Gap Years

(Jack Kelway, Feb 2009)

There’s a cliché often quoted in reference to gap-years – that you ‘find yourself’. This is often said to be by travelling to a far off place, experiencing a new culture, living a new lifestyle, basically escaping the trappings of the western world. The cliché’s wrong, but it’s along the right lines. You don’t find yourself, you just change yourself.

At the age of 18, fresh out of ten years of all-boys boarding schools where arrogance and ease had seemed to be the main pillars of the community, I decided to travel to Kenya with a company called Africa and Asia Venture, which would set me up as a teacher of English, French and sports in a school out there. Up to this point, the furthest abroad I’d ever been was a Greek island. I didn’t decide to teach in Kenya because of any deep-seated charitable urge within me, I decided to do it because they gave a talk at my school, and they made it seem fun. I raised the money for the trip by working at my old prep school in Scarborough: an old spa town on the east coast of England that mainly consists of fish and chip shops, peeling arcades and knackered out donkeys lugging obese children along the beach. It’s a charming place.

So, when January came around, I was buzzing with excitement – I had no idea what was in store for me. My knowledge of Kenya was limited – some exotic animals, heat, tribes – these all just mingled into one buzz.

We touched down in Nairobi airport and jumped on a bus which took us to the Karen district – a rich suburb of the city. To get there though, we travelled through Kibera, the largest slum in Africa, with around a million people living in it. The word Kibera means jungle, a very apt description.

The first week was spent by Lake Naivasha, training for life in Kenya. The company were acclimatising us gradually. After a week though, I was dropped off in Eldoret, in the west of the country. I waited outside a hotel where the some Somalian war-lords happened to be meeting with various African leaders. I watched the comings and goings of these elaborately dressed men until the headmaster, Mr Biwot, came to collect me. He was a man built like a rhino and with an equally friendly attitude. I was the first volunteer to be sent to his school – Paul Boit Boys secondary school, Kapkong. He had told the company that I would be staying in the ex-deputy-headmaster’s house, which sounded like a very kind offer. What he hadn’t told them, was that the house had been trashed by the students during the previous term – they had rebelled and chased out the deputy-head for using the cane on them too often, and in the process had smashed every window of his house, daubed the walls with mud and stolen all the furniture. The headmaster kindly told me that I could go into town the next day to buy a mattress for myself, but that night I was to stay at his.

That night just so happened to be prayer night, where many of the local community gathered in the head’s house, with the local priest leading a Christian ceremony. It was great to meet some more of the people who I’d be living with for the coming months, and a massive relief to find many of them far warmer towards to me than Mr. Biwot. I did, however, make a rather large error when asked by the priest as to my beliefs. I told him that I didn’t believe in a god, and spent the next 30 minutes holding hands in a circle of Africans swaying and chanting for my soul to be saved and for me to be bathed in the blood of Christ. I was definitely out of my comfort zone.

That night, I slept in a single bed that was usually used by the headmaster’s three children. I spent the majority of the night trying to kill the cock-roaches that continually scuttered across me – I woke up with 6 dead ones either around or on me. I was later informed that if you crush a cock-roach, its eggs feed off the carcass and you actually increase the population in the long run.

On the following day, I cleaned up my house – it was pretty basic – a concrete block with a corrugated iron roof, three empty rooms, no running water or electricity, but after ten years of boarding school – this was exactly what I wanted. I bought a mattress in the town, a guitar, some Tusker beers and plenty of candles. I was alone that evening and sat outside on a broken chair that had been thrown out of a classroom – I didn’t have any epiphanies, I didn’t have any especially profound thoughts – I wish I had as then I could share them with you now, but I was equally filled with fear and excitement by the situation. I had fully removed myself from all I was accustomed to.

I taught at the school for 3 months. Classes of 40 kids whose behaviour was impeccable – partly because they recognised the necessity of education in improving their lives, but also because they would be made to kneel on sharp stones for hours with their hands behind their heads if they were caught misbehaving in any way.

I ended up spending 6 months in Africa before returning home. I met some charming people and made good friends; I met some horrendous people and made enemies. I cooked pancakes for a whole village and the village elder waited until he’d had his fill before telling me I brought shame on the male sex by cooking. Myself and a mate were the only two white people at a Gidi Gidi Maji Maji gig – the rap group that were number 1 at the time with Unbwogable which means Unbeatable in Swahili – we got far more attention that night than the rappers. During my time in Kenya, I encountered unprovoked racism and unprovoked generosity. I found that there were just as many happy, angry or depressed people as there are anywhere else in the world.

My impact on the country was miniscule – a few kids now know how to play rugby and the football team got some boots to play in. One class now know the phrase, ‘voulez-vous couchez avec moi, ce soir’, and one class know that Shakespeare wrote a play or two.

However, the impact on myself of Kenya and, more importantly, the community in Kapkong of which I was briefly a part of, has been monumental. I went to university in September, not having ‘found myself’, but having unmistakably changed.

There are a few morals that come to my mind, you can choose which you take away with you: step out of your comfort zone, embrace change in yourself, experience the diversity of the world, don’t crush cock-roaches – burn them.