summer 2010 kaleidoscope

S U M M E R 2 0 1 0

Kaleid scopeVo l u m e 4 0T H E N E W S L E T T E R O F U W C - U S A , T H E A R M A N D H A M M E R U W C O F T H E A M E R I C A N W E S T

JUMPING page 7

No More Deathspage 10

JUEGO DE PELOTApage 8 A Student’s Artistic Journey

SCREAMING&

When Border Politics Intersect with Heritage

U W C - U S A / W W W . U W C - U S A . O R G2

editor in chief

Elizabeth Morse

contributing editor

Emily Withnall MUWCI ‘01

designer

Danielle Wollner

contributors

Mounia Abousaid ’11

Dereck Alleyne ’11

Zeinab Bailoun ’11

Charlotte Benishek ’11

Natalie Chan ’11

Simone De Cia ‘10

Gabriel Ellison-Scowcroft ’10

Marc Figueras ’10

Ben Gillock

Rachel Hampton ’11

Khatira Hassan ’11

Rodrigo Huerta ’11

Ben Johnstone

Shafee Jones-Wilson ’98

Victoria Kizza ’11

Tom Lamberth

Sara Barrales Reyes ’10

Yim Rodriguez Sampertegui ’10

Ebenezer Sefah ’11

Sharon Seto

Dristy Shrestha ’07

Gareth Smith ’09

Danielle Wollner

Mark Zelinski

contact

UWC-USA

PO Box 248

Montezuma, NM 87731

USA

505-454-4200

[email protected]

Kaleidoscope is published biannually by the UWC-USA Development Office,

for the purpose of keeping the extended UWC-USA community connected and aware of current news and dialogue.

feedback

Send an email to [email protected],

or post a comment online at www.uwc-usa.org/read.

We look forward to hearing your comments and critiques!

S U M M E R 2 0 1 0

TA B L E O F C O N T E N T S

Generosity Abounds 3

DEBATE: Should There Be Curfew at UWC-USA? 4-5

Life After UWC 6

Jumping & Screaming 7

Juego de Pelota 8-9

No More Deaths 10

Breaking Barriers 11

Thinking Clearly with Dale Holm 12

Losing the North 13

Truth, or Diplomacy? 14

The Faces of Life 15

Bringing Electricity Home 16 -17

Alumni Profiles 18 -19

P R E S I D E N T ’ S M E S S A G E :

Most of us are familiar with our lofty mission: UWC makes edu-cation a force to unite people, nations, and cultures for peace and a sustainable future. What it takes to achieve this mission is deep en-gagement, commitment, and extraordinary perseverance.

As President of UWC-USA, I consider it a tremendous privilege to be a part of the challenges we all face here and to witness the steady growth and transformation that occurs in the student body as they struggle through the challenges of culture shock, health issues, learning English, and so much more. The unity and support we of-fer each other in the process of facing the myriad of personal challenges is what lies at the heart of our ability to attain the UWC mission.

I invite you to read about some of the challenges our students face, what they have learned, and how they have grown. I know that I am always grateful to learn from our diverse and inspirational student body here at UWC-USA.

And in keeping with this issue’s theme, after over 20 years of commitment and service to UWC-USA, Adriana Botero and Peter and Betty Hamer-Hodges are all moving on to embrace new chal-lenges. Each of these colleagues has made invaluable contributions to our students and the campus community. We are grateful to each of them, and I hope you will join me in extending our best wishes to all.

Lisa A. H. Darling President UWC-USA

On the cover: Students at White Sands National Monument in New Mexico. Photo credit: Ben Gillock

K A L E I D O S C O P E / S U M M E R 2 0 1 0 3

“”

Sometimes when I tell others about my UWC experience, I realize that they are looking at me like maybe I am a little out of touch with reality. But this is the thing: all of the alumni I encounter seem to feel like this. From the bankers to the activists, regardless of the year we graduated or the campus we attended, regardless of our national origins, beliefs, jobs, or families, we are each other’s people. If only everyone could feel this way: that the world’s people were their people too.

UWC remains a continually important part of who we are and how we became this way. We give back to UWC because we care about each other and recognize that these relationships were made possible by donors. Now, as we continue to reap benefits of the gift that we were given, we feel the desire to say ‘thank you’ by giving back.

—Shafee Jones-Wilson ’98, USA

p Shafee sits in a vat of 250 kilos of rose petals. The rose petals are harvested near Cannes by Pierre Monteaux ’98, France, and his family. The petals are then distilled into absolute rose oil and sold to a famous perfume maker.

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Over 80 percent of students either think curfew should be abolished or are indifferent to its existence.* Here are their main reasons:

Curfew is not respected. In fact, the rule is broken on a daily basis by the great majority of students. The average UWC-USA student breaks

curfew four out of five nights, every week. This means that, only this semester, curfew has been broken an estimated 13,120 times! Now, it could be argued that lack of enforcement is the reason for such high figures; but can curfew really be enforced?

Reality tells us it is almost impossible to enforce curfew. First it would be almost impossible for a Resident Tutor (RT) to

check the beds of all students regularly enough that students be de-terred from spending the night in another room. Even discouraging friends from visiting each other past midnight is something hardly con-ceivable. As Rena Sapon-White ’10, USA-OR, put it, “People who break it always will, and people that don’t, won’t.”

Second, the dorms are very close together; it takes less than 1 minute to go anywhere in lower campus, and less than 30 seconds in the castle.

Third, RTs are usually very popular among students, and they are trusted by students. This very nice ambience would probably be very different if RTs policed the dorms at night. In Shruti Korada’s ’10, USA-CT, words, curfew “doesn’t encourage the maturity we should be foster-ing among students,” as this is considered to be a “bridge school.”

* All data is taken from an anonymous email survey by Marc Figueras, in which 64 students participated. All calculations hereafter refer to the data from this survey.

In spite of all this, it is known that some RTs have actively tried to enforce curfew. Mike Hatlee, RT of Mont Blanc, is known for trying to catch students walking between Chum and Mont Blanc after midnight, with some degree of success. Yet typically a student is more worried by the cold of the night or finding a skunk in the dark than by being caught by an RT. “I don’t even factor it into my thinking,” said Tessa Nasca ’11, USA-NY. And she has reason not to be worried: out of 64 students surveyed, only two had been caught breaking curfew this se-mester. This means one has less than 0.05 percent chance of getting caught breaking curfew!

Curfew does not make students sleep more; and even if it did, there are better ways to induce students to sleep more. Only in rare cases would sleeping habits change if curfew were abolished. Nearly 94 percent of students say they would not change their behavior in any way if curfew were abolished (besides perhaps studying outside or with a friend instead of studying in their room).

Now, lack of sleep is a big problem on campus. The average UWC-USA student goes to bed before midnight less than once a week! This is not surprising, given the workload of students and how much students like to socialize here. Recent efforts to encourage students to sleep have included an RA-sponsored Sleep Week, and limiting the maximum number of activities and services to five.

There are also better ways to enforce quiet time after check. For example, cor-ridor lights in the castle are turned off at night. Also, showering individuals for their birthday was prohibited last year. But many better steps could be put into place to prevent noise after 10:00 pm.

To conclude, curfew is an antiquated rule that is neither respected nor enforce-able. The impracticality of this rule has become a symbol of the administration’s reluctance to change. It is not in-line with the image that they have built over the years: that of a liberal, modern, and un-derstanding administration. It does little more than to exhaust the staff who try to enforce it.

Curfew does not make students sleep more; and even if it did, there are better ways to induce students to sleep more.

D E B A T E Should There Be Curfew at UWC-USA?

No!Marc Figueras ’10

Spain

NO


who need their rest. In a school that emphasizes understanding of each other as one of its main teaching points, we can reflect on what we are taught by acting in a considerate way to meet the needs of others.

