In March of 2010 a small group of West Seattleites and members of St. John the Baptist Episcopal Church set out on a 9000 mile trek to build a secondary school in Mulundi Village, Kenya.

You can read about their trip here and here.

The inspiration for the trip came from St. John members Mike and Janet Johnson (Janet is from Mulundi and Mike met her there while working together on humanitarian efforts in the region in the 2000).

“The path is elementary school is probably the highest you will ever go in that village,” Janet said before the trip, estimating one in 600 elementary students in the region get the chance to attend high school. She said most students and their families cannot afford the fees associated with that next step in schooling that may lead to a college education.

Today, the small group of humanitarians continues to slowly grow – and their support for Mulundi Village and the Mulundi-Kwa Muema School they helped build continues to evolve.

In the past year, their effort has expanded to providing scholarships for young students hoping to continue their education beyond elementary school, according to St. John member Ken Duvall.

Despite challenges, Mary goes back to school
Duvall, a recently retired West Seattle resident with a career in HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) repair and 65 years under his belt, is a newer addition to the Mulundi efforts.

He is making his first trip to Kenya with a few others in February to help teach (he hopes he gets math or science, his strong suits, instead of English) and to meet the children he and others are sponsoring with scholarships.

Duvall, a man of modest means, said his wife, three children and his three grandchildren decided collectively to help support a few Kenyan children in their pursuit of a quality education.

“Even though there is so much you can do in the United States, you can do in West Seattle, I was drawn to (Mulundi) and I can’t tell you why … it just seemed that they needed a leg up so bad,” he said.

Duvall is excited to meet one young girl he is sponsoring in particular, a 14-year-old named Mary.

“So I get involved in this program and we decided that we would sponsor this young girl,” he said,” and then we got word back that she had gotten pregnant. She was thirteen at the time and they were going to switch my scholarship money to a student who was excelling.”

It was expected that Mary, who has now given birth to her child, would make the decision to quit school, but Duvall wanted to hear that decision from the source.

“I just wrote them back (there are Mulundi locals who divvy out the scholarship funds) and said until she wrote me and said she wasn’t going to school and turned down the money, that scholarship that I was financing was earmarked for her education.”

James Saadeh, a St. John’s member who has spent a lot of time teaching at the school, got back to Duvall with the news: he had spoken with Mary’s mother and Mary had decided to continue on with her education … and she wanted to know more about the man who was helping her out.

“She knew that I was just a normal guy, just a working guy supporting her,” Duvall said. In speaking with the rest of the St. John’s board, he said “People make mistakes in their life, and that is a major mistake for a young girl to make, but I just felt that I’ve seen a lot of people turn their lives around and I felt it was her decision.”

Duvall is using the opportunity to instill in his grandchildren a love for helping others, and an opportunity for life lessons.

“They were involved in our decision to keep sending the money to Mary … and so when she made a mistake that was a time to talk to them about making mistakes. Once she decided to come back (to school) we were all really excited.”

In addition to forming relationships with his sponsored students, Duvall hopes to set up a pen-pal network between them, his grandchildren and himself as a way of showing continued support.

As a young man Duvall decided to skip out on college and a regular high school education, instead enrolling in a vocational high school (a decision he said his parents were not too pleased with at the time). Going through that experience helped inform Duvall’s take on the scholarships.

“This isn’t just to get them to college,” he said, “but to broaden the spectrum of their lives. If you are going to be a farmer you can read an agricultural magazine now, or you may want to be involved in some after work activities, or you may find that you really like reading mystery novels.”

“We are not all going to be doctors; for a functioning society you need a cross section of people and I’ve had a really rewarding career in HVAC and I don’t regret it at all,” he said.

“My thought for them is: It is just going to open up your options.”