Considering School Partnerships for Global Learning: A Photo Exchange

The Elementary School Heads Association trip to Kenya was wonderfully enriching for each of us as participants, as we observed and learned about cultures, environment, and education in the country and, particularly, in the Laisamis District of Northern Kenya. Yet, the most meaningful outcome of the trip would be the development of learning partnerships between ESHA-member schools and the Laisamis District primary and middle schools we visited.

What concrete form might such a partnership take? Kathleen Colson of the BOMA Fund made a suggestion that strikes me as having real merit in its hands-on, student-centered focus and relative simplicity.

Consider turning students in your school loose with a digital camera and a list of aspects of their daily lives to capture. Print those photos and have the students label them with their comments. Pack them up with a disposable camera and a return mailer, and send them to our contact in Laisaimis, who mirrors the project there, sending that camera back to you for processing. Voila -- an exchange!

Interested? Contact me at info@elementaryschoolheads.org.

Claudia

(Photo: Claudia Daggett)

Service learning experience: Congressional Schools of Virginia

Discussion about the ESHA trip to Kenya has stimulated many conversations with heads of schools and others about service learning experiences, in Kenya and elsewhere. Here's an interesting example that sends home the notion that service need not be complex in order to be helpful, a learning experience, and in some way reciprocal.

From ESHA member Seth Ahlborn, Head of School, Congressional Schools of Virginia on October 25:

We were looking for a good place to send out old uniforms when we switched. A parent is involved with a local church doing mission work in Kenya – voila!

The orphanage has 52 children and their schools serve another 150 or so from the neighboring tribes – which is quite cool from our standpoint. The priests were visiting the church here on a trip and were able to come and spend time with our students and visit our school.

Claudia

Photo credit:
United Orphanage and Academy, Moi’s Bridge, Kenya, courtesy of Seth Ahlborn

Local or Global Service Learning?

This question was posed by an ESHA member in the discussion of Muddy Waters' presentation, "The World from Another Perspective: ESHA in Kenya," at the 2010 ESHA Conference:

Why would an independent elementary school get involved in a service learning project in Kenya when there are so many local opportunities to serve people in need?

My response, shared then but developed further over the weeks that have followed as I have talked with colleagues, read, and reflected:

The best of our service learning programs will go beyond the important goals of giving students meaningful, relationship-based, interdisciplinary experiences in helping the needy and of developing the understandings that come from helping others with fewer resources. Exemplary programs will have at their core the goals of developing our students' comprehension that basic human needs transcend place and of building their sense of both local and global citizenship in a context that is of mutual benefit for the members of both organizations involved.

Service on a variety of levels enriches understanding in other areas, of course. For young children, this includes supporting the emerging concept of simultaneously being present in a school, city, state, country, continent, and world; kindling an appreciation and interest in the breadth and richness of the world's cultures; and developing a working knowledge of world geography.

Christian Harth and Rev. Jennifer Deaton of St. Andrew's Episcopal School in Mississippi made a compelling presentation on this topic at the 2010 National Association of Episcopal Schools (NAES) Biennial Conference on November 19, the premises of which are offered in a recent article by Harth in Independent School magazine, "Going Glocal: Adaptive Education for Global and Local Citizenship" (Fall 2010). Harth stresses the importance of developing identities and connections to multiple communities. Borrowing a term from British sociologist Roland Robertson, he urges us to think of a "glocal" schoolhouse:

"While knowledge of Western heritage remains necessary, it grows less sufficient daily. Increasingly, all students should have awareness of, and appreciation for, cultures from around the world — near and far. Moreover, they need to understand their global and local contexts and the various levels in between."

Claudia

Photo:
"Nesting places," NAES Biennial Conference presentation, "Ubuntu, "Glocal" Service, and Educating 21st-Century Citizens in the Episcopal Tradition," 11/19/10
(Photo credit: Claudia Daggett)

The Samburu Sugar Sack

Several years ago, I purchased a messenger bag fashioned from a Vietnamese rice sack. I can't remember where I bought it, but I do remember feeling pretty good about contributing to the life of a Vietnamese woman, which I had done according to the nifty bag tag. The bright orange bag still serves me well as it has through many adventures in these intervening years and even got a new interest when a Vietnamese friend of mine saw the bag and exclaimed, "Hey, where did you get that rice sack?" as she read out the words which had been beautiful, but indecipherable, to me until then. So, it wasn't just a nice story... it was a real rice sack. Now project ahead to the markets and stalls lining the roads from Nairobi to Ngurunit.

