I found my thrill on Ugali Hill

One of my friends on Lamu was Sadat,
who worked at the post office and
regularly alerted me to the arrival of that
precious commodity known as mail, including
3-month-old copies of the Lewiston Tribune.

This column ran in my newspaper, the Lewiston Tribune, on March 16, 2011.
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I joined the Peace Corps for cheap thrills. Seriously.

It was never really a calling - I had less of a burning desire to save the world than to just go explore it. And as a volunteer, I got to do that, on Uncle Sam's - your - dime. So for that, I thank you.

That would be "asante sana" in Swahili, one of the many things I learned during my three years of service.

As an English teacher stationed on the island of Lamu, Kenya, between 1985 and 1988, I definitely wasn't in it for the money. The Peace Corps paid me a living allowance of roughly $100 a month for about 34 months, and when it was over sent me home with a readjustment stipend of $5,000.

Not very lucrative, no, but my thinking going into it was this: If the U.S. government was willing to transport me to another part of the world while taking care of all my travel, living and medical expenses in exchange for me tackling "the toughest job you'll ever love," then I was game.

I did love the job and my time in Kenya. I taught a couple of hundred young men English, built a library, coached a basketball team and made a lot of great friends.

Making friends was the linchpin in the deal, but I'll get to that in a moment.

As development work goes, the Peace Corps wasn't - probably still isn't - about quantifiable results. Were a fastidious bean-counter in a government office somewhere to do an investment-outcome analysis of my three years in Kenya, he or she would quickly conclude it had been a lemon of a deal - no Rhodes scholars, no hydroelectric dams, no tropical disease eradication.

But as a volunteer, I came to see myself as more of a goodwill emissary than a nation-builder, a walking billboard for the American way of life. At least that's the epiphany I and many of my fellow volunteers experienced after we'd been in-county for a few months, struggling to navigate an alien landscape, a new language, a different culture.

And I was OK with that. Like I said, my primary goal was cheap thrills, and I definitely found them. The simple act of adapting to life in a developing country was a challenge rife with every-day adventure. Learning to live without the kinds of things we take for granted here - potable water, electricity, washing machines, TV, cars, fast food - was interesting but nowhere near as difficult as you might imagine.

Trying to avoid contracting a lethal case of malaria, food poisoning, infections and all other manner of exotic illness - now that was a more formidable task. We were all issued a book called "Where There is No Doctor," which should give you a pretty good indication of the extent to which health care was available. Just traveling via the public transportation system was a crapshoot. In this category, I succeeded, meaning I returned to the United States alive and in one piece.

And I brought back a treasure trove of stories with me. One of my favorites involves the Lewiston Tribune, where I had worked as a sports writer and copy editor before joining the Peace Corps.

Shortly after I arrived at Lamu in January 1986, I ordered a subscription to the Tribune. Three months later, the first batch - sent by surface mail - arrived in my mailbox, rolled in tight little tubes. I was excited to catch up on the news from back home, and I took a couple issues to school the next day to show my students. This will get them excited about learning English, I told myself as I passed them around the classroom. And the students were excited: Several came up to me after class and asked if I had more. Sure, I said, and I brought the rest of them to school the next day, handing them out to an enthusiastic audience.

A few days later, as the mwalimu on duty, I was on campus on a Saturday morning to inspect the dormitories for cleanliness. While making my rounds, I happened to enter the communal bathroom at Kifaru (Rhino) House. As I was checking the toilet stalls, I discovered my precious newspapers, torn into neat little 4-inch strips and resting on the floor next to several commodes.

They loved the Tribune all right, but it wasn't for Bill Hall's columns.

As for my duly appointed task - teaching an unruly language to a group of sometimes unruly students for whom it was a second or third language - that was a stumper. I started out embracing the noble idea of educating my students in a worldly language that could help them improve their lives. But frustrated by a lack of progress, I scrapped that plan halfway through my tour. Instead, I decided to try to just teach the more advanced students how to prepare for the battery of final exams they would need to pass to have a chance of going on to higher education.

At this I succeeded, mostly. At the end of my second year at Lamu Boys' High School, my school recorded its best English scores ever, with about two dozen students earning good enough marks to qualify for teachers college or beyond. Any satisfaction I felt was offset by the realization that most of them wouldn't be advancing, instead returning to their families' shambas (farms) to help scratch out a hardscrabble existence most of us here can't fathom.

Still, I came away awed by my Kenyan friends' resiliency, their charm and their genial embrace. For the better part of three years, I was one of them, welcomed into their homes, their churches, their mosques, their lives. I like to tell people I won the Peace Corps lottery.

Looking back on my service, I worked hard, played hard and made a lot of great friends, many of whom I'm still in contact with today. I tried to represent my country to the best of my ability while absorbing the best qualities of my host nation. I returned with a greater appreciation of the world beyond our American borders.

If I were to distill what I learned during my service, it's that it was less about changing the world than about changing people's perceptions, starting with my own. As a measure of its success, the Peace Corps - marking its 50th anniversary this month - is really about relationships, and I am grateful to have had the opportunity to make many a quarter century ago.