cover story
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P H O T O B Y R AY S T E P H A N S E N
8
NOTHING
Lessons from a global classroom
BY TIMOTH Y STEPHA NSEN ’11
M
y journal smells of leather, and not at all as if it spent a month in Africa. The only evidence that it has been anywhere is the water stain running through the bottom halves of its pages from the time we were caught in a downpour in the rainforests of Ghana. I probably smell vaguely of the body wash I used this morning, or perhaps the lingering aroma from my encounter with Reed Hall’s bearded dragon has overwritten that by now. The only physical evidence I bear of Africa is red dust on the inside collars of shirts I no longer wear and a half-faded Livestrong-style bracelet made in the colors of Ghana.
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Above: Children from the villages quickly befriended Dr. Mulamba and other ONU team members. Opposite page, top: Jadon Huddleston ’11 assists a student with her paper. Opposite page, bottom: Prof. Ingram, pictured with Jadon Huddleston and Laura Messenger ’11, demonstrates proper formatting for a Works Cited page.
The funny thing is, when people ask me “how was Africa?” I always tell them that the trip was “wonderful” and “life-changing.” But now, I find myself hardpressed to find any actual changes taking place. It’s not as if I have forgotten. I remember spending a solid month with ten other people: professors Dr. Rebecca Belcher-Rankin ’69, Prof. Kristi Ingram ’01, and Dr. Kashama Mulamba; and seven other Olivet students — Jessica Brown ’11, Brittany Frost ’10, Jadon Huddleston ’11, Kayla Koury ’11, Rebecca Lankford ’12, Laura Messenger ’11, and Emily Spunaugle ’12.
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Spending every waking moment with the same ten people should lead to over familiarity, but we never had even the slightest problem with group dynamics. I remember spending entire mornings, every week day for two solid weeks, in two small rooms at the University of Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso’s capital of the same name, helping the senior-level students organize and brainstorm for their thesis papers. Each morning was a mixture of emotions. Each of us would help up to four students a day, and their topics were not catered to our interests. In the same day I could have a high point helping a student with a paper examining the role of satire in characterization, and then turn around to feel like I crashed and burned on a political science topic on which I am horribly unlearned. In the afternoons, we would split off to different high schools and teach ESL classes, while in the evenings we would work with adults. I remember when the adults killed me inside. I was alone one night with a class of fairly advanced learners who were given an hour’s time to ask any sort of question of me that they desired. Those that I was asked were heartbreaking. “How can I get to your university?” “If I give you the shipping cost, can you send me a car?” “How can I get to the U.S.?” “What help can you give me?” These were questions for which I had not mentally prepared myself