The lifetime dream of visiting Africa has turned into a life-changing experience for a Gravenhurst teacher and promises to transform the lives of children in Kenya.

Kyla McMullen-Dent, a Grade 4-5 teacher at Gravenhurst Public School, arranged in 2006 to take half a year off to visit the East African country. Described in the Lonely Planet travel guide as “wild and a little dangerous,” Kenya is where the word “safari,” meaning journey, originated.

On Sept. 16, she flew to the capital city, Nairobi. Wanting more than just a tourist experience, she lived with a Kenyan family and worked at an animal orphanage. Her husband joined her two weeks later and they toured the country, returning to Canada on Oct. 27.

“I experienced culture shock when I came back,” she said. “There was so much food and the pace of life was so fast.”

She felt she had to go back and so she did, leaving on Dec. 31, 2006. For three weeks she worked at an orphanage for newborn babies and began a new project, the establishment of “Harambe for Humanity,” a charitable organization whose goal is the building of a new school. “Harambe” is Swahili for “pulling together.”

“The Kenyan people are desperate for education,” she said. Kenya has a population of 37 million, half of whom live below the poverty line. AIDS is expected to leave more than 20 million children orphaned by 2020. “Extreme poverty forces many parents to send their kids to work,” she explained. “Orphaned children are more likely to be used for child labour.”

McMullen-Dent expects it will take about two years to get the school established. Its temporary name is Ewaso Junior Academy.

“This means brown river school, as the school is located close to the main source of water,” she said.

Once the project is underway, the community will be asked to name the school.

“We are aiming to raise $30,000 which will build a four-room school with a kitchen, washrooms, library and a small staff room,” she said. The building will be surrounded by a compound wall for security. “One of my goals on the next trip is to secure another estimate on materials and labour. Time, increase in costs and results of post-election chaos may result in more needed.” More than 600 people have died in riots that followed the Dec. 27 election. McMullen-Dent is also prepared for cultural obstacles and bureaucracy that may affect the total cost.

Along with the school are projects such as a garden, water reservoir or well, the acquisition of school supplies and income-generating projects for the women such as knitting woollen bags to replace the plastic that litters the landscape. Enough funds need to be accumulated to support the school for a few years until it becomes self-sufficient.

“We will be working closely with the community as they want to fund parts of the school such as acquiring livestock and teacher’s salary as well so they can have some ownership over this project.”

The previous government promised there would be electrical power in two years at the town of Narok where the school will be built. “The people are hopeful but I am not so sure it will happen that quickly,” she said. “While I was visiting, nobody used generators. We cooked with charcoal and used oil lanterns for light in the evening. The school will be set up to accommodate power, but most schools I visited simply relied on natural light. Food for students would be cooked using propane.

McMullen-Dent estimates there will be between 30 and 50 students attending the school when it first opens. “The closest school is 50 kilometres away,” she said. “On my last visit, we ran out of time to visit the surrounding small villages where there are even more children living in dire circumstances — some without a stitch of clothing.”

Part of the challenge will be to overcome cultural and economic obstacles. Parents will have to be convinced to enrol their daughters and show that the family can support itself without the children there to tend to the herds or collect firewood and water.