Large white sacks, approximately three feet long by one and a half feet wide, lie on the ground filled with the original contents or lie filled with anything that requires a good, strong sack: charcoal, beans, spices, beads. They lie upright filled with their wares or are spread flat on the ground as a protector from the dirt. They cover manyattas against wind and rain. Most frequently, one sees them strapped against a bicycle or a back. They are plentiful and clearly useful and strong. Privately, I start to marvel at the way they are re-purposed. Only once along the road did I see them being sold outright and, after this sighting, kept a constant lookout for them. I started pestering Steven to stop and let me get some sacks. He responded to my requests with the patient voice one uses for small children or the slightly deranged.


Steven's responses aside, I remained as committed as ever to owning these versatile sacks. I started imagining how I would re-fashion these sacks into something that would interest American women. Each day that passed, my mind kept churning. Kind Claudia became my sounding board. Nicholas Kristof and images of empowering Samburu women danced in my head. Finally, on the penultimate day of our Kenyan adventure, Steven pulled over on the side of the road, without warning, and said, "OK, get out and get your sacks and don't pay more than 50 cents for them." Thrilled to be turned loose and for the first time, alone, into a market, I quickly found a willing interpreter. Despite the looks from the Maasai women that universally translated into "crazy mzungu," I came away with three sack specimens. I could have purchased 100.

Now the task in front of me was to turn these into something, which is where Bree Norlander enters this narrative. Bree was well known in The Little School community to be an expert seamstress. Growing up as the daughter of an upholsterer, Bree has a commercial-grade sewing machine and sewing room in her home. She cleverly had turned some packing material from my move west into a sack for my daughter earlier in the fall. I explained my idea and asked her to work her magic on these sugar sacks. She developed the pattern, sewed two prototypes of one style and invented yet a second style from the remnants. Her skill and vision has kept the vision going for the Samburu Sugar Sack project.

As Claudia and I use the two prototypes and test them for endurance, Bree works on translating the pattern into one that can be understood through pictures and symbols for any seamstress. Bree and I focus on the least number of seams to enable women with a knowledge of handcraft to be able to sew them. While I work on a low cost source for the bag straps, I feel pleased that this little project is moving forward. Ideally, with the sacks, materials, seamstress abilities, and a market outlet, we can turn this small idea into a meaningful source of income for the Samburu women. The need is more urgent than ever as the families in the Ngurunit area are suffering from drought with few resources to acquire food and water.

Laurel

Photo: "Laurel gets her bags," Maasai market (Claudia Daggett)

Prosperity with Dignity

After publishing last week's post, I was in touch again with Kathleen Colson. She forwarded the address for her blog -- which our readers may well enjoy!

Kathleen makes two or three extended trips to Northern Kenya each year on behalf of the BOMA Fund. She began writing about her current trip on October 27 and has been posting regularly since. Her descriptions of the living of the BOMA mission and its new tag line -- prosperity with dignity -- and of the work of the Rural Entrepreneur Access Project (REAP) are compelling. Her post "Swimming with the Crocodiles" struck a chord with me given my concerns, expressed in this blog, about the potential for unintended negative consequences when we act on charitable impulses. And I know my fellow travelers, in particular, will enjoy reading about familiar people and places.

Read on! BOMA Nomad, http://bomafund.wordpress.com/.

Claudia


"Heavy load," on the road from Ngurunit to Marsabit (Photo: Claudia Daggett)

For the Answers, Look to Those in Need

In our recent blog posts, Reflections on Cultural Survival and The Blue Sweater, we offered our concerns about the possible unintended negative impact of outside help to the people of Northern Kenya. Clearly, one response to these concerns is to look to those in need for the answers.

