Here's the article published about me in the local paper. In retrospect I'm not entirely comfortable with it. I'm disagree about the part stating rural Kenyans know more about American politics then me. Many Kenyans do know a good bit about American politics but the way the editor phrased it is not entirely accurate. Also, the editor suggests that peace in Kenya could be a result of the large number of Quakers, but the reason for peace among tribes is much larger than the work of a single Christian denomination.
African posting with Peace Corps: No elephants, lots to learn
By KAY CAMPBELL
Times Faith & Values Editor
kay.campbell@htimes.com
He's embarrassed now to admit it, but Joseph McMahan had hoped, at least every now and then, a herd of elephants might step through the yard of his little house near a rainforest in western Kenya.
McMahan knows the "Lion King" stereotype many Americans have of Africa isn't accurate. He knows most African people have given up traditional cultural life except for festivals.
But no elephants? Not even a monkey or two?
"It's completely not like that," McMahan said last week during a two-week furlough at his parents' Huntsville home. "Where I live in Kenya is fairly developed with little towns and cities all over. And the people are very well educated. They know more about American politics than I do."
McMahan is serving a two-year Peace Corps assignment. He works as an educator and marketer for the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization. No one "works" for the Peace Corps, he explained. This U.S . government's international program offers training, health care and support for volunteers who are then assigned to non-profit organizations with programs in developing countries around the world.
McMahan works with the Kakamega Farmer Field School Network to offer resources on growing crops, developing cash crops and connecting farmers with corporations who will buy those crops.
While most farmers can grow the food they need to survive, he said, they need a way to raise cash to pay for their children's high school education and health care.
In his "off" time, McMahan has started two projects on his own, one to get grants to help a network of women growing chickens for eggs and meat, the other to get wheelchairs for the handicapped people he sees in his village dragging themselves along in the dust.
"It breaks your heart to see that," McMahan said. "Some use potholders to protect their hands."
McMahan said he is thriving on the work. Ever since mission trips as a teen with groups from St. Thomas Episcopal church, he's felt drawn to the joy of doing work that mattered with people who needed help. Ever since a post-college European back-packing trip, he's felt lured to places different from his home town.
The Peace Corps offered him, he said, a combination of both service and adventure.
It's an adventure he very nearly didn't have.
A degree from Auburn University led to a good job here in Huntsville with Adtran. Very shortly, he was paying for a car, a house, contemplating a serious romantic relationship. One day it hit him that if he didn't investigate the Peace Corps, an idea he'd had for years, he would be drawn into an inescapable orbit of job-marriage-kids.
"One day I realized that if I didn't leave now, it was not going to happen," McMahan said. "In retrospect, it was probably the best decision I ever made."
His time in Africa has taught him a lot. Never again, he said, will he take clean water flowing out of a tap for granted. Never again will he take free high schools for granted or health care he can access because of insurance.
And never again will he look at his own country in the same way, he said.
"When I tell my neighbors that in the United States you can live in an apartment and not know your neighbors, they say, 'How can that happen?'" McMahan said. "In Kenya, people look out for each other. It's a very community-based culture."
Working with the people of the Kakamega District in Western Kenya, he said, has reminded him of what really matters.
"In this country (the U.S.), we've reached the point where we define a lot of who we are through our material possessions," McMahan said. "In Kenya, they don't have so much materially, but they are very strong spiritually."
Kenya, which is predominantly Christian, has one of the world's largest concentrations of Quakers according to the CIA's World Fact Book. It might be a result of that peaceful religion, or perhaps a natural development of the Kenyans' own personalities, but McMahan has noticed something else he wishes the world could learn from the Kenyans: Peaceful co-habitation with diverse types of people.
"In Kenya, you have more than 40 individual traditional cultures, each with its own language and traditions in a country whose borders were arbitrarily drawn by the British," he said. "The fact that they have been able to co-exist peacefully despite their differences * I think that's kind of unique."
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