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From Brooklyn to Tanzania, and Back Again |
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“Jambo. Si Jambo.”
Brooklyn and Tanzania
Begin A Conversation Through Art
Two people meet on a bumpy road, not far from the Serengeti, pausing beneath the sparse shade of a tall spiny tree situated along the plain. “Jambo,” one says, with a wide-faced welcoming smile. “Si jambo,” the other, a visitor to the region, has been taught to reply, reaching out a hand. And, simple as that, there is a beginning. Hello. Greetings. Welcome. Jambo. Si jambo. Now they can get to know each other. They can tell each other about themselves. By the time the two continue on their journeys sometime later, they are closer to being friends.
The art in this exhibition represents such a greeting— between students in Brooklyn and Tanzania— a handshake using the vocabulary of images to share bits of lives separated by culture and great distance, but brought together by a mutual curiosity and a desire to understand each others’ lives.
•••
Creativity. Action. Service. Three concepts that Brooklyn Friends Upper School students consider as part of their curriculum. Three ideals which form the bridge between the world of studies in the classroom and the principles of civic participation and ethical responsibility that are central to Quaker values and the mission of a Brooklyn Friends School education.
“Creativity/Action/Service” is also the name of a service-based program that encourages students to share their energies and special talents while developing awareness, concern and the ability to work with others within the BFS community and in various agencies in the wider community. Students are encouraged to build relationships and become involved in projects that allow them to share their talents and energies while at the same time reflecting on the experience. CAS Projects are entirely student designed and executed, under the supervision of a faculty advisor.
The art seen in this exhibition is the result of a CAS project undertaken by BFS alum Kamau Carter (BFS 2010) and graduating seniors Max Scherzer and Nina Ryser. They designed their project with the goal of connecting the BFS student community with the student community of Kisangura Friends Secondary School [KFSS] through a collaborative exchange of visual arts. Max and Nina led current BFS students in several workshops where they created portraits or scenes that revealed some important aspect of themselves and their lives, and the KFSS students did the same. “Who am I?” students were asked to consider. “What do I see when I look around me?” “What do I want you— someone who knows very little about me— to know about my life?”
KFSS does not offer art classes, so local artist Frederick Nyansongo was hired to conduct special workshops for the Tanzanian students. In all, he made seven trips out to Kisangura, teaching drawing to twenty Form I and Form II students, the equivalent of our 8th and 9th grade students. The art supplies used by the Kisangura students were collected and donated by the BFS community. The results of this student work were transported to/from Tanzania by a member of the Brooklyn Monthly Meeting, Jim Morgan, who traveled there in January and February 2011.
•••
Kisangura is a township located within the Mara Region, in northeast Tanzania, alongside the Serengeti National Park. KFSS is a school of roughly 450 students who come from a wide area throughout the region, some biking or walking as much as ten km to attend. Former BFS student Seth Congdon was a volunteer teacher at the school in 2006, building on a relationship that was originally forged by Jim Morgan and Emanuel Kagoro. These two Quakers met in 2000 at the Friends World Committee for Consultation Conference. As a result of that meeting, the Great Lakes Region (Africa) Education Committee, a committee of New York Quarterly Meeting, was formed to support the primary and secondary students at the Kisangura Friends Schools. Over the past decade, fundraising has supported:
•annual school fees, books, supplies, and uniforms for 125 students orphaned by AIDS;
•physical improvements, such as staff housing, classrooms, and cisterns for drinking water;
•developing relationships in the United States that support the two schools.
In 2006, and again in 2010, BFS teacher Marna Herrity traveled out for extended visits to Kisangura. Marna serves as Max and Nina’s project advisor, and helped coordinate various components necessary for this first student-to-student exchange.
This exhibition is presented by the Care Relationship Committee
which focuses on nurturing the spiritual relationship between
the Brooklyn Monthly Meeting and Brooklyn Friends School.
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