2009 OCC Africa Trip
The ONE Campus Challenge students have landed in Kenya and will be regularly sending back reports from on the ground. This one comes from Washington State University student Melissa Boles. Check here for more updates!
Jambo!
No video from me tonight, I’ve had a long day and have another long one ahead of me, but I wanted to recap the day a little.
We started the day at Kitie Secondary School, where there are 280 students, 110 of them girls, all of whom were taking exams when we arrived. The principal took us around the school, showing us everything from the latrines to the area where the water was collected. They don’t have running water at the school, so there is an employee who goes to the well four times a day, brings the water back, and sends it from one end of the property to another through a pipe. When the water reaches the large tank near the kitchen, it is mixed with chlorine so that the students do not get sick from drinking the water.
We spent a lot of time with the principal, but we were also able to go in to a couple of classrooms. We met a girl named Monicah Kioko, who is a Peer Educator (someone who educates other students about HIV/AIDS) and wants to grow up to be a Peer Educator trainer or possibly a Lawyer defending the rights of women. We went into her classroom and talked to the other students for a few minutes. They seemed very shy, but once we started handing out ONE bands they were pretty excited.
There aren’t enough teachers at the school. The principal told us they have 10 teachers, two student teachers, and would run more smoothly with sixteen teachers. One teacher’s desk was so stacked with papers and folders that he barely had enough space to work in!
These teachers are working very hard and not getting paid very much. The students are also working hard, and some of them are rewarded by being accepted to University when they graduate, though if they can’t pay for it, they can’t go. Some of them cannot even pay for the tuition at Kitie. Children that are orphaned, as well as others that deserve on the grounds of merit, are funded through USAID, but not very many. 3,300 students throughout the country are funded. There are nearly 6,000 applications waiting at USAID for someone to say, “yes, you can now go to school.”
Despite all of this, there is a demand for teachers, as there are not many people who can teach. We went to a teachers training college and talked to some of the students there, who told us it is very hard to pay for school, uniforms and books, and even if they do get into school and get all the way through (it is a two year program), they sometimes cannot find a job. Some students want to teach where they leave, but there is no demand for teachers where they are, and some want to teach in a different place, but there is a demand for teachers where they live. The Kenyan government has trouble understanding why people don’t want to go where there are jobs, so they make it hard for the new teachers to relocate and find a job. We heard a lot about that from a couple of the students.
After the teacher training college, we went to the elephant orphanage, which was pretty great. The caretakers stay with the baby elephants 24/7, because elephants get separation anxiety, and they feed them milk as well as send them out into the national park. The elephants are eventually released back into the wild, but it is good that they have someone to take care of them until they are ready to do it themselves.
I guess that’s all for now. Tomorrow we leave the hotel at 5 AM to fly to Kisumu, Kenya, so I’m going to get some rest.
Kwa sasa, kwaheri!
-Melissa Boles
The ONE Campus Challenge students have landed in Kenya and will be regularly sending back reports from on the ground. This one comes from University of Michigan student Stephanie Parrish. Check here for more updates!
After visiting the Kitie Secondary School, we drove through Machakos to get to the Machakos Teacher Training College. We were warmly welcomed by the Deputy Principle and invited to come inside the campus. My first impression was that it was a beautiful campus! Similar to colleges back home, they had separate buildings for different classes and administrators. There was a beautiful grassy area in the middle with tables for students to study. We witnessed a lot of studying because the first year students (it is a two year program) have their midterm exams this week.
It was so generous of about 20 students to join us for lunch and to talk about their experiences during such a stressful time. After introductions, we heard from students about the kinds of courses they take, their experiences in teaching practicums, the financial burden of attending the college and the challenges they face throughout their studies. Two students in particular were very helpful and told us about their experiences. In their teaching practicum, one of the biggest challenges they face is the language barrier. They also spoke of the difficulties they will face in finding teaching positions.
One of the most interesting parts of our visit was learning that this is one of three colleges in Kenya that trains teachers with disabilities. These students are fully integrated into the classroom, which is completely unique to this school! While we all talked, two students were signing to another student so that he could be equally as engaged in the discussion! Our time here was short but it was incredible to see such motivated and passionate students. They have all been through so much to get to this point and I have no doubt that they will be successful and change many lives through their teaching!
We are on our way to the giraffe sanctuary right now and the road is getting pretty bumpy. Check in with us soon for pictures and videos from today!
-Stephanie Parrish
This Friday, the ONE Campus Challenge (OCC) is sending five of the top student anti-poverty advocates in the United States to Kenya for a week of first-hand, hands-on experience with the people, issues and programs OCC students work to affect – and we have a new site to chronicle their adventures. Check it out, here.
We chose the five students based on their outstanding individual efforts during the 2008-9 OCC season, and also from the excellent projects they submitted on how they will use their experience in Africa to inform their OCC work during the upcoming 2009-10 season. The students are:
Bryant Shannon, from the University of Florida in Gainesville;
Melissa Boles, from Washington State University in Vancouver;
Stephanie Parrish, from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor;
Steven Thai, from Luther College in Decorah, Iowa; and
Tomas Moreno, from Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina.
Learn more about the OCC, the students, and the trip through our new, interactive OCC in Kenya site.
I asked the students what aspects of the trip they were most excited about, and the overwhelming response was the African people.
“I am looking forward to meeting people affected by extreme poverty, but who have been able to come out of poverty with the help of foreign assistance such as USAID,” said Steven Thai.
“I’m most excited about meeting new, amazing people, as well as learning more about their lives. I can’t wait to hear stories from women and men that I get to talk to about what their lives are like in Kenya,” said Melissa Boles.
“I’m also pretty excited to see how everything I have learned in school and through ONE will help me relate to them,” she added. “Mostly it just doesn’t really feel real yet.”
Indeed, the purpose of the trip is to build a bridge between ONE’s grassroots advocacy campaign and the issues and programs ONE members work to affect, giving these five students first-hand knowledge they can use to help build better OCC programs across the country.
The students will share their experiences first-hand with their fellow students and all ONE members through blog entries, video journals, and Facebook and Twitter updates. You can keep up with them and send them your comments and questions on our new OCC in Kenya website, here.
-Emily Stivers
