A talk to bring it all home...

Speaking with 90 young men in Form 4 at St Benedict's Budalang'i High School yesterday.

Over the past couple of weeks, I have had the opportunity to speak with students at two nearby secondary schools. 150 young men and women within the health and young Christian clubs at Nyambare Secondary School in nearby Siaya District, and 90 young men in Form 4 at our local St. Benedict’s High School here in Budalang’i.

At each school, I was given a one-hour time slot to speak to the students, offering any advice I thought could help them. These talks, however brief, were two of the most fulfilling and enjoyable experiences I’ve had in my three years in the Peace Corps.

Not only did I have a blast, but the students also seemed to enjoy themselves, taking notes and participating when engaged. Although I wish I had time to work at more secondary schools, it is fitting that these opportunities have effectively concluded my time in the Peace Corps.

There was a time when filling such a long time slot would be a daunting task. What could I possibly talk about? But in the past three years, through the work and conversations I’ve had within my communities both in Mali and Kenya, I’ve developed an understanding of the issues of development, along with ways to frame my arguments to motivate those around me to take charge of their own lives. In many ways the speeches I gave are the culmination of my time, an appropriate summary of everything I’ve learned about development.

My good friend Charles Ratory, the community health extension worker whom I work extensively with, briefly talks to the students at Nyambare Secondary School after I finished my speech.

Although the teachers all speak and teach in English, I have found that Kenyans are generally not able to understand my accent. I have spent my whole time here in Budalang’i without speaking English, anyways. It felt pretty awesome to be able to give such a speech in another language, Kiswahili, with them understanding every word.

I won’t begrudge anyone for not reading further, but I wanted to summarize my speech here for my future reference:

After introducing myself, I asked the students, knowing that I am from America, what one word would you choose to best describe my life based upon your current understanding of America?

The students answered with words similar to ‘comfortable’, ‘easy’, ‘rich’, and ‘simple’.

Yeah, that’s generally the perception. Everyone knows America is developed; we’re a rich country. We have machines to wash our clothes, tapped water and electricity in every home. But how did we as Americans attain that life? Is our life really that easy?

Which countries in the world today are most developed? America, China, Japan, countries in Europe. Very different cultures and ways of life, but what one thing do all of these countries have in common? They were built on their own, depending only upon themselves. Do you think World Vision or other NGO’s worked in these countries?

If you look at Africa today, countries generally depend upon outside assistance. In my opinion, that is where all of their problems emanate from.

Sure, I don’t farm like you all. But my parents of my parents of my parents did. If someone works one job, another two, another five, who do you think will be better at their job? The person who focuses all of their energy on one job will know it completely. And that’s what happened in America. We saw that by specialization, we could work more efficiently, thus benefiting all of our lives.

Nearly everyone who succeeds in life has done so because they depend upon themselves. They work hard to take advantage of the resources at their disposal. If you always dwell upon what you don’t have, like the common refrain here, ‘sina pesa (I have no money)’, you will never meet your goals.

It gives you an excuse, puts your life out of your control. Thinking that way leads you to sit and wait for others to give you a handout. You get discouraged. And before you know it, your ten years older, you’ve wasted your time, wasted your youthful energy, and have nothing to show for it.

But if you use that energy properly, you can flip the script. We all have our own resources. What is important is that you use those resources at your disposal to their fullest. Work hard. If you have the opportunity to attend school, study to your fullest. Do the best you can. And when you succeed, colleges will eagerly accept you. Succeed there, and you’ll have skills and experience to help you sell yourself to employers, making them believe that it would be a mistake to pass on you, allowing you to work elsewhere.

Take for instance my life in America. I told them how in America, when you reach age 18, your parents generally cut you off. You have to head out on your own, completely unsupported. (They gasped in shock at this, and the teacher later told me this shocked him. Here, even adults often go back to live off of their parents.)

I then went into detail about studying hard in high school and college, taking out massive loans (the amount of which draws gasps), and then struggling through work as a civil engineer. ‘Voluntarily’ putting in extraordinary amounts of unpaid overtime, because if I didn’t, we would miss a deadline. My firm would lose a contract, and I would lose a job. And even so, when the economy tanked, I still lost that job, and had to struggle to find another one.

So is life in America easy, really? The students responded emphatically, ‘No!’

Yes, my resources are different. Life in America is more developed. Education is better, but at the same time, everything is more expensive. You must work, and hard. If you go to any town center in America during the workday, you’ll never find people sitting around ‘kupiga story’ (to beat the story/chat). (This also surprised them.) Everyone has their own job they must do, or they can’t eat.

Every country has its good and bad traits. And if you compare Kenya to other countries in Africa, you’ll find that the quality of life here is actually very high.

Take for instance Mali. I described the arid environment, how it rains only two months out of the year, yet they depend only upon subsistence farming. How their food is made up of almost exclusively millet, accompanied only with sauce made from the leaves and bark of the baobab tree. No regular access to meat or vegetables.

How it gets so hot that you have to sleep outside, and you still lay in a pool of your own sweat. Then a dust storm can come in the middle of the night and coat you in sand before you wake up. No electricity for 100 kilometers. I explained how out of 1,500 people in Makili, only one person could speak the national language of French; the head teacher, and he didn’t finish secondary school. They were absolutely stunned.

So if you could choose to have been born in Mali or Kenya, where would you choose? Overwhelmingly Kenya. How about Kenya or America? America. We all laughed, well…

Appreciate what you have. Take advantage of your opportunities and play to your strengths. Never give up. Don’t wait for good things to come your way, they won’t.

Good lives are made and lived. Good lives are not given.

To use your resources properly, set a goal for yourself. Think about what you want to achieve and plan a course of action. Everything you do can either lead you further down that road, or can get you stuck or lost.

Think ahead. What are the consequences of your actions, positive and negative? What are the opportunity costs?

I then asked the students, what are some of the common mistakes people you know make that lead them astray? I then discussed with them each one.

Most importantly, we discussed abstinence or safer sex/condom use when sexually transmitted illnesses and pregnancy came up. How both parents and teachers are afraid to discuss sex with the youth here, so people don’t have the correct information, don’t know the consequences of their actions. That is why HIV infection and underage pregnancy are such major issues here. I discussed specifics about this issue, especially condom use, and encouraged them to talk to their friends and younger siblings about the same. Lets put the information out in the open.

The other major mistake I made sure to discuss was dropping out of school for quick money. A major problem here in Bunyala is that kids leave school to fish on the lake, work odd jobs (‘jua kali’), or drive ‘boda boda’ (motorcycles for hire, serving as taxis) because it brings money right now.

Say you leave school to fish on the lake. Ten years from now, what do you think you will be doing? Have you opened any new doors? No, you’ll remain at the same place, fishing. Or maybe even be worse off than today.

But say you continue to study, building upon your intelligence and skills. You develop your own internal resources. Ten years from now, what do you think you will be doing? I asked the students, getting answers like working as a doctor, lawyer, engineer, or accountant.

Exactly. You will build a foundation upon which to construct your future. Maybe the person who chooses to leave school now, he’ll be better off monetarily than you today. But ten years into the future, who will be better than whom?

So in conclusion, appreciate what you have. Don’t despair over what you don’t. Take full advantage of the resources available to you, and work with all of your ability.

You can’t choose where you are born. But you can choose to use your opportunities and resources to their fullest.