Afterword

Just a few things in order to properly put an end to "A Guy in Kenya."

THANK YOU's are in order to the following:

1. The Clinton School of Public Service, for first of all accepting me as a student at their school and thus giving me the opportunity and means to do the important work I did this summer and to have the incredible experience of personal growth that it gave me. I am profoundly proud to call myself a "Student of Bill," and I have immense amount of gratitude to the school for the value they place on field service. I don't know of any other school in the country that essentially says to its students: "Here's some money - go out and do some good on the other side of the world." Their International Public Service Project has no match in higher education. Thank you Dean Rutherford and to Joe Ballard for organizing the IPSP program.

2. To Jim Cummings and Kijana Educational Empowerment Initiative, for partnering with me on my project and continuing to show me unlimited faith and support as I have continued to develop from a young man into a slightly older young man. I have now seen first-hand the amazing impact Kijana is having in Kenya, and if I wasn't already, I am certainly now your partner for life.

3. To Patrick, for taking the journey alongside me and trusting that Kijana was a worthwhile partner.

4. To the Kutai family, my Kenyan family, for showing me unlimited love, hospitality, and spreading their warm hearts to mine.

5. And to my American family, for their love and support and allowing me to travel off to distant lands for ten weeks. I'm lucky to have you all.


And lastly, thank YOU for joining on my journey this summer by reading along from where ever you are in the world. I was telling Patrick the other day that I'm glad I blogged this summer because I'll enjoy looking back on these entries in the years to come as if looking back on the pages of a journal. I've never been good at keeping a journal throughout my life, so I think what's made keeping a blog easier is the fact that I know I'm writing for an audience - people that can share in the journey with me. I guess I'm self-centered - I need people's attention to be motivated to write apparently. So thanks for joining me and giving me motivation to keep on writing - I've loved receiving comments and hearing shared ideas and experiences brought up from readers.

I'll close by asking you for one more thing. If you've enjoyed reading this blog, and have the means to do so, please consider making a donation to Kijana Educational Empowerment Initiative. You can visit them at www.kijana.org and figure out how to make a contribution. I can tell you with complete faith that your contribution would be meaningfully spent and make a significant impact in the lives of the students in western Kenya. The students I encountered there are so remarkably intelligent and on average, significantly more motivated and dedicated to their education than American students. They truly value the ability to learn and will study as hard as possible to achieve their dreams and escape their environment's cycle of poverty. They have the brains and the heart - they just need the resources. That's why Kijana's work is so important. You have the power in your hands (and bank account) to have a humongous impact on a student who wants so badly to succeed and make a good living for him or herself and their family. The world has a lot of money in it - mostly in our American hands. It's up to us to share it. Before leaving, I gave Franklin's family $200 towards his college education. Because of the donation, he'll be able to enroll in an aviation school next month and will be the first child in his family to attend college. His mother is poor and his father is deceased. It was a tough decision, but I have faith that it will pay off. Additionally, his mother will sell her livestock and Franklin will get a part-time job in Eldoret to earn the extra money needed to pay tuition. My sacrifice is so small in comparison to theirs*. Will you join me in making a small sacrifice for the lasting empowerment of Kenyan students? Even if it is as small as $10, I hope you'll consider it. Money comes and goes, but an education lasts forever.

And with that, I leave you. You can help make the story continue on at www.kijana.org.


*I tell this story not to brag of my generosity, but to perhaps inspire you to give as well. I don't believe in not sharing good news. I know it's always helped me to make a commitment if I've seen someone else make their own commitment.

My first chicken!

I wrote in a previous blog post that I gave a recent high school graduate named Franklin the equivalent of $7 to settle his balance at his secondary school, and in so doing, receive his diploma certifying that he had passed secondary school.

Franklin has returned the favor by giving me the gift of a live chicken!

I felt incredibly honored to receive such a well-intentioned and meaningful gift. The chicken now roams around the compound along with Welliminah's other chickens. I imagine that eventually I will be eating it. :)

Thank you, Franklin.

