Some Thoughts on my Trip to Kenya - Ben Sheehan
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The African continent has drawn considerable press in the past decade, due mainly to genocides and civil strife. With American news as my foundation for understanding the entire landmass that is Africa, a continent larger than North America, though one would never guess looking at common maps, I admit to being nervous about flying into Nairobi. I had a vision of landing in the midst of gunfire, and running, hunched-over, to a vehicle waiting to whisk me away to relative safety in a high-walled compound.
“This is Africa,” I would say, quoting Blood Diamond, and fall asleep listening to rebels battling government troops in unsettlingly close neighborhoods.
Unlike Darfur, to the northwest, Kenya has a stable, if stagnant, government, and there are no genocidal factions roaming the hills. Arriving on the evening of the 16th of July, 2007, my traveling companion and I were greeted by a beaming Alice Mudiri, and her sister-in-law Neddy. They brought us to a car, through a friendly, bustling crowd, and drove us immediately to a Kenyan pizza joint. We had our comfort food, and a rapidly changing sense of Kenya and the surrounding continent.
Over the following two weeks, we toured across Kenya, meeting potential students of the Beverly School. In dark, smoky, mud huts, rimmed by neon green sewage water and mounds of garbage, we met smiling children, and their mothers who were withering under the force of HIV/Aids. Their bodies lithe and weak, some mothers were able only to sit up to shake our hands before retiring again to their beds of hard-pack mud. Often these women were so poor that rent was an impossibility, and landowners were threatening to evict the dying women, along with their children. Any eviction would have involved lifting these women off the floors of their huts, and placing them down on the filthy, unsheltered pathways of the slum. This is Kisumu. This is Kenya.
Kenya is suffering from an ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor. Money coming into Kenya through official channels is being funneled into political pockets, and only sparse amounts are trickling down into educational infrastructure and beneficial programs seeking to help the poor. Though primary education is now “free” in Kenya, books and uniforms are not. Thus, access is still limited to those who can pay. When families can hardly afford food to eat, and rent looms ominously, education takes a back seat. Uniforms and books are not a priority as compared to survival.
When visiting Maasai Land, the swath of savannah grasslands, which cover much of southern Kenya and northern Tanzania, we met dozens of children with little chance of affording education. Bright eyed, and full of seemingly naïve hope, the children posed for photos and smiled at the white strangers suddenly in their midst. Their parents, who live hand-to-mouth in a never ceasing struggle to stay alive, presented a feast of fresh roasted goat and bottled sodas. These were downright extravagances presented to strangers simply because Kenyans, whether Maasai, Kikuyu, Luhya, or any of the dozens of other tribal factions in the modest African country roughly the size of Texas, believe wholeheartedly in hospitality. A guest’s teacup is never empty, and mine was no exception. The sheer generosity of these people, who have nothing, was astonishing. What they wanted in return was the possibility of education for their children.
Education is where the Beverly School will begin to make a difference for Kenyans. Upon completion, the Beverly School will educate, feed, and house 300 students of varying Kenyan backgrounds. Half will be orphans, many coming from slums where water must be paid for and toilets are the nearest shady corners. There are already profound stories emerging from the infant Beverly School. Two children, Vincent and Hillary, will be the Beverly School’s first students. Both found themselves alone, starved, and desperate in the slums of Kisumu, neither more than ten years old. They clung to each other, not because of any blood ties, but because they were both at the mercy of the slums and solitary life. Hillary, the elder of the two, worked as a cobbler to support the two of them, living together in a mud shack the size of a small broom closet. When they stumbled upon Abdi Lidonde, and the benevolent American, Tom Maher, wandering through the slum, their fortunes changed instantly, and dramatically. They now have a Beverly School education in their future, and the chance at better lives. The cycle of poverty and subsistence living will not repeat itself upon Vincent and Hillary. Theirs are futures already changed. This is the Beverly School.
I arrived in Kenya expecting gunfights and rebel insurgencies. The press coming across the Atlantic into American homes has to do with murder, rape, corruption, and war. These are all newsworthy, to be sure, but there are other, more lasting battles being fought with no press. The children of Kenya, and of most sub-Sahara African countries, are fighting for education. Some children interviewed even demanded education. They understand that education is their ticket to a better life, and a tool that can never be taken away. The Beverly School will offer hundreds of children the tools to succeed in a land where education is all too scarce. In turn, those educated will be able to reshape the future of Kenya. The Beverly School will be a means to a better end for all of its students, and as education infiltrates the masses, Kenya will better navigate the modern world.
In all corners of Kenya, we saw potential, and happiness amongst the youth. The human spirit is resilient, and the population is ready to learn in hopes of a better future.
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