Kids for Kenya Club to host African Experience Night

By Matt Nagle

The Kids for Kenya Club at Endeavour Intermediate School has been busy getting ready for the big event they are planning called African Experience Night on April 25, as part of Global Youth Services Day which is being recognized in schools across the country. Numerous speakers, presenters and even an African daily living experience exhibit will be featured at this first-time event to be held in the gymnasium and multi-purpose room at Surprise Lake Middle School (SLMS).

Thanks to a State Farm Good Neighbor Service Learning Grant and a grant from the Summit Uniserve Council Community Outreach Program, the students have been able to include a lot into African Experience Night, which is also a fundraiser for Shammah Academy, a primary school in Machakos, Kenya.

Endeavour teacher Wendy Merdian, who was just chosen by the district as an employee of the year, has been advisor to the Kids for Kenya Club and virtual tour guide through Africa for her students, as they have been learning about the continent (Kenya in particular) since the start of the school year. While in college, Merdian traveled to a remote Kenyan village and spent time working and living with the villagers there. She was quickly made to feel as welcome as a family member and she wants her young students to understand how important such connections are between people who know very little about one another.

“To me, it seems like there’s been so little education on Africa for kids,” Merdian said. “There’s so many people working to help the African people and African people working to help themselves, and I think Americans need to see that. It’s time U.S. children really start to learn about Africa.”

The evening begins at 6 p.m. in the SLMS gymnasium with a formal program. Julia Cook, a sixth-grader and president of the Kids for Kenya Club, will be emcee.

The Hedden Drum Ensemble from Alice V. Hedden Elementary School will start the festivities by showing off African dance moves they learned especially for African Experience Night. Featured speakers will be Peter Gishuru, president of the African Chamber of Commerce, and Melannie Cunningham, associate director of admissions and coordinator of multicultural recruitment at Pacific Lutheran University. Naomi Kimani, voted best new teen talent in Kenya last year, will perform and a Kenyan children’s group will sing the Kenyan national anthem in Swahili and English followed by an African flag parade.

From 7-9 p.m. there will be many activities for attendees to participate in,

presentations to listen to and Kenyan foods to sample. Scheduled presentations will be given by Eva Abrams

from Seattle Storytellers Guild, Nigerian children’s book author Kunle Oguneye and the Kenyan Malaikaz dance group.

There will be ongoing presentations as well by Sister Baptista Kaoma from

Zambia; Caryl Bittenbender, a first-grade teacher at Discovery Primary School who lived for 14 years in Africa; and Endeavour fourth-grader Riley Burks and her dad will talk about their travels in Kenya. Traditional clothing and costumes from around Africa will be on display and hands-on activities will be offered in mask designing, bead making and weaving traditional Kenyan “kikuyu” baskets led by a group of Kenyan women.   

The large African daily living experience exhibit will be set up in the gymnasium where those in attendance can get a clearer sense of how Kenyans live their daily lives: carrying water and wood, cooking over an open fire and tending to vegetable

gardens and livestock. Enlarged photographs will serve as visual lessons on how Kenyans live. There will be an area illustrating sports and games and a classroom setting like those in Kenya, where students will be able to write letters and draw pictures to send to Shammah Academy in Kenya, which Kids for Kenya Club has “adopted.”

Merdian said the club members are very excited about their big night. “It should be really neat. My hope is that the cultures can connect, that Americans can see and learn something about Africa; not that it’s just a poor continent but that it’s full of life and wonderful people.”

Read more about Endeavour’s Kids for Kenya Club by going to the school’s website at www.fifeschools.com.

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