Walk for Educate!

2006-08-08T12:27:00.000-07:00

If you're reading this, you already know, we have completed the Camino de Santiago!!! We reached Santiago on the 24th of July, then hiked the remaining 90 kilometers to Finisterre (literally "the end of the world" as it was once the furthest western point of Spanish expansion.) We hung out at the beach for a couple of days, then returned home for the first time in 9 weeks. It has never felt so good to sleep in my bed.

The Camino was unlike anything I have ever done before. Walking at least 15 miles a day, every day for a month instilled such a rejuvenating and healthy structure in my life. Every day I would wake up before sunrise, get dressed, get packed, and walk. Time ceases to have any real meaning. When the sun rises you wake up and when it sets you go to bed (6:30 a.m. to about 10:00 p.m.--much to our mother's content) and everything in between is just in between. We had no engagements; we were driven by our simplest of wants and necessities. All that we needed was a willingness to walk. It doesn't really matter how far you walk or with what speed you walk it, becuase you're not really going anywhere. Whether you walk 30 kilometers or 50 you will still be the same place that you were in the morning--on the Camino, in Spain, in the middle of nowhere. The trip put planetary scale in a whole new perspective for me.

We really appreciate all of the moral support you have given us over the past two months. The last nine weeks have been some of the most incredible of my eighteen years. To try to share more of our experience with all of you, Emmy and I will be posting some of our best pictures from the trip on this blogspot. If you want to see more of them, we would love to email them to you or to come over and show them to you ourselves. Just let us know...

We hope to continue to raise money till we leave for school. So please help us spread the word to your friends, tell them about us, give them our blog address, give them our emails and phone
numbers. We're really sorry about the two week hiatus in our blog entries. Soon Emmy will write her final blog, which will cover more of the specifics of the end of our trip. Ciao!

2006-07-16T01:44:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we entered the Galician Mountais and completed our most difficult hike yet. We walked 31 kilometeres and increased our elevation by 600 meters. Galicia is so different from the rest of the Camino. In just a couple of days the landscape changed from flat, endless fields of wheat to a rainy, lush mountain range. With its tempermental weather, green mountains and Celtic music, Galicia looks more like what I imagine Ireland would look like than Spain. We even saw a man playing the bagpipes at the top of the mountain yesterday.

Over the past couple of weeks we´ve formed a tight group of about 15 students from 5 different countries. We´ve been walking with two brothers from Barcelona, a Danish boy who is taking a gap year, two guys from Italy, a girl from Madrid, and of course Juliet (friend from Amherst) from Singapore.

Like Andrew said, we´ve had a lot of trouble explaining to other pilgrims what we were doing in Uganda and how Educate! works. I´ve found that most people don´t even know where Uganda is located, what the political situation is in the surrounding countries, and really have little interest in hearing about it. Especially if there is a language barrier, I have a lot of trouble explaining the purpose of our month in Africa. Often I find myself reducing the experience to ¨charity work for African children¨.

With so many students from around the world walking the trail, I thought that it would be easy to garner support for Educate!. But I´ve discovered that the concept of school sponsored non-profit work seems unique to American colleges. People can´t understand how our month in Africa is related to our education.

There are a few other groups of American students walking the trail who seem very interested in Educate!. There is a couple who just finished the undergraduate degree at Yale who were very interested hearing about our month in Uganda and Rwanda. I also talked with a group of seminary students for a couple of hours about the political situation in Sudan and the Congo. And yesterday we met a group of missionaries from all the the US (one went to Williams) who were eager to talk to us about our project.

Aside from the American students, one of the few interested pilgrims that I´ve encountered is a Danish student. He is attracted by the fact that the organization is small and personal. I gave him the website and my contact information and he hopes to spread word of Educate! in Denmark.

We are 130 kilometers away from Santiago (230 away from the ocean) and the trail has suddenly become unbearably crowded. There are Spanish scout troops, school groups, and guided tours on the trail. The refuges are so crowded that the only floor space that I could find last night was a spot next to a bathroom and underneath a glowing and buzzing sign. I left at 5:30 this morning and took no breaks in order to get a bed tonight. I just hope I didn´t pick one near a heavy snorer.

