Kenya calling: 16-year-old Coleman answers
published 4:29pm Monday Nov 23, 2009
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Logan Coleman shows off a memento.PHOTO BY ERIKA MAGUIRE
She’s traveled halfway across the world, organized her own month-long trip to Kenya, studied the modernization of African cultures, interned with the Damanga Coalition for Freedom and Democracy, speaks near fluent Swahili, and one day hopes to work alongside the African Union. Oh, and she’s only 16 years old.
Logan Coleman, a Charlottesville High School junior, says she’s long had an interest in African culture. And although she’d been exposed to African customs and lifestyles through school, she realized early last year she wanted to experience the culture first-hand.
“For me, going to Africa has always been sort of a calling,” says Coleman, who cites Disney’s The Lion King as her first exposure to Africa. Wishing to travel to the continent on her own, she began learning Swahili and saving up for a trip. During her months of research, she found an organization, the Maasai Girls Education Fund, which not only sees learning as key to ending poverty in Kenya but also became her ticket to living with a Maasai family.
“Unlike a lot of the programs I looked at, which were expensive and primarily for sightseeing, this organization,” Coleman says, “helped me find a host family which would allow me to stay in one place and form relationships with people.”
By traveling outside of a tour, Coleman hoped to experience the authentic culture, rather than a polished tourist-y version, in an effort to understand the degree to which the pressure to modernize is having an impact on a way of life.
“As Americans, we assume Africans want to change,” she says. “Though they really enjoyed small technology like my iPod and cell phone, modernizing goes against their cultures. Even though they’re farmers, they are incredibly self-sufficient, and it would be asking a lot of them to change.”
During her 30-day stay with the 14-member ole Lemanyi family, Coleman helped with a lot of the daily chores, herding goats and sheep as well as collecting firewood.
“Living with the Maasai as a member of the family really allowed me to get a feel for the culture and the way of life,” Coleman explains. “It became really natural in ways I never thought it could.”
Like the other family members, Coleman lived in a hut consisting of dried cow-manure, mud, sticks, and grass. And although each day began around 6:50am with a diet consisting of cabbage, tea, and “every part of a goat and sheep you can imagine,” she found the environment surprisingly comfortable. She hopes to spend two months this summer in another country in east Africa.
“The experience was incredibly worthwhile,” she says. “I cannot wait to go back.”
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In December, C’ville Coffee will feature photographs taken by Logan during her stay in the village of Ngurumani in Kajiado, a Rift Valley Province in Kenya.
This is amazing. It is wonderful you have a calling that is so passionate. I know you will be doing great things in your life and setting an example for your generation.
Tobi Zion
These writers would do well to use you, as an example, of how to grow up well. More students need to get away from home and find themselves in their adolescence, as you have done. Good luck. You have set a great example for your peers and their parents, many, who are afraid to even let them hike alone in the woods.
http://www2.dailyprogress.com/cdp/news/local/education/article/uva_writers_try_to_help_parents_who_overdo_it/49216/
Just FYI (hopefully this site is of interest to you)
We’ve [Bernard Pollack and Danielle Nierenberg] been traveling across Africa and documenting our journey on a website called Border Jumpers [www.borderjumpers.org].
You can also follow us on Twitter @borderjumping
Currently en route to Uganda… (just came from Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania!)
The bus between Nairobi, Kenya and Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, leaves at 5:30 in the morning – and takes fourteen hours. Kampala Coaches claims on their website to provide a safe, comfortable, and worry-free journey. Their mission is “to exceed customer expectations, all the time and everytime,” and their vision is to “provide unparalleled services.”
We arrived at the bus station at 4:30am—as instructed by the agent we called—to make sure we had a seat. Like most of the bus stations we’ve visited from New York to Nairobi, this one was in one of the shadier areas of town. By 6:00am the bus hadn’t arrived. At 7:00am we were still waiting. Finally, at 8:00am the bus pulls out of their tiny Nairobi office. We’d pulled an all nighter the evening before, thinking we’d be able to sleep during the bus ride.
When the bus arrives it is crammed full with people continuing on to Dar from Kampala, Uganda. We’re forced to squeeze into two seats in the very back of the bus, with people on either side of us.
The whole ride was a comedy of painful experiences — a nearly 350 pound women sat next to us, the odor of people who had traveled all night hung in the air like a fog, we couldn’t recline our seats and there was almost zero leg room. Welcome to traveling in Africa, we thought to ourselves.
Soon, the coaches staff realized they wouldn’t be able to fit all the luggage under the bus, so they decided to pack the entire middle aisle with bags stacked on top of eachother. Keep in mind that we were in the back of the bus and the luggage prevented any sort of escape route if we should crash.
And just when we thought it couldn’t get worse, it did. The driver drove so erratically that we later thought he must have been drunk, stoned, or completely insane. Danielle thought cocaine, I voted for alcohol. The bus was flying over the unpaved roads and because we were sitting behind the back wheels we felt every single bump and wild turn of the wheel. At times, the bus was airborn as it flew over bumps and up and down hills. Both of us were jolted out of our seats on several occasions.
We begged them to stop — just to let us use the bathroom — about four hours into the journey. Bernie had to tell the staff that Danielle was pregnant (she’s not) to get them to stop. When they pulled off the side of the highway, they told her to just “walk behind the bus”—where any passing cars could see.
After that, we’d finally had it.
When the bus stopped in Arusha, Tanzania (the first feasible destination for us) about seven hours into the journey, we just got off. Enough was enough.
Kampala Coaches is one dirty, dangerous, disaster…