A Sister School Journey in Africa

In Africa your senses open wide. From the swirl of language and vividness of color to the smell of animals, diesel, spice, roasting meat, and earth -– there is no place like it. Everything combines to create a sense of immediacy, which is very different from most of our everyday experiences. When you are there you can feel that it is a place not fully tamed.

Many have described Africa as a continent of extremes. On one hand, there is beauty; but on the other hand, there is grinding poverty. It seems unfair to just go for the former, and not do anything about the latter.

Still, it is hard to embrace an entire continent. One can begin with a community. If you go back to a place, it is not just an exotic faraway land that you got to see once, but also a community whose people you are connected to. You can reach out and touch that community — try to heal parts of it, and in turn, it heals parts of you. So, there is this little town in Kenya where I went back.

The beauty of Nanyuki Kenya is that it is small enough to embrace. You can go there to climb Mt. Kenya, to safari in the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, to live and work, or to do some good. In this place it feels like one’s efforts have some effect. They don’t just get swallowed up. You can say, ‘there, I did that one thing, and it helped.’

I went the first time to Kenya to participate in an Earthwatch expedition, ‘Saving Kenya’s Black Rhinos.’ Although I am a teacher, I went for the animals, not the people. The idea of tramping around to see the animals and not being confined to a jeep appealed to me. So I went for selfish reasons.

Then we arrived at Ol Pejeta. The bus turned into the conservancy, and the animals were everywhere. Zebra, giraffes, elephants, gazelles — they seem to be coming out of the woodwork. Although I had been nervous, in this place I relaxed and breathed in the air.

The Ol Pejeta Conservancy sits on 90,000 acres, or slightly more land than the Philadelphia area where I live. It is a protected place with a mission to safeguard endangered animals. However, the management has also embraced the idea that healthy communities are better able to participate in the conservation of animals.

I had a great time, and I only worried about the animals — until our outing on ‘Community Day.’ This was the day that they packed all of the EW volunteers into a matatu, a minivan of sorts, and drove us around to visit people in the villages surrounding the conservancy. It was a chilly morning and we were tired from working on the black rhino project. Our first stop, Njoguini Primary School, brought the human reality back in a rush.

The sight of a rickety wood building with holes in the walls and a rusty tin roof brought me up short. Was this really a school? Inside this building we found full classrooms and children with inadequate clothing for the morning chill — a lot of children. The reading materials were old and yellowed with the edges curled up from use and time. I felt the return of that familiar feeling – the one that shouts in your ear, ‘You must do something for these kids!’

We returned to the research camp having seen other schools that were happier and had more modern facilities, but I could not get Njoguini out of my mind. Nanyuki is at an elevation of over 6,500 feet and it gets quite cool at times. How could the students learn if they were cold? The vision of an uneven cracked dirt floor in a classroom where not every child had shoes wouldn’t leave me.

I recalled a meeting where we had learned about the partnership between Ol Pejeta and PA-MOJA, PA-MOJA. Other schools that we had visited had real floors and libraries. These were PA-MOJA schools and had a sister school in North America. I decided that I would present the idea at my school, Stephen Girard Elementary, in Philadelphia. If we could adopt Njoguini perhaps we could improve things for these students.

Upon my return I spoke to my principal, Mr. Thomas Koger, and he agreed immediately. After all, it is not hard to be a sister school. The staff of the sister school only had to send one cultural exchange project, such as friendly letters, and hold one fundraiser.

The journey for me was not only what happened in Africa, but also what happened in Philadelphia. My school in the city is a fairly large K-4 with more than 600 at-risk students. They are the ones normally on the receiving end of charity. Mr. Koger and I both thought that this was a chance for our kids to be the givers and we hoped that it would be an empowering experience for them, as well as a chance to learn about another culture.

The environment at Girard is fast-paced and sometimes chaotic. How was I going to get anyone’s attention for this project? I tried a coin collection before the holidays. When I came around in the middle of a reading lesson looking for money, more than one staff member might have wanted to strangle me.

Still, the 3rd grade students and teachers were a great support in writing friendly letters to the children in Kenya. We had raised a few hundred dollars in the coin drive, but most of that was from teachers. We had fulfilled our obligation, but it seemed to me that something was missing – that is until the dancers from a Canadian sister school visited Girard.

The students from the Langley School of Fine Arts, were mostly tall, lithe dancers with ready smiles for our kids. Our students were convinced that they were Kenyan, — we worked on some geography lessons later. The Langley dancers wowed our students and staff with their gorgeous dances and kindness.

Before they arrived, our computer teacher, Maria Yanga, designed and printed big posters to hang around the building proclaiming that we were a PA-MOJA sister school. After their visit, while the buzz was still flowing through our building, another teacher, Domenick Maiorano, shared a basketball fundraising idea he had read about in the newspaper. Paulette Nichols, another 3rd grade teacher, had her students donate their self-published stories. Suddenly things were moving.

Things culminated with our late spring fundraiser, “Helping Hoops for our Sister School.” Our gym teacher, Jed Bordner, helped plan and manage age-appropriate basketball and hula-hoop activities for our students. Third graders created African inspired art that they donated to an art sale. The students from the entire building raised money to participate in the helping hoops event. Tracy Teal’s kindergarten classroom alone raised more than $165. We combined the art and bake sale with the hoops activities in a one-day blast. It seemed that everyone got involved and our little inner-city school raised nearly $800 on that day.

