Linking Duke to Kenya

For the past several years, dozens of Duke students have experienced the different facets of Kenya.

On one side there's the unavoidable story of poverty and children dying of malaria and AIDS. That's the side that moves Duke student Sunny Kantha, who is currently spending the summer working in Muhuru Bay, Kenya, to write that he will return in 2008 because "I cannot stand idly by while Muhuru suffers."

But there's also the sometimes overlooked story of education and development. Beyond the disease and poverty, there are dynamic universities attracting bright students. Thanks to the friendship and collaboration of Duke biologist Sherryl Broverman and Rose Odhiambo, director of the Institute for Women, Gender and Development Studies at Egerton University in Kenya, Duke is part of that story as well.

Learning to Listen

The DukeEngage team in Muhuru Bay took on several difficult tasks, from working with HIV patients to answering questions from young Kenyan girls about menstruation. All of the work was meant to turn the knowledge they collected in their research into something valuable for the local community. In the below excerpt from their blog, student Lucy McKinstry describes a day of surveying local families to collect data to assess what financial services would make a difference in the people's lives.

"Squinting my eyes in the late afternoon sun, I watch two toddlers toying with a piece of plastic. I lean in to listen closely for familiar words in the Luo banter among the older members of the family. They are trying to calculate how much the family spends per person on clothing and footwear each year. This question is one of the more challenging on our fifty-six question survey. I sit back and wait until Michael, my translator, announces the decided amount.

"Perhaps you are wondering: what is the purpose of a survey full of questions about shoes and school fees? These questions provide the skeleton of a complete poverty assessment, which will produce a snapshot of the economic condition and needs of the Muhuru Bay community. -- The ultimate goal of this effort is to bring the specific financial services to the community that will fill these unique needs.

"By personally visiting the houses and listening to the problems each family faces, we are experiencing the vivid reality of these families in a way that would be impossible to replicate in a book or a website. -- Despite the language barrier, we are immersed on a daily bases with the challenges these mothers and fathers face, the trade-offs between a new roof and school fees or the blunt truth that for half the year there simply is not enough food to go around."

For more from the blog, click here.

To read the blog of the Egerton University team, click here.

Last year, students in Duke's Focus program, which offers interdisciplinary communities for first-year students, funded a new Internet café for Egerton students. The café allows students in Broverman's and Odhiambo's classes to communicate and work together on homework and on projects centered on HIV-AIDS, sexual harassment and gender studies.

"We value that interaction outside the traditional classroom," said Amy Feistel, senior program coordinator for the Focus Program.

For Egerton, it was the first center for Internet use of its kind. For Duke, said Feistel, it was a way to help form "students of the world."

Based in Nakuru, Kenya, Egerton University was recently named the top university in the country. Odhiambo credits the honor in part to Duke's help to bring Internet access to the facility. In a recent e-mail to Broverman, she wrote: "Please congratulate yourself and the students -- . Please appreciate your efforts."

The collaboration also includes two summer programs sponsored by DukeEngage. At Egerton, four Duke students are helping with HIV awareness and testing campaigns the drafting of a new gender and sexual harassment policy. At Muhuru Bay, eight Duke students are working with members of the local community to raise funds and to build a boarding school for girls. Broverman is adviser to both projects.

"We're trying to get them stretched culturally, get them out of their comfort zone," Broverman said.

Broverman said that much of her work and that of the students is centered on trying to improve the lives of women in the poor communities of Muhuru Bay.

Most Americans would be shocked by how few rights girls have in Kenya, she said. "Girls in many poor communities are just sold. Girls have very little autonomy -- . This resonates with the students here. These girls have no control over their sexuality and their health."

Odhiambo, the Kenyan professor, is the only female from Muhuru, Kenya, to go to a university. "The fact that Rose exists is phenomenal," Broverman said.

For students such as Kantha, the rising junior who is working in Muhuru Bay, the experiences have been one of the highlights of his education.

"What has astonished me about my experience thus far in Muhuru Bay is not the breadth of my learning, but that these are lessons I could never have learned in a classroom," she writes in a blog shared with other students working in Duke Engage. "The difference between reading about poverty in a textbook, and experiencing it firsthand in a developing country is tremendous."

Feistel said these kinds of interactions are important components of programs such as Focus and DukeEngage.

"This is very important to the university," Feistel said. "This commitment at every level puts the best face of Duke forward at the best time. It shows the true nature of Duke students and their interest in their community. They are interested in making a difference in the world."