2006-07-09T07:48:00.000-07:00

Thank you so much for all of your comments. I didn´t realize until people starting leaving us messages that you have to create an account to leave a message. So, we´re very sorry about that. Please feel no pressure to create an account, but if you still want to leave us a message, commend us, critisize us, anything, then you can email us at esmith08@amherst.edu or andysm87@aol.com.

Spain has been fantastic. We arrived in Barcelona on the 26th where we met one of Emmy´s friends from Amherst, Juliet Tan, and one of my friends from St. Mark´s, Bryan Block. We rented bikes for two days to try to see as many of the sites as we could. We rode up to the Sagrada Familia and then to the Palacio Real where we had a spectacular view of the city. We walked along Las Ramblas and went to several of the other famous gardens and buildings. We ate the freshest of seafood and the first ice cream we had had in over 5 weeks. Our time there was extremely enjoyable and rejuvenating. We took a train to Logrono on the 29th and began walking the Camino on the 30th.

Each day, we wake up a little before sunrise (usually 6-6:15), have a couple of crackers and a cup of coffee, and begin walking. We walk on average about 30 km a day. We try to get to an albergue, or refuge, by noon, where we can wash our clothes and ourselves and relax for the remainder of the day. We are in bed by 10:30 each night. Most of the refuges are donativio meaning that they are free, but that donations are encouraged and needed. Big family-style dinners are provided in most of these hostals for no charge. The Camino way of life is very simple but very comfortable and fulfilling.

For me, one of the most enjoyable parts of this trip has been meeting people of all ages from all over the world. Bryan and I have created a running list of all the different nationalities we have come across. The list has gotten very long. We have met a 40-50 year-old man from Japan who is walking alone. He does not know a word of English or Spanish and has been unable to communicate with the pilgrims he has encountered along his walk. His eyes lit up when he saw Jeanne and Juliet because he thought they might be from Japan, but was disappointed when he discovered that they were from America and Singapore and knew not a word of Japanese. He communicates with everyone with alot of hand waving and strange noises. He creates alot of very strange and awkward encounters with all of the people he meets and sees, and because of this, he is one of the well-known and well-liked hikers. Another noteworthy individual is a cook from Aruba who we met one afternoon in a Hippie Commune. He is a renowned chef and owned 17 restaurants all over the Carribean. But a few years ago, he sold them all so that he could adopt a simpler lifestyle and embark on a spiritual journey. We told him all about our Educate! mission and our walk to raise money. Before parting ways with him, he slipped us a 100 euro donation for our walk. We have enjoyed telling everyone about our walk, but so far, none of our listeners have been as interested as he was.

Kinda surprisingly, no one in our group has gotten severely sick or injured so far. We have had a few minor blisters and bruises, but thankfully nothing too severe. At 2 a.m. tonight we will leave for the next town which is 38 km away. We will walk in the darkness, under the stars, and in the light of an almost-full moon. I´m expecting it to be one of those things that is better in theory than in reality, but i´m still optimistic. I hope you have enjoyed our first Spanish blog and, again, let us know if you have any questions or comments. Thanks again for all your moral support. We will do another blog shortly. Hasta luego!

2006-07-04T09:55:00.000-07:00

Thanks so much for all the comments you have left us. Just kidding, we have actually received none. We are starting to wonder if anyone is actually reading this. So if you are, please let us know how we are doing, what we can do better, what you would like to hear about, ANYTHING. Comments will make us want to write more blogs. I plan to write a blog on Spain in the next couple of days, until then.

