During my first week of living in the Rift Valley I went hiking with my a member of my host family and some fellow Peace Corps Volunteers to the edge of the Abedare Plains. I was amazed when I reached the top and saw that the Rift Valley literally stopped and the Abedare Plains began and were so flat that you could see for miles. Yet, when I turned around the Rift Valley dramatically dropped from where I was standing with a beautiful vista that also extended for miles.
As I stood there taking in the view, I looked down and found a piece of volcanic rock. My host family companion said "That falls from the sky." I wondered if this statement was actually an oral history that decended through the generations from a person long ago who actually witnessed the stone falling from the sky during an eruption.
As we turned to walk along the edge of the Valley, I saw a man in the distance approaching us. As he drew near I was amused to see that he was wearing a McDonalds uniform even though there were no McDonalds restaurants in East Africa! This was the first time of many that I would see Kenyans wearing a humorous piece of clothing that had come from bulk shipments of donations from America. For example, another time I saw an old woman wearing a "Metallica" t-shirt and heard from another volunteer that he had seen a young girl with a t-shirt that depicted Donald Duck's nephews, Huey, Dewey, and Louie with red eyes and the caption "Stoned Again!"