Janet Swinton also tells me, “Many of the non-residential buildings such

as the IT Center, classrooms, library, and auditorium need to be locked up for the night.” On many nights we see members of security come and ask us to leave some of these buildings at midnight. The locking of the buildings is necessary security on the school’s part. The only reasonable assumption with locked non- residential buildings is that students will be in their dorms, hence the curfew policy. Curfew should be left in place to make the job of our dedicated security staff possible, and of course, for our own safety and peace of mind.

Another aim of the curfew policy is to give students much needed quiet time to study and catch up on assignments. In [my] survey, 56 per-cent of students said that they need quiet time but that it is not observed. Lizzie Cuevas ’11, USA-NH, says, “I really like the idea of quiet time. It’s really sad that it never actually gets to happen.” Here, we could compro-mise to cater to everyone. If curfew time was moved from midnight to eleven o’clock, and quiet time as we know it now, at 10:00 pm, was re-moved and made part of the time after curfew, everyone would be catered for; those who need to socialize more would have an extra hour without bothering anyone, and those who need quiet time would have it after 11 pm. In this case, curfew would be necessary as the dividing timeline.

Tendai Shirley Masangomai ’11, Zimbabwe, says “For me, curfew is a good check point when it comes to managing my time. I use it as a base and organize my timetable around it. It’s also a way for the administra-tion to make sure that everyone is safe.” If we could all take Shirley’s point of view, curfew might open our eyes to the fact that we actually have more time for our work than we think we do, as is the common grievance on this campus.

Watching over students from all over the world can be no easy trifle, so let us afford the adults some peace of mind and let them know that they can depend on us to keep ourselves safe. Rather than argue for the freedom that is afforded students elsewhere, it shows more responsibil-ity on our part to work within our own community. We do not know the price that other students have to pay for their freedom.

Want to share this article with a friend? Go to www.uwc-usa.org/studentfocus

D E B A T E Should There Be Curfew at UWC-USA?

Throughout the history of UWC-USA, curfew has been one of the most opposed school policies. We say that we do not see the reason for it, and that in some other UWCs it is unheard of. But there are strong reasons for curfew and a number of solutions to our problems with the policy, besides having it done away with.

As expected, the main reason that curfew is part of school policy is so that we may get enough sleep. Janet Swinton, Resident Tutor (RT) of Chumolungma House, says “To us, it’s very important that the students get enough sleep. That is the main reason curfew is enforced.” This rea-son is made known to us before we even join the UWC community, and we all know the wonders that good sleep does for us, physically and men-tally. It is almost surprising how opposed we become to curfew soon after we start life at UWC-USA. Knowing what we know about the value of good sleep, this reflects a lack of concern for our own well being, as well as the administration’s good intentions.

But many of our school population do see the value in the policy. In a [separate] survey conducted to find out students’ views on curfew, in which 54 students participated, 57 percent felt that curfew is a necessary part of school policy, in some cases with a call for more enforcement, and in others, a need for an extension of the time. The majority cannot be ignored just to make our school resemble others in policy. Curfew should remain in place for the good of everyone, whether this good is

seen or unseen.One common argument against

curfew is the lack of serious enforce-ment on the part of the administra-tion. Shruti Korada ’10, USA-CT, says “Curfew should either be enforced or removed, because right now it makes no difference.” Seventeen percent of the students who took part in the survey believed that curfew would be more effective if it was enforced more strictly. What we need to realize is that it is a sign of the administration’s good faith in our decision-making that they do not herd us into our dorms every night. And since the main issue at hand this year has been the inactivity of the student council, one possible solution is for the student council to become responsible for curfew ob-servation, making curfew a student-imposed policy, rather than doing away with it and disregarding those

“I really like the idea of quiet time. It’s really sad that it never actually gets to happen.” —Lizzie Cuevas ’11, USA-NH

YES Yes!Victoria Kizza ’11Uganda

YES


For more than a quarter of a century, Peter and Betty Hamer-Hodges have been an integral part of the UWC-USA community.

Peter served as Math Teacher, head of the Get-Away Program, Resi-dent Tutor (RT) of Hamer-Hodges House, and later, as Dean of Admin-istration. He led numerous trips to the Grand Canyon and took students on a number of Project Weeks. Peter spent many Saturday after-noons refereeing soccer match-es at the school and served as president and treasurer of the Las Vegas Recreation Youth Soc-cer League. He organized tennis and squash activities, helped with rugby coaching at New Mexico Highlands University, and, for a time, refereed rugby matches with the Rio Grande Referees Society.

Dan Pringle ’93, New Zea-land, writes, “I have fond memo-ries of playing and talking rugby with Peter. Rugby was a great love of Peter’s. I’m very grate-ful to Peter for getting a few of us involved with the NMHU rugby team (Los Vatos!). Peter still had it, too. I can clearly re-member sprinting for the line once, only to be tackled hard by Peter who’d run me down. Peter showed great trust (and good judgment!) in granting us a few days off school to play at the US collegiate regional champion-ship in Tucson, Arizona. A very memorable trip.”

Even with all those commit-ments, Peter’s dedication to the students always rang true. Em-manuelle Abrioux ’89, Canada, realizes, “Now that I have two boys of my own, I am amazed at how [Peter and Betty were] able to juggle all of our needs alongside those of [their] family.”

Ibrahim Khader ’00, Palestine, remembers, “[I] will never forget the extra hours [Peter] dedicated to tutoring nightly classes right before the official IB exams. Really, I never got the chance to properly thank him for all his time and effort. The least I can do now is to remind all of us of this man’s brilliance and dedication. I wish him the best in his new endeavor. I am sure he will be missed by many, and especially by the struggling math students of the Higher Level class to come.”

Betty served as the RT for Aconcagua, ran the campus store with the help of student assistants, and worked for many years as Development Assistant. She has left a lasting impression on students who were lucky enough to spend time with her.

Eva Kolker ’06, USA, remembers, “From the first day, crying in your apartment, to the last day, crying at graduation, you were always there for me. I don’t know how I would have gotten through UWC without you. We always knew Acon was the best dorm because we had you! I wish you the best wherever you go, and I hope to see you wherever our paths can meet.”

“Betty was like a mother to me,” remembers Natalia Bernal ’05, Colombia, “She even took me to dinner on my birthday because she knew it was hard for me to be away from my par-ents. She knew how to make you think. I learned responsi-bilities and love from her. She is without a doubt one of my favorite people ever.”

Both Peter and Betty re-main committed to UWC stu-dents long after they graduate. Trustee Mike Taylor ’91, USA, remembers, “Somewhere in those stern corrections was a pretty good method for lots of presentations in life besides Maths. [Peter’s] been a wonder-ful go-to person when I visit, connecting me with my own past and the current happen-ings on campus. We got to have vicious squash matches. We talked soccer and rugby, travel,

personal finance, school policy, wilderness trips, and life changes. Betty too has shown great interest in my young daughter, pushing me to share photos and stories of her life. They’ve been great friends, a great anchor for my relationship with UWC, and I will miss them terribly.”

Peter and Betty have been an instrumental part of nurturing, sup-porting, and educating 27 years of UWC-USA graduates. The number of alumni tributes submitted attests to just how much they are both appreci-ated, and how much they will be missed.

Want to share this article with a friend? Go to www.uwc-usa.org/read

Life After UWCDanielle WollnerCommunications

p Peter and Betty Hamer-Hodges

“Really, I never got the chance to properly thank him for all his time and effort. The least I can do now (10 years later) is to remind all of us of this man’s brilliance and dedication.” —Ibrahim Khader ’00, Palestine

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p Vichea Tan ’11, Cambodia, completing the winning jump

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Before coming to UWC-USA, alumni al-ways told me that I would make memories that I’d never forget. “These moments! They will stick with you,” they said. I dismissed their words as sappy nostalgia and bought my ticket to Albuquerque, New Mexico. I thought UWC-USA was just another school. A very good one, certainly. One where I’d learn a lot. But I couldn’t see myself being as affected and as changed by my experiences in Montezuma as alumni’s stories im-plied. After all, it was only a school, wasn’t it?