2006-07-04T09:03:00.000-07:00

After a couple of days of travel and another couple days in Barcelona we´ve finally started walking. On the train, planes, and trail I´ve had time to reflect on the impact that we´ve made on the lives of a few refugees. I´ve also had time to recall the hundreds of applications that I read. I spoke with refugees who described to their sad and unfortunate pasts. There were orphans, kids who had been recruited as child soldiers, kids who didn´t have enough food to eat, and kids who had seen their families tortured to death. I listened to heartbreaking story after story about why a certain individual needed help...why they could never receive an education (or have a future) without our help. There were desperate mothers who would grab me in the street, fall to their knees, and tearfully beg me to help their children. One women even pulled me into her home and insisted that I eat roasted maize in her home. She told me about her two kids and we prayed together. After I left her house, her neighbor explained to me that she had AIDS and wasn´t able to work (and thus support her two kids) anymore.
I was overwhelmed by the number of desperate pleas and dire tales that I heard. Especially when I remembered that in order to avoid overcommitment, we could only agree to the immediate sponsorship of five children. How could we possibly choose just five? At times I felt like a tease and source of false hope.
But I began to realize that Educate! is doing more than just sponsoring 47 students. Of course these students are the focus of the organization, but the ripple effects that the sponsorship of just those students has on the rest of the camp are striking.
Refugees have formed an Educate! club called COBURWAS that supports and promotes education within the camp. After just six months, there are already 118 Congolese, Burundi, Rwandan, and Sudanese (where the club gets its name) students that are part of the group. CORBURWAS creates a group of support and unity for the regugees. When the camp cut funding for the local primary schools, they raised $300 by digging in the fields. This is an impressive amount because each person receives 33 cents for a 8 hour day´s worth of work. That adds up to 900 days of labor. Members of the group help each other with day to day problems as well. One student´s house burned down for the second time this year. CORBURWAS is helping him rebuild it. The club also has plans to start an after-school tutoring program.
Although we´re only able to offer financial aid to a handful of kids, I now realize that we´re doing much more. We´re reinforcing in children and parents the value of an education. We´re encouraging solidarity in a camp filled with racial tension. And perhaps most importantly we´re creating hope in the midst of despair.

2006-06-26T04:20:00.000-07:00

We spent our last week in Africa in Kyiangwali, a refugee camp in northern Uganda. There are over 17,000 refugess from Sudan, Rwanda, Burundi, and Congo that live in the camp.
The Ugandan government provides each family with seeds for crops and a small plot of land when they first arrive. The government expects the family to be self-sufficient by the fourth year (this rarely happens.) Refugees often see the move to Kyiangwali as a temporary one; they expect to repatriate after a few years. As a result, refugees often produce just enough to get by, invest little for a future in the camp, and fail to establish a strong sense of community. Many families have been in the camp for nearly ten years and stability in their homelands is still not in sight.
The camp is divided into different villages along ethnic lines. There is serious tension between the Congolese and the Sudanese refugees (the 2 biggest groups in the camp) so we tried to divide ourselves equally between the two communities. Andrew and I spent most of our time meeting refugees from the Sudanese villages. Wani Lumago is one of the students that we met and hope to sponsor.
Wani is a 23 year old Sudanese male. Back in Sudan, his father was an officer in the SPLA (Sudan People's Liberation Army). He then joined an offshoot rebel group that was against both the SPLA and the Arabs (the government in cartoom) in the North. His father (along with other members of his family) was tortured and killed. For nearly ten years he has lived alone and looked after himself in the camp. Wani will never be able to return to Sudan.
Wani was able to study at a secondary school (junior high and high school) for two years under a scholarship. He was always at the top of his class and he showed us leadership and citizenship awards that he had won in secondary school. After his scholarship ended in 2003, he didn't have a way to continue his formal education.
But that didn't mean that he set aside his studies all together. When he invited us into his very humble hut, he showed us the work that he has been doing for the past two and a half years. Every night after working in the fields he dedicates 1-2 hours to school work. Some of his younger friends bring him exercises and problems that they're working on in school. He can't afford too many notebooks and pens so he goes to the primary schools to work problems on the chalkboards.
We plan on offering Wani a scholarship so he can pursue his dream of becoming a doctor.

2006-06-23T03:05:00.000-07:00

So what exactly are Emmy and Andrew doing in Africa? Why did they ever need to go? What is Educate!? Where did all the money that I sent go??!?!?

I’m sure that some of you have asked yourselves these questions when reading our past three blog entries which have amounted to nothing more than just a few memorable anecdotes. So to try to compensate for the lack of tangible information in our previous entries this blog will be dedicated to answering the questions above.

