Ujima

by Tamara D. (Dalton Class of ‘07)

Summer Academy at Cape Town is the four-week-long intensive program in Cape Town, South Africa where I took classes, went on trips, and did community service this summer.  Our classes consisted of South African History, Geography, Modern Africa and Global relations, African Ecology and Zoology, African Language and Literature, and African Music and Art.  Throughout the four weeks we did community service in local townships and went on trips to places such as Robben Island.   We also stayed on a beautiful campus overlooking the ocean in Simon’s Town, Cape Town. About 40 kids attended the program: 15 from various countries in Africa and the rest from different regions of the U.S.

South Africa has such a rich and varied culture.  There is so much we can learn from this remarkable country, in particular their great sense of community.  That we could experience this is remarkable, because just ten years ago Summer Academy wouldn’t have been able to exist in South Africa because of apartheid.  My classes consisted of white and black South Africans and many other races of people. This is something that would have been outlawed ten years ago. Summer Academy in itself is an important mark in South African history.

The Cape Town program challenged me academically and emotionally. I will never forget walking in townships and seeing such extreme poverty, or the conversations that I had in my classes.  I made friends with people from all over the world and I spent the most intense month of my life at the Summer Academy. I learned a lot about myself and other people. It was the type of experience that I wish that every person could have.

More details for the Cape Town Summer Academy can be found on their website at www.theacademyct.com/

By Emma R. (Dalton Class of ‘07)

Living in a world as privileged as my own, it is really difficult to relate and appreciate a life very unlike the one I’ve known.  I’ve always wanted to be part of a project, which, (as clichéd as it sounds) would make a difference in the world or change people’s lives for the better.  Clearly, being a student, and coming from an advantaged background, I can’t really make that ideal difference alone.  However, joining the collaborative effort of the students, parents, and faculty who make up Ujima has given me the opportunity to actually make a world of a difference for some people.
The students who are chosen for scholarships lead such difficult lives, very different to anything I know.  Many of them are orphans who have lost one or both of their parents to AIDS or other tragedies.  Many have difficult and strenuous commutes to school each day, as well as lots of physical work outside of their academics.  Last year I received a letter from my pen pal in Kenya, Peter.  Although the experiences that these remarkable students have undergone are in some ways incomprehensible to me, I was able to appreciate everything that Ujima had done for him. The simple tone of gratitude and hope in this short letter allowed me to grasp- on maybe a distant level- the life-altering opportunity we had provided Peter, as well as many other students.  Everything Ujima has done for these students will help shape their lives and the futures of those around them.  To be able to make that difference for someone is a feeling of fulfillment that is truly indescribable.

By Katherine F. (Dalton Class ‘07)

The Ujima Project has been a significant part of my life for many years now, and having the opportunity to see so many members of the Dalton community committed to the work and spirit behind this project has been a truly rewarding gift.  This summer, I was fortunate enough to visit Kenya for two weeks with my dad, Neil Getnick, my older sister, Courtney Finerty, Ms. Meg Scheurer and Dr. Malcolm Fenton.  This experience not only exposed me to the beauty of Kenyan culture, but it provided me with the ability to literally see how much the effort and enthusiasm behind the Ujima Project has genuinely affected the lives of others.

In Kenya, we visited the nine different schools in which the Subukia Scholarship Fund has placed the twenty-one scholarship students.  Courtney and I had the opportunity to sit with all of the students and learn about their lives growing up in Kenya, their struggles to obtain an education, and their hopes for the future.  We in turn told them all about the Dalton School, and the remarkable dedication of our fellow students back in New York.  To their delight, we were able to give them pictures of the projects Dalton has been involved with for Ujima thus far, and we provided each student with information about their Dalton pen pal.

An extraordinary experience for me was when I finally was able to meet my penpal, Nancy Njeri from the Jomo Kenyatta Secondary School.  Nancy is 16 years old, an extremely bright student, and has lost both of her parents to the AIDS pandemic.  I also learned that, like me, Nancy loves to play volleyball, listen to music, and hang out with her friends on the weekends.  Many of the twenty-one students within the Subukia Scholarship Fund have had to overcome tremendous hardships, and they have struggled financially to even get as far as the chance of having secondary school education.  One student named James Mwangi, at St Lwanga Secondary School, had lost his father before he was admitted to our scholarship program.  Tragically, his mother passed away just after he was admitted, and he was then faced with being an orphan with nowhere to turn.    His headmaster, Gabriel Mwago, was compassionate enough to let James live with him at the school so he would be able to pursue his education.  This was the attitude of so many of the educators whom we met at the schools in Subukia: complete dedication and genuine care for all of their students.
The amount of gratitude that the students in Kenya expressed for all of the people involved in this project was infinite. Coming as I do from a community where education is guaranteed, and sometimes underappreciated, I was able to find an immense source of inspiration from these students’ desire to learn, and their determination to succeed to their highest potential.  One of the most common ambitions amongst the scholarship students was to be able to come to America one day, extend their knowledge, and then return back to Kenya in hopes of serving their country and making it a better place.  The pride in self and country that this dream demonstrates is a testament to the overall dignity of Kenyan culture.  I found myself constantly telling the students, their parents, and their teachers how mutually beneficial this experience was, and how grateful I was to them.  At the root of the Ujima project is the true force behind all of the community activism and service: the dream to create a true relationship between two cultures, a relationship that seeks knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of each other.  I cannot overemphasize the difference that our work in the Ujima Project has made on the lives of our companions in Kenya. And I couldn’t be more grateful for the impact that this project has made on my own life, and hopefully on the lives of everyone else involved.