However, during my Project Week in March, I think I made one of those memories.

I distinctly remem-ber sitting on top of a dune at White Sands, on our first day of Proj-ect Week. My eyes were closed and I was feel-ing the gradual appear-ance of sunburn. In the background, I could hear Ben Gillock, the Environmental Systems and Societies teacher, talk about the forma-tion of dunes. Meanwhile, most of our Project Week group were having a sand dune jumping competition, which quickly became a “who can make the most graceful jump” competition. Vi-chea, my co-year from Cambodia, won. There is a picture of him in mid-jump where he looks like he’s about to perform a side kick. As soon as that picture was shown, the contest was closed, as he was the undisputed winner.

Our Project Week group also volunteered with Sky Island Alliance, a conservation orga-nization, in the southwestern corner of New Mexico. We did wildlife surveys of endangered species, and helped on various conservation projects. In the first couple of days, we went on long hikes to ponds and rivers in the area, in hopes of finding leopard frogs. Leopard frogs were the endangered species we were sup-posed to look for. We did not find any—which

Jumping & ScreamingMounia Abousaid ’11Morocco

prompted us to run around crying in overly-dramatic voices, “Frogs! Come to us!”

The next two days, we cut down young willows, in order to replant them closer to the bank, to limit erosion.

Finally, we built a stone structure that looked somewhat like a dam. A river was go-ing to be redirected, and we built a stone struc-ture where its stream would be in order to slow down its speed and thus reduce erosion.

Then, we drove back to Montezuma through a snowstorm.

I learned a lot on Project Week about ecol-ogy and restoration from the activities we did and simply by hearing Ben talk. What I’ll re-member, though, has nothing to do with com-plex ecological systems or the geological history of the area. I’ll remember jumping in the river as we cut down willows. I’ll remember scream-ing over-dramatically about absent frogs.

I have made one of those memories that all those alumni alluded to. It turns out that what they said, while sappy, is true. I haven’t come through UWC unchanged—because it’s more than a school. I do not mean that UWC-USA is a perfect, happiness-producing utopia. I just realize that when you put 200 teenagers together, a whole lot of learning and memory-making ensues. Even while sitting on a dune at noon in White Sands, New Mexico.

Instructions for a Girl Living in a DormRachel Hampton ’11USA - New York

On journeys, wear a demure hat, and your luggage will be carried for you.

Do not lose your rings or bracelets in airport bathrooms.

Upon arrival, make sure bats cannot get into your room.

Make sure annoying people cannot get into your room.

Ignore the noises coming from the other side of the wall.

Ignore your parents’ emails if they make you hurt.

Experiment with how much sleep deprivation you can handle.

Be more sleep deprived than you can handle.

Record any conversations that occur after two o’clock in the morning.

Keep clothes stored in your friends’ rooms.

Remember to return your friends’ clothes after you forget to store your own.

Study at times when your eyes can focus.

Change your sheets.

Do laundry.

Do not flush your phone down any toilets.

Do not panic when the ramen bubbles over in the microwave.

Do not panic.

Everything is going to be all right.


Yim: This painting is called Lucanamarca; it refers to the massacre held by a terrorist group in Peru called Sendero Luminoso. They assaulted Lu-canamarca, a farming town, and they killed all the farmers there, including children, babies, women, men, old women, old men, because they rebelled against the communist leader in that town. There was a lot of injustice.

Emily: When did this happen?

Yim: 1983. In what was one of the first attacks of a terrorist group in Peru. [This painting of the massacre] took four months to plan and research.Most of the pictures [ from the time] are really shocking and really striking and you can see the head of a baby there because… I don’t know if I have to describe it! But it was really cruel and crude, and they stepped on the heads of the babies, and all the bodies they put in that church, which is the deep-

ness over there, in the dark.And after this massacre,

many others came along, but I think this is the one that got lost in the history of Peru. That’s why I am trying with this painting to not lose part of the history even though people say that we don’t have to remember really sad things—but I think that’s a part of the culture and you cannot get rid of it. You have to learn how to avoid again the same situations and that’s my aim now with my

style of painting. [The mural] has as well a lot of influence from Picasso’s Guernica, which was created in reaction to the bombing of Guernica dur-ing the Second World War.

I think more than showing a painting for galleries or for an exhibition or things like that, I think it’s more for the people and that’s why I paint in murals—because it’s the easiest way for people to look at it. And even if you don’t understand the colors and the faces, they do not make me feel comfortable, because it’s a massacre. [The mural makes] me feel thought-ful about what is going on, even though I don’t understand.

You see a girl who is holding a stick? I’m getting controversial when I’m talking about that girl because that girl is the motherland. [Her] monument is in the Commerce of the Republic, and it is a sculp-ture with Greek pictures, really beautiful. But for my mural I make it really ugly and really uncomfortable and really grey and really dark, and its expression scares me. For me, it means my country doesn’t care about justice.

The nice thing about painting those characters is that you can create a story even though they are not real. There’s where art becomes a mes-senger between the past and now.

For me art has to be shared; it has to be promoted as well. Art, and in this case muralism, became stronger with the revolution; for example, in Mexico and with the bombing in Chile, where art became really important for complaining about human rights. And I think that’s the new vision, from my perspective, of art which is not made by the artist, but with the history of the people as well. [This] doesn’t put me out of the picture; it can make me the facilitator of the history of my town and the painting itself.

Emily: So this history isn’t taught in schools as a part of the curriculum?

Yim: No. You raise an important point. Education in Peru: you don’t ana-lyze the facts of the terrorism or of Sendero Luminoso, which was the communist group in Peru. Maybe if you study law or if you study anthro-pology you can see it at university, but if you don’t study it, you are not able to know those issues. I was one of the ignorant people who just was talking about terrorism but didn’t check the facts.

Emily: I remember you saying at the Choose Your Weapon Con-ference that you organized unions for labor and you sold stuff on the streets?

Yim: Yeah, my experience as a child was a little diverse because I have been working since I was 10 years old. I have been doing conferences in Latin America, and in universities, about human rights, but from the perspective of the children’s movements in Latin America. But I learned so much from the streets as well, which is really cruel, it’s really crude, it’s really cold. And I think that is where I had to learn that you don’t have to forget from where you came. That’s why I don’t want to forget what my country had in the past.

Emily: What did you do—you sold things?

Yim: Yeah, I sold stuff in the streets, like candies and potatoes. When I went to the capital it was more to talk about another level of participation. I think, personally, child labor is a level of participation. Because you don’t think about a child as a potential citizen until he becomes 18 or 21. And that’s something that is unfair, because a child at some point will make an opinion [at home]. Why not offer the opportunity to [a] child to rise as a citizen [ from when] he is 10, 12 years old? Society always looks at the child as the receptor of things but not the producer of things. That’s the misunderstanding of how you understand children—but that’s a pretty broad topic. I’m aware that not always that situation is the same situation for everyone, because you have exploitation, children who are abused in their work, and things like that. There is no reason for saying, for ex-ample, that prostitution is a way of working for children. That’s a way of exploitation, it’s simple.

Emily: Is it that aspect that you were addressing in trying to go to confer-ences and schools to talk about children’s rights—the exploitation aspect?

Yim: Latin American movements, in the case of children who work in the streets, they are organized now, and that’s the important thing. If you are organized and if you can have a group of people who can support

Juego de Pelota: Interview with Yim Rodriguez Sampertegui ’10, PeruEmily Withnall, MUWCI ’01Communications

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Yim Rodriguez Sampertegui ’10, Peru, is a painter and a musician who is in-

terested in art’s role in affecting change and in preserving stories. Yim’s per-

sonal challenges at UWC-USA included undergoing two heart surgeries in his

second year. Yim prevailed through his surgeries with grace and continued to

contribute much to the UWC-USA community. He will continue his studies

at Earlham College in the fall.


you, that’s fantastic, it’s like a family. That’s how social movements begin, by helping your neighbors, by helping your town, by doing lottery, fund-raising, for example. Simple, simple things. That’s what I was doing—sharing the opinion of the children with the adult people. We don’t want to convince them, we just want them to hear us, and based on what we do they can have an opinion. And that’s the hard part.

