Kenya opens local teen's eyes

One of the most surprising lessons Dollard des Ormeaux resident Diana Kouli learned during a recent trip to Kenya was how much baboons like chocolate.

"We were sitting at a table and the baboon literally jumped on our table and stole our food," recalled the Lower Canada College student with a laugh during an interview.

Kouli went to Kenya last February through a partnership with her school and the Round Square organization, which seeks to promote student awareness of international development issues by organizing trips to developing nations.

Besides learning about the surprising affinity for chips, sandwiches and sweets that baboons randomly encountered during hiking trips may have, Kouli also experienced first-hand how developing nations are vastly different from what she described as a distorted reality painted by media and television.

"When you see things on TV and when you read about it in the newspaper or in books, you just have such a different image in your head," Kouli explained. "When you come there, you meet different people and you realize they're just like you are in any kind of way," she said.

One of six students representing Lower Canada College during the nine-day trip, Kouli said she nevertheless spent much of her time there with students from across the world participating in the trip, as the program is designed in a way to expose students to their counterparts from other areas.

"That's one of the main reasons that I even went to Africa," Kouli said, " to meet new people and see what others have to offer."

She was shocked to discover, for example, that one of her favourite movies, Twilight, was also a preference to her new friend from Cape Town, South Africa.

"I didn't know that people from Cape Town even knew these movies."

Kouli's biggest moments of surprise, however, came when she saw the world outside of the conferences she attended and school she was staying at.

Right outside the latter, a large international boarding school called Brookhouse, Kouli said, she could daily see children without clothes in the streets of Nairobi. "It was so shocking," she said.

Later on, during a trip to an orphanage that the visiting students helped repaint, Kouli was horrified to learn the story of a little boy she met there. His mother, Kouli said, was in jail for having murdered the boy's older brother, who was only five.

"I realized that kid had so much going for him and we just take everything for granted really," she said.

Since this was her first time travelling to a developing nation, convincing her parents to let her go on the trip was no easy task. At first, "(my parents) completely shut me down," she said, expressing concerns over her safety.

And, according to LCC school councillor John Gordon, who accompanied the school's delegation on the trip as a supervisor with his wife, the Koulis were not the only ones to have that problem. "People had some concerns, valid concerns," Gordon said.

"We worked very hard ahead of time to make sure the trip was really carefully organized," he said.

One way to get around parents' concerns was to meet with them and let them be a part of figuring out logistical problems, Gordon explained.

For example, one well-travelled parent tipped off the school about purchasing a satellite phone and a cell phone with exchangeable sim cards to ensure it would be possible to constantly be in contact with children.

In the end, the trip went without a hitch, with many of the teenagers returning with a deeper appreciation of the ravages of poverty, Gordon said.

"They really wanted to be able to do something to alleviate the poverty that they saw."

For Kouli, it might be a little too soon to see if that will be a career path. "I still have two years to decide," the Grade 9 student said.

However, her eyes are now open to travelling to developing nations, with China and India next on the list.

She will also return to Africa with her sister through Red Cross, she said, although she has not quite decided which country yet.