Running to Uganda And The Comparative Challenges Facing Children’s Development in Africa and the West
Run to Children’s Hospital Fundraiser (click me to DONATE)
Holy cow, we made it past $10K! This will be the last time I link to the fundraiser. Thank you so much for your support! We have played an indelible role in the ongoing development of East Africa’s only public children’s hospital. It’s no exaggeration to say that your contributions have already saved children’s lives. As the Ugandans say, Well done!
The blog is now several weeks behind, as my adventures ramped up and swallowed my time. Finally, now my Africa chapter is coming to a close. I will fly out tonight. Moving forward, I will continue to write my African adventures— there’s much more to the story.
In today’s post, time-sensitive readers can skip to the “Let the Conversation Begin…” section.
❤️🔥🌍
Starting the Run to Uganda
After my week in Iten, I felt pretty good. So good that the little idea to keep running through Africa started feeling pretty good too. I was tempted to stay in Iten as long as possible (until my grandma’s birthday— a mandatory event in New Jersey). Ultimately, mission called though. I wanted to keep raising money for the Shoe 4 Africa Children’s hospital, felt confident in my Swahili, and my body felt strong 💪🏽.
On Sunday I took the bus back to Eldoret from Iten. First thing Monday morning, I jogged over to the hospital to wave goodbye and gushed with the joy of pure freedom as I started running into the great unknown.
For miles, I sloped gently downward. At 10:30, I reached a small town and checked my distance: almost 38km. It was the fastest I’d ever run with my backpack. For hours, I relaxed in a basic “hotel” (cafe) sipping chai and going through my phone. As usual, locals stared at me.
In the afternoon, a powerful thunderstorm pounded the tin roof like hammers. I asked if it rains everyday. The locals said yes. For today, the rain listened to my schedule and stopped before 4. I set off again on muddy farm roads in cool air passing kids walking home from school. After 6, I rolled into the destination on my map— an arbitrary village I picked named Musembe.
I asked for a guesthouse, and a woman said there was one 1.5km away. I hopped on the back of a motorbike, and we drove down the road for what felt like 3 or 4 km. I asked, “How many more kilometers?” The driver didn’t answer. Suddenly, he veered onto a side road and accelerated.
A wave of panic rolled through me? “Am I being kidnapped? I should’ve known this is what happens when a lone mizungu shows up in a random village at sundown.” We slowed at a corner and I considered jumping off into the bushes. Before I could ditch the bike, however, we stopped.
What stood before me was a gate enclosing a big, beautiful mansion. I looked at the man confused, “This is the local guesthouse?” He nodded. For reference, guesthouses in tiny, rural villages tend to look more like a jailhouse than the image of a “hotel” in your head. I’ve come to expect a row of steel doors with padlocks enclosing austere concrete rooms.
We knocked on the big gate— no answer. By now, it was getting dark. I asked the motorbike driver if he could take me to a cheap local guesthouse. He said, it was too dark to drive to the next town.
I checked Google maps and found the mansion listed as a Retreat Center. I found a phone number and called. To my surprise, someone picked up. I asked, “Are you here?” She said, “Yes…” I asked her to open the gate. A woman dressed in uniform came out and handed me a phone. On the other end, a stern older woman said she wasn’t expecting any guests. I said I didn’t expect to be here. She asked me to explain my situation. I told her I’d been running across Africa and finished in her village tonight. The locals directed me here after I asked for the guesthouse.
She told me they vet all their guests extensively. She instructed me to come inside for an interview. I was directed to a safari-style tent behind the mansion. The woman was seated beside a charcoal fire like a queen crowned by a cornucopia of hair. She directed me to sit and asked for my passport. She checked that my visa was valid, the first time anyone had done so since I got to Kenya. I sat tensely wondering if I’d ventured into the castle of a good or evil queen.
She asked my physical address and when I told her Seattle, she lightened. She just flew in four days ago from Vancouver. “Huh?” “I live in Coquitlam!” she told me, “I’m Canadian!”
Let The Conversation Begin: Comparative Challenges Facing Children’s Development in Africa and the West
Khayanga Jenipher Wasike grew up with nothing in the village where we sat. She worked hard to go to school, then worked hard in school, graduated from university, and became a maths and science teacher. Her dream, like many Kenyans, was to make it out of Kenya.
