Peace Corps Kenya 101

As a child of the world, I spent 2 years in Kenya with the Peace Corps teaching math. The Peace Corps slogan – “The toughest job you’ll ever love.” The alternative slogans – “The longest vacation you’ll ever love” or “The easiest job you’ll ever hate.” I must credit those to other volunteers.

As far as locations, Kenya is a pretty sweet gig – there’s the Great Rift Valley, safaris and wildlife, pristine snorkeling and diving, rainforests, Lake Victoria, the Leakey’s and the “cradle of humankind”…

On the other hand, you could have been one of the poor saps (oops... volunteers) at our staging that was headed to Mauritania. I’m sure it has its own loveliness, but do you know what most of Mauritania is:



Yowza! – gee guys…those pics of the approaching sandstorm are pretty cool. Lucky!


Picture courtesy of here http://mr.pcvs.org/site/country/visit.php

The equator runs smack through the middle of Kenya. If you happen to be at a higher altitude on the equator, I would call the weather MAGNIFICENT. If you are not, I would call the weather sucky. I’m going to go with “my site was only slightly sucky because it was a dry sucky.” The jeans I took – wore them once. Whose dumb idea was packing this sweater? Do you know why a cement floor is awesome – because when you lay down naked on it, it’s almost cold. Did I actually just poke fun at Mauritania’s geography?

Kenya is famous for its wildlife reserves, but on Peace Corps’ awesomely huge salary, my safari life was, “Hey look at the Black Mamba in my pit latrine”, “Is that a scorpion in my shoe?” or “Damn, the bus almost took out that elephant on the side of the road.” Ha ha... OK… that’s not true, because really that elephant would have taken the bus out, not the other way around. They’re sorta big that way.

So there is a tiny intro for you…plenty more where that all came from.

*WARNING* You may also find Humor-Blogs in your pit latrine.