By David Morgan

I went to Kenya directly out of university where I had majored in physics. At Sigalame I taught math and science. In my later career, I got into computer science, during the early years of its popularization 1980s-90s. I never pursued physics, but the scientific thinking I learned in school served me well nonetheless. I worked for about 20 years for hardware and software makers, then taught computer science at university for another 20 years. I retired this year. The teaching I had done at Sigalame helped me when I began teaching again here in Los Angeles in 1999. Since I left Kenya, I have never had the opportunity to return. I still would like to do that in the time I have left. Mungu akipenda.

When I was at your school I was one of two foreigners. The other was a Pakistani named Mr. Azmi. The year before, and the year after, there were other Americans but, in my time, I was the only one. In the second year, two more wahindi teachers joined. In the 1990s, in New Jersey, I met the American couple who taught at Sigalame preceding me (Kwaitkowskis by name). My Sigalame housemate was teacher Charles Indongole, and I exchanged emails with him about 5 years ago. He was retired to a shamba he had near Kakamega. I can’t reach him now, I don’t know his current situation. In my time, there were also a couple of foreign women teaching at Nangina Girls School, one Irish and one American.

Compared with others Sigalame had a reputation as a poor school, financially, academically, socially. After I left, in the 1970s, I heard there were student disturbances that closed the school. Beyond that I know nothing about it but what, now in the 21st century, I can find on the internet. And there is not much of that. I came to Kenya with other Americans as a group. There were 45 of us. The U.S. government sent us as part of its Peace Corps organization. We arrived in October 1970 and went to our assigned schools in January 1971. During those three months, we had training divided into teacher training, Swahili instruction, and cultural adaptation.

The Kenyan government decided where each of us should go, and my destiny was Sigalame. During my first year at Sigalame I had a pikipiki. During the second, I sold it to one of the other teachers and got a small car. Coming 75 miles from Kisumu, the road was paved (hard surface) for about 30 miles till around Yala. After that I rode the remaining 45 miles on dirt. It was OK, except on the pikipiki when there was a bus ahead of me (most of the time). The bus raises a cloud of dust. If you ride through it, you have dust in your hair, nose, ears, and mouth. The solution is to go slow enough to stay far behind the bus. But the problem is, the bus makes many stops. When that happened, I would accelerate in hopes of passing the bus before it re- started. Often it didn’t work. The bus was far ahead of me and before I reached it, it resumed driving and covered me with dust.

These are the fond, funny memories of far away and long ago. Is the road to Sigalame paved now?? Gas/petrol was available at Sio Port, where an Indian couple ran a shop. One of my photos shows them. The same month I arrived, January 1971, Idi Amin took over Uganda. He expelled the wahindi from there, and the ones in Kenya were worried. Eventually the Sio Port shopkeeper (Rahim Rana) emigrated. I saw him in Seattle where he had a motel. Later he moved to Canada to get citizenship. It was nearly impossible to make a phone call. You had to go to the post office at Funyula. There was some paperwork. Then the operator was informed about the destination, and we hung up to wait for him/her to call back, after making the connection. I took an hour. Kenya was lucky that they never had to build all the wires to support a terrestrial phone system. They skipped that step of telephone industrialization. When the cell phone was ready, so were Kenyans. I was teaching computer science and I told my students about Kenya’s mobile money “mpesa.” You had it before we did. The headmaster was Wanjala Welime. One of the other teachers I well remember is Benson Makutwa. He was a serious, effective professional. He had a child named Newton who is among my photos. I liked Newton but he was afraid of me. He would come up close to my door but if I stood up to approach him he would run away. This continued for two years. One day, during my final week at Sigalame, he appeared outside my open door. I did not stand up. He came in silently, climbed up onto my lap, and fell asleep. One of my best memories. There were three Kikuyu teachers, Reuben Kagema, Charles Kihembe, and Mr. Njoroge. The new 1972 wahindi were Mr. Mohamad and Mr. Gohil. And another who was a very good guy and friend was Silas Omulando.

God bless you all.