Joseph Lekuton ’91 has been
recognized by People and Reader’s
Digest for his humanitarian efforts.
The only one in his family
to go to school,left Kenya for the first time when he traveled
to St. Lawrence. He studied economics and government,
earned a master’s degree in education from
St. Lawrence and another from Harvard University, and 10 months a year is
a teacher at the Langley School in northern Virginia. But that’s only part
of his story.
Joseph returns to Kenya every summer, where he lives as the Maasai
tribesman that he was raised to become. He remains involved
in community development projects in rural Kenya. Through his work
with several non-profit organizations, more than 100 nomadic children
have received education scholarships and constructed a water system
delivering clean water to a dozen villages in northern Kenya. He
is the youngest recipient of Kenya's Order of the Grand Warrior,
given by the president for exemplary service to the country. He was
given St.
Lawrence’s Sol Feinstone humanitarian award in 2005.
The author of a memoir Facing the Lion: Growing Up Maasai on the
African Savanna, Joseph recounts growing up in a traditional nomadic
way of life in Kenya (where “facing the lion” is both a
metaphor and a vivid memory). Torn between two ways of life, he learns
to accommodate both of them. Along the way he celebrates his tribal
initiation by circumcision, learns to play soccer and speak English,
gets help when drought causes his family to have too few cattle to
pay his school bills, and adapts to being a college student halfway
around the world, in a physical and cultural climate unlike any he'd
known before. National Geographic is the publisher of his book, which
has received international attention.
