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Reality Check: Allen students educated in slums of Kenya
Photo courtesy of Cynthia Kim - Eric Langston plays with several children in the Lenana slum in Nairobi, Kenya.
By Jared Watson, jwatson@starlocalnews.com
When Allen-area high school students Eric Langston and Chenyao Yu attended a leadership conference in February, they had no idea how life-changing it would be. The chain of events that began that weekend would soon lead them to the slums of Nairobi, Kenya, and the beginning of a whole new perspective on life and the world around them.
At the Asian American Leadership and Educational Conference, which was hosted on the campus of Southern Methodist University, both Langston and Yu attended a workshop hosted by Eddo Kim. He was at the conference representing The Supply, a non-profit organization he founded that's dedicated to upgrading urban slums through education and empowerment. During the workshop, Kim mentioned the High School Immersion Program, and that The Supply would be offering students the chance to travel to Kenya through the program in August. Both students registered immediately.
"I just wanted the experience to be able to have a more complete understanding of Africa and of Kenya, because I feel like the media skews things a little bit," Yu said. "I wanted to see it for myself. And I wanted to see what I could do to help these people."
"Even the smallest questions and the smallest problems, if they tackle them, can make a huge difference," Kim said.
Yu's research project explored the perception of what school subjects were most important to students in the DYC school - both from the perspective of the students themselves and from the Americans there to help.
"What I really focused on was what could help these students even if they don't have the opportunity to pursue higher education, which a lot of them don't because they don't have the resources," Yu said.
Yu discovered that both groups thought English was the most important subject, but for different reasons.
"For the people in the Lenana community, they value English so they can communicate with a larger amount of people, with outsiders," Yu said. "But the Americans chose English because it allows you to express your ideas, to learn about all the ideas in the world, to prepare you to think. So in America, I think that the English subject has a much more cultural enrichment aspect to it, whereas with the Kenyans it has more practical value."
Langston's research was concerned with hygiene knowledge at the school. He asked students if they were aware of good hygiene practices, such as brushing their teeth and washing fruit before eating it. Then he asked if they had the tools, such as toothbrushes and clean water, to do those practices.
"What I found was that most of them knew they need to be doing it, the problem was accessibility," Langston said. "It was hard for a lot of them. Some of them don't even have a toothbrush. Some of them use sticks."
Beyond their activities at the school, Langston and Yu were able to see the poverty of the Lenana slum firsthand.
"Seeing the contrast between how we live and how they live; it's much more than you think it is," Langston said. "You see it on T.V. You see the people living in shacks, but going there and seeing the stagnant water between everyone's houses and the huge piles of garbage between houses was really shocking. It makes you really emotional when you see it for the first time."
However, the students quickly discovered that the living conditions in Lenana had no effect on the happiness of the people living there.
"They're definitely poor economically, but socially I feel they're not poor in that way," Yu said. "Because at first I thought I was just going to be assisting the needy. But it turned out that despite them living in deplorable conditions, they're very happy people. They welcomed us very warmly."
It also surprised Yu to learn that, though most children in Lenana don't have the opportunity to progress past primary school, it does not stop them from dreaming big about their futures.
"They have a lot of hope," Yu said. "They all have high ambitions. All the kids want to become doctors, lawyers, pilots. They all have these dreams but they know they may never be able to achieve them because they might not get the opportunity to pursue higher education. But they keep these dreams in case they get the opportunity."
The misconception that people living in slums are almost universally unhappy is something Eddo Kim takes very seriously.
"These people are people. Poverty has not stripped them of their happiness, not stripped them of their dignity," Kim said.
In fact, Kim said that The Supply was at first hesitant to start the High School Immersion Program because he thought it would be viewed as similar to other student programs that engage in what he calls "poverty tourism."
"They take students and essentially engage them in poverty, thinking that exposure to poverty will radically change students," Kim said. "When the students come back, for a week or two they might appreciate what they have more, but long term it doesn't make the change."
By the end of the trip, both Langston and Yu developed a love for the students and community that made it difficult to leave.
"It was really depressing, because it was such a short trip, and we had made so many good relationships," Langston said. "The teachers at the school had a big impact on me. Having us there was a huge deal for them, and they really don't want us to be that type of people that come, leave and never come back. So seeing them want us to come back so badly really makes me want to come back."
Once Langston returned to Allen, he was surprised to find that returning to his own community was just as jarring as it had been to go to Nairobi.
"What they call it is 'reverse culture shock'," Langston said. "We get back and we realize what great lives we have, everything we buy and everything we see, and realize 'Wow, I'm so selfish.'"
Both Yu and Langston have kept in contact with teachers and students they met in Nairobi and the DYC school. They both plan to return to Lenana as soon as their circumstances will allow, whether it is on another trip with The Supply or on their own.
When Yu looked back at his experiences in Kenya, he used the words of a poem by the late rapper Tupac Shakur to describe how the children of Lenana inspired him.
"These people are like roses that grow out of concrete," Yu said. "When a rose grows out of concrete, you can't help but just marvel at it. Even if its petals are a little dirty, or if it's leaning slightly to the side, all you can say is 'Oh my goodness, it's a rose growing out of concrete.' And that's like the children in these communities. If they've made us smile, made us laugh, made us cry, then we shouldn't focus on how their petals are a little crooked, but how they came out from all of that and became good people."
For more information on The Supply and the High School Immersion Program, visit http://thesupply.org.
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