Educate! is a non-profit organization started and founded by Eric Glustrom, one of Emmy’s close friends at Amherst. Eric first visited Africa in 2002 to make a documentary on the Kyangwali Refugee settlement in Uganda. Very quickly he befriended and got to know several adolescent orphans in the camp. His documentary shifted from being a story about the camp to being an account of these refugees' lives. Some of the kids were the only surviving members in their families and had been forced to make a living by farming and digging since childhood. Their stories were so astonishing and unbelievable that they prompted Eric to start Educate!. The program began with the mission of educating both refugee and national students in Africa, so that they could receive an education at both the secondary and collegiate level. The program was meant to not only help these refugees receive an education but to ultimately find and get a job. Once Educate! agrees to sponsor a student, they commit to that student’s education through the university level (if they choose to do so). Educate! currently sponsors 43 students, 28 of which are in Uganda, 11 of which are in Kenya, and 4 of which are in Rwanda. On this trip, we are looking to find five more students to sponsor.

Emmy and I have been visiting a lot of these students both at their homes and at their schools. We have made sure that they are doing well in school and that they are happy at their respective schools. Since Educate! is based in the United States, we receive all of our applications by mail, so we haven’t personally met a lot of our students. It has been great to meet and visit with all of the students and to see their gratitude and thankfulness for the organization.

Another thing that we have done is visit banks to set up individual student accounts, from which we can easily and inexpensively transfer money and from which students can more conveniently withdraw. Before, students have had to go to Western Union to pick up money that we have electronically sent. A couple of students have been mugged on their way out of the bank. Now they will each have a debit card for their school and transportation needs. This new method will be easier, safer, and considerably less expensive.

Over the past week, Emmy and I have been in the Kyangwali refugee settlement where we met sooo many people. We received hundreds of applications while we were there and interviewed several of the camp’s best students. We got to know several very well and look forward to sponsoring them in the future.

More than anything else, our visit has been important because we have made sure that the students who we are currently sponsoring and who we will eventually sponsor are trustworthy. We will have another entry tomorrow talking about the specifics of our visit to Kyangwali and of the students who we got to know. I hope this blog was helpful and not too boring. More later.

2006-06-15T03:23:00.000-07:00

We’ve spent the past five days in Rwanda visiting three Educate! students, JP, Leon, and Uwera. After greeting us at the bus station, Leon and Uwera (brother and sister) took us to their village, a small cluster of houses in the countryside outside of the city Gitarama. The village welcomed us with music, dancing, flowers, hugs, and a feast. We were given the seats of honor and the six of us formed a sort of receiving line. Each of us shook hands and hugged every member of the village. I couldn’t believe how sincerely grateful everyone – not just members of the students’ family – seemed to be. It was clear that the town was incredibly proud of Leon and Uwera.

After about three hours of celebration I was stuffed, exhausted, and thoroughly impressed by our welcome. We left the village to drop our bags off in the house where we were staying. But it turned out that the party wasn’t over. The afternoon celebration was just a preview of what the village had planned for the evening.

When we returned to the village, again we were greeted with music and dancing, except this time the village expected us to be the stars of the entertainment. They dressed us in their dance costumes and pushed us into the middle of the crowd. While Jay and Eric received the male costumes (toga-like outfits, spears, and shields), they seemed to think that Andrew was a girl and dressed him in a flowing skirt and wrap. He looked really cute. After a brief pow-wow, we threw together an impromptu performance. We danced the Macarena, sang/acted out I'm a Little Teapot, and I did a hand jive. Andrew and I even sang a duet. American culture at its best.

After all of the performances and a series of speeches, the town showered us with gifts. First the children surrounded us with hundreds of candles and flowers. The adults brought out wood carvings and dozens of large baskets filled with the village's best crops. They gave us lemons, avocadoes, and thousands of different colored beans. We were overwhelmed by their kindness and generosity - especially when we realized that we had to transport potato sacks full of beans back to Kampala.

On Monday and Tuesday we visited Leon and Uwera at the respective schools. We met their teachers, principals, and peers. We toured the dormitories, the classrooms, the computer labs, and the libraries. At Uwera's school we challenged a group of students to a volleyball match and made fools of ourselves in front of the entire student body.

J.P., the other Educate! student in Rwanda (and one of the first students that Educate! sponsored), graduated from university and is now working as an engineer in Kigali (the capital). He spent a few days traveling with us, but had to leave us early to work with the organization Engineers without Borders. He volunteers his time to work build water purification systems and solar panels around Rwanda.

Today we are spending the our time running errands around Kampala. Tomorrow morning we pick up a newspaper reporter from the airport and we head to Kyiangwali, the refugee camp.

