At the end of July of '95,I boarded a plane that would take me from my home in Cincinnati, Ohio, to Nairobi, Kenya. My parents had always wanted to take our family abroad, but when my mother signed a contract to work for the U.S. Agency for International Development in Kenya, plans materialized, and we were soon on our way to an exotic year in Africa.

Besides the farewells I had to make to my friends at home, I had few reservations about living abroad. What made it easy for me to come to Africa was my eagerness to immerse myself in a new culture. I knew that I might never get such an experience again, so I was determined to learn all I could about the language, the history, and the people, of that far-off place.

During the first few months of our stay, my family took various trips around the country. We watched zebra and wildebeest migrate across the Serengeti, saw hippos floating like rocks in Lake Victoria, marveled at flamingos balancing knee-deep in a salt-lake. We climbed an extinct volcano in the Rift Valley. We snorkeled in the Indian Ocean and fed fish from our fingers. We hiked 17,000 feet above sea level to the peak of Mt. Kenya. And we studied Swahili, the local language, every evening after dinner. But in late October my aunt came to visit for a month. She romanced us with stories of her experiences in rural Africa working in the Peace Corps. The sharp contrast between the simple lifestyle she described and the one I was leading shocked me as to how un-African my life was. I went to an American school every day with mostly Europeans and Asians, which, despite being a unique experience itself, isolated me from the larger Kenyan community. I was also living in a city, where shopping malls, Italian restaurants, late-night discos, and movie theaters were all available close at hand. Was this really what I had come to see? My daily activities were almost the same as the ones in the United States. I typed English essays late at night on a computer; I showered with hot water every day after soccer practice; I dined on fried chicken or fish fillets or hamburgers. I was in the midst of a swarm of expatriates who had formed a community so tight that I could live with all the luxuries of a technologically-modern lifestyle. I saw my problem: I had wound myself so tightly in the routine of my school life that I was no longer seeing Kenya or even Kenyans. I yearned to know some of the African culture, but I didn't know how that could be achieved without a drastic break in my academic progress, which I wasn't willing to sacrifice.

After talking over this issue with my parents, I stumbled upon the perfect solution. [name] is the son of [name] and [name], with whom my mother lived twenty years ago when she came to Kenya as a volunteer nurse. [name] was living with us while he attended [name] College, but he was going back to his home village to visit his family over the Christmas holidays. I could go with him and stay with his family there.

This excursion proved to be the most rewarding ten days of my entire stay in Africa. In that short period, I learned more about Kenyan culture than I had in the five months prior to that time. First of all, I witnessed how different the female role is in Kenya than in America. The women-young and old-did about twice the work the men did. They had to cook the meals, get the milk, sweep the house, chop the firewood, take care of the children; the list goes on and on. The men did some work on the farm, but mostly they enjoyed a laid-back lifestyle. And it is not uncommon for a man to have more than one wife. [Name] has had a total of three women as wives. What seems unheard-of to a Westerner is commonplace to a Kenyan.

I also saw an intense restlessness for change. When the men sat around the dinner table (women weren't allowed to eat with them), they would not merely discuss the weather or the latest gossip of the village. No, they debated the problems and merits of Kenya and what could be done to improve their country. They voiced their apprehension of the government, their fear that if they openly opposed the estab-lished authority, their family could be persecuted by the president's special agents. They talked of the A.I.D.S. epidemic spreading through the working class like wildfire. They expressed their anger at the drug abuse of their nation's youth. But these men were unwilling to accept the obstacles they faced and instead looked toward solutions-education, fairer elections, less corruption, and others. I also saw that a primitive life is not necessarily a painful one. Theirs is a simple life-one without running water, or electricity, or telephones, or cars. But being simple did not mean it was a pleasureless life. It meant fetching water every day from a well. It meant cooking over a fire and reading by a lantern. It meant walking to school instead of driving. But it also meant no expensive phone bills, no wallet-straining car repairs, no broken washing machines. A simple life had its hardships, but it also avoided the hassles that Americans face in their complex modern lives. In the village, we ate good food, children screamed and shouted with joy, we laughed while playing card games, we flipped through old photo albums. Their lifestyle was vastly different from mine, but they still had the same goals that I did: to have fun, to get a good education, to be comfortable. After the New Year, when I returned to my home in Nairobi, I went back carrying in my mind a vivid picture of rural Kenya, but also satisfied that I had learned something that could not be found in Nairobi's American expatriate community.

