A Visit to Rural Kenya (Harvard)

At the end of July of '95,I boarded a plane that would take me from my home in

Cincinnati, Ohio, to Nairobi, Kenya. My parents had always wanted to take our family

abroad, but when my mother signed a contract to work for the U.S. Agency for

International Development in Kenya, plans materialized, and we were soon on our way

to an exotic year in Africa.

Besides the farewells I had to make to my friends at home, I had few reservations about

living abroad. What made it easy for me to come to Africa was my eagerness to

immerse myself in a new culture. I knew that I might never get such an experience

again, so I was determined to learn all I could about the language, the history, and the

people, of that far-off place.

During the first few months of our stay, my family took various trips around the

country. We watched zebra and wildebeest migrate across the Serengeti, saw hippos

floating like rocks in Lake Victoria, marveled at flamingos balancing knee-deep in a

salt-lake. We climbed an extinct volcano in the Rift Valley. We snorkeled in the Indian

Ocean and fed fish from our fingers. We hiked 17,000 feet above sea level to the peak of

Mt. Kenya. And we studied Swahili, the local language, every evening after dinner. But

in late October my aunt came to visit for a month. She romanced us with stories of her

experiences in rural Africa working in the Peace Corps. The sharp contrast between the

simple lifestyle she described and the one I was leading shocked me as to how un-

African my life was. I went to an American school every day with mostly Europeans

and Asians, which, despite being a unique experience itself, isolated me from the larger

Kenyan community. I was also living in a city, where shopping malls, Italian

restaurants, late-night discos, and movie theaters were all available close at hand. Was

this really what I had come to see? My daily activities were almost the same as the ones

in the United States. I typed English essays late at night on a computer; I showered with

hot water every day after soccer practice; I dined on fried chicken or fish fillets or

hamburgers. I was in the midst of a swarm of expatriates who had formed a community

so tight that I could live with all the luxuries of a technologically-modern lifestyle. I saw

my problem: I had wound myself so tightly in the routine of my school life that I was no

longer seeing Kenya or even Kenyans. I yearned to know some of the African culture,

but I didn't know how that could be achieved without a drastic break in my academic

progress, which I wasn't willing to sacrifice.

After talking over this issue with my parents, I stumbled upon the perfect solution.

[name] is the son of [name] and [name], with whom my mother lived twenty years ago

when she came to Kenya as a volunteer nurse. [name] was living with us while he

attended [name] College, but he was going back to his home village to visit his family

over the Christmas holidays. I could go with him and stay with his family there.

This excursion proved to be the most rewarding ten days of my entire stay in Africa. In

that short period, I learned more about Kenyan culture than I had in the five months

prior to that time. First of all, I witnessed how different the female role is in Kenya than

in America. The women-young and old-did about twice the work the men did. They

had to cook the meals, get the milk, sweep the house, chop the firewood, take care of

the children; the list goes on and on. The men did some work on the farm, but mostly

they enjoyed a laid-back lifestyle. And it is not uncommon for a man to have more than

one wife. [Name] has had a total of three women as wives. What seems unheard-of to a

Westerner is commonplace to a Kenyan.

I also saw an intense restlessness for change. When the men sat around the dinner table

(women weren't allowed to eat with them), they would not merely discuss the weather

or the latest gossip of the village. No, they debated the problems and merits of Kenya

and what could be done to improve their country. They voiced their apprehension of

the government, their fear that if they openly opposed the estab-lished authority, their

family could be persecuted by the president's special agents. They talked of the A.I.D.S.

epidemic spreading through the working class like wildfire. They expressed their anger

at the drug abuse of their nation's youth. But these men were unwilling to accept the

obstacles they faced and instead looked toward solutions-education, fairer elections,

less corruption, and others. I also saw that a primitive life is not necessarily a painful

one. Theirs is a simple life-one without running water, or electricity, or telephones, or

cars. But being simple did not mean it was a pleasureless life. It meant fetching water

every day from a well. It meant cooking over a fire and reading by a lantern. It meant

walking to school instead of driving. But it also meant no expensive phone bills, no

wallet-straining car repairs, no broken washing machines. A simple life had its

hardships, but it also avoided the hassles that Americans face in their complex modern

lives. In the village, we ate good food, children screamed and shouted with joy, we

laughed while playing card games, we flipped through old photo albums. Their

lifestyle was vastly different from mine, but they still had the same goals that I did: to

have fun, to get a good education, to be comfortable. After the New Year, when I

returned to my home in Nairobi, I went back carrying in my mind a vivid picture of

rural Kenya, but also satisfied that I had learned something that could not be found in

Nairobi's American expatriate community.

** Comments by Admissions Officers **

•This essayist benefited from having had an unusual travel experience and from

knowing how to write about it using lots of colorful detail. Two officers mentioned that

the writer could have improved the essay by making her conclusion more reflective.

"What do these things mean?" asked one. "In the conclusion, the all-important self-

reflection is absent. . . . Remember, if you want to write an essay about your immersion

in a foreign culture, you must be able to articulate how you've grown from the

experience; a mere recounting of events is not enough."

•This is very well written. I especially like the vivid descriptions of the African scenes.

It shows us a young woman who is extremely open to new experiences, who wants to

immerse herself completely in whatever new situation comes her way. She would be a

valuable addition to an entering class.