I had the opportunity in October to meet and talk with Kathleen Colson, Executive Director of the BOMA Fund, a non-profit organization serving Northern Kenya originally established in association with Joseph Lekuton. Over a bowl of soup in Brattleboro, Vermont, Kathleen listened to me lament over these issues that seemed to me to present a moral dilemma. When I finished, she simply said, “I don’t think it is for us to decide.”

From Colson’s perspective, the key issue is not cultural survival but human survival, which requires addressing profound poverty. The BOMA Fund and its Rural Entrepreneur Access Project approach this issue through working with the women in the rural Rendille, Samburu, Ariaal, Turkana and Elmolo communities in Northern Kenya to establish community businesses with a mission to improve the capacity of individuals to earn their own income. The BOMA Fund website and this video give an overview of their work:

Video source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTaEmgHL1l0

Christopher Werth captures this notion succinctly in the opening line of his recent Newsweek article, "A new fix for the needy" (10/25/10):

“Patronizing the poor is proving to be a deadbeat strategy. Trusting those in need may be the answer.”

Claudia

The Blue Sweater

What a wonderful coincidence! I did not bring enough reading material on our trip to Kenya, so when Laurel said she had a few books, I took her up on her offer to borrow The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World by Jacqueline Novogratz (Rodale Books, 2010). I can honestly say that the combination of this book and our trip radically transformed my worldview in a most important way. Novogratz begins her book by saying:

“They say a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. I took mine and fell flat on my face. As a young woman, I dreamed of changing the world. In my twenties, I went to Africa to try and save the continent, only to learn that Africans neither wanted nor needed saving. Indeed, when I was there, I saw some of the worst that good intentions, traditional charity, and aid can produce: failed programs that left people in the same or worse conditions.”

Reading her story while traveling through Kenya was a powerful educational experience.

Much of my service experience in schools has been to help the children collect money, books, clothing, etc. to give to others less fortunate than we. While the intent may have been good and the results may have been better than doing nothing, Novogratz cites example after example to show the problems with this model. She talks about a woman named Aisha in Kenya who told her that she and her friends were tired of white American women coming with answers without knowing enough about the people they were trying to help to even have any questions. Novogratz and her foundation strive to identify the most competent people in an area and invest in and support them to bring about change. She sees these people as partners and collaborators rather than poor people who need to be saved. The changes brought about by this model have proven to be much more sustainable and therefore effective.

Our ESHA group has struggled with the following because of our experience: What if our desire to help causes a culture to change dramatically or even disappear? For instance, could efforts to help educate more Kenyan children receive an education lead them to turn away from their traditional occupations or cause certain dialects to die out and be replaced by Swahili or English -- and should we worry about that?

As is often the case, the more we come to know, the more we want and need to know. This book and this trip certainly made us want to learn even more.

Muddy

Laurel reads to Pauline Labarakwe and Ntacha Orbora, Ngurunit

(Photo credit: Muddy Waters)

Discussing the Trip with Colleagues

Muddy talked with colleagues about our trip and his responses to it on October 19 at the Annual ESHA Conference in a session entitled "Seeing the World from a New Perspective: ESHA In Kenya." In a recent post on her blog, Shared Leadership, Jamie Feild Baker offers a summary of that session and some good, provocative questions that came from the discussion on topics of service learning, cultural literacy, and how we and our school communities view our own lives.

Claudia

Seeing the World from a New Perspective

After offering a post here detailing our itinerary, Muddy shared an overview of the trip and his reflections in a post on a school blog. Entitled "Seeing the World from a New Perspective," you'll find it at Journeys: Explorations by Pike Faculty and Staff.

