Humanity Looks Good on Everyone: Outreach for Autism in Africa

Woman's voice: Tanzania is a whole new world for me. I didn't know what to think before I came. I was very open-minded but I didn't have any expectations or anything. Just the people, they live the simple life and they are fine with it, they don't live above and beyond like we do in America. And it's just so neat to see them live their life the way they do and are completely fine with it.

Woman's voice: All it takes is listening to one of the students that's been here previously tell their story about what they learned and how much they grew from the experience here in Tanzania and it's like once you get hooked, you want to keep coming back again.

Woman's voice: I just kind of fell in love with the whole idea of the trip and all of the ideas everyone had for it and it didn't take too long to hook me.

Woman's voice: Just makes you think that you don't need, you know, three-fourths of what you have in your home when you come here and see that they can live on such small terms.

Woman's voice: The children are so beautiful and their singing and the earnestness it just really does touch you.

Woman's voice: Just seeing how happy and excited the kids were to see us and being able to just interact with them was really awesome.

Dr. Marilyn Kaff, Associate Professor of Special Education, Kansas State University: Five summers ago, a colleague that I had gone to graduate school with decided that we wanted to do something adventurous. And so, the previous summer we had been to a conference that was dedicated to helping special education professionals make a difference in the world. And so, I went to Tanzania to a college to teach a two-week course in inclusive school practices. And I became so intrigued with the people in Tanzania and the special needs education, I knew that I had to go back. Then it prompted me to want to see what more I could do, and I knew that if in my mid-50s, I didn't start getting back then when was I going to start doing it?

Valarie Evans, Management Instructor, Kansas State University College of Business Administration: You know, originally I came because it was just another adventure. You know, I was coming along, and I was going to help her with a workshop but I'm not special education, I'm business. So, it was just a chance to see another part of the world. During that first trip, we visited a school named [inaudible] and it was a school with a lot of needs with special needs children, but the school is not in that good of shape. And so, it really created this urgency for me to do something to make life different for those students at school. And there's just something about this part of the world and the people in the world too that draws you back again and again.

AJ (Ashley) MacEwen, Senior in Special Education, Kansas State University: I've wanted to go to Tanzania since I was 12. My dad went and it's just been one of those places I really wanted to experience. Nothing had really worked out and I was in Dr. Kaff's class and she mentioned a trip and it was special ed. It was a literacy project, it was Tanzania. So, I was all in, I didn't know where the money was coming from or anything, but I was gonna go.

Amber Engelbert, Senior in Special Education, Kansas State University: And when she presented the trip, it just sounded like a lot of fun and a good way to experience education in a different view.

Ellen Goldak, Senior in Special Education, Kansas State University: And so she had just made the announcement that she does these special education service-learning trips in Tanzania. And so, she just asked anyone who was interested to stay after and so I stayed.

Kari Coen, Senior in Elementary Education, Kansas State University: Africa was somewhere I'd always been very interested in visiting and exploring and discovering what it's all about, I guess.

Mindy Fischer, Senior in Special Education, Kansas State University: Dr. Kaff was my professor and she opened the opportunity up and we started having meetings to go to Tanzania and we started talking about it. And I was very interested. I decided I was going to Africa, going to Tanzania and doing work over there.

Nicole Maupin, USD 383 Special Education teacher and former Kansas State University graduate student: I wanted to come back this year because there was a lot more people, I feel like we could make more of a change perhaps. And also, I was kind of anxious to experience what it would be like for them to be in my shoes as I was three years ago and see their excitement for seeing some of the things that we get to see and do here.

Dr. Marilyn Kaff: Humanity Looks Good on Everyone is our attempt to focus attention on the needs of students with special needs in Tanzania and to emphasize the need for teacher training, for outreach to find the children with disabilities and to help their parents and the community provide services for them. I love children with autism. I knew I could make a difference and so I recruited the first group to go over and we went to two different schools. We saw how incredibly underfunded and under-resourced the classroom was. And the fact that we were able to work with the children and the teachers, we spent the morning working with the children, and the afternoon doing teacher training. And literally both groups hung on our every word. They saw us as being the experts even though we didn't necessarily have all of the answers.

