Oh, the places we'll go! Fifth in a five part series: Africa

Will Horn

"[The actual climb] was actually somewhat more luxurious than [junior ShiYing Lee and I] really expected mountain climbing to be. It took six days. Our guide woke us up about midnight to hike to the top. It was pretty nice to hike at night because the sun wasn't out and the moon was full. The first four days were pretty easy. We didn't really have any trouble at all, so we were kind of like, 'This is nothing too challenging.' On the last day though, it took six hours to get to the top and that was really hard.... It's pretty cool because once you get to the top you can start seeing some of the snow fields, and at the top there are these huge glaciers--you don't feel like you're even in Africa anymore. But we both got altitude sickness--nausea, headaches, and you can't really think straight. About two hours into it, I started feeling it, and ShiYing got sick at the top. It was just one foot in front of the other. If you get sick before the last day they usually don't let you go up, but since it was the last day they carried us up.

We both wanted to carry our packs. Most people have porters carry all that kind of stuff. After a couple days, we'd start giving them stuff to carry. Our guide said we were hurting our chances of getting to the top if we tried to carry everything. We had a guide and five porters. A couple and their daughter, who were going up the same time we were, had five guides and 25 porters. For lunch, they would set up a tent with tables and chairs inside [and] the porters carried up cots for them to sleep on. I mean, I thought ours was luxury."

Patrick Ashby, senior
Gun Free South Africa
South Africa

Michele Lanham, senior
Egerton University
Njoro, Kenya

"I've never felt as white or as female as when I was in Kenya. Dr. Sherryl Broverman, senior Courtney Crosson, and I went together, and everyone thought Dr. Broverman was our mother and Courtney and I were sisters because we were all short, white, and brunette. An easy mistake to make, we knew, but we still found it humorous. We spent most of our time at Egerton University in Njoro, meeting with administrators, professors and students to help them develop a curriculum for their new course on HIV/AIDS and to promote their newly established Women's Institute--the first and only in Kenya. [We met] a group of women and discussed issues they dealt with on their campus as female students. We had to meet in secret so that male students would not barge in on the meeting. They told us about how women running for student government are expected to perform sexual favors in exchange for votes--one girl jumped out of the window of her dorm room to escape male students who were threatening her. These things do not take place on all campuses in Kenya, thank goodness, but are more prevalent at Egerton because it is a more rural school with a 75:25 male-female ratio. These issues are, however, reflective of larger issues that women in Kenya deal with, contributing to the fact that women are at higher risk of contracting the HIV virus than men."

Ryan Kennedy
Cross-Cultural Solutions Ghana
Woe, Ghana

"Stepping off the plane, the thick, humid African air rushes up and smacks you in the face as a hello: 'Welcome to Ghana, you have no idea what you've gotten yourself into.' In my new hometown, Woe, the myriad of children running around were amazed to see white people strolling about. They would constantly yell out 'yevu,'--the Ewe word for white person--and practice the bit of English they knew: 'What is your name?' 'Where are you going?' 'Give me money.' I was also a bit startled to see a fashion trend among a portion of the population--Osama bin Laden t-shirts. My director later explained to me that many people have no idea who he is, but they like his look and long beard.

For my work in Woe, I taught computers and economics at a high school--the headmaster was extremely trusting of my supposed ability to teach. My first day, I was given a class and told to teach. I was supposed to teach how to insert clipart into documents; however, the blank stare I received from my students as I gave instructions told me something was wrong. I realized we'd be changing the lesson to the very basics of computers. A few weeks before I left, I decided to go a bit more native and have my hair braided. After the painful three-hour process, employing four braiders, two bags of hair extensions and a lot of patience, I strutted into class to show off my new 'do. My students responded by spending the next three minutes laughing, pointing and prodding."