Photo:

"Collecting rocks for a school foundation," Ngurunit, Claudia Daggett

Schools Visits Prompt School Thoughts

It never ceases to amaze me how much teachers enjoy visiting other schools, and our curiosity about the Kenyan education system had been piqued from the first thoughts about the trip. Imagine our unmitigated delight when we discovered Salato School near our manyattas in Ngurunit, a school Steven Labarakwe has worked hard to build with the support of his Dutch supporters at Ayuda en Todos Partes. We spent our service time in the local Ngurunit Primary School located near the town center and built by missionaries years ago. Steven's proudest achievement, however, was clearly the school compound he built in 2009 (again, in part with Dutch support) in the remote village of Mpagas. It was on our journey to Mpagas that we read the thorough reports by his head teachers accounting for everything from test scores to inventory. These reports were simultaneously impressive in their comprehensiveness and humbling in the kinds of issues faced by school leaders in this remote region.

As we know all too well, the state of the physical plants of our schools, while important, represents only one of the things which command our time and attention, and this is no less true here. In conversations with Steven, he emphasized the need for teacher training and school resources in the form of everything from water supply to desks to curriculum materials. In setting the priorities, he set all of our thoughts in the direction of ways in which we, as individuals and in our roles as school and association leaders, can direct our support.

Laurel


Photos: Claudia Daggett

"Through the Gate, Salato Primary School"
"Head's Office, Ngurunit Primary School"
"Salato Primary School"
"Arrival at Ngurunit Primary School"
"Through the Classroom Window, Ngurunit Primary School"
"Head Teacher at the Blackboard, Ngurunit Primary School"
"Service in Ngurunit: Painting the Blackboards"
"Service in Ngurunit: Collecting Rocks for School Foundation"
"Walk on the Campus of Mpagas"
"Visit to Mpagas"
"Discussing a Penpal Exchange, Mpagas"

Reflections on Cultural Survival

Half of our time in Kenya, more or less, we spent tucked into the Samburu village of Ngurunit. While visiting schools and lending our efforts to two service projects, we enjoyed getting some sense of the rhythm of daily life in this pastoralist community. Highlights included the singing well, an impromptu market of local crafts, and a performance of traditional dance by the moran – the young men who are warriors from the time of circumcision in puberty until they reach the age of “young elders.” Perhaps most edifying, however, was the opportunity to simply be present and observant. We offer a few photos here, many taken by our guide in the village, Josephat Lemalio (whose delight in the digital camera could be counted as another highlight). Nigel Pavitt has written a wonderful book, Samburu, full of photos of the people and descriptions of their traditions and beliefs (1991, London: Kyle Cathie Limited).

In making the journey from Ngurunit to Maasai Mara toward the end of our trip, we stopped at a local Samburu place of lodging modeled after the safari camps of the game parks. This one differs, our host Steven explained, in that it was established by a local Samburu, Diipa Lenanyangara, who developed it with local materials and labor. As we asked him about his efforts, with Steven translating, Diipa left us for a moment and returned with the spring 2010 issue of Cultural Survival Quarterly -- a magazine published by a non-profit organization based in Cambridge, Massachusetts! The cover article, “Samburu Under Attack," features Diipa Lenanyangara and addresses the recent conflict between the Samburus and the Kenyan government regarding cattle ownership.

Throughout our visit and afterward, I found myself wrestling with how to reconcile my desire to respond to a request from this community for help and partnership and my concerns about whether Western points of view and involvement will mean the inevitable end to the distinctions of indigenous cultures. This led me to return to the work and words of Wade Davis, an ESHA conference keynoter in 2009. In Light at the Edge of the World: A Journey through the Realm of Vanishing Cultures (2002, Washington, DC: National Geographic), he points to "the desert peoples of Kenya -- Turkana and Boran, Rendille, Samburu, Ariaal, and Gabra" -- as examples of endangered cultures. Wade Davis quotes anthropologist Daniel Maybury-Lewis in saying, “Too often we meddle with lives we barely understand.” (p. 122)

Nigel Pavitt urges financial and material support for the culture’s physical survival, emphasizing the Samburus’ need for help in creating infrastructure for basic needs such as water supply while respecting the culture’s integrity. Help in the area of education seems a more complex matter. Pavitt states his belief that the moran will become a thing of the past as more boys attend school. And, yet, are all children entitled to an education? If so, how do American educators offer a hand with full respect for the culture?

