Plans are underway to establish an AU Abroad program in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, which is expected to start in spring 2005, according to AU Abroad Director Sara Dumont.
Dumont, along with three graduate students and former NBA star and AU alum Kermit Washington, visited Kenya in March to assess the feasibility and logistics of setting up the abroad program.
This will be the third link between AU and Africa, after the AU Abroad program in South Africa and the University's assistance in establishing an American-style university in Nigeria.
The idea was first brought to the attention of Dean Louis Goodman of the School of International Service by Washington, who started a nongovernmental organization in Kenya called Project Contact, which provides health services to the people of Nairobi.
"It's not a vacation where you are going to go on safaris," said Washington, who has worked there for the last 10 years. "The biggest thing [students will get from this] is understanding what third-world nations are about. You learn and be around people who have to live it every day."
According to Dumont, there will be a separate program for undergraduates and graduates attending. Both programs would include a three-week orientation and a rigorous language course in Swahili. Language studying would continue throughout the stay.
Undergrads would take part in a designed program that will give them the opportunity to learn culture, history and society, while earning credit by taking classes at the United States International University and working with an NGO.
Meanwhile, graduate students will have a more intense program with a wider range of service opportunities working with NGOs or participating in research projects as well as taking classes at the University of Nairobi. Both universities have shown an interest in working with AU's abroad program.
While there, Dumont's group met with the two universities as well as international NGOs such as CARE International and the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Students may have the opportunity to work with these two organizations as well as Washington's group, which will open a clinic in June whose goal is to help as much as 100,000 people within the next year.
"Going to Nairobi [was] a wonderful experience," said graduate student Wanjiku Gachugi, one of the students who went on the trip. Gachugi was born in Kenya but has spent majority of her life in the United States.
She worked in Kenya over the summer with the Coalition on Violence Against Women-Kenya. She believes that Kenya and Nairobi offer a wide range of opportunities that students would appreciate.
"I believe that students can learn a lot from working and living there," Gachugi said. "My experiences, working in developing countries and more specifically Kenya, are something that I have always cherished, and it would be wonderful if other students can also share that experience."
Graduate students Ali Alwahti and Kelly Jo Bahry were the other students who attended the trip.
"Kenya is so diverse in landscape and people," said Bahry, president for the Student Organization for African Studies (SOFAS). Bahry said she thinks students traveling on AU Study Abroad Kenya will get a chance to experience life in all kinds of perspectives.
"It became my home, so that when I came back to the U.S. to live it was hard to get used to," Bahry said. "It felt like people were cold here in comparison to people in Kenya and in Africa as a whole."
Bahry has been to many countries in Africa and has lived in Kenya in the past. She will be going back in May for the IOM to escort Somali Bantu refugees on a chartered flight to the United States for permanent resettlement.
"It's a chance to see how decisions that are made halfway around the world affect communities not usually considered by Americans," Bahry said. "It's a chance to learn from people who aren't usually given a voice globally and a chance to be humbled by the wise people students will come across. It's also a chance to taste food cooked over an open fire and to be a part of something bigger than themselves, even in a village of only a few hundred people."
Both Dumont and Goodman said they are optimistic about the abroad program in Kenya, and encourage students who are interested in learning about the program to start planning now to attend.