Emily: I write poetry, so I know it’s hard to write happy poetry, uplifting poetry—is it difficult to paint something positive?

Yim: That’s true. I just paint sad things. [laughs] Happiness and sadness are two emotions that are totally related to other things, so it cannot be that difficult to paint happiness or sadness. You have to be like a child to paint what you really feel, emotions like happiness and sadness. If you analyze the whole picture, happiness can be introduced in this case as hopefulness; that child is holding a bird, there’s another bird coming out from the legs of the guy who is lying on the floor, there’s another bird that’s lying on the dress of the girl. And that’s the way for expressing hap-piness as well, by introducing hopefulness.

Emily: What are you hopeful about?

Yim: I am hopeful that people in Peru can see this mural. I’m really hopeful that it can have an impact. I would feel so frustrated even though I finished this but I cannot take [it] to Peru or to show to the people what I did. I’m not seeking fame or I’m not seeking money, I just want to put it somewhere, where someone can see it, and to support those kind of programs, because I know in Peru and in Latin America, painting is the teaching of how to paint and that’s it, but not the function of painting itself, what painting has to do with society, what painting can contribute to a relevant society.

Emily: Is that something you hope to see in the world? Artists having more of a function in society?

Yim: Yes, that’s totally true, that’s what I believe, for art, not just for painting. Maybe it sounds really idealistic, and that’s something that frightens me.

But I don’t think you have to pass through an academy to become a painter. I mean, I didn’t know about muralism until I read about the Mexican Revolution, and then I came up with ideas like painting about my culture, my native culture in Peru. One [of my murals] is a more cultural one; it’s not from my background, but I think at this point I don’t belong anymore to Peru, just to Peru, I think I belong to every place where my co-years and friends here belong. And that’s something as well that helped me to paint the fourth [mural], which is the Mayan ballgame—Juego de Pelota.

There are two courts, and there’s a racing act, with many people try-ing to catch the ball, and at the bottom there is a god watching them.

Emily: It’s true that the winning team was sacrificed?

Yim: Yes, that’s the normal rule in all ages.

Emily: So it was an honor to be sacrificed?

Yim: I don’t think that they thought it was an honor to be sacrificed at that moment! [laughs] But I think the game is about honor. The game itself is about honor, and about being able, even though you are going to die, to do everything possible for being the winning team. It was, I think, a game of trying to measure myself, to measure my team, to mea-sure how brave I can be because of my race or because of my culture. At some point that has a really deep meaning because that’s something that we lack—we are not sometimes really brave about our culture, and we just let our culture be stepped on by other cultures.

Emily: That sounds like a metaphor for life, too, standing up for what you believe in, and doing your best even though you’re going to die.

Yim: Life is like the Juego de Pelota. [laughs] That’s true, we should write it down.


p Lucanamarca by Yim Rodriguez Sampertegui ’10, Peru

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During the March 2010 Project Week, a group of UWC-USA stu-dents took a trip to Arizona along the Mexico-USA border. Being an American citizen and having both parents originating from Mexico made this trip all the more intriguing to me. I would finally get the opportunity to experience first-hand what really goes on in the south-ernmost part of the United States, a region depicted by the media as being a constant battle against drug traffickers and people who are out to take American jobs.

Working with the organization No More Deaths, which has its base in Tucson, Arizona, we were driven about ten miles north of the border where we had the mission to go out on patrols every day and provide humanitarian aid to migrants. This aid consisted of leaving

basic human necessities such as food and water along trails to prevent migrants from dying.

I remember that on my first patrol I was deeply challenged by seeing the amount of trash and tattered clothes that belonged to the migrants and their children all scattered in the desert. Each garment, water bottle, and sandal tells a story of their struggles and of the desperate measures that these people are willing to face to provide a better, more sustainable future for their children.

These stories have never been depicted in American media, which always insists on delivering the same form of condemning, degrading, and exaggerated rhetoric towards people who only seek a better life that does not exist in their homeland. Perhaps what bothered me most was the

fact that my own family sought out this journey to-wards the United States, a country that threatened their lives on a daily basis on the same border.

I had never personally realized the human element that is deeply ingrained in the constant flow and influx of immigrants into this privileged nation. You don’t consider this until you actually go out in the treacherous desert, become thirsty beyond belief, become fatigued by the pounding sun, and walk and walk so much that you cannot feel your legs, realizing when you stop for a break how badly cut and bush-wacked your legs, arms, and chest have become.

My experience allowed me to see the abuse by the government-financed Border Patrol, which has militarized the border to such an exaggerated extreme that it appears that they are fighting a war of their own in the south of the United States, complete with a man-made wall intended to iso-late us inside our country, rather than keep people out. Not only that, but they handcuff migrants and force them to march across steep mountains in mid-day while the soil burns beneath their feet and the sun pounds their backs, and without an immediate source of food or water.

What I have learned from watching this inhu-mane behavior that we inflict on our neighbors is something that will never ever be presented to the American people. What hurts even more is the fact that these migrants are my own people. In the faces of these people I see my cousins, my aunts, my uncles, and my parents. It is a difficult experience to assimilate in the mind, yet never-theless I feel that it will guide me and inspire me in my future endeavors to never forget my roots and the privileged life that I lead thanks to these courageous people.


No More Deaths: When Border Politics Intersect with HeritageRodrigo Huerta ’11USA - Illinois

Shar

on S

eto

p Sustenance placed on the trail on the Mexico-USA border by UWC-USA students


As our small caravan of SUVs approached San Pablo, a remote vil-lage in Copper Canyon, Mexico, children lined the dirt road, their faces framed by the dusty twilight. There was an unmistakable mixture of fas-cination and timidity on their young faces. For many years, UWC-USA students have been coming to San Pablo to perform a cultural show and give a fiesta for the children. The village is unique because the majority of the residents are the indigenous Tarahumara people. All fourteen of us, representing twelve countries, piled out of the SUVs and greeted the village teachers as the children huddled together, furtively glancing at us. We walked over and introduced ourselves. With encouragement, they offered their names as well.

As we walked over to the pickup truck to unload our gear, I noticed a table filled with handmade baskets, carved figures, and jewelry—gifts for us. We prepared to unload our huge wilderness backpacks, but before we knew what was happen-ing, a cluster of children were ferrying our packs like a small army of ants—extremely jubilant ants. That was when I stopped to really look around. The sheer joy on the children’s faces, their enthusiasm to act as our porters, the table of carefully crafted gifts, the warm welcome of the teachers, and the scene of the last bits of sunlight filtering into the canyon through the smoky air of the village rushed over me in a wave of emotion. I looked around, speechless. I hadn’t felt that strong a positive emotion since I received my acceptance to UWC-USA nearly a year before. I didn’t know what to call it. Looking back, I think it was an intense mixture of being humbled by the village’s generosity and standing in awe of the children’s wholehearted joy at our arrival.

The unloading had made them slightly less

guarded and the change in the atmosphere was almost tangible. How-ever, we still were not quite sure what to do with the kids. The answer came from an unexpected place—Hikaru, from Japan, who couldn’t speak a word of Spanish, began to chase a little Tarahumara girl around a pillar, growling and making faces. The little girl giggled and ran faster,

the bright colors of her traditional skirt and bandana vivid in the twi-light. As you might imagine, this simple game quickly evolved into a game of tag that included everyone —Tarahumara children and UWC students. We had earned a small victory. A barrier had fallen, as we always thought it would.

… a cluster of children were ferrying our packs like a small army of ants—extremely jubilant ants.

