Plenary, 07 Jun 2006

Meeting date: Wednesday, June 7, 2006

Official Report 363KB pdf

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Time for Reflection

Good afternoon. The first item of business today, as it is every Wednesday, is time for reflection. Our time for reflection leader is Emma Campbell, a former pupil of Currie high school.

Hi. Kenya is the most spectacularly different place I have ever had the privilege to visit in my life. I had heard about Africa before on the news and in the newspapers, but I had never felt connected with it. I feel a connection now that I think will last a lifetime.

My school was nurturing a partnership with a girls' school in Chogoria near Mount Kenya, so my friend Lauren and I, along with three of our teachers, were sent as ambassadors for Scotland and for Currie high school. Chogoria is a small market town where live chickens, second-hand clothes stalls and hordes of people line the streets. The school is a sharp contrast to the disorder of the town. Pupils rise at dawn to clean the school and its grounds. The thought of me getting up that early to scrub our school toilets was unthinkable.

I had heard that the girls started class at 5 in the morning and did not finish until 9 at night. Although I had that information on good authority, I still did not believe it. Show me a teenager in Scotland who can concentrate for that length of time, because I certainly could not. Standing at a classroom window at 5 in the morning and seeing those girls working silently towards some invisible goal made me feel disgusted at my own laziness.

The two Kenyan girls who later stayed with me, Silvia and Silvanah, gave me a fresh perspective on my life, as I saw what I had through their eyes. Silvia asked me, "Why do you have a part-time job when you have everything you could possibly want?" It surprised me how difficult that question was to answer. I tried to give them a taste of Edinburgh using the most tried and tested tourist means at my disposal—a ghost tour. Feeling rather too pleased with myself, I was later brought back down to earth when they remarked, "Where were all the ghosts?"

The girls seemed most shocked to find that my male friends and other males in Scotland considered themselves equal to females. Their jaws dropped one evening as they watched my dad clear the dining-room table. It chilled me to think that these incredibly intelligent people might be forced to live lives in which they could not reach their full potential because of such a trivial thing as gender. "We are so behind, but we will catch up", they told me.

After visiting Kenya, I could see the ways in which Scotland was behind. However, I feel that things are changing and partnerships between schools in countries such as Scotland and Kenya are helping that change. Kenya is not a country to be pitied—there is an abundance of skill, talent and enthusiasm among its people—but it lacks opportunities. However, we have endless opportunities; I see that clearly now. That knowledge is what I will take from Kenya. I just hope that the Kenyan girls have taken something as valuable from me.