We had more answers than they did at that particular point in time, but I think we took more away from it than the teachers and the students in that we saw that we could begin to work together to build a partnership, to really build the capacity of Tanzanians to work with their special needs population. It wasn't gonna be something that we tried to impose from the west, it was more to the point we needed to help them find the answers to working with students with special needs that were specific and concrete for them to do in Tanzania.

Nicole Maupin: The first year that we were there, there was a little boy there who had no verbal communication skills and hardly any nonverbal communication skills like many of the other children. And he just kind of had this blank stare on his face the whole time we were there. And Marilyn and I, and a couple of other colleagues that we had been with were meeting in a room and he walked in and I pulled him onto my lap. And just immediately started balling because I knew how much they needed help. These kids, their parents, you know, don't know much about the disability and they don't know how to help, it's very new to the doctors even over there so they don't know how to help and obviously the teachers are just unaware of how to work with these children to benefit them.

And so, it was just kind of overwhelming to me that we have so much knowledge here and that I could go to college for four years and learn all of these things. And we only have so much time over there to help them and we don't even... It's hard to know where to start but just being with the kids and having him on my lap really brought it home of why we were there. And, you know, little by little, each time that we've been there, we were able to do something different and just, you know, an inch is a mile really to them, an inch to us as a mile to them.

Mindy Fischer: I thought Shanga Shanga was amazing. I thought that it provides so many opportunities for people who people underestimate and choose not to employ. And just the whole, like, hearing about all of the different things that they make and just it's such a cool experience to go through and look at everything and to know that it's all recycled materials and that they, you know, burn it down and mold it into something new and they mix it all together and the products they come up with from, like, the gift store and everything are just incredible. To go and see the process of it and then to go to the store afterwards and see the final product was incredible.

They were also willing to show you what they were doing, and they were very proud of what they were doing and that's what makes me smile because if you're proud of what you're doing, then you're having fun and you're enjoying it. And sometimes I think in our education, you know, we push knowing, you know, math or, you know, certain subjects that maybe the students are interested in, but these students were very proud of what they were doing and they liked it.

Ashley MacEwen: Shanga Shanga was like stepping into a different world, it reinforced the idea that all people have value to me. I think sometimes I get in the mindset that children are limited by their disability and Shanga Shanga was just another awesome reminder that no child is limited by anything. The glass blowing was amazing.

Ellen Goldak: It was so cool being able to see the people who are disabled make all those amazing things and they were so pretty. And you would never have guessed that, you know, they were different than you or I.

Ashley MacEwen: Irente Children's school was a win, win situation, it offered training to young girls, it was like a vocational school. Offered them training so they would have a way to provide for themselves and their families. And it also provided homes for children that needed them. The orphanage itself has around 30 children that they're serving and about three and under.

I think seeing the passion that the people have, I did break down crying there as they were thanking us for our donations and our support. And I think that got to me the most because we're there for two weeks, we're there for, you know, a couple of days playing with the kids and taking our pictures and having fun. They're there every day in and out and they're working so hard. And for them to be thankful for, you know, the pocket change that we donated and the day that we spent, it was just really meaningful to me to see how selfless and how passionate about the work they're doing.

Kari Coen: That service was absolutely breathtaking. I thought it was an amazing place and hearing about the background prior to going Dr. Kaff and some of the children's stories they're hearing about them before going made it that much more of a moving experience being there and actually getting to interact with the kids and seeing, you know, putting names with faces and seeing...or the stories with faces as well, and seeing the children and getting to play with them and it was an awesome experience. And then the service at the end when we were doing coffee and tea and they came in and singing it was breathtaking and it was a very moving experience to be in there and see how much just being there and being with the children, how much it affects them as well as affecting as.