Breaking BarriersCharlotte Benishek ’11USA - Wisconsin

Charlotte works on an art project q

with children in Copper Canyon

Eben

ezer

Sef

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1, G

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Derek: Can you tell us a bit about your life story and where you’re from?

Dale: I was born in Portland, OR on January 23, 1924. I lived there un-til WWII started. I decided, against my brother’s advice, to join the Navy. He had spent four years in the Navy and said, “This war is going to be over very soon; you don’t have to worry about enlisting.” After spending three years, nine months, and 11 days in the Navy, I was discharged. I took a couple correspondence courses in the Navy and I got out of the Navy, I think it was January 18, 1946. Two days later, I enrolled in college.

I became a physicist. I wanted to work at Los Alamos as a scien-tist and I heard that they had a graduate research assistant job that I might get. I stayed in Los Alamos and I like to say I couldn’t hold a job, because I changed fields many times, always trying to get a new challenge. I worked in a reactor divi-sion first and did materials science reactor construc-tion, and analysis.

Natalie: What is the greatest challenge that you have faced in your life?

Dale: Greatest challenge? It was when I volunteered to work on the test operations in 1962 as a scientist for bomb tests. I had never done that, and I thought this [test] was the last one they would ever have. I was as-sured that there would be people who were experts and they could hold my hand for anything I didn’t know. And that was very comforting, except it was very wrong.

I found out that it was wrong when I started calibrating our instru-ments and I concluded that I was maybe making an error in absolute values of a thousand or more. And so I called the experts and told them why I thought that, and they weren’t worried because they got the results they expected, on the computer. And that was the most challenging time in my life because I wanted to do a good job and I couldn’t get the help I needed. The test was terminated for a while because a bomb blew up on the pad and contaminated Johnston Island. I cleaned things up and decided to go home. But it was a month after the cancellation of the test before I relaxed.

Whenever I hear something, I listen, and say, “Do I agree with it or not?” If I didn’t agree, I would say so, and I got into trouble, frequently. But I decided that the way I did experiments was not the normal scientific method. I formed my conclusions, and I gathered my data to support those conclusions. Sometimes I would do the experiment two or three times, each time doing it better. After I was done, I [had] all the data, ev-

erything [was] wonderful, [and then] I would spend time thinking, “How could I be wrong?” That was extremely important. I used my intuition and my subconscious and dream analysis to find out where the mistakes could have been.

In fact, one time, I was new and every time I did an experiment, I got the best data. Well, that’s kind of suspicious, and [my section leader] thought it was very suspicious since I was the new guy on the block. So he arranged to do an experiment with me. True to form—best data ever. He congratulated me. The next morning I looked him up and I said, “It’s wrong.” It took me over half an hour to convince him that [it] was [wrong].

Natalie: It seems like your whole life is so successful because you al-ways believe in yourself. Have you ever found out later that your opinion was wrong?

Dale: I used to tell my kids: “I have never made a mis-take,” and then I said, “Oh

yes, I did make one mistake. I thought I made a mistake.” They thought I really meant it.

When I was in the intelligence division I was a new person there. They said, “We’ve got this problem that we have a contract for, for so many thousands of dollars. We’ve spent half of it, and we have no use-ful data. Will you work on it?” I had no experience, but I knew people, and I knew their competence; I would accept the job and get the right people to help me.

In one case it was on spy dust. This is a thing that the Russians put on classified documents to see who touched it. The CIA had spent a couple million dollars trying to understand how to do that. They asked me if I would do that. I had no experience whatsoever that I thought was germane. But I had a fellow working for me [previously and] I thought, “He’s very creative and I’ll see if he can help me.” With his help, and a couple of other people, we solved the problem. When the CIA came, they were happy that we solved the problem, but they were very un-happy that we went two hundred and sixty dollars over the quarter of a million dollar budget.

Derek: Sounds pretty weird. I would feel good that I actually found a solution.

Dale: One of my favorite sayings is “What I lack in ability, I make up in confidence.”

“Whenever I hear something, I listen, and then say, ‘Do I agree with it or not?’ And if I didn’t agree, I would say so, and I got into trouble, frequently. “

Thinking Clearly with Dale HolmDereck Alleyne ’11 & Natalie Chan ’11Barbados & Hong Kong

Dale Holm, a retired scientist from Los Alamos, first became involved with UWC-USA when he was invited to speak at a student-organized “peace conference” in

1986, wherein he was given the topic of “The Moral Justification for the Use of Nuclear Weapons.” Dale described this as “like being invited to a banquet where

you are the main course,” but also called it a highlight of his career. Dale reprised this role by visiting campus in February 2010 to speak at this year’s student-run

annual conference, which explored the implications of medically extending life expectancy.


On Navigation Day, I found myself lost in the middle of nowhere, trying to understand what I interpreted incorrectly on the map and how to get back to school healthy and safe. In academics, I have found myself many times struggling with incomprehensible texts and endless papers.

At times like these, it is easy to freak out and break down in tears, forget-ting about the purpose of the activity and the solution to the problem. All of this keeps our minds and bodies occupied, and sometimes it is very easy for some of us to lose our North and forget the reasons we came here.

But these are the kind of challenges that, little by little, have shaped my personality and helped me to mature both intellectually and emotion-ally. They are small pieces of the whole UWC puzzle.

Now that I am preparing myself to leave and start a new adventure, I realized the biggest challenge has yet to happen. The most diffi-cult task is to leave this place after two years of exceptional and un-forgettable moments shared with the most peculiar people I have ever met in my life, although I have known since the first day I took a plane from Spain to Al-buquerque that this experience would last for only two years.

Time is always present in any aspect of our lives, but it acquires special meaning for UWC stu-dents. Arriving new to this unfa-miliar and extraordinary environ-ment involves getting to know many gifted peers and professors, but it also means getting attached to them, and when this happens, we don’t usually think of the end-ing.

We all know how it feels to live with so many talented people, to share a room with someone that you cannot easily communicate with, to have to go to classes after having spent an entire night writ-ing an Internal Assessment, to eat ramen at two in the morning because there is nothing better, or to feel ridiculously clumsy when

dancing next to the Africans at the parties. We understand each other without needing words.

But the real challenge will come when I leave this place and find myself out of the stimulating environment I have experienced for four

semesters, being exposed to reality and having to apply all my knowledge and skills to new situations. The real challenge will come when going back to my life before UWC-USA and adapting myself again without the peo-ple who understand me and support me the best.

At the end, anything that means a risk or a complica-tion is a challenge and an opportunity to grow. Coming to UWC-USA is a challenge; exposing ourselves to this kind of situation in which we are continually tested allows us to get to know ourselves better. However, I sometimes wonder if it is worth it to develop such strong connections and relationships with people, knowing that we will have to live without them afterwards. Knowing that these two years will become just memo-ries, and that all the people who have been part of my experience will continue on their own paths. This can be very painful and frightening sometimes. Nevertheless, I would not have it any other way.

Losing the NorthSara Barrales Reyes ’10Spain

Sometimes it is very easy for some of us to lose our North and forget the reasons we came here.

Gab

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q Sara finds her North on a UWC-USA wilderness expedition


“Peace is what we need in the Middle East. This Arab-Israeli conflict, it’s driving us crazy.”

“Peace? How can you talk about peace when no justice has been achieved? How can you call it a conflict when all there is to it is occupation?”

“What are you talking about? The suicide bombers are everywhere—all Israel does is for the sake of its protection and the protection of its people! Do you want another Holocaust to happen?”

“A holocaust is already happening, and this time it’s not the Jews who are the victims—it’s the Palestinians.”

“What are you saying? What are you accusing us of?”“You know exactly what I’m saying. You know exactly what I’m ac-

cusing your government of. You also know that what I’m saying is completely true!”