Every four years, one program sponsored 16 top Kenyan teachers to work abroad. The program selected the teachers whose students had the highest overall scores. Relative improvement was not considered.
As a teacher at a public school in a second-tier Kenyan city, Khayanga competed head to head against teachers of the best private schools in Nairobi. Did she at least get to pick the students in her class? No. Some of her students were failing. Forget Cs or Ds— she had students scoring 17% on exams. Is it possible to save such an incompetent student?
YES! With a lot of effort. Khayanga fed the students outside of school and simplified the teaching methods to meet their level. She would say, “The last exam you got 17%. Let’s shoot for 22% this time.” They would come home with 30%, and she would celebrate.
I interrupted, “Wait a second. Your students were giving 100% effort and still scoring 17%?” Yes. Khayanga insisted the problem was NOT lack of effort.
She told me with the air of a seasoned veteran that there are so many more factors that go into a child’s development than what you can control in the classroom. Some kids come from unstable families, others are abused, malnourished, you name it. They’re stunted before entering the classroom. The only way to dramatically improve learning is to consider their entire environment— home and school.
Khayanga poured every ounce of her energy into the students. Over the course of the year, their scores went up little by little. By the end, sure enough her students had the highest math exam scores in Kenya. She was selected to go to Canada as a volunteer teacher with a minimal stipend. I asked if she burned out after such a crazy year. She said she was too excited for Canada to burn out.
Canada did not turn out to be sunshine and rainbows, however. Khayanga left behind all her children. Did I mention she had her own children separate from her students? 14 to be exact— two biological children and 12 adopted. In order to support her family from Canada, she began providing cleaning services under the table outside of teaching hours. “This was a status crush. Imagine me telling people who envied me back home that I was in Canada cleaning poop and puke in pubs and nightclubs.”
Khayanga also experienced culture shock as a teacher. In her first year, she sent a student out of class for not doing their homework. Later, she was called to the principal’s office and reprimanded for being too harsh with the student. She told the story with fresh indignation. “The students I taught in Kenya didn’t have access to a fraction of the opportunity as Canadians, but they would never forget to do their homework!” Khayanga felt that her Canadian students were ungrateful. She wished she could make them see the challenges Africans have to overcome to get education.
This fueled an intuition I harbored about education in Africa. As I’ve observed, honest law-abiding Africans across the board will tell you that education is the number one thing they want for themselves and their children. They value education with the kind of zealous vigor only rivaled by my neurotic Jewish grandparents. When you visit schools, you may choose to interpret the call-and-response style of class as mindless rote learning designed to develop sheeple, or you can look at the students as devout believers in education, eager to absorb whatever the schools throw at them. While both could be true, I want to highlight the irony that even though the West has better education, the students in Africa seem to me to be more dedicated to education.
Eventually, Khayanga went back to school for a Masters in Social Work from UBC to increase her career capital and find better employment. As a counselor, however, she felt even more helpless. She told one story about a student with depression who complained about her mother. Khayanga wanted to say, “Do you know how much effort it takes to bring a human into this world? You should respect your mother!” but the bounds of her job left her to appease and validate the girl’s emotions.
Now Khayanga has left social work in Canada to move back to her home village in Kenya. She is helping make the economic development and social justice that she would like to see happen here. Her other friends who emigrated from Kenya are shocked by her return, “Why would you go back to the third world? You worked so hard to leave!” She and I shared a smile as she staged her response, “Is it really so bad here? The food is ten times better— local and fresh. The climate is lovely. And employees and villagers are actually grateful for the community work I’m doing.”
Khayanga founded the Lugari Community Learning Resource Centre whose focus is relief of poverty, advancement of education and support of independent living. LCRC is supported by Willing Hearts International Society of Canada. More recently, to counter Kenya’s high unemployment, she also founded the Musembe Technical and Vocational Training Institute which provides vocational, technical and business skills to youth. Internationally, Khayanga belongs to several service organizations including Rotary, Lions, Soroptimist, Zonta, EAWL, 100 Humanitarians, and Days for Girls. “My business is humanity and my product is service.”
With all her education and experience developing young humans, Khayanga’s own childhood makes her best-suited to help the children growing of rural western Kenya. For example, she started a program to produce reusable period towels and teach menstrual education because she used dried cow dung and banana leaves growing up (She didn’t tell me this; I read about it here).
