dear tawonga

Tawonga in 2014.

Dear Tawonga,

You are, without a doubt, one of the most important people who’s ever passed through my life. You wouldn’t be where you are today — pursuing a bachelor’s at Earth University — if I hadn’t pushed you to apply to the African Leadership Academy. And I wouldn’t be on this quest to help more African students attain the education they deserve if it weren’t for the success I had with you and Freza. We each changed each other’s lives so profoundly that I have no idea how to have a relationship with you.

We’re not friends. I was never technically your teacher, or even a mentor, really. (My role was so minimal: I just nominated you, typed up your application, and helped you get your visa.) I was your Peace Corps Volunteer. What a strange relationship.

When I try to talk to you, I feel awkward and wooden, hopelessly out of touch, like an absentee father making his monthly phone call to his ever-more-distant children. At the same time, I genuinely care about your life. I’m rooting for you. No matter what, no matter where you are, please know that I will always be sitting there in the stands with a big foam finger that says “TAWONGA #1” yelling, “You can do it! I believe in you!”

…As if you even need my encouragement. You’re one of those people who’s destined for greatness. And even though helping you and Freza is the thing I’m the most proud of in my life, I have to be careful, because you are your own person, not my accomplishment.

inner monologue

Haven’t heard from Friday in awhile. I wonder what he thinks about all this… Malawians are so polite it can be hard to know what they’re actually thinking. What would I do if Ms. Chaput decided to ride a bike across the country to help me apply to college? I’d be like… lady, what are you doing? That’s so much work! What if I couldn’t match her enthusiasm, those expectations?

No, this is different. Friday is Malawian; he grew up in a culture where it’s a thing to have American volunteers move to your village. He specifically asked me for help.

But does he really even understand what this entails? Does he really, truly want to go to college in America? If he did, wouldn’t he be contacting me more? I know he has what it takes (even though all his documentation will probably say otherwise), but does he believe that?

I keep hearing the same message from these admissions counselors: They wish they could let in students like Friday, but… and then they give me a look that says, “The money isn’t there.” And so they reject these students on the basis of SAT scores or GPA. Can Friday not be judged on his own merits? Can they really not recognize his tenacity, his potential? Are you saying you can’t educate a hard-working, motivated student? If not, what kind of school are you? Are you a school at all, or just a business?

But also like… shouldn’t Friday be the one saying this, not me?

visiting freza

“Do you remember the time you came and gave me your college essays, and you had those blisters covering half your palms from transplanting rice?”

“Yeah, I really do.”

“Those are the gnarliest blisters I’ve ever seen. And I’ve hiked the Appalachian Trail.”

Back in those days, Freza was a skinny teenager. He lived in a mud-brick house with a straw roof with his parents and seven younger siblings. His home village was a four-mile walk from Chikweo, the nearest place with electricity. He walked that road every day — even when he was hungry, even when he was sick, even when he was chased away from campus because he didn’t have school fees — because he believed that education had the power to change his life.

And it did. The last time I saw him, I had just gotten out of the Peace Corps. I did a long Greyhound trip up the east coast to visit friends and family. We met at the library on McGill’s MacDonald campus; it felt so good to hear a Malawian accent. It was February in Montréal, and the wind kicking up off the St. Lawrence River was so harsh it made my eyes water, but he was wearing a windbreaker with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows.

 “The door opens for you,” he remarked as we walked out into the bitter cold. “Back home you had to open the door, but here it opens for you.”

Compare him to the college senior sitting across from me, speaking effortless English. “Hard work” doesn’t even begin to describe how this young man got from there to here.

“What advice would you give to Friday if he gets into an American university?” I ask him now.

“It will be the hardest thing you’ve ever done,” he responds.

“Harder than transplanting rice?”

He laughs and shakes his head. “A lot harder. I had no idea what I was getting into.”

He tells me about how in his freshman year, he felt hopelessly behind. He felt stupid. The amount of work he had to put in just to catch up to everyone else was daunting.

