Am I Smarter Than a First-Grader?

Life as a Peace Corps trainee is like being a kid again. You are back living with your (“homestay”) mama, have a 6:30 curfew, and need permission to leave the area or spend the night elsewhere. Your Kenyan mama determines your eating, washing, and cleaning activities. Whatever aspects of your life she doesn’t control, Peace Corps does.

As it must. This is Kenya, not Kansas. And for me, few things have tested my adulthood – from navigating Nairobi (aka Nairobbery) at dusk, to maneuvering a moving matatu, or learning the symptoms of invasive parasites like schistosomiasis (which produces skin-penetrating larvae that lay eggs in your brain or spine) – like Pre-Service Training. Similarly, nothing has made me feel more like a child. One moment I’m beaming at successfully formulating my first complete sentence in Kiswahili and the next I’m bawling because I’ve forgotten everything after a training trip to Taveta and Mombasa.

If homestay and language training doesn’t make you feel like a first-grader again, being around 51 other mostly young (between 20 and 28) volunteers trying to find their way in a strange new place most have only read about or seen in movies will. Here I have had the absolute pleasure of knowing some of the most wise and extraordinarily grounded young people I’ve ever known. But there’s a strong current of immaturity among others, even those who are older, that I haven’t experienced since elementary and high school.

Finally, there’s the work itself of trying to impart sustainable business practices that we – at least those of us in SED – are here training to do over the next two years: explaining the most basic of accounting principals to people more accustomed to getting handouts than hard work and a firm handshake from white skinned outsiders like me. Initially I might feel like an awkward kid, but when I see the spark of understanding in their eyes I feel 10 feet tall.