More Tales from Kenya
By
Kevin
Williams, Maywood Rotary Kenya
Project Chair
Well it happened again to me, for the sixth time. One week, I am sitting home in Maywood where it had snowed and the next
week I am in Nairobi Kenya
in the heat of their summer. When you were celebrating St. Patrick’s Day, I was
working with 330 Maasai elementary school children and volunteers. And it wasn’t for our annual Maywood Rotary volunteer trip. How did that happen?
Two years ago, I was privileged to go with Maywoodian Reverend
and Doctor Karen Rezach on our annual Rotary volunteer trip to Kenya. Karen is also the middle school principle of a private K-12 all girls school called
Kent Place School
in Summit NJ. She was so impressed with the Maywood Rotary Kenya Project trip that she asked me to set up a trip for
6th, 7th, 8th and 9th grade KPS students.
So, I did. Dr. Rezach, three teacher/chaperones and twelve courageous
girls (and me!) left on Friday March 13th for ten days of volunteer service for our one little adopted elementary
school. I have been honored to write five previous articles for the readers of
Our Town on past trips. Here is my sixth report to the readers and supporters
of our Rotary Kenya Project about another wonderful volunteer trip. I won’t bore
you with every detail in chronological order, just a few of the many miracles I was privileged to see. It’s not an official report on the trip, just my perspective.
The first miracle that deeply touched the hearts of all 16 Kent Place volunteers is the same one that all the past trip
volunteers experienced. On the first day, the volunteers walk about one mile
from our tent camp to work at the school. As they approach the collection of
cider block walled and tin roof buildings, the come up the hill to see a wave of 300 children in red uniforms running fast
to greet the volunteers as they approach the gate to the school. Dozens of these
jubilant children encircle each volunteer joyful to just touch them, hug them, shout “Jambo” or “Sopa” (hello) and bring them
up to the school. Trust me, it’s not because of anything we give them, it’s just
because they are so happy to see new friends from their favorite place in the USA,
New Jersey. Most
all of the volunteers are overwhelmed at the out pouring of love, attention and caring given just for being there. For five years, I have heard from many volunteers that this is a soul moving event that they will not forget
for the rest of their lives. I understand.
And I agree, there is not enough money in the world to pay for such a wonderful experience. I wish everyone in Maywood could know what
it is like to be so wanted and welcomed by children who have so much less than our children have.
There are so many people that make this event and trip possible.
One of them is a gracious woman called “Mercy Purity”, who now works for the
Maywood Rotary Kenya Project since last year. This is not a job for Mercy, she
says it’s a dream come true to be able to work all day for Rotary to help the children of Empopongi Primary School. Now Mercy is so happy that she has 16 new friends and she arranged for all their volunteer work for the
week. And on this trip, it’s all about life saving clean water. You may not know that a source of fresh water can save more lives than three full time doctors in Africa. In 2006, thanks to donors like you, we completed
a water project that brought clean water to storage tanks the main area of the school. And we have previous built a school
dormitory for the girls but the problem was they had no water pipes to the dormitory, two hundred yards away from the school
water tank. The girls had to carry buckets all the way to the tanks and back
to the dorm just to wash up each day. And bring even more water up to wash their
clothes each night. A water pipe would allow them to use showers installed in the dorm and sinks to wash their hands and clothes.
But that would be a big, expensive, project that I didn’t
think the Kent Place volunteers could complete in
less than a week. I got tired just watching them work, and believe me, that’s
all I did was watch (I call that “supervising”). I am too old for hard labor.
The soil is rock hard and it would be a massive amount of deep digging in the hot sun with shovels and pick axes. Boy, was I wrong! By the end of the first day, the 12 girls,
four chaperones and their assigned student buddies had already dug up the top part of the trench needed for the new pipes! No one was more surprised than I was. By
the second day, they had dug deep enough to install the pipes from the tank to the dormitory.
And by the third day, the girls were already washing their clothes inside the dorms without having to haul buckets
of water so far. The Kent Place
volunteers had also built a clothes line for them to hang their newly washed uniforms.
You would think that these hard working girls would be satisfied
completing their main construction project and just spend the rest of their time being with the elementary school students. But no, they noticed that the PVC pipe line from the water tanks to the school kitchen
was broken because elephants had crushed the pipes while walking by. This meant
that that Lillian the school cook had to walk a long way several times each morning to fill buckets of water and carry it
back in order to cook the 330 lunches of Rotary provided beans, rice and corn each afternoon.