A discussion like this is typi-cal at UWC-USA. I recall being involved in these discussions at the beginning of the year, heated ones involving the Israeli occu-pation, and not being able to keep calm. A claim that Lebanon had stolen Israel’s water set me off into a long rant on how Israel’s right to exist was disputed in the first place. Similarly, attacks on Palestinians would set my blood boiling. It seems like just the other day that I was told by my fellow Arabs that I needed to just calm down, enough so that people could begin to listen to me and hear what I was trying to say rather than how I was say-ing it. Perhaps I needed to learn to keep calm and not attack people with my words, but did that mean I should become diplomatic?

One conversation changed it all. One conversation made me rethink the way I saw things—and made me question everything I had previously believed in.

“How do you think this looks to everyone else?”“What do you mean? I’m saying my opinion, that’s all. And it’s backed

up with facts, isn’t it?”“Yeah, but think about the image you’re giving. Think about the im-

pact this might have on some people who don’t see the whole picture —who don’t know the whole story. Who are they going to believe, the calm speechmaker or the angry, defensive, argumentative fighter? Who’s reinforcing stereotypes now?”

I don’t agree with everything that was said at that point, but what the conversation did accomplish was to make me think, make me ask questions. How does one define the terms “diplomatic” and “politically correct?” Are they what we should be aiming for? Diplomatic implies the “ability to avoid offending others or hurting their feelings,” as the Random House Unabridged Dictionary makes clear. We are constantly told that we need to be careful in our manners of speech and perhaps diplomatic, in some senses of the word—but is that what we really want? Is that what we really need?

The world has seen Palestinians suffer at the hands of their diplomat-ic and compromising leaders, while South Africans overthrow apartheid with ideas no “diplomatic” person at the time would have dared make

public. It appears to me that diplomacy and political correctness have not led anyone anywhere remarkable before, to tell the truth. Does being “nice” and using terms that will hurt no individual’s feelings mean you are stepping down, being puny, standing up for nothing, or does it mean you are being polite and respectful? You will never please everybody, so why try? Why say that perhaps we should consider being a little sweeter to black people and improving their separate water fountains, just a little bit, when we know perfectly well that there should be no differentiation but rather complete and equal integration? Why use terms such as “perhaps,” “maybe,” “I hope,” “I think,” or “consider,” when we can simply stand up and say “This is what needs to be done”? Being a leader is about being a

concoction of different things—but sometimes it will call upon one’s ability to be assertive. This does not mean one should not be open to criticism, either; on the contrary, one should be will-ing to admit mistakes, which provides further basis to the

claim that we should be straightforward. When it comes to the truth and issues important to us, we cannot

afford to “avoid offending others”—had the world been less diplomatic and spoken up against Hitler at an earlier stage, it might have avoided the tragedy that was the Holocaust. Similarly, when we see and hear of the horrors going on in Palestine today and decide not to speak up for fear of hurting certain Israelis’ feelings, we are doing much more harm than we are good. It is not politically correct today, for example, to denounce Israel and its actions—for if you do, you will be accused of being anti-Semitic. What does it mean to be anti-Semitic? Isn’t it more anti-Zionist? People have to learn not only to recognize subtle differences in wordplay but also to accept that not everyone will side with everyone else. If you cannot take a term you do not agree with, then you do not deserve respect in the first place. What does it mean to be politically correct if it means you will only be sugarcoating the truth?

I believe my experience here at UWC-USA has helped me reach something of a balance, and I’ve improved greatly from the fiery, pas-sionate fighter I was at the beginning of the year to a more mature de-bater. Questions still circle and surround every activity I do, every speech I make, and every article I write. What constitutes a win-win situation? Should we endeavor to be liked, or to be truthful? Truth is the major component in this debate, because there are always the questions of how truthful one should be and what in fact constitutes truth in the first place. Is it right to tell the truth in a roundabout way, or must one tell it in an assertive and straightforward manner?

The challenge we all face is that of reconciliation—reconciling our need to be calm and polite in certain situations with our need to stand up, speak out, and tell the truth regardless of public opinion in others.

Sometimes, people need a wake-up call, and sometimes they need to learn to stand up for whatever the hell it is they believe in. There’s no need to apologize for it. That’s what freedom is all about.

Truth, or Diplomacy?Zeinab Bailoun ’11Lebanon

When it comes to the truth and issues important to us, we cannot afford to “avoid offending others.”


How life changes every day. We drive along facing the different faces of life. We get lessons every day from our lives. We experi-ence new changes in life which help us to be so strong.

Coming to UWC-USA, I never thought that I would face so many cultural problems. Problems like culture shock, miscommuni-cation, and being misunderstood by people. The challenges of life at UWC are totally dif-ferent and difficult because of the way a new place, new people, and new culture shape a whole con-cept of life.

Here, I was so shocked that girl-friends and boyfriends are a common thing, and that people are with someone today and with another person tomorrow. Talking about sleeping together is the everyday topic among students. This is kind of uncomfortable for me, personally. People don’t care about rela-tionships, and they also suggest that people shouldn’t stay with a person. This is totally different from my culture. We care about re-lationships a lot.

The culture of not sleeping at night and talking to others and disturbing people sleep-ing at night, doesn’t show respect and consid-eration for sleep. People come in at 2:30 or 3:00 am to say goodnight to their friends. I don’t know how this shows love or friendship.

The Faces of LifeKhatira Mohammad Hassan ’11Afghanistan

In my culture, we respect everyone, especially those who are sleeping.

The other thing which was so shock-ing for me was that the word they use in all their communication is “f*** you” and “what the f***.” All those words enter my ears like weapons. I was saying, “What a disrespectful community this is; they don’t have respect at all for the next person.” In my culture, if a child uses these words, it is the parents’ duty to punish the child until

the child promises that they will not use those words in their lives.

Coming here taught me a lot, like

sharing a room with a person you have never met before. There is encouragement to un-derstand each other. Everything that you don’t like here, your mom takes care of at home. I learned that there is no more mom. You have to adjust to people, which I think is great, be-cause my mom always tried to teach me all these things and I refused. Now, at UWC-USA, I have learned.

The best thing at UWC-USA is the coop-eration of my awesome teachers who help me in every difficulty I face; they encourage me to face the challenges of life. They have helped me a lot, and I learned how to work with other people because of my outstanding teachers. I love them a lot, and in life I will never forget them.

FurtherSimone De Cia ’10Italy

Whenever the soul grows

the evil moves

further

into our colder and barer

forest.

A subtle smile appears

where once we harbored fears,

blaming our burning desires

kindling indifferent fires.

Time pushes

further

to turn us experts of human

sorrow and human

vice.

And again the evil moves

further

into our land of ice.

All those words enter my ears like weapons.

p Artwork by Leonoor Cornelissen ’10, Netherlands


“In Nepal, there was an old campaign that said ‘Let’s develop our own village,’” says Dristy Shrestha ’07, Nepal. “It encouraged people to start projects individually and locally, because we are the most familiar with the resources and needs of our own villages. As a Nepali, I [wanted to] start locally—from my country, and possibly expand to the global com-munity in the future.”

And start locally she did. In 2009, as a sophomore at Middlebury College in Vermont, Dristy

heard about Projects for Peace, funded by philanthropist, Mrs. Kathryn Wasserman Davis. She jumped at the opportunity to give back to her home country of Nepal. She knew she wanted to do something related to development, but she wasn’t sure where to start. After much research, she discovered the idea of micro hydropower. She drafted a proposal out-lining a plan for using micro hydropower to generate 3KW of electricity from a small river in a rural part of Nepal to a remote village, using a Nepali-made machine called a Peltric Set. The village was far removed from the national electricity grid system due to the complicated and ex-treme geography of Nepal, and was unlikely to ever be connected to the grid. One of Dristy’s hopes was for her project to serve as a “Model Micro Hydropower Project in Nepal” and draw attention to that sector of hy-dropower of the country, particularly since Nepal is the second richest country in water resources in the world.