2006-06-04T07:52:00.000-07:00

If we had to chose one word to describe life in Uganda it'd be " slow." Our flight from Nairobi to Entebbe was 2 hours late. Buses are never on time. And even to upload this webpage in the "Surf City Internet Cafe" took a good 20 minutes. Every aspect of Ugandan life seems to lag...that is except traffic.

Yesterday we were on our way home from a celebration of Ugandan Christian martyrs when our bus driver pulled a fast one on us and made an ambitious right-side pass on a right-hand turning car. After jumping the curb, we screeched to a stop just inches away from a gas pump. Luckily everyone was fine except for Andrew who had a wet spot on his behind afterwards.

We are in the home of two current Educate! students. The accomadations are very simple. But the family has been both extremely helpful and hospitable ever since we came. Each day when we come back from our excursions in town, we find our clothes folded, our room organized, and our shoes cleaned (seriously!). House living is kinda like a party. Kids are popping out of corners everywhere. We still don't know exactly how many people are staying in the house. As of now, the family is accomodating eight African kids, two nephews, an aunt, a mother, a father, two extra Educate! students, five Amherst students, and little Andrew. We are all packed into a modest three bedroom house, giving each of us a perfect opportunity to get know one another in both good and bad ways.

Activities thus far include: visiting internet cafes, playing soccer, meeting and getting to know the Kampala Educate! students, attending church (our first time in 6 years. Andrew even took communion but I don't think he knew what it was until I told him afterwards), checking into the U.S. embassy, playing hacky sack, learning about the political situation in Sudan, attempting and failing to exchange our green dollars, and helping with the daily chores. While Andrew was putting all of himself into family shoe maintainence, a dynamic team of Ugandan and American girls scrubbed away at a week's worth of the house laundry, including but not limited to underwear. Andrew complained of the stench of feet that had betook the scent on his hands, while Emmy's hands smelled of much worse things. We have a minute left, time to go.

2006-05-25T17:20:00.000-07:00

Well our departure is four days away, and Emmy is already starting to freak out. The graduation hustle bustle has been consuming most of my time, so I haven't really been able to help out with the any of the logistics (Emmy makes a point of reminding me of this every time I see her.)

For those of you who don't know, our entire itinerary for our two-month long trip is this. We leave for New York on May 30th, where we will meet four Amherst students (rising juniors and seniors.) We will all fly to London, where we will drop off our Camino bags at the house of one of our companions. From London, we will fly to Uganda, leaving behind tea parties and our creature comforts for Conrad's "Heart of Darkness." We will stay in Uganda for three and a half weeks, traveling to different refugee camps in Uganda and Rwanda. We will be visiting current Educate! students, recruiting new students, establishing more contacts, and trying to meet as many people involved in education in Africa as possible. Emmy and I are both thrilled to be going; we're expecting it to be the experience of a lifetime.

From Africa we will go back to London to pick up our Camino bags and head to Spain. During our month of walking the pilgrimage, we hope to raise more money for Educate! and spread word of the foundation. There are so many international students and teachers on the trail who we hope will show interest in our project. Emmy has been preparing jokes and stories to impress all the pilgrims that we will meet on the way. She thinks it will make her appear cultured and sophisticated or something...I don’t know.

Eric, a rising senior at Amherst and the founder of Educate!, sent us a packing list today for the Africa segment of our expedition. Included in the list are the following, "Two pants, One pair of shorts, Four shirts, Large backpacking backpack, rain coat, sandals, hiking boots, 30 cliff bars (these are all we are going to eat for the first two days because it will reduce our chances of getting sick. We will also eat them during the rest of the trip too) and medicine (malaria, anti-travelers diarrhea, pain killers.)" Eric told Emmy that he didn't shower for a month the last time he went. So Emmy and I added deodorant to the essentials.

Thanks again for all of your contributions and support. We are going to try to update this blog as frequently as possible, but we are not sure, especially in Uganda, how much internet access we will have. So if there isn't a blog in three weeks you will know that either we don't have much email access or a giant malarial mosquito attacked both of us. Stay tuned...

President and founder and only member of the Dartmouth chapter of Educate!,
Andrew Smith
and overseer,
E-Smittysmooth.