Spring 2000

The Orinka

This is a story of St. Lawrence at its very best. It is a story that begins with an outstanding overseas program, the alumni who attended it over the past 25 years, the students, faculty and staff who are there now, the people of Kenya from Nairobi to Samburu, and the Faculty and St. Lawrence leaders of the past and present who conceived this program and have made it what it is today.
Two years ago, a number of the faculty and staff involved in St. Lawrence’s international programs and in the Kenya Program in particular were at a meeting when one noted that 1999 would be the 25th anniversary of the start of our Kenya Program. What, they asked themselves, should we do to mark this important milestone of continuous commitment, through times of peace and times of conflict, to a program, to a program in Kenya?
St. Lawrence has a broad, deep, and distinctive curricular emphasis in African studies, a pillar of which is a Kenya Program that has been life-transforming for our students-an assessment communicated to us over and over in the testimonies of alumni and current students. Surely we must do something besides just noting the passing of 25 years.
One answer to that question was that we should hold a special reunion of alumni who had participated in the Kenya Programs-some 700 strong-during Reunion 1999 here on campus. And so some outstanding alumni who had been to Kenya began to work with on-campus staff and faculty, and with Paul Robinson, long-time director of the program, to bring such a reunion off. Attending, in addition to program staff, would be Pakuo Lesorogol, the Samburu elder in whose northern Kenya community our students have been hosted for home-stays for 23 years.
Then we learned that Paul would be leaving us for Wheaton College. Because of the strong role Paul played in building our program over much of its history, and the wonderful relationships he developed with so many of our Kenya Program alumni, the reunion would also become an opportunity to honor him as well.
The approximately 75 alumni who came to Canton last June spoke eloquently of the powerful impact of the Kenya program on them, both at the time and in their lives since. Crucial for their experience, they said over and over, were their contacts with Kenyan people, especially the Samburu, the pastoralists in the north with whom students on the program spend two weeks each semester in a field experience that includes a three-day home-stay. These alumni decided they must find a way to give something back.
In consultation with Pakuo, it was determined that the most critical need was additional classroom space in the primary school in Naibor Keju, established by Pakuo’s community and located just a couple miles from our program’s field site. Classrooms had been built for grades 1-6, but students in grades 7 and 8 had no space of their own. Books were in short supply as well. So our program alumni decided they would ask each other for the funding to build two new classrooms, renovate a third and provide new books for all students in grades 6-8. This they did.
Ann and I enter the picture at this point, because it was felt necessary and important that we be present to dedicate the new and renovated classrooms when they were completed. And so it was that we found ourselves in Samburu at the Naibor Keju Primary School on March23, during the time, as it happened, that our students would be there on field stay, to dedicate these classrooms.
There is not enough room in this space to describe all we saw and learned, or to communicate adequately to our alumni of the Kenya Program how utterly grateful and pleased that Samburu community was at such an extraordinary gift. The entire community assembled for a four-hour dedication ceremony. There was beautiful singing by the women’s choir, dancing by the primary school boys’ group, many speeches, and the giving of gifts. We were told that the classrooms our alumni funded were the best in any primary school in rural Kenya, and that the provision of books for all students made the school in Naibor Keju unique. In many schools only the teacher has a book.
Our conversations there and in Nairobi with students in the program mirrored almost exactly the powerful stories of learning, friendship and personal growth we had heard from alumni last June. We were able to view the program and its Nairobi facilities firsthand, and understand the learning goals of the program-such as environmental and economic sustainability, anthropology, politics, history, all in the Kenya context-and how our students achieve them. It is an academically demanding and physically and emotionally challenging experience that causes students to rise to the occasion. I have to say that in over 30 years in higher education I have not encountered anything better.
The Kenya Program is special among our overseas programs in another way, for each year we enroll two Kenyan students at St. Lawrence (eight overall) on highly competitive full scholarships. These students, who with Associate Professor Celia Nyamweru’s over sight and assistance began our orientation to Kenya by cooking a Kenyan meal for us in our home just prior to our trip, are of truly outstanding quality. You see them everywhere on campus: in leadership roles, involved in cultural activities, and whenever academic honors are presented. They are outgoing and engaged, and their love of Kenya and willingness to share are legendary here. Their presence on campus is critical to our goals for intercultural understanding among our students. Since we began doing this a number of years ago, 34 Kenyans have received their bachelor’s degrees from St. Lawrence, a remarkable and highly positive additional outcome of our Kenya Program.
At the closing ceremony of the 1999 Kenya Program reunion, Pakuo made me the gift of an Orinka-a Samburu elder’s wisdom stick. It is for one whose children are grown, for only then among the Samburu does one have the wisdom to help with the children of others. What our students like most about their time with the Samburu men and women is the patient way they share their wisdom. They are gifted teachers. I profoundly hope that we at St. Lawrence have the wisdom to continue to invest in opportunities like that in Kenya for our students to study abroad.
As a nation we were stung by the “ugly American” tag, earned in the 1950’s and 1960’s because of the visible and frequent misunderstanding of other cultures Americans acting abroad seemed to exhibit with alarming frequency and powerful consequences. Concern about our behavior abroad is perhaps even more salient today, after the end of the Cold War, as the people of other nations, especially in Europe, see America not just in the driver’s seat economically, with the ability, with the ability almost unilaterally to shape the global economy, but also seeking to impose its social and political values on others. The intercultural understanding St. Lawrence faculty have sought to foster over more than 35 years of encouraging our students to study abroad, such that 30-40% of every St. Lawrence class does so, is only more important in the world of today. You can be sure that on my watch, we will continue to invest in this kind of opportunity for our students.