點評：

這篇散文小品的作者得益于一段不平常的旅行經歷和熟練的運用各種豐富多彩的細節。記住，當你要寫一篇關于身心沉浸于異國文章的散文時，你必須表達出通過此經歷你的成長，因為僅僅是敘述事件是不夠的。

整篇文章結構嚴謹。這個學生知道怎么樣去創作一篇高質量的文章。她的表達方式讓你身臨其境。完美的結構和文筆。她有對事件的細節及其敏感并且知道如何去展開一個故事。這是一篇不錯的文章。我特別喜歡文章對非洲景象生動的描寫。它向我們展現了一位女性，她完全開放于新鮮的體驗，忘我的沉浸于她面前的境遇，無論這種境遇多么陌生。相信作者將是入學新生中的優秀一員。

譯文：

肯尼亞鄉村之旅

1995年七月末的一天，我登上了從俄亥俄州辛辛那提飛往國外的航班，它將帶我到達肯尼亞首都內羅畢。父母一直有帶全家出國旅行的心愿，但直到母親簽訂了與美國國際開發署的合同，這份心愿才予以實現。不久我們就踏上了這次非洲一年的異國之旅。

除了不得不向我家鄉的朋友道別以外，對于這次國外之行我沒有別的可以留戀的了。對異國文化的渴望使我輕易的下了去非洲決心。我知道這是我一生中難得的機會，所以我會全身心地陶醉在學習這片遙遠大陸的語言、歷史、和民族的過程中。
 
在非洲的最初的幾個月里，全家出行了多次。我門曾觀看過斑馬和羚羊在塞倫草原上遷徙，曾見過像礁石一樣漂浮在維多利亞湖上的河馬，也曾驚訝于火烈鳥在沒膝深的鹽湖中的平衡力；曾攀登過大峽谷中的死火山；曾在印度洋里潛過水，魚兒也曾在我們的手中攝食；曾徒步蹬過17000的肯尼亞第一峰；曾在每天晚飯后學習斯瓦西里語。但當我姑媽十月份造訪我家的一個月中，聽著她在非洲的傳奇經歷，與她描述的淳樸的生活風格相比，我深深的感到我的生活是多么的非非洲式的。我和一些歐洲、亞洲移民就讀于一所美式學校，盡管這是份獨特的經歷，但它被孤立于肯尼亞社會之外。我也居住在城市,那里的購物中心,意大利餐館,通宵舞廳, 電影院都近在咫尺.難道這就是我千里迢迢來這兒要看的東西？我每天的活動幾乎和在美國相同。深夜在電腦前敲擊這英文文章，每天在足球運動后洗個熱水澡，吃著炸雞和魚片還有漢堡。我深處在一個鋪天蓋地的外籍移民緊密聯系的社會中，在這種社會中我可以享受奢侈的現代化高科技的生活。我認識到了我的問題：我的眼睛已經被每天例行的學校生活所遮蔽，看不到真實的肯尼亞和肯尼亞人。我渴望了解非洲的文化，但我無法完成這一目的，除非打破我所不愿意舍棄的理想中的進行計劃。

與父母討論了這個問題后，我偶然發現了一個兩全其美的解決。**是**和**的兒子，母親在20年前到肯尼亞做志愿護士的時候和他同住過。在**讀大學的時候和和我家生活在一起，現在他將要用圣誕節的假期回家探親，而我正好可以和他同去。

這次短程旅行是我整個非洲之旅最有意義的十天。在短短的時間里，我所了解到的非洲文化比我之前的五個月要多的多。首先，我親眼見證了婦女在肯尼亞的社會角色和美國有多么大的 不同，不論是年輕還是年老的婦女都承擔了男人兩倍的工作。她們不得不做飯、擠奶、打掃房間、砍柴、帶孩子，工作一樣接著一樣沒完沒了。而男人們只做一些農活，大部分時間卻享受著悠閑的生活。而且男人可以有多個妻子。**已經有三個妻子。對于西方人不可思議的事情在這里司空見慣。

我同時感覺了一股改革的躁動在社會中孕育。當男人們圍坐在飯桌前時（女人不準和他們一起吃飯） ，他們很少談論天氣或者鄰里之間的閑話，取而代之的是肯尼亞的問題和優點以及怎么樣做才能是他們的國家進步。他們吐露過曾被政府逮捕過，而且他們擔心如果他們公開反對既定的權威他們的家庭被政府的特工迫害。他們討論艾滋病象野火一樣在工人階層中傳播。他們表達了對毒品在青少年中泛濫現象的不滿。但他們不愿意接受現在所面對的困難而希望于教育的提升，更加公平的選拔，更少的腐敗等等。我也證實了原始的生活并不是痛苦的生活。他們的生活簡單，沒有自來水，沒有電，沒有電話，沒有汽車。但是簡單并不意味不愉快。它意味著每天要從井里，挑水，意味著炊煙四起，意味著秉燭夜讀，意味著遠足到學校。但也意味著沒有昂貴的電話帳單，意味著沒有汽車修理使生活拮據的尷尬，意味著沒有“體弱多病的”洗衣機。簡單的生活有它的艱難，但它也避免了美國人所面臨的復雜的現代生活。在村里,我們吃著美事,孩子們歡快地叫喊歡呼,我們笑著玩牌, 翻閱舊相簿. 他們的生活方式與我如此的不同，但是我們有著共同的目標：追求歡樂，追求好的教育，追求舒適。新年剛過，我回到內羅畢的家——腦海帶著肯尼亞鄉村鮮活印象，我毫無遺憾因為我已經了解了一些在內羅畢的美國僑民社區無法尋覓的東西.