This was not acceptable to the girls so I had to find eight 15 foot lengths of pipe to replace the broken plastic pipes. Basically, I don’t like confrontation, so in a land of no Home Depots closer than
500 miles, I found a way to get them the pipes. And of course, they spent many
more hot hours in the sun digging and laying the new metal pipe to the kitchen. Of
course, I supervised. I can’t begin to tell you how happy that made Lillian. She
came to work at 6:00am the next morning just so she had the time to wash down the whole kitchen from the water that came out
of her pipes! Just another miracle for the Kenya Project.
By now, I figure my job as the trip organizer is safe and
I won’t have to run around finding plumbers and pipe. The Kent Place volunteers
are done with the big construction work for the school, they will move on to teaching English, teaching a class on the USA,
teaching a class on AIDS, sitting through the Maasai school children’s classes and having the Kent Place School teachers meet
with the Empopongi School Teachers. Less work for me! But NO! One of the Kent Place girls discovered
that the previously installed plastic water pipes from the tank to the vital school garden were broken because a jeep crossed
the pipe line.
I thought to myself, “Oh, No!” Yes, you are right, the Kent Place School volunteers demanded we also fix
this water problem. The school children showed up just after sunrise to dig the
trench, the pipes were installed and the Kent Place
volunteers buried the newly installed pipe. I started to think, this is too much
for me. Three major and important water projects completed in only one week! How lucky can I get?
But so much more happened for these brave volunteers on this
trip. In the next part of “More Tales from Kenya” next week in Our Town, you
will meet many of the volunteers who made this life changing trip as well as the Kenyan people who worked hard to make this
happen for 330 children on the other side of the world. Stay tuned.
More Tales from Kenya
Part Two:
The Girls!
By
Kevin Williams,
Maywood Rotary Kenya
Project
This was my sixth trip to Kenya
and I have learned to answer to many names. All the little school children scream
out “Jambo Kelvin”, shortly followed by “Where is Corey (my son and frequent visitor).
The resident Maasai naturalist at Siana Springs tent camp calls me “Williams, Kelvin from the Rotary.” I answer to that also. But one day on the ride to the school,
we passed a group of Maasai mothers washing their clothes in the stream. One
of them turned around to all the others and said loudly, “Look, it’s The Kelvin!”. It
was like she said, “Look, there’s the Pope”. No matter what they call me, I couldn’t
be made to feel more welcome. And they ask about every Maywoodian who ever volunteered
in the past. “How is the Mayor?” “How
is Jay the veterinarian?” “How is Judge Lois?”
“Nurse Alice?” “Librarian Diane?” And so many others, they never seem
to forget a volunteer. Others asked what President Obama asked ME about Kenya; as if he is
someone I have breakfast at Hillmans with every morning.
It was a new experience for me to bring the twelve girls from Kent
Place School instead of mostly
adult volunteers. And it had a big impact on Empopongi Primary School. You have to realize that Kent Place
School is probably the best private school in New
Jersey. Their girls are extremely well educated, confident
and mature beyond their years. But the Maasai girls are taught from birth to
be submissive and to always yield to any man’s wishes without question. So, I
was curious to see how this turned out and was happy at the result.
What few girls who are not married off and drop out of school by the 6th, 7th, and 8th
grades were inspired by the Kent Place
School girls. The Maasai girls worked side by side with the Kent Place School
girls in the classroom. They did geometry, algebra, English and other subjects
together. You might be surprised to know that
some of the best educated girls in New Jersey not only were
able to teach their Maasai counterparts, you’d expect that, but were also able
to learn from them. The Maasai taught the girls how to get the correct algebra
answer one way, and the Kent Place
School girls showed the Maasai another “American” way of getting the
same answer.
You would expect our strong and confident girls to inspire the Maasai girls, but Mercy had another point to make. She said that it’s just as important for all the Maasai boys to see that girls can
be brave, confident, and outspoken because they know they are equal. She’s right;
some of the boys were absolutely amazed at the girls’ behavior in class. And
so were the teachers! Our girls respectfully pointed out when a boy or even a
teacher made a mistake in English or Algebra. “No, that is not how you determine
the volume of an Ostrich egg”, one student pointed out. The teachers handled
this culture shock very well in my opinion. All the boys and the teachers will
never think of girls in the same way after our visit. That’s a good thing, even
if it clashes with traditional Maasai culture.