Claudia

Photos: first three, Claudia Daggett; all others, Josephat Lemalio

Ndoto Hills

Ndoto Hills: Kenya's Natural Beauty, Part IV

Somewhere between the hot dusty desert of the north and the savannahs of the south, rests some of the richest land in Kenya. The central highlands of Kenya are home to most of the country's agriculture, including the world's largest area for rose cultivation. Just north of this fertile delta area yet south of the Chalbi Desert are the Ndoto Hills, whose landscape seems to be trying to blend the best of those two environments. In the winter dry season of our visiting time, the cracked, clay-bottomed river beds crunched under our feet while the hills surrounding the camps where we stayed appeared green and somewhat lush. These hills provide ample adventure opportunities for travelers who like climbing and hiking. Natural water sources remain unpredictable yet, at the same time, support leafy trees, plants, and birds of many varieties. Herds of domesticated animals dominated the landscape but tales of wild animals, particularly predatory cats, abound. We saw few wild creatures in this region but grew fond of the neighbors' cows, camels, and goats who liked to come visiting each morning at our camp.

In a reference to the belief of the Nuer people that the tree "still stood within man's memory in the south of Sudan," Peter Matthiessen named his book, The Tree Where Man Was Born (Penguin Classic, 2010), after imagining a large baobab standing solitary and majestic in the desert sun. We came upon such a mighty tree in our Nguranit neighborhood. The canopy of the tree stretched wide and far from its gnarly tangled trunk. Such trees are believed to be as old as 2500 years. It now seems easy to imagine both its age and wisdom.

Laurel























































































Photos:
"View from Ngurunit Campsite," Claudia Daggett
"Dry Riverbed, Mpagas," Claudia Daggett
"Ngurunit Landscape," Muddy Waters
"Mountain Slide," Muddy Waters
"Sunset, Marsabit to Ngurunit," Claudia Daggett
"Goats," Claudia Daggett
"Camel with Bell," Claudia Daggett
"Trunk" Claudia Daggett

Our Feathered Kenyan Friends

Our Feathered Kenyan Friends:
Kenya's Natural Beauty, Part III

While the large animals certainly hold great appeal, we found that the winged friends, with their stunning plumage and vociferous chatter, kept us just as entertained. Who knew that we would come to recognize four different types of vultures? We even chased a bustard (a pheasant-like bird) around in our bush car as Sam, our Maasai guide, became excited at the rare sighting of this shy bird. Luckily for us, the winter landscape of dry bush and barren trees in some places enabled us to spot the colorful birds quite easily. Our zoom lenses and binoculars came in especially handy at these moments. When we returned home, however, we discovered that none of us had recorded the names of the many birds we had seen. In another stroke of good fortune, we had picked up A Photographic Guide to Birds of East Africa (Richards, D. Ralph Curtis Publishing, 2001) in Nairobi, which helped greatly.

To continue the pleasure, we discovered a lovely novel, A Guide to the Birds of East Africa by Nicholas Drayson (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008). With a sanguine writing voice similar in style to Alexander McCall Smith of #1 Ladies Detective Agency series fame, Drayson gives us Mr. Malik, a gentle bird-loving soul and member of the East African Ornithological Society, who is infatuated with the equally lovely Rose Mbikwe. If you can't travel to Nairobi via plane, traveling in your armchair with a book, a Kindle or a Nook turns out to be very satisfying, in this case.

Laurel






















































































































Photos:
"Little Bee-eater," Maasai Mara, Claudia Daggett
"Flock of Vultures," Maasai Mara, Claudia Daggett
"Going for a Stroll," Bustard, Maasai Mara, Claudia Daggett
"Northern Red-billed Hornbill," Ngurunit, Claudia Daggett
"Stork," Maasai Mara, Claudia Daggett
"Taita Superb Starlings," Taita Hills Wildlife Sanctuary, Claudia Daggett
"Secretary Bird with Plumage Extended," Maasai Mara, Laurel Seid
"Ostrich," Maasai Mara, Claudia Daggett
"Red Beaks," Ngurunit, Claudia Daggett
"Yellow-necked Spurfowl," Maasai Mara, Laurel Seid