I think one of the best experiences I've had is the school for the blind. It was amazing just to see the students walk around all over the campus without anybody, you know, guiding them, they didn't have sticks, they didn't have the material things that we have in America, they didn't need that. They were able to discover things by themselves and when they sing again, that was just beautiful. They didn't need a big music room and, you know, great walls to make them sound beautiful, they just, you know, they sang from their heart, it sounded like, and they were very happy that we were here and they were welcoming and to have us come back.

Valarie Evans: They were singing "Jesus Loves Me" as a group. And Marilyn said, you know, I've heard that song before, but the children are so beautiful and their singing and their earnestness it just really does touch you. But just watching the girls too on the braille machines and their skill and knowing that if that school weren't here, that they may not have been able to develop that ability to read and communicate and learn in that way. And that school is testing using the same tests that they use and the same exams that they use for schools without hearing impairment. So they are teaching those children so that they can function in the world and go on.

Ellen Goldak: The Irente Rainbow School was my favorite and definitely affected me the most. Just seeing how happy and excited the kids were to see us and being able to just interact with them was really awesome.

Mindy Fischer: As soon as you walked in the front gate, they all would run up to you and give you big hugs, and they were just so excited to see you and so excited to take pictures with you. And they don't get much interaction with outside people from their own culture and I think it's just great to see them interact with us and our professors and just the way they interact with themselves. We were told that some of them were orphans and it's just really sad to see these little kids but they have everything they need right there and they have great classrooms, and that was just amazing to see like where they were actually learning and to be excited about going to school every day.

Kari Coen: Thomas at the Rainbow School, I went to Rainbow School was, I mean, I got out of the truck when we were just entering into the Rainbow School and immediately he just ran up and tackled me. And it was probably the warmest welcome I've ever received from anyone let alone children or any, you know, I didn't even know him. And he was so outgoing and intelligent and he would just come over and sit next to you and want to talk to you and want to get to know you. And he's the prime example of a student that people would brush aside or overlook.

Ashley MacEwen: In the actual school itself there was a mural that one of the boys brought me to show me he was very proud of it and he wanted to show it off. And essentially what it said was this work that you're doing here is important so stand up and do it. And so that again is just the passion that comes through these places and the work that these people are doing, it was just a great feeling, it made you feel energized and want to do more.

Dr. Marilyn Kaff: In Tanzania, most teachers start teaching with just a primary and secondary education. Once they're done with secondary school, if they pass the final exam they can become teachers. There are limited examples or limited places for teachers to get further training. So what we could bring to the table was our knowledge, our skills, and our experience, and help them build their knowledge, skills, and experience so that they can train other teachers. We want to use a trainer of trainers model with our guidance and collaborating together to build a better teacher training school.

The original effort was to do teacher training, and that still continues to be my major emphasis. And as the needs of the college have changed, I've changed my focus as well. The first year was just a basic course in behavior management for teachers. The second time we came back it was to do an in-service for teachers in the area and it was the first time that special education and general education teachers have been trained together. Last year, I was asked to do a seminar on autism practices, autism interventions for a select group of the first-year students and that was very successful. And then this year [inaudible] focus was on the idea of literacy and providing some resources to the teachers that had graduated from Sukuko and were out working in very resource-poor schools.

It started out as just some talking points about how could we develop some books or how could we develop some programs that would be useful to them, to the children at the particular schools that we were at. And one of the things that came about was the fact that there were no children's books in Swahili. The children didn't really see themselves in the books that they read, most of the books were either in English or they pictured children that didn't look like the kids that are here.