I am not saying there were no cultural conflicts, there were. All Kindergarten
through 12th grade students in Kenya are required to take a class each day on fundamentalist Christian education
as outlined by the federal government. Even our one Muslim teacher, Safia, must
teach this course. And every student must pass this course to move on to the
next grade. One of our girls was baited by a Maasai student who asked “You believe
in evolution? Prove to me that I was a monkey!”
They tried to ridicule her. Now I, being a Christian, but also a hot head,
would have made a big argument about this and insulted the Maasai. Luckily, I was not in that classroom at the time. But not our Kent Place School girls, they disagreed with grace
and dignity. But I knew some of them were hurt by this.
Simply put, the girls changed the school but they were also changed by the school, and I think for the rest of their
lives. They will never look at water in the same way, they will see it as a rare
and life saving commodity. They will appreciate what a luxury clean clothes are
for people on the other side of the world. They will come home grateful for paper,
pens, pencils and school books because they are so precious in other countries. They
have learned that a school lunch of beans, rice and corn each school day can save your life if your family has no other food. I think all of them have learned that by accident they are blessedly gifted to not
be born in a poor part of the world. And that these children, through no fault
of their own, were born in a poor part of the world. So, when I am elected to
be “KING” of New Jersey, I will declare that EVERY school
child must volunteer for ten days of work at a Maasai school. It’s an education
in real life that will last for the rest of their lives!
The girls did not work every single minute of their trip to the school. Who
wants to go all the way to Africa and not see the wildlife? So I scheduled as much time as
possible to go on jeep safaris so they could see the “Big Five”, the lion, leopard, elephant, rhino, and buffalo. And they did see all of them. Reverend Dr. Karen Rezach started
to call me “Kelvin, the 6th of the Big Five.” I liked it. I only heard one problem happening on the Safaris. One jeep
pulled up very close so that the girls could get a good look at a Kenyan lion. Unfortunately,
one 12 year old student forgot to turn off her camera’s flash which threatened the lion.
Luckily, instead of eating several high grade students, the startled lion just turned around and sat down.
Mercy and I had a surprise planned for Karen Rezach, the middle school principal of Kent Place School. It occurred after dinner on our first night at the school. About twelve Maasai warriors came to perform the traditional Maasai “baptism” and re naming ceremony of
a worthy Mzungu (white person). Karen was called up by the head Maasai warrior
so the tribe could talk with each other about which Maasai name would be best for this honored person. The tribe settled on “Nashupie”, meaning “Ever Happy”. I think
that Karen found this ironic, but was so pleased to be honored in this way. The
lead Maasai warrior instructed her to be sure to change her birth certificate and driver’s license when she returned home
to Maywood. For
the rest of the trip, no one called her Dr. Rezach, Reverend Rezach or Principal Rezach; she was now called Nashupie by all
the volunteers. I think she liked
that a lot.
Probably the hardest thing for our volunteer girls to do was to say Good Bye on our last day at the school, Friday. They had grown very close to their assigned student buddies, the faculty and other students at the school. We were invited up
to “Maywood Rotary House” (a small house on school grounds built by contributions so Mercy has a place to live while she works
for the Kenya Project) for lunch. After lunch, the girls and the chaperones walked
back to the center of the school for the good bye ceremonies. You could
probably call it a tearful event because it was so heart breaking for the girls to say good bye to their friends. They listened to many speeches of thanks and watched the students perform thousand year old dances and
songs of appreciation. Then came our turn to say good bye. The girls wrote a wonderful speech/poem about how deeply their visit affected them. The Empopongi school principal translated that poem into Mai, the tribal language of the parents who came
to honor us. They laughed, agreed and applauded the deepest feelings of our girls. Because the Maasai performed for us, our girls got up and sang the Kent Place School
anthem as well as Amazing Grace. It was well received by the students and community. When I saw the girls walk away from the school, it was a trail of tears. Happy tears, but still tears.
How lucky could I get, to be a part of all this? I used to think that
all the donors and trip volunteers gave so much more than what they received, not anymore.
Now I know that anyone who gives their hard earned dollars, or gets to work at the school, gets so much more than they
give. Like Corey, they have changed the world; the world of 330 children on the
other side of the world.
Next time, in part three of these articles, it’s going to be more of a personal look at what it was like for me to
be on my 6th visit to that other side of the world on the Kent Place School trip.
After reading it, you will never look at electricity or water in the same way again!
