Habari Gani?
(Swahili for “What’s the news?”)

John Linsley ’04 (KSP fall ’02)
169 Perkins Row
Topsfield, MA 01983
jlinsley@gmail.com

2007 Kenya Summerterm participants, including Noel Luciano '08, center, of Glens Falls, N.Y., visited with children, including a couple of rather shy ones, at Kenyatta National Hospital.

Watching the winter’s events unfold in Kenya has been difficult and upsetting.  May peace and calm make a speedy return to a country and people with which we share a special connection.

Congratulations to former St. Lawrence Kenyan scholars and Parliamentarians Joseph Lekuton ’91 and Chachu Ganya ’96 for their election wins and continued dedication to Kenya!

Sara Wilhelmsen ’01 (KSP spring ’00) is working for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) on the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief in the Bureau for Global Health.  A 2005 graduate of the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, she earned a master’s degree in public policy and international economic development.  Sara has returned to Kenya twice since the KSP, once as a graduate student and once with USAID. 

Ryan Vandermark ’05 and his girlfriend, Breanna Greene ’05 (both KSP spring ’04), recently returned home from Namibia, where they were working for Wilderness Safaris at Little Kulala Camp in Sossusvlei. 

Kathleen Fitzgerald ’92 (KSP spring ’91) has accepted a position with the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) in Nairobi as director of land protection.  Kathleen was previously executive director of the Boston-based Northeast Wilderness Trust.  She said, “AWF helped set up land trusts in Tanzania and Kenya, and I will be focused on assisting their private land protection efforts.  I have long been pulled to the African landscape, culture and mammals.  It is a special place that has inspired me and I am excited to be part of the effort to ensure that it endures long into the future.” 

Jessie Davie ’04 (KSP fall ’02) and Than Robinson, the son of former KSP director Paul Robinson, are both graduate students in environmental studies at the University of Montana in Missoula. Paul is director of the Human Needs and Global Resources program and a professor of history at Wheaton College in Illinois.  In a recent e-mail, Robinson said, “I am continually amazed at how studying in other places, connecting with people from different cultures and perspectives, and entering into each other's lives, stimulates deep and long-lasting relationships.  Part of the privilege of leading programs such as the KSP and now the HNGR has been to have a part in developing these transformative initiatives. At this critical moment in our planet's long history, these may be instrumental in fostering in us and our global neighbors a sense that in all our diversity we share much that is fundamental.  As we recognize this, we can together (in the words of former Tanzanian president Mwalimu Julius Nyerere) ‘develop the resources of this planet for all the people of this planet.’”  Learn more about Robinson’s work with HNGR at www.wheaton.edu/hngr.  Jessie and Katie Gauthier ’04 (KSP fall ’02) both return to Tanzania in summer 2008 to lead trips for Putney Student Travel.

Erica Zimmerman (KSP ’87, Amherst College) e-mailed that she looks forward to reconnecting with fellow KSP alumni and former faculty.  She wrote, “The KSP was definitely one of, if not the most, formative experiences of my life.”  Erica wrote an article, published by Vermont Community Works, which traces the KSP’s impact on her career; it’s in the spring 2004 publications archive at www.vermontcommunityworks.org.

Articles discussing Associate Professor of Anthropology John Barthelme's course The Neanderthals: Fact, Fiction and Fantasy appeared last fall in The Chronicle of Higher Education, USA Today and the Chicago Tribune. Barthelme’s course deals with comparing what students learn to the inaccurate portrayals of Neanderthals commonly seen on television shows and commercials.  Barthelme has long been involved with the KSP and returns to Kenya this summer to teach an archaeology course.

As part of my master’s work in international relations at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University, I will spend summer 2008 in Ghana working with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) on educational programs for trafficked children.  Several times in Syracuse this year, I had the pleasure of catching up with former St. Lawrence Kenyan scholar Nicolette Oleng ’05.  Nicolette is in her second year of medical school at the State University of New York Upstate Medical University and recently spent time working with the Kenya Medical Research Institute.  Last fall, Nicolette visited with her friend Leah Nelson ’05 (KSP fall ’03) who is working for the Adirondack Council and lives on an organic farm in the Adirondacks.

While on their way west last fall, several KSP alumni passed through Syracuse, including Doug McCabe ’03 (KSP spring ’02) and Barrett Miles ’07 and Jon Angus ’07 (both KSP spring ’06).  Doug was a ski patrolman at the Yellowstone Club in Montana, Barrett is working in Victor, Idaho, as a property surveyor, and Jon is a carpenter in Jackson Hole, Wyo.

If you are willing to provide an update of your current doings or have an old KSP adventure to share, please be in touch by e-mail or post (take note of my new address at the top of the page).  Pictures are always welcome.  Tutaonana!

Summer 2003 Entry
Fall 2003 Entry
Winter 2004 Entry
Spring 2004 Entry
Summer 2004 Entry
Fall 2005 Entry
Spring 2006 Entry
Summer 2006 Entry
Report of Appreciation 2006
Winter 2007 Entry
Spring 2007 Entry
Summer 2007 Entry
Report of Appreciation 2007
Spring 2008