Dristy’s project was selected as a Runner Up from Middlebury, which did not secure her the funding she needed. Dristy said, “I could practi-cally see the entire project in my head, so not winning the Projects for Peace Competition was heartbreaking for me. I had so much faith in the idea and was almost desperate to see it happen because I knew how much it would benefit the villagers.” Discouraged, but still determined to see her project come to fruition, she submitted the same proposal to the Clinton Global Initiative University Outstanding Commitment Award 2009 (CGIU). The results pending, she convinced Middlebury’s presi-dent, Ronald Leibowitz, to fund the project out of the $10,000 President’s Discretionary Fund.

Funds in hand, Dristy traveled home to Nepal in May and June of 2009 to complete her project in Gurdang Village of Mapikhel VDC, Lalit-pur. She talks of the challenges presented by attempting a project during the summer monsoon season:

The first part of the project was purchasing the equipment and transporting it to the project site. We had hired a truck and were planning to transport everything at once. It was only driz-zling, but towards late afternoon and the evening when the truck headed towards the village, at moments I had doubts that it would make it.

The road to the village is just a dirt road. Accidents in rainy season like trucks slipping or skidding [are] considered normal. Although it took them what seemed like forever, they made it to the village safely with all the equipment so the next morning when the truck could be unloaded, the construction work began. The construction work, like digging the canal to fit the pipes, and construction of the power house, had to be halted on days of heavy rainfall.

While the project was under construction, Dristy remained hopeful about the success of her project, dreaming about children playing, work-ing, and participating in bringing home earnings, people being able to read and study at night, and women having spare time after the sun went down to do some extra work. Dristy imagined this all leading, eventu-ally, to the economic development of the village by allowing for additional income-generation and lifestyle improvement. The villagers were also concerned about the success of Dristy’s project. She says:

When I first went to the village, I was expecting an excitement among the people because they had already been told about the funds that I received [and] planned to use on a micro hydropower project for their village. Later I learned that these villagers had been struggling to get electricity for 15 years and had been given several promises which clearly hadn’t been kept so they were a bit skep-tical and weren’t completely willing to believe that a 21-year-old Nepali girl who studies abroad was going to make a new promise and keep it. I remember how warm and welcoming they were, but also the doubt and skepticism they had until the actual equipment was purchased and transported to the villages. I was not prepared to see such a reaction but am glad that by the end it changed to positive energy and [they had] electricity in their houses.

Dristy’s project generated electricity for 32 houses, and the village has continued to receive electricity since June 2009. During her last days in Nepal, as she finished up her first project, Dristy discovered that she’d been granted the CGIU 2009 award, and therefore had the opportunity to replicate her project in another village.

Dristy returned to Nepal in January 2010 dur-ing her winter break at Middlebury and successfully completed the project in Tallo Kerabari Village of Bhimkhori VDC, generating hydroelectricity for 32 additional houses. One of Dristy’s most memorable moments occurred during the inauguration of the second project:

Both my parents and I had hiked up to the village to attend the ceremony. The roll-er coaster of emotions that I went through that day is still very hard to describe. I have won several awards in my student life, but that day I realized that those frames of ref-erence were so poor compared to the gar-lands the villagers put on me, the vermil-lion powder all over my face and clothes, and their endless gestures of Namaste. [Being] honored by the villagers in such a manner was the most respect I have ever received from anyone in life. No wonder I couldn’t hold my tears while making my “thank you” speech at the ceremony. That was my reward—the feeling that one gets in return for serving others.

Bringing Electricity HomeEmily Withnall, MUWCI ’01Communications


Dristy also faced the continued challenges of bandhs (strikes) called by Maoist forces that frequently brought Nepali life to a stand-still:

Since Nepal was going through tough political times and there was very recent change in the government, such strikes disrupted our work and decreased our efficiency. There isn’t any particu-lar way out in such situations, but after the equipment arrived at the project site, away from bandh zones, the villagers could pro-ceed with the construction work. We always stayed well-informed about the possibilities of bandhs while we were working on the project, and did our best to get as much as possible done when days appeared normal.

Dristy confessed that being away from Nepal and hearing about her country through the news was a challenging experience. She admits to almost losing her faith at times, but says that her two projects have left her more hopeful and have given her a new faith in Nepal’s potential:

I feel like I have grown stronger and more optimistic as a Nepali citizen. It was at UWC-USA that for the first time, I actu-ally got to take on a “Nepali” identity. Being one out of the two Nepali students there and sharing about my country reinforced this identity more than ever before. My experience at UWC made me think about what it meant to be a Nepali [and] I realized how lucky and blessed a Nepali I am. Thousands of Nepalese migrate to foreign countries to work, for better education and opportuni-

ties, to be able to see new dreams and struggle tirelessly to make these dreams come true.

I feel like it is my duty to make the most out of [my opportuni-ties] for myself, and for others—especially my country. because it is really in need of this kind of attention. It isn’t even just about “making a difference.” For me it is about doing all that I, as an individual, am capable of. Even today, when I read about or hear from fellow UWC [graduates and] how they continue finding ways to “do their best” in their individual ways and [transform] the ideas and dreams they had talked about at UWC, it adds in me more strength, courage, and zeal to do something.

Dristy continues to find ways of turning her dreams into reality. She was recently chosen as one of the winners of Davis Projects for Peace 2010. With this grant, she has plans for an entirely new project, one which entails a National Nepali Scout Camp with the aim of bringing together more than 500 Nepali Scouts of different castes and ethnicities from every corner of Nepal in a symbolic national event that emphasizes peace and unity in the country. She says, “I know that I am very fortunate and blessed to have all these opportunities and resources available to me. I just hope that this is the beginning of my journey in which I continue living this spirit of service to my country and global community and take the role of a ‘global citizen.’”

Want to share this article with a friend? Go to www.uwc-usa.org/alumniprofiles

Phot

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pClockwise from top left: The Peltric Set and control box inside the Power House. Hot water is collected in the barrel after being used to generate electricity, and is re-released to the same river; Dristy leads the way to Kerabari village, two hours by foot from the road. The galvanized corrugated sheet will be used for the roof of the Power House; Dristy is honored with tika by the micro hydropower project’s committee chairman in the village of Kerabari and Lord Bhim is asked for his blessings for the smooth generation of electricity; Dristy and her parents, at the project’s inauguration.


Alumni ProfilesDoug Turner ’87, USA, completed a run for the Republican nomination for Governor of New Mexico, in the June 2010 elections. He did not secure the nomination, but he is bound to be noticed in the political arena in years to come. A native New Mexican, Doug has provided political and strategic counsel to Fortune 500 companies, elected officials, and government and nonprofit organizations. He has owned and operated DW Turner, a public relations firm in Albuquerque, NM, for 12 years.

In the late 90s, Doug worked on Gary Johnson’s first campaign to defeat incumbent New Mexico Governor Bruce King, and man-aged Governor Johnson’s come-from-behind re-election win. He also served as a deputy po-litical director for Steve Forbes’s 2000 bid for President of the United States. Doug is a board member of the New Mexico Coalition for Char-ter Schools, a life-long member of the National Rifle Association, a member of the American Council of Young Political Leaders, and has served on the Republican Governors Asso-ciation National Finance Committee and the UWC-USA Alumni Council. A former syndi-cated columnist, Doug’s articles have appeared in Time Magazine, Financial Times, Far Eastern Economic Review, the Carnegie Council’s Policy Innovations and Japan’s Daily Yomiuri.

Doug says, “My UWC experience rein-forced my belief in community service, and my respect for and willingness to listen to others and strive to do what is right.”

Vachararutai (Jan) Boontinand ’90, Thailand, be-gan working for Global Alliance Against Traf-fic in Women (GAATW) in Bangkok in 1996.Jan was responsible for a research project on trafficking in women in the Mekong sub-region and worked with organizations and researchers in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. Through GAATW, from 1999-2001, Jan was a

part of the Human Rights Caucus at the UN Crime Convention while the Palermo Proto-col was negotiated. Jan also helped to conduct training locally and internationally for NGO workers, law enforcement officers, and other groups to raise awareness about trafficking and human rights violations.

