Posted 12-8-00
photo by Susan GriffithStudying urban and rural African life in Kenya with the College Scholars Program were (from left) Seena Perumal, Rob Sheu, program director and faculty member Peter McCall, Justin Klubnik, Jason Hildenbrand, Christina Garrett, history professor Jonathan Sadowsky, and Hope Folarin. |
CLEVELAND -- As herds of elephants roamed the Maasai Mara National Reserve of Kenya, the conversation of six members of Case Western Reserve University's College Scholars Program and two faculty members centered on improving conditions at the Gitero Primary School in Naro Maru.
Junior undergraduates in CWRU's College Scholars Program have been studying African life and culture this year. During fall break, six students and two faculty members traveled to Kenya to experience and learn about Africa in person.
The College Scholars program emphasizes leadership and community service. Sophomore, junior, and senior classes design their own study programs and projects.
The visit to the school, run by the Kikuyu people, prompted plans to return to Kenya next summer to bring water, lights, and school supplies to the school's 350 children by using their engineering, computer, and educational skills they have acquired at CWRU. The endeavor would be a senior-year project adopted by students from CWRU's undergraduate program that emphasizes leadership and community service.
Justin Klubnik from Independence spearheaded the plans for the junior-year students' trip, where the group wanted to do more than read about African life. "I think getting out of the American element is good. The trip showed the scholars that there's a whole other world out there," he said.
The study trip was organized through IntoAfrica. The British travel program took the students off the tourist circuit and into the villages of the Maasai people of the Rift Valley and the Kikuyu people who live along the foot of Mt. Kenya, an ancient volcanic mountain. The students observed everyday life in the African villages, and they spent a day on safari viewing an abundance of grazing animals and birds in their natural settings in one of Kenya's 57 conservation areas.
The students left Cleveland October 20 and returned October 31. The itinerary for the trip included a trip into the forest where the Mau Mau fighters fought for independence at the base of Mt. Kenya; cultural activities in a Kikuyu village, including sampling food prepared by village women and learning about the customs and culture of the people; camping in the Sekanani Valley near the Maasai Mara, which is an extension of the Serengeti plains, before and during a safari into the national reserve; a visit to Mojiro to stay with a Maasai elder in the Loita Hills, where Maasai people make their home and graze herds of cattle, sheep, and goats; and then a trip to Nairobi.
"In Kenya, I realized how so many others fail to even have their basic needs met. Struggling for survival, they have little time for the materialism and greed that is rampant in America," says Seena Perumal from Bronx, New York.
Hope Folarin from Elgin, Illinois, was "amazed at how much they could do with so little," she said. "The students were able to achieve just as well, and if not better, with smaller resources than we have."
In the city, the students were able to contrast the close-to-earth and drought-stricken life of agriculturists and pastoral people with the busy life of Nairobi. They also met with a German medical doctor who runs a clinic for some of Nairobi's poorest people.
During a visit to a Maasai primary school in Kerricho, where they saw a need to help students who lack the financial resources to buy pens, paper, and pencils, and where teachers create their own teaching aids to help the students. In a third grade classroom, teacher created a natural history museum in which children brought in bones of animals and other artifacts from area. Families must provide firewood as well as food to feed the children -- a task that presents a hardship for many families as Kenya enters the third year of a drought.
The group also visited the Gitero Primary School in Naro Maru, run by the Kikuyu people. The school has no electricity or running water. The College Scholars realized they could use the engineering, computer, and educational skills which they have acquired at CWRU. They may return to Kenya next summer for a senior-year project to bring water, lights, and school supplies to the school's 350 children.
Christina Garrett from New London, Ohio, hopes someday to teach school and wants to help out by connecting local students with Kenyan students at Gitero. She would like to start a pen pal program between a Cleveland-area school and Gitero so local students could learn more about Kenya. She also wants to find school supplies for the students, who sometimes beg American tourists for pens and other school supplies they need but cannot afford.
Yun Robert Sheu, who has plans to pursue a career as a medical doctor, would like to work on health education within the school. Perumal, a religion major who will attend medical school next year, also wants to promote health education and gain public health experience by working in a Kenyan medical clinic.
"I think it is clear that we can help in some significant way to improve the education of the students," says Jason Hildenbrand, a junior from Munroe Falls.
Accompanying the scholars were Peter McCall, professor of geological science and director of the College Scholars Program, and Jonathan Sadowsky, an African history specialist and the Theodore Castele Professor of Medical History.
The College Scholars Program, established in 1997, is an honors program in CWRU's College of Arts and Sciences. It was made possible through gifts from the Jack N. and Lilyan Mandel Foundation, the Joseph and Florence Mandel Family Foundation, and the Morton and Barbara Mandel Family Foundation. It aims at enhancing educational opportunities for undergraduate students at CWRU, and connecting the University to larger world concerns.
Emphasizing broad, interdisciplinary learning and leadership, the College Scholars Program offers outstanding students the opportunity to interact with persons of accomplishment and to apply classroom learning to critical social and scientific issues in the surrounding community or the world at large.
Past scholars classes have met with Nobel Laureates Lech Walesa, the Polish Labor leader, and Jodi Williams, who has led a crusade to ban land mines; playwright Edward Albee; Green Party Presidential candidate Ralph Nader; and others.
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