MAKING LASTING MEMORIES
Munro Academy students return to Canada after life-changing experience in Kenya
Life-changing experience in Kenya for Munro Academy students .
Katie Murphy didn’t know what to expect when she arrived in Kenya last month.
Murphy was one of 10 students and three chaperones from Munro Academy in Balls Creek who travelled to East Africa for 18 days, visiting different parts of the region.
The students were in the country spreading love, making connections, volunteering and seeing first-hand the struggles of those living there.
“Life is short and you have to live it well,” said Murphy, a Grade 9 student. “I enjoyed making relationships and building on those with a different culture.” As part of the trip, the students visited the Kibera slum, a neighbourhood in the capital city of Nairobi, where most of the residents live in extreme poverty, earning less than $1 per day.
The Cape Breton students were also enrolled in a school with Kenyan students in an effort to understand how they learn and what they experience on a daily basis.
“The expectations at the schools there are very high,” said Mary Jane Murphy, a teacher at the Balls Creek private school, who also took part in the trip.
“The way their system works is that they can go to school until Grade 8 and then they have a huge national exam and if they don’t do well, they’re done, there’s no more education — if they score well, there are different schools where they can go.”
During the trip, the students also had the opportunity to help build homes for widows, who were also given a mattress and food as well as live chickens to be used for financial support.
“When you become a widow in Africa, culturally the man’s family takes everything away from them,” said Mary Jane Murphy.
Yumin Roh, a Grade 12 student at Munro Academy, thought she would experience a whole different world in Kenya.
“When I went there and being able to have a meal with them and play with them, I quickly realized that we had the same life, to an extent,” said Roh, who considers the trip a highlight of her graduating year.
“I think meeting the different people, from little kids to high school students, it was a really fun experience and it was good to be able to build relationships.”
The Kenyan students were eager to learn more about life in Canada, said Katie Murphy.
“When we went to the school in the (Kibera) slum and all the kids were waving and wanting to learn more about us, that was a real special moment,” she said. “They liked hearing us talk, they liked hearing about our country, it was a real cool experience.”
The cost of the trip was $3,500 per student. Students began fundraising for the life-changing experience in November.
“I’m thankful that we were able to do this trip and make a difference with those students,” said Mary Jane Murphy.
“Two of my kids were on the trip with me and to be able to go and do that on top of all of those other things that we offered, it was great and something I will always remember.”
After 28 hours of travel time, the students returned to Canada on March 29.
Munro Academy is looking at the option of offering the trip to students every second year, with the goal of giving more students an opportunity to make a difference.