For most of the world, that’s still considered very young. I still have my whole life ahead of me.

But here in Kenya – where,  according to statistics just released in the Kenya Economic Report 2009, people living in places like Mombasa, located on the Southern coast of the country, average life expectancy is just thirty years.

Across the country the average age is only fifty-five years old and more than half the population is below twenty.

The numbers are attributed to the emergence – and  re-emergence – of diseases  like tuberculosis and malaria, and, of course, HIV/AIDS, which has been estimated to have killed over one million young people in this country in the last decade.

So while many of my friends lament turning the big 3-0, I’m feeling pretty lucky.