Frank Shea, a former Victorian now living in Mansfield, was only a year out of college in 1973 when he took the long journey to Kenya
Shea was initially sent to the state's capital of Nairobi, where he taught high school chemistry, physics and math, but a visit to the northern village of Lodwar, where a high school teacher was a missionary, provided some of the most rewarding moments of the journey. In Lodwar, near the Sudan border, Shea taught at an all-boys boarding school run by Irish priests.
Lodwar had less than 1,000 people when he was there, and the closest asphalt road was eight hours away.
One of Shea's biggest missions was to help students pass an eighth-grade exit-level test they needed to enter high school. If they didn't pass, they had to "work on the farm or find something else to do," he said.
"They are 10 times more motivated over there than here. They all wanted to learn," Shea said.
Turkana tribe members lived in Lodwar, and Shea taught many of them, but it took time to adjust to their customs and way of life.
"When I first started teaching in Lodwar, a number of students got up and walked out of class," he said. "They were wanderers and herders. In their language they would say, 'My feet had the urge to wander.' They just couldn't sit still for two or three hours at a time. It wasn't disrespectful."
Shea learned to take breaks more frequently. "You have to learn to roll with the punches."
He also found out while teaching a chemistry lab that his students couldn't identify colors. They were testing different substances and the results were based on what colors were made. "I was flabbergasted. I had to put a color chart up on the wall. They would take their test tube and compare it to the chart."
Shea said the Turkana mainly saw brown, blue and occasionally green.
Living conditions were rustic, but they did have running water. Shea lived in a one-room, 200-square-foot concrete hut, which was considered nicer than the grass huts the rest of the villagers lived in.
In Lodwar, food mostly consisted of canned vegetables. "It was very rare to get meat. Occasionally we would buy a goat and kill it and eat it."
Food was sent in from Kitale, the nearest city eight hours away. "In some cases the food didn't get through, because the rivers flooded and the trucks couldn't get through. We came close to running out."
Shea was the first Peace Corps volunteer in Lodwar and the volunteer stationed farthest north in Kenya.
Today, Shea is the process engineer manager at Solvay Polymers in Mansfield. He lived in Victoria from 1990-2000 when he worked at the Union Carbide Seadrift facility.
