2 Weeks and Counting

Welcome to my new blog!

There are exactly 2 weeks until I leave for staging with the Peace Corps and get started on my move to Kenya. As I write this I can look out the kitchen window and watch the snow piling up on the deck. In about 15 days I'll be on the other side of the globe in the bright summer sunshine of Embu, Kenya, watching anything but snow.

I am a Small Enterprise Development volunteer, which means my purpose is to "enable rural Kenyan communities to increase their capacity to purchase goods and services they require for their livelihood by deriving better returns from their income generation activities." Some of the things required of me will be to analyze the local business environment, train entrepreneurs in a range of business skills, provide guidance and support to entrepreneurs, and teach computer literacy.

I will be meeting a group of fellow volunteers in Philadelphia where we will get some training information and then fly as a group to Embu, Kenya. Once there, we'll spend 8 weeks living with local families and training in language (Kiswahili), culture, and our jobs. Sometime during that training I'll be assigned a specific project in a specific place, but until then I have no idea where in the country I'll wind up.

For the next two weeks I'll be busy taking care of my bills and legal stuff, buying what I think I'll need with me in Kenya, and attempting to pack those things into two suitcases weighing less than 80 pounds total. I figure if I can do that and wind up with a halfway adequate household in Kenya I've already accomplished a lot!

It's been super surprising how many people I've run into in the past few months that either has been to/lived in Kenya or knows someone who has. It's a small world and appears that Kenya is a pretty friendly country. I have not heard a single negative thing from anyone and have heard more good things about Kenya than I could list, so I think this is going to be an even better experience than I imagined so far. I will try my hardest to keep this blog updated more frequently than the last one. I have a feeling I'll have a lot more to report, so it won't be difficult to come up with things to say...

love leah