Word Gets Around

The other day Welliminah's son, Vincent, was driving Patrick and me in his car. As we were driving out of Es'saba village, we passed a group of little kids hanging out on the side of the path we were driving on. I heard them shout out something I have become used to: "Mzungu!", which means "white person" (some of my travel guides for Kenya try to be polite and translate it as "Westerner", which is not quite true). But I also heard them put another word on the end of it that I wasn't familiar with. "Wetu", as in "Mzungu wetu!" When Vincent heard this, he cracked up and said, "Do you know what they just said? They said, 'Our Mzungu'". Our white person.

Strangely, I have to admit that it feels good to be referred to as "our white person". I'm not just any white person - I belong to somebody. I'm Es'saba village's white person. I'll take it.

Patrick has a better shot of blending in here due to his skin color (he's been told that he looks like a Nairobian visiting the countryside to passing strangers here), but when he's with me, that shot goes out the window. We (mostly I) become a spectacle walking through the villages. Often we'll be walking around in an area where I don't see a single person around us in any direction, but suddenly we'll hear a kid shout at the top of his lungs, "Mzunguuuuuuu!!", as if it were an alarm or alert system for the entire neighborhood. Soon after hearing this 'alarm', streams of kids will run out of houses or shrubbery to simply stop and stare. I try to do my best to put a smile on my face and wave at them, because I know they are curious about what white people are like. So if they get any impression from me, I hope it's that I seem like a friendly guy, even if my mannerisms and Swahili accent come off a little odd to them.

And it's hard to hide in white skin even when I'm at Welliminah's house. Patrick and I have gotten into the habit of working during the day in her living room, typing at our computers, doing stuff for our projects. At some point in the afternoon, around 3 or 4, we'll often get a little stir crazy and decide to head out to the front yard and toss the frisbee around or even kick the soccer ball. Every time, without fail, the kids start trickling in to Welliminah's front yard to play with us. They come out of the woodwork. I have no idea how they find out so quickly that we're outside playing. Yesterday was an all-time high for us. Check out the picture below - at one point there was a whopping fourteen kids hanging out, including little babies who had been brought along by their older brother or sister.

It's cool with me. It makes it more fun for us to hang out and show these kids how to play frisbee, and to learn how to play soccer from them (even if I sometimes may get a little too peacocky for my own good).

But word gets around to older kids and adults too. I guess the buzz around town is that two Americans from Kijana are staying at Welliminah's house, so we'll sometimes get people popping in to say hello. Yesterday, a teenager popped in. I initially just said hello to him and continued working on my laptop, since it appeared like he was just there to visit Welliminah, with whom he struck up a conversation in Swahili. But eventually, Welliminah told me that he had come seeking assistance from Kijana. His name was Franklin, and he had passed Form IV (12th grade, making him a high school graduate) back in November 2009. But he was also an orphan with very little money. His problem was that despite passing Form IV, his school wouldn't give him his certificate (or diploma), because he still had a balance of 600Ksh on his tuition. He was wondering if he could get a donation.

600Ksh is roughly $7. Considering that this was now June 2010, and he had graduated in November 2009, it means that for seven whole months he was unable to accumulate the 600Ksh necessary to settle his balance and gain something that I assume is important to anyone - a high school diploma acknowledging four years of  hard work. More importantly, if he wanted to take the next step in his education and head to college, he would have to display proof that he had graduated high school, further emphasizing the significance of that piece of paper. So I gave him the money and wished him good luck. Really, the money came from the stipend that the Clinton School gave me for the summer. While most of that money has been spent on plane tickets, vaccinations, travel insurance, and even three days in Egypt hanging out and visiting the pyramids, I decided $7 to pay for a young man's high school diploma was a reasonable expense as well. So Clinton School, you should know that some of your money is going to micro-philanthropy in a rural village in Kenya.

Although it's hard for me to imagine Franklin being able to afford college tuition without a significant scholarship or other aid, I asked him what his aspirations for college would be. He said he would like to go to an agricultural college located in Nakuru. In any case, I asked him to write down his name and contact information for Kijana. Maybe we can figure out a way to help. In the meantime, I think Franklin is happy enough to have his high school diploma.