“I hear that,” I say. “I had a 1.9 GPA after my first semester of college.”

“Really?”

“Yeah…” I shrug. “I was used to always being one of the smartest kids in my class without really having to try.”

“I felt the same way.”

“Right? But then when I got to college, it was a whole different world. All these other kids had private high school educations and tutors, all these resources I didn’t even know existed, and I was so intimidated that I decided if I couldn’t succeed, then I’d fail intentionally, and it would at least be my decision.”

He looks confused; I’m not sure if it’s the fuzzy logic or if he can’t believe that the person who helped him apply to college almost flunked out herself. What can I say? To preserve my ego, I decided that I wasn’t stupid, the system was stupid, and I was just too smart to go to class. And I still turned out okay in the end.

“That’s why I admire you so much,” I continue. “You came from a completely different world. You learned on a chalkboard. You could have given up, and no one would have faulted you, but instead you worked your ass off.”

“Yes I did,” he says. I feel a twinge of guilt. Who did I think I was, transplanting this kid, forcing him to struggle in this strange new environment?

“Was it worth it?” I ask.

Without a moment’s hesitation, he says, “Yes.”

sea change

With college enrollment down 2 million students since 2011, we may be witnessing a shift in higher education in America. Why could this be?

The price tag is one factor. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the average public university costs nearly $25,000 per year ($10k less if you live at home), and private schools charge more than twice that. Although state spending on public colleges and universities has recently seen an increase, it’s still almost $9 billion less than in 2008. The average student loan debt is around $30,000. Even a teenager who’s never lived on their own can recognize that starting out their career $30,000 in the hole probably isn’t the best investment.

Especially since bachelor’s degrees don’t guarantee jobs the way they used to. Unless you’re in a handful of specialized fields, you gotta shell out even more money for a master’s. Gone are the days of getting out of school, getting a job, and working your way up through your company; these days, careers are fluid. Skilled trades and the service industry are can be more lucrative, require less of a financial investment, and actually let workers use their bodies, rather than forcing them into a cubicle (or one of those dreadful “open offices”) under fluorescent lighting for 40 years.

But back to the sea change in higher education…

Even with tuition rates as high as they’ve been in American history, less enrollment means less revenue, which means colleges have to make budget cuts. Student programs are among the first to go, which makes the school less attractive to prospective students, further hurting enrollment. The next area to make budget cuts in institutions of higher learning? You guessed it, instructors’ salaries! As of 2017, four-year colleges devoted less than a third of their revenue to instruction. On the bright side, some reports say private schools spend 48% of tuition revenue on financial aid. On the not-so-bright side, this also includes athletic scholarships, which doesn’t exactly do much to help poor African students. 

In 1969, nearly 80% of college faculty was tenure or tenure track. But as of 2018, that number dropped to less than 30%. These days, adjuncts step in to fill the gap — a bargain for universities, costing an average of $79,000 less per year than a tenured professor. (And at the schools where Friday was applying, closer to $179,000 less.) Adjuncts make a measly $25,000 per year. That’s a shade over minimum wage. That’s, if you’ll remember from earlier in this rant, $5,000 less than the average student loan debt.

They should become administrators instead. Between 1998 and 2003, salaries for university administrators and bureaucrats have increased by 50%. And the median salary for the president of a college is $276,727.

Maybe the current generation is finally waking up to this scam. Your teachers and parents expect you to know what you want to do with your life at age 16. They promise you a future, but they’re actually just chaining you to a system. 

But in Malawi, a bachelor’s degree still means something. And one from America? It’s a golden ticket. It opens doors to high-paying jobs with nonprofits, NGOs, media, possibly even the government (although boy oh boy is the government in Malawi corrupt).

What if you educated a student who grew up in the village, who had real ties to that place, friends and neighbors and family? Who had a deep understanding of how the village works, and how it could work better? What if you gