Education for All

Over the past 3 weeks I had an opportunity to travel through 3 different African countries and have 3 totally different experiences. While those experiences will be documented in my travel blog (because I was traveling), I wanted to take an opportunity to discuss some of the very interesting African people I met along the way. I bring this up because almost every person that I got into conversation with that was African in decent, fascinating, smart, and really sort of blew me out of the water.

My first day in Tanzania, amid the heat, the stress, and the craziness, I sought solace in an internet café where I met a 22-year-old Rwandan girl, whose family moved to Tanzania about 6 years earlier. For those of you who may have spent your life living in a hole, it is important to know and understand that Rwanda is a small East African country that was plagued by genocide ending in 1994, which at the very least claimed the lives of 800,000 people or as much as 20% of their population. It is a nation that for many years was classified as a lost cause, but in recent years has tried jump up on the world stage, finding some semblance of stability.  Through a quick blossom of friendship, I learned that this girl was heading for a job interview in Dar el Salaam with one of the major banks there. After talking I learned that she was just looking for a job at the time, but really wanted to eventually move into the non-profit sector and do something a little more meaningful. She really wants to give back to her fellow Africans and to the communities that need it the most.  Learning this piece of information even threw me off a little because of all of the stereotypes that exist about Africans.

On Zanzibar Island, off the coast of Tanzania, floating in the crystal clear waters of Ningwe, I met a man from Tanzania, who works as a non-profit lawyer in Dar Es Salaam and got his Master’s from a university in Johannesburg. We enjoyed a long conversation discussing the differences among African nations and people. We then met his friend, also Tanzanian, also working in law around the cause of HIV/AIDS, another friend from Botswana, and a third friend from South Africa working and living in British Columbia, Canada. In Swaziland, while reading a poem carved into a stone column explaining that while we all may look different on the exterior, deep down we all share the common bond of being human, I met a man from Zimbabwe. He was working for a John Hopkins medical hospital/project in Swazi. He did his medical internship in Texas and got his medical degree from a school in South Africa. Again we had a nice discussion about a bunch of different African nations and the people (a common theme). Finally in Clarens in the Free State of South Africa, I met a group from Joburg and together we enjoyed champagne and rang in 2011. This group included two sisters who grew up between Lesotho and Botswana, completed undergraduate degrees from universities in the Northeast of the United States and now lived in Joburg. One of the sisters, with a background in Chemistry, was working on starting up her cosmetic company (she explained that she was having fun, but was slow to start making money), while the other one got her Doctoral degree from a school in London in Economics and was working at a university in Joburg teaching economics. Her husband grew up in South Africa and studied at Dartmouth and began working with Morgan Stanley upon graduation and still works with them today. Quite an interesting, intelligent, and diverse group of people if I may say so myself.

There are so many people who believe that Africa is a lost cause and it is because of the people. Yes, I have actually seen that comment on different news articles I have browsed.  Luckily, I have had been blessed enough to meet and see for myself that if Africans have the means and the opportunities that they are just as capable as anyone from a Western country. I am not going to lie, for me it is really intimidating to meet a well-educated black person. The first time this really happened for me was when I met the inter-port student from Ghana on Semester at Sea. He was one of the most well educated and articulate 20-year-olds I had ever met. Something that fascinated me was that you could throw any question you had about his country and its history, etc. and he knew the answer. I am pretty sure if you ask me or most other Americans questions (I know this is true for me because it happens all the time) that we will not know the answer.

The Ghanaian boy, Rwandan girl, Tanzanian man, Zimbabwean man, the Sesotho (of Lesotho) sisters, and the South African man come from a families that were financially stable and economically able to send them to good schools throughout their lives and provide them with educational opportunities that will propel them ahead in life. Sometimes I believe that is what is really comes down to. Education. This is something that Nicholas Kristof, columnist and blogger for the New York Times constantly touches on, a deep set belief of Greg Mortenson who is working to educate those in remote villages of Afghanistan and Pakistan in order to foster peace and a cause that Queen Rania of Jordan works to promote.  If you haven’t heard of Nicholas Kristof, I highly suggest you google him and read some of his columns, if you haven’t heard of Greg Mortenson then again I highly suggest you pick up his books: Three Cups of Tea and Stones into Schools. While you are educating yourself of the education of the world, it would also be a great idea to sign Queen Rania of Jordan’s One Goal Petition that was started and rolled out during the 2010 World Cup in order to fight for education for all. Currently “There are 69 million children out of school across the world. That's more than all the children that are primary school across Europe, USA, Canada, Australia combined. The world has the opportunity to ensure that every child has an education, and the chance to beat poverty.” Anyways as Nike says “Just do it.” It will take 2 minutes of your time.

So the question still remains: Can Africa move forward? While my interesting friend from Stone Town in Zanzibar has his doubts, I think that he along with all of the other Africans I met along the way prove that with the right opportunities, healthy family lives, dreams and strong educational background, that Africans do have the means to head right into the 21^st century.