LORI STANLEY
I could help him to preserve what is being lost. He said that he had learned a great deal from his father and other elders about medicinal plants and the medicines they could produce, and he knew many older Maasai people who had extensive knowledge of traditional medicines. He had access to the knowledge that was disappearing, but he did not have the means for recording it, compiling it, and preserving it for future generations. That, he said, is where Luther College could help. He was certain that we had the training, the experience, and the resources to assists him in realizing his dream of preserving Maasai medicinal knowledge for his people. That conversation took place at the end of the January 2010 study abroad program. By June, two students from that program— Sylvie Hall and Kia Johnson—were on their way back to Tanzania to work with Leboy and another young Maasai named Musa Leboy Oltimbau with Kia Johnson (dark hair) and Sylvie Hall work with Leboy OltKamaika to initiate the Maasai Medicine imbau to identify and photograph medicinal plants. Summer 2010, Eluwai village. Project. That summer Sylvie, Kia, Leboy, During my spring 2013 visit to Tanzania I was able to and Musa made huge strides in identifying medicinal plants address the goal of deepening and broadening our partnership and documenting their preparation and prescribed uses. The with Maasai in the northern districts of the country. A few following summer Rachel Hodapp and Georgianna Whiteley, months earlier I had been approached by Leboy Oltimbau two participants from the 2011 January Term program, exabout serving as a steering committee member and U.S. liaison panded on the 2010 research in partnership with Leboy and for a non-governmental organization that he was working to Musa. They also helped to explore possibilities for launching establish. Leboy’s vision was to create an organization that an income generating project that would produce soap and would benefit Maasai women and children in his home district massage oils made from the essential oils of medicinal plants. through education and economic development, and to that In summer 2012 Jeffrey Emerson, a participant in the 2011 end he spent more than a year establishing the Esarunoto January Term program, was involved in further investigating Emaa Foundation (EEF). the production and sale of products containing the oils of When I arrived in Tanzania in late January, I met with medicinal plants. Among the many outcomes of these colLeboy and other steering committee members to discuss EEF laborative efforts, perhaps the most important was a detailed goals and review progress made thus far. EEF had already and fully illustrated guide to Maasai medicinal plants compiled established a preschool that was providing more than 40 from the field data collected during the first two years of the young children with the kind of preparation they needed to project (Hall et al. 2010; Whiteley et al. 2011). In January be successful in the Tanzanian public school system. The big2011 Luther students delivered forty copies of the first edigest educational barrier for rural Maasai children is a result of tion of the medicinal plant guide to Maasai elders and to the the fact that most grow up in Maa-speaking homes and have rural secondary school at Eluwai for use in their Indigenous little or no exposure to either Swahili, the national language Knowledge Curriculum. The following January we presented and language of instruction in government primary schools, the school and local elders with an equal number of copies of or English, the language of instruction for all secondary and the revised and expanded edition of the booklet. 1 post-secondary education. The EEF preschool helps to address this problem by offering early instruction in both Swahili and English. The school also prepares children for Standard Sabbatical Goals, Activities, and Outcomes 1 (first grade) instruction in mathematics, reading, and other One of the objectives for my 2012-13 sabbatical leave was to subjects; works on developing social skills; incorporates physiexplore new means of furthering the deep partnership that is cal education into the curriculum; and provides meals that developing between Luther College and the Maasai commuhelp to ensure the children’s nutritional needs are being met. nities that have enriched our learning and warmed our hearts The school has been operating in a rented space not with new friendships. Beyond that, I proposed to explore ideally suited for the purpose, and one of EEF’s top prioripossibilities for including other Luther faculty, and possibly ties has been to build a new campus in a central location staff, in what I envision as an ongoing multi-disciplinary and within the widely scattered Maasai community north of the multi-faceted program in Maasailand. Finally, I planned to town of Mto Wa Mbu. Prior to my visit the local people initiate a conversation on the Luther College campus about had expressed some willingness to donate fifty hectares of deep partnerships and guest-host reciprocity in study abroad. 38
Agora/Fall 2013