And I learned through other international trips that I've done that it's really important for the local kids to see themselves in the books that they read. So with the work of volunteers here in Tanzania and many people back in Kansas, we were able to publish our first children's book in Swahili "CHURA NA JONGOO," the centipede and the frog. What started out as an experiment has really blossomed into an idea that we really want to nurture and see it grow. And we see this as just the first of many, many more books that we would really like to be able to bring back to the children in Tanzania. One of my favorite things this summer was that we were able to meet with Mama Mdemuwho is in charge of the children's home and she told us the grandmother's stories. So as a result, we have five new stories from this trip and it's our goal to have them translated, illustrated and published into books next summer so that we can take them back to the children of Tanzania.

Every summer, Nicole Maupin and I have this discussion, are we coming back next year? Oh, you know, we've done about as much as we can, probably we've done, you know, just some incremental change and we've worked real small. Well, at last summer, quite frankly, I made the decision I wasn't coming back. And then Patrice Scott mentioned that she would like to do a piece in Connections, and I agreed to that thinking that that would be kind of the culmination and it would, you know, it would be a nice ending. And then I mentioned the trip to my exceptional student's class and several hands went up. Everyone you see here today was in that class. And they said, oh, we're really interested. I'm thinking, oh, okay, well maybe. I said, let's have a meeting after class in two weeks and we'll see what the interest is. I was thinking, you know, two, three, four, oh no, no, no. There were 13 people that were originally interested in the trip. I think okay well, if there's that much interest, we probably should try to go through student's study abroad. Then the article in the K-State Connections led to another article in the Collegian and things just kind of took off from there.

Then Allison calling from the Segel Family Foundation saying, you know, "We might be interested in giving you some money." Getting an email from Barry Segal about three days ago, saying that he's giving us $10,000. The thing that really got it for me was when we did an autism workshop and we took the students, we taught them how to use the childhood autism rating scale. We went to [inaudible] school and each group of about four or five students was assigned a student to watch and to practice during the course they got into it. It was so exciting and fun to see them actually use it. And then when I got home, probably five or six students said, we're gonna use the course in our classroom, they'd started an outreach project based on kind of what we had done. And I think that probably was the ultimate turning point to say, yeah, I guess I'm really not finished yet. What inspires me with these students is that they're so much more attentive and they soak up the information even with the language barrier they get it.

Ellen Goldak: I think a trip like this helps people going into the field just because you get to experience so much and you actually get to teach people who are already teachers, which is pretty amazing, I think.

Mindy Fischer: Something that I would take from this workshop when I was teaching the teachers was to explain things. It's really hard to communicate and I will take that back with me to my classroom as I'll have students that it will be hard for me to communicate with. And there's just multiple ways and I will definitely think back to this and think back if they don't understand what I'm saying, how else can I explain it?

Nicole Maupin: I think that this experience has made me a better teacher because it's made me realize that three-fourths of the things that are in my classroom are probably not necessary. They make do with very little and are still able to educate their children just as well as we are and get them through to even the university level with a small amount of materials.

Kari Coen: Well, it shows a completely different side of education going in and seeing those classrooms and seeing, you know, in the U.S. technology is such a huge aspect in our classrooms and it's all about the latest program and the latest device and how you can incorporate that, and I think those are awesome. It's so interesting to take you back to the basics and being in those classrooms where it's a chalk and a chalkboard.

Amber Engelbert: I think it had started, you know, very small back five years ago when Dr. Kaff came and each year it just keeps getting a little bigger and, you know, doing those small things to make a change in everyone's lives.

Dr. Marilyn Kaff: It's affected my life in that I am much more reflective in my teaching. I try to be much more aware of how much I have at home and how much they don't have over here, and I try to balance that out. I think I'm more generous than I used to be. I think I am more compassionate than I used to be, it's opened me up in ways that I don't even know yet. I have learned to be open because as I said, I didn't think I was ever coming back again and it was like God tapped me on the shoulder and said, you know, I don't think you're quite done with Tanzania yet. And every year it grows and expands and changes and I try to be open to that growth so I can continue to grow and expand and change. Quite frankly, it's the rest of my life that I prepare to do this every summer, this is kind of like the icing on the cake of my work.