It’s one thing to hear about classrooms with 200 students, but it’s another to visit one. While at Kakuma Refugee Camp we spent time in a Grade 3 classroom packed with 200 students. There wasn’t so much as a chair or brick for them to sit on. all of Kakuma’s 24 primary schools are overcrowded.
If you told me on April Fool’s Day 2004 that a simple joke would result in me traveling to Zambia in Southern Africa, I would have said, “The joke’s on you pal”. But sometimes, life takes you down unexpected paths.
When asked if he had to choose between his wind-up radio or his cow, he didn’t hesitate. Fordward, an 18-year-old Rwandan head of household said, “I shall choose my radio, because a cow doesn’t give me information.”
World headlines fixated on one event – the culmination of the long march to democracy in South Africa and the inauguration of Nelson Mandela. As Western media seem to feature one African story at a time, another African event was a footnote: an ‘African tribal war’ in a country not many had heard of.
Kristine Pearson shares a deeply personal story of her friendship with South African women’s leader and ANC activist, Feroza Adam
