I Miss… #6

I escaped NYS a day early so that I could get some work done in Mombasa while I still have a nice 3G connection on my ceullular modem. Of course, it also means I am sitting in a hotel room with air conditioning, so I am comfortable, and thought I would fire off a [...]

Never A Holiday Really, Except This Time

Most all education institutes in Kenya follow a three on, one off, schedule for their school year. This simply means we have three months of teaching, followed by one month of holiday. Of course, NYSTC is slightly different from every other institution in that though we follow the 3/1 pattern, our year starts [...]

Naturally-Induced Change

This may be a short blog post for today as I start to wrap up everything here on the coast before heading out on December 1st for the beginnings of my zany three part adventure. Part one is traveling around Kenya doing Peace Corps-related work, part two is a Eurotrip with Chris (more on [...]

Thanksgiving in Mombasa: The Pictures

The application I was using to get pictures up on Flickr had a silly default setting of, “private,” for every image, meaning only I could see it. I believe the settings have all been changed now, manually, through the website, so I am hoping the images are all public. They weren’t showing up [...]

Thanksgiving in Mombasa!

I must be the luckiest guy in the world, because not only were my friends and I able to pull off a successful Halloween, but we bagged Thanksgiving as well! Thanksgiving went off without a hitch, not counting the later than expected dinnertime of course. But hey, this is Kenya, something would have [...]

Ars Politico Africanae: Those Who Lead

Part of my biggest problem when trying to get anything done here is that I always simply get frustrated when nothing gets done for no apparent reason. I sit and I ask myself, “Kenya is becoming a more and more globally-aware nation. Why are we not learning from other nations’ mistakes in their [...]

The CC Camel: An Independent Thinker

I was on the beach yesterday (I know, hard work that Peace Corps), and there were your usual camel ride troop of camels but being a Tuesday there were not many customers so the camels were relaxing. Normally, when a camel (the animal) relaxes, it rests on its knees so as to get up [...]

Maisha ya Mkenya: Mombasa Seasons

I thought that I would kickoff the introduction of more series-based posting with a talk on the seasons here in Mombasa. Now that I have been here for almost the year, and experienced the full gamut, I feel like I can give a better impression.
First off, what are the seasons. Many people will [...]

Ars Politico Africanae: Draft Kenyan Constitution

In December 2007, Kenya underwent what was arguably its second, “free, democratic, election,” which in this situation I will present as a democratic, multi-party election in which the former effectively-dictator leader, Moi, was not running.
It failed.
Kenya, Africa’s shining star of stability and super economic growth, failed.
The result was months of post-election violence, allegedly instigated by [...]

Peace Corps Panama Cartoons, circa 1965

A series of cartoons from a Peace Corps Panama volunteer circa 1965 was brought to my attention. They were drawn by RPCV Charley Stough, and have potentially inspired me to restart my own Peace Corps Kenya Cartoons. These images are being linked to from the hosted site and are not stored locally on [...]