Three Teachers Head To Ghana—

A Return To Buduburam For RIS Teacher Karen King

By Martha Coville

Reed Intermediate School teacher Karen King returned to Ghana on Sunday, February 17. Ms King has made several previous trips to the West African country, working with the more than 35,000 Liberian refugees living in the Buduburam refugee camp.

Maryann Sniekus, who teaches applied technology at the Newtown High School, and Barbara Mancher, also a sixth grade teacher at Reed School, accompanied Ms King on her trip. They plan to return on Tuesday, February 26.

The three teachers plan to focus their efforts on three projects. With the help of Reed School music students, Ms King raised money to provide school supplies for children in the camp. She will help build a water purification system for the camp, too, without which many children fall ill to waterborne diseases. Finally, Ms King plans to expand on the pen pal program she previously established between her own students and those in the refugee camp schools.

Ms King explained that schools in Buduburam do not provide students with school supplies, and that many students cannot afford to purchase them themselves. The music department at Reed School stepped in to help during the winter concert series in January.

Cleo Fellows-Conk, a sixth grader who plays the bass violin in the school orchestra, said, “At every concert, we made an announcement asking for donations.” Michelle Hiscavitch, music director for the district, said that the fundraiser was undertaken as part of Reed School’s Caring Community program. “Over the course of four nights, the music students raised $1,000,” she said.

Ms King, who teaches the sixth grade, said that she will also be joining other volunteers in Buduburam to help install a “simple, inexpensive water purification system.” Children, whose immune systems are less developed than those of adults, are especially susceptible to waterborne illnesses.

Finally, Ms King says she is very excited about the disposable cameras she will be bringing with her. “It’s about photography as a tool for communication,” she said. Her student, Cleo, says the new program is called “Eye to Eye.” Ms King says she hopes the cameras will bring her students closer to their pen pals in Buduburam schools, with whom they already exchange letters.

Inspired By An Oscar

Ms King will supply students in the camp with disposable cameras, just as she has done for her own students at Reed. The students, though separated by a 5,000-mile ocean, will complete the exact same assignment. “It’s like a scavenger hunt,” she said. “I asked them to photograph something that makes them feel scared, something that makes them feel happy, to take a picture of what they eat for dinner.”

Ms King said her Eye to Eye program was inspired by the 2004 documentary Born into Brothels. In the film, which won an Academy Award for Best Documentary, directors Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman similarly gave disposable cameras to a group of children raised in Calcutta’s red light district.

 As the title implied, Ms Briski’s and Mr Kauffman’s students were the children of prostitutes. They lived in cramped one-room apartments, and could not afford to attend school. Under Ms Briski’s tutelage, however, they began to take surprisingly good pictures. More importantly, they found their own particular, individual voices. Several used their portfolios to obtain scholarships to good schools.

Ms King hopes that she can help the students in Buduburam gain their own voices. She also wants her own students in Reed to learn about everyday life in a refugee camp.

Buduburam is about 27 miles west of the Accra, the capital city of Ghana. The camp was opened by the United Nations in 1990. Elementary and middle school-aged children were born there, and have no knowledge of Liberia, the country from which their parents fled during two civil wars in the 1990s.