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W
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2012
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n our final day in the bush, a bit worrisome for our group was a very
large elephant family coming right toward us. Someone asked the
driver, “Do you think we should move?” The elephants calmly went
around us on both sides. The best treat of all was a cheetah that walked directly in
front of us.
We entered the courtyard of Enkiteng Lepa School, where the children were
waiting to sing a song for us and dance delightfully in their red, blue and yellow
outfits. A sign outside the school reads, “Don’t exchange girls for cows — give
them education.” The leader is a brave woman. She was a teacher who was
dismissed from numerous schools because of her stance on women’s issues. She is
against female circumcision and rescues young girls from this fate and marriage
to older men. This courageous woman was obviously very proud of what she had
accomplished and said, “If they kill me I will die with dignity.”
Older women were there as well, who were widowed. They were learning to
sew on old sewing machines, making things to sell, to support themselves. We all
bought shirts, some reading “STOP FGM” (female genital mutilation).
We will remember the warm days, the cool nights, the gorgeous sunsets and sun-
rises, the magnificent vistas, the majestic animals healthy and thriving, the gentle,
smiling faces, the scrumptious fresh food and all of you, my new friends.
—Joan Pellet McFarlane ’55
Chachu Ganya ’96 and his 4-year-old son Zako Christopher
(named after his SLU friend Christopher Bunting ’93) came to vis-
it [at the Kenya Semester base] – joined in the discussion about the
impacts of [the Kenya Semester] on Kenya – very positive things to
say about its impacts and the respect it has over Kenya.
Saw hippos on sand banks; crocs looking like logs on the river-
bank; a cheetah, maybe pregnant; a lioness and three small cubs;
several elephant families, one with a calf suckling; big herds of
wildebeests; wildebeests and zebras crossing a river with quite spec-
tacular jumping and splashing. Lennie McKinnon ’58 struck up
the alma mater, and a number of alums joined her.
—Celia Nyamweru
“(At) the Enkiteng Lepa School, widows
were learning to sew on old sewing machines,
making things to sell, to support themselves.
We all bought shirts, some reading ‘STOP
FGM’ ( female genital mutilation).”
—Joan Pellet McFarlane ’55
Karen Wachtmeister
This trip has opened my eyes wider than ever to many beautiful people who
work so hard making it day to day in this very complicated world in which
we all exist.
[At] the SLU Study Center we met with students and directors of the
Kenya Program. The students had just returned from a seven-day rural
homestay in Tanzania. I loved hearing about the experiences they had en-
joyed, from helping their host fathers plow a field to watching Mexican soap
operas, dubbed in English, with their host mothers.
Early wake-up call (5:45) after hearing bush babies screaming on and off
all night. They sound like a whole bunch of people being murdered.
—Karen Wachtmeister P’99, ’05