From 2002-2008, Jan served as the Country Manager of ActionAid Thailand. She launched the “Action for Change” project which involved young people in Thailand using music, art, film, and journalism to raise public awareness about many social and political issues, includ-ing the impact of Free Trade Agreements on local Thai farmers and the exploitation of sea-gypsies on the southern coast of Thailand in the aftermath of the tsunami in 2004.

Jan’s current project is focused on teach-ing English to children in her community, and involves her entire family, including her two children, now ages nine and five. Her desire to work within her home community and to help those less fortunate than herself is one she wishes to instill in her children. Jan had to put her teaching project on hold when she enrolled in a Ph.D. program in Human Rights and Peace Studies in June 2009, but she has plans for resuming it in July 2010.

“When I walk in my neighborhood, I of-ten have some children running to greet me, calling me ‘teacher.’ I definitely feel good that I could finally do something for the commu-nity. I can say that the UWC experience had an important role to play. With political tensions and conflict that have polarized Thailand since 2006 and the series of subsequent violence including the riot in May this year, a lot more work will need to be done to create genuine de-mocracy and peace in this country.”

Brian Bava ’91, USA, has been working as the Director of Admission at the College of Idaho since 2008. Brian also currently serves as In-terim Dean of Enrollment Management. In the fall of 2006, the College of Idaho was added to the Davis Scholars Program, which has proven to be one of the most significant accomplish-ments Brian has made at the college. Brian has visited six UWC campuses in addition to UWC-USA and has worked exclusively on the recruitment of UWC students. In the fall of 2009, the College of Idaho had 38 Davis Schol-ars among a total international student body of

80, representing 40 countries. Brian says that when he arrived at the College of Idaho, there were only eight international students.

Brian and his wife Amy have a two-year-old son, Emerson, and a five-year-old daughter, Parker, who will be starting at an IB school in the fall. Brian says, “I am thankful for the educa-tion I received at UWC and know that without that experience I would not be successful in my professional life. It is a joy to return to Montezu-ma each year and see so many familiar faces—I just hope they will stay around long enough for my own kids to be taught by them!”

Laura Taylor-Kale ’96, USA, joined the US For-eign Service in 2003. From 2004-2006, Laura worked as a consular officer and special assis-tant to the Ambassador at the US Embassy in New Delhi, India. She served as the political affairs officer at the US Embassy in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire from 2006-2008, where her pri-mary responsibility was to follow the Ivoirian peace process and progress in human rights and combatting trafficking in persons. From 2008 to 2009, Laura served as an economic affairs officer at the US Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan where she focused on transpor-tation, telecommunications, labor, and envi-ronmental policy issues.

Laura currently serves as an advisor to the US Executive Director of the World Bank. Laura coordinates with US Treasury and State Departments and USAID in developing official US government positions on loans and strat-egies for the Middle East and Africa, environ-ment and energy policy, and extractive indus-tries development. In this role Laura is able to employ her skills as a diplomat to persuade, and utilize her expertise in economic develop-ment and world politics and history.

Laura says she first learned about the For-eign Service at UWC-USA from classmates

18 U W C - U S A / W W W . U W C - U S A . O R G


whose parents were diplomats. “UWC shaped my worldview and made the world much small-er. I learned that I was part of a much larger global community than the one in which I was raised on Chicago’s south side. I developed my cross-cultural communication skills as well as my knowledge of everyday life for people from different corners of the world. I also developed leadership skills and an appreciation for public service, whether it’s building homes in low in-come communities or representing your coun-try as a diplomat.”

Lauren (Fletcher) Hucknall ’01, UK, works as an English teacher at Djanogly City Academy, in Nottingham. In March 2010, she took a class of 14 and 15 year olds to Uganda to build a li-brary and exam centre. In the months leading up to the trip, her class raised almost $12,000 to cover travel costs and building supplies. Upon arrival in Uganda, Lauren and her stu-dents spent a week at Hope North School in Bweyale, in the Masindi District. The very ba-sic school building was occupied by many of the school’s students, most of whom were or-phans as a result of the civil war in Northern

Uganda. Many of the students there had fled for safety, or were among those children lucky to have escaped from being child soldiers.

At Hope North School, Academy stu-dents were paired with Hope North students. They worked side-by-side for the week, and students from both countries fetched water, mixed cement, dug foundations, and learned to lay bricks and build scaffolding. Over the course of their work together, Academy stu-dents heard many of the harrowing and tragic stories from the child soldiers about their time in the bush.

The construction of the library enabled Hope North to keep their school open, and there are hopes that the new library will also serve as an exam centre, which will allow children to take

tests there rather than having to travel alone for two hours to reach the nearest town.

Moritz Waldstein-Wartenberg ’01, Austria, left his job at Roland Berger Strategy Consultants in 2009 to launch a start-up company, Coffee Circle, with two colleagues. Coffee Circle will provide consumers with a new way of drink-ing coffee by facilitating a process where the coffee is directly sourced from co-operatives in Ethiopia, which will keep the entire supply chain in their control. Coffee will be roasted in Germany and purchased online, and all profits will be shared with the farmers in the form of projects. Moritz hopes that by linking produc-ers and consumers that his business start-up will provide an innovative model for interac-tion and transparency. They plan to go online in August of this year.

In parallel to this project, and alongside his brother, Mortitz started an NGO, Project-E, which launched New Life Community College (NLCC) in Ethiopia, providing business educa-tion to orphaned girls in Ethiopia (www.nlc-college.com). Young orphaned women often have no prospects for education past 10th grade, which often means that they are forced to work as servants or prostitutes. NLCC helps to break this cycle by training young Ethiopian women to earn their own living in a professional capacity.

Moritz says he found UWC to be “a life changing event. The two years in Montezuma provided me with the insight that you can change something—here and now—you just have to do it.”

Nono Louise Elisabeth Harhoff ’02, Denmark, works as an advisor for the Cambodian Secre-tariat of the Global Campaign for Education, building staff capacity in advocacy, commu-nication, partnerships, and liaisons, through VSO International. The Global Campaign for Education is a civil society movement that aims to hold governments accountable for their promises to provide “Education for All,” and to make sure that governments act now to deliver the right of every girl, boy, woman, and man to a free quality public education. Global Campaign for Education also runs the 1GOAL Campaign that during FIFA Football/Soccer World Cup 2010 brought together footballers, fans, charities, corporations, and individuals to advocate for education for everyone.

Nono says she has “always been interested in development and creating a more just world. My time at UWC-USA challenged and shaped me in many ways, but mostly it gave me a sense of hope: despite the enormity of this aim, this was not a naive idea. Of course I do not be-lieve that simply working in development will single-handedly change anything, but I would rather be a part of the fight-and-fail than sit around and accept defeat.”

David Hogue ’03, USA, worked as a fellow of Princeton’s service program in Asia from 2007 to 2009, teaching oral English to high school students in the commercial metropo-lis of Guangzhou, China. During this time he

also traveled throughout China and Southeast Asia. Since the fall of 2009, David has been enrolled at Nanjing University in Nanjing, China, pursuing a Master’s degree in Classi-cal Chinese literature.

David feels that his experience at UWC-USA “has had a deep influence in my personal project of cultural observation and learning. Be-ing around so many active, optimistic, multilin-gual, and adventurous classmates from all over the world for those two years made the world seem to a high degree accessible, familiar, and readily understandable. The UWC recognition of the practical need for understanding differ-ent and potentially conflicting value systems, and its corresponding discipline of imagining how people with different cultural perspectives can coexist, benefit from interaction, and thrive together, have also been, and continue to be, in-spirations and sources of guidance.”

If you would like to be featured in an up-coming Kaleidoscope issue, or if you’d like to nominate another graduate, please email [email protected].



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