Personally, my conversation with Khayanga felt like nothing short of a gift from the universe. As I’ve somehow found myself engaged in child development in Africa from food aid to school sponsorships to supporting a children’s hospital, I’m inspired by Khayanga’s return home.
This past May, before I went to Africa, I asked a well-respected community leader in New Jersey if he sees any common problems in young people? He told me that often times, they don’t go through their first true failure— loss of a job, divorce, etc— until their 30s, and at that point in their lives, it shocks them. His general sense was that our young people seem to be less resilient than the older generations, which aligns with Khayanga’s misgivings about Canadian students.
Olly Off-Script
Thinking about how to improve resilience in the US, I wonder, is tough love the answer? (Should we stop “the coddling”?) Then I think of my Kenyan marathoner host, Peter. One day a shopkeeper gave us each a candy. I ate mine right away, but Peter graciously thanked the shopkeeper and put the candy in his pocket. When we got home, he popped the candy in his toddler Ryan’s mouth and smiled as Ryan ran around the room giggling.
In the past I’ve sworn I would never give my kids candy. Why would I feed a child an unhealthy and addictive substance? In this case, though, it was totally innocent. I realized that in a scarcity environment where you can’t afford candy, there’s no risk of it becoming a regular thing. Peter doesn’t have the budget to buy candy everyday, so there’s no risk of spoiling Ryan with it. His financial situation ensures that a treat truly is a treat for special occasions.
Building off this, almost, every African friend I’ve made endured at least one difficult period in their life. Rocky’s childhood household had nine people, and there often wasn’t enough food for everyone to eat a full meal. Daniel would consume raw ugali flour to ease the pain of his empty stomach. Masoud begged for food on the streets because his family couldn’t pay the school cafeteria fees. There’s no need to raise your kid to be tough when life already is tough. I believe that Africans lack no motivation to work hard because they know exactly what’s at stake. Counterintuitively, having no safety net can push them to leap for opportunity.
Reflecting on my own life, most of my hardships were self-induced. Going to boarding school, taking a gap year, running a business while taking 2 majors in college, etc. Choosing my struggles has been perhaps my greatest privilege, and I’m eternally grateful. I think in my case, when I don’t self-induce external hardships, I’m a prime candidate for the internal ones— anxiety and depression. As the Buddha says, life is suffering. And as an Uber driver told me, “If you don’t pick your battles, they pick you.”
When we were running to Kenya, Rocky asked me, “Do people in the US try to kill themselves?” I said yes of course. He said, They should come to Africa. They’d never want to kill themselves after being here. I assumed Rocky meant they’d feel grateful for their lives after seeing the conditions here. I think that’s true, but Rocky actually meant, the African people will give them so much love, especially white people. Africans are literally taught that Jesus is white. (Perhaps this is why I feel safer in Christian areas than Muslim areas.) Off the beaten path, they look at your arrival as a miracle, and they believe that you have the power to solve their problems. To be treated with such respect and admiration must have some positive impacts on mental health.
The grand Africa thesis that I’ll continue to come back to is that Africans’ problems and Americans’ problems are complimentary in many cases. I’ll hammer this home with an anecdote from Toby Tanser, the founder of the Shoe 4 Africa Historial. He worked on an event in New York helping 50,000 at-risk youth. He had the idea to flip the concept of the program from helping the kids to empowering the kids to help others. He proposed that each kid bring $1, and he would build a school in Africa with the money collected. As Toby says, nothing is better for the soul than helping someone else.
I’m imagining one grand fiesta in the African village. The local villagers can bring the fresh food, laughter, resilience, gratitude, and active lifestyle; Americans can bring the capital, education, and healthcare. What could go wrong?
I enjoyed following your journey,Olly! Safe travels and I look forward to all of your adventures to come. I finally had my coffee with Jean from Clearwater, which we talked about when she dropped you off at our house. She recently competed in the BC Senior games, biked 40 kms and came in 1st or 2nd(I can't recall which one) AND she is 90 years old. What an inspiration both of you are!
Olly , I can’t express what I feel when I read your words and think of your actions… I have to come to right mindedness . Sending love to your spirit and what comes your way! Bonnie