The Monopoly Man Story

One year of malhappenings! Thanks to everyone who's been reading along the way.

Note for the folks at home: True Story started as (and still is) a vehicle to tell my family and friends strange things that have happened to me in Kenya. I would also like to think that it's fulfilling the "Third Goal" of the US Peace Corps: "To help promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans". Originally, I drew True Story on white sketch paper with a fine tip Uni-Ball "Vision" pen. Then I would scan the inked comic (using a fellow volunteer's scanner) and edit using GIMP on a computer at the school where I work. Here I would add the two shades of grey, and later the shadowing. Over the year, the process has been refined. Now I draw the comics directly into Photoshop using a Lenovo tablet laptop. This saves time, but took some getting used to. (Note the awkward handwriting in my first tablet-drawn comic as evidence of the learning curve.) All of the comics are hosted on Flickr, and the clog on Blogspot.

September

Note for the folks at home: A regular US Peace Corps Volunteer service is two years long (plus two or three months of training.) A volunteer can additionally apply to "extend" their service for a third year, though not all extensions are granted. Volunteer entrance rates vary greatly country-to-country, but in Kenya, new groups of volunteers enter the country twice per year, replacing two "graduating" groups of volunteers. Currently, Peace Corps Kenya supports volunteers in three categories: Education, Public Health, and Small Enterprise Development. In September, 2010, I supposed I might be building houses for villagers in a remote settlement in the middle of a jungle as a Peace Corps volunteer. By September, 2012, I have built a total of zero houses, and consider my pre-departure ignorance of Kenya humorous and embarrassing.

"Passing the Disk"

Note for the folks at home: For most Kenyans, English is their third language, and Kiswahili is their second. Their first language is their "mother tongue", also called their "tribal language" or "vernacular". There are over 40 different ethnic tribes across Kenya, each with its own mother tongue, and several mother tongues have entirely distinct dialects by region. Some of the tribal languages represented in the Maralal area are Samburu ("Serian! Kesupat!"), Kikuyu ("Ohoro wako? Kwega fio."), and Turkana ("Ejoko? Ejok'!"), among many others. Naturally, such a mishmash of languages causes general confusion, so a common language is required to allow mutual understanding. Kiswahili is the usual choice, but modern schools have been tasked by the government to push English in schools. To this end, all classes (besides Kiswahili class) are taught in English, and the speaking of mother tongues within school is to be discouraged with stiff punishment. The threat of punishment seems to be the extent of this last point --- very rarely is the protocol enforced, as even the teachers find themselves slipping into vernacular now and again.

Get Him To Call

Note for the folks at home: Due to the way English is pronounced in Kenya, mobile phone text messages among Kenyans are populated by a unique brand of shorthand. For instance: "are" = "a", "your" = "ua", "nice time" = "nyc tym". "For", "to", and "too" are all given their numerical equivalents, and, as per the particular grammatical tradition of Kiswahili, subjects are dropped ("Am cming 2 town"). Despite this seemingly informal nature, text messages are still held to the same standards of politeness as person-to-person communication: greetings ("gd mrning", "hw r u?") are always required, and formal titles ("mr principal") should be recognized.

This Signal

Note for the folks at home: By "Touristy Parts", I mean the port city of Mombasa, some parts of the capitol Nairobi, and anywhere close to a game park (like the massive Maasai Mara). Tourism is undeniably one of Kenya's largest industries. In some areas, tourists greatly outnumber local people. A few consequences of this are immediately apparent: i) White people have a nation-wide reputation for being rich, often lost, and constantly in need of a ride somewhere. ii) Young children often assume foreigners have pockets full of candy, which they plan to distribute at the first half-English request. (I'm not sure how this one came about. I'm assuming some early tourist had the great idea of packing a few bags of Werther's Originals, to win the hearts of the local youth. Whatever this pioneer's reasoning was, I hate him for it and wish only harm to him and his lineage.) iii) "Guides" seem to be one of the most popular jobs across the nation, although how much training goes into the title is another question altogether.

Watch This!

Note for the folks at home: The school where I work is an all-boys' boarding school. Boarding schools make up the majority of secondary ("high") schools in Kenya, (the less-common alternative being "day" schools,) and a great deal of them are single-gender. Schools can be funded by a variety of sources. Public schools, which are at least partially funded by the government, are classified by the size of their region: "district", "provincial", "national", etc. Private schools are, understandable, funded privately, often through a religious organization or charity. From my conversations with teachers, private schools are (in general) optimal for students (who receive the most student-teacher interaction) but dismal for teachers (whose salaries aren't subject to the standards of the government, and could possibly be very low).

Give Me

(They had somehow glued long black fibers, what I suspect were pieces of a discarded weave, to their faces. The result was truly horrifying.)

Note for the folks at home: "Street children" are a daily reality across Kenya, more common in urban than rural areas (but existing throughout.) These kids may have several reasons for living unaccompanied by adults. Many may be orphans, which of course is common due to the several life-threatening diseases of the region (notably: Malaria, HIV/AIDS), but a large number of street children do in fact have parents. These children have left home, in many cases, because of scarcity of food. Several factors may induce this; including drought-borne famine, enormous family sizes, and tribal violence; none of which, of course, are new problems. Many locals point to the westernization of communities that causes families to turn away children, of parents unable to give proper care, who they would otherwise care for as one of their own. Whatever the cause of the children's situation, street children face a hard life that more often than not leads to begging, stealing, and drug use (most notable being the huffing of paste fumes, giving them their second name: "Glue Kids".)