I knew that $800 goes a long way in Africa, so I was excited to return that summer to see what was happening at Njoguini Primary, and to meet the Canadian organizers of the PA-MOJA program.

I arrived to Ol Pejeta one July day to find the volunteers were out. I waited in Pelican House, a beautiful country cottage with a thatched roof where the volunteers stay. The house overlooks a lake where birds roost and elephants come to drink. Hakuna Matata – no problem!

Elizabeth and Helen, who took care of us during our stay, put out a lovely lunch of fresh bread, cheese, tomatoes, and tea. To tell the truth, I wasn’t 100% sure how I was going to be useful, so I was happy to be ignored for a while.

Later that evening the PA-MOJA gang arrived. I had actually given them up for dead, but the PA-MOJA days are long, as I was soon to find out. I immediately felt comfortable with the entire crew. Silvia Knittel sings to everyone she meets, and back home she teaches creative writing. Alison Stuart is the other half of this leadership duo. She’s a wildlife biologist, vice principal, and science teacher. The others included Heather Hall, Sheridan Tochkin, Brittney Wallace, and Madeleine De Little, and that was just the volunteers at this house. There was another group of young volunteers staying in town who gave their time to the Nanyuki Orphanage.

The dinner that evening was typical, I would soon learn. There was a lot of food on a big long creaky wooden table. People were talking, eating, having a glass of this or that, and occasionally someone would get up and open the door so the bats could fly back outside where they allegedly belonged.

I quickly found that I would not really be working at my sister school and helping teachers as I had earlier imagined. The primary things on the PA-MOJA to-do list involving visiting schools to interview students, teachers, and administrators about PA-MOJA-funded projects, taking photographs and video that will illustrate what’s been done, and finding out what still needs to be done.

Alison, Heather, and Silvia on the job.

There are other things that happen along the way; like going to buy cows for schools so they can make bio-gas for the science labs and provide milk for the students; and going to the second hand market to buy shoes and coats for students and their families — not to mention beans, maize, and furniture.

I found that I basically would go along with everyone to visit all of the schools in the community. I took notes and pictures, and later wrote some stories about PA-MOJA and the sister schools. It had been a while since I had done reporting work, and it felt good to dust off those old skills.

Njoguini Students

The highlight of my time with PA-MOJA came, of course, when we visited Girard’s sister school, Njoguini Primary School. I felt a little nervous as the car pulled into the yard. This after all, was my reason for being here. As the children spilled out of the woodwork, I looked around in wonder. Was this the same place I had visited only the previous year? A whole new wing of classrooms was being built. There were greenhouses and water tanks, but more importantly there was a liveliness about the school that had seemed lacking on that last visit.

Surrounded by laughing children and friendly teachers, we toured the classrooms, old and new. We were treated to little ones showing off their English counting skills. We saw the trophy that the school had won for the most improved in the district, and finally we sang and we danced. It was a celebration that was joy-filled. I felt honored to be a part of it.

In reflecting back on my time working with the PA-MOJA team I recall the work, love and compassion in the project, and also the laughter and fun. There are several memories that I add into my mental scrapbook along side the Njoguini visits.

One of those was the day that Silvia announced that it was going to be an easy Sunday. We were only going to have lunch with one of our family’s teachers and then visit Grandma Mary. Well between the time Silvia said that in the morning and the time we got back to Pelican House, after 7pm that evening, the PA-MOJA crew had thought of 22 other urgent things we needed to do to further the program or just help someone out. That became the running joke. Oh, we don’t have that much to do today! And everyone would roll their eyes.

On one occasion, we were driving to a school and passed a manyatta, or Samburu settlement. We saw a really beautiful young man and child. We chatted with them through our PA-MOJA coordinator, Sylvester Loimaso, who happened to be a Samburu himself. We made a plan to visit the next day and meet the family. One thing led to another and we made friends with the tribe, which led to a day of singing and dancing with them. Definitely Kenya has it’s own brand of trail magic!

Other memories remind me of the work still to be done in this community, such as my first visit to Joel’s house. Joel is a student who came to his principal at Sweetwaters Secondary School for help because he was having trouble studying at home. School administrators followed up with a home visit and promptly contacted PA-MOJA.

It was not a wonder that Joel couldn’t study. The family’s mud and thatch house was small and partially destroyed by fire. A previous home had been blown in by a storm. There were 9 children and two adults trying to make do with this inadequate shelter. It was cold on that first visit. PA-MOJA had contracted for a simple new house of corrugated tin, which was going up alongside the old house. Joel introduced his brothers and sisters many who were barefoot and shivering in the cool air. The older children seemed excited to have visitors while some of the younger ones hid behind Joel and his mother. After this visit, Silvia and Alison agreed that it was time to make a trip to the second-hand market.

The second-hand market is another vivid slice of Africa. This colorful place extended outside of town and into neighboring fields. Even on a weekday afternoon the place was busy with people circulating through simple wooden stalls to purchase everything from blankets to shoes and socks. The shoe sellers mostly spread their wares out on tarpaulins in the fields. I was amazed by the sheer quantity of stuff. I understand now why many charitable organizations when responding to a crisis don’t want our clothes. It seems that our old clothes are already there.

All of these memories are part of the reason that I plan to return again. Africa and its wilds thrill, but it is more than that. It’s a chance to be my best self. I am a part of the PA-MOJA team, and my senses are awake to a new world. Sometimes it is discouraging when we cannot fix everything, but to be able to make a difference in a faraway corner of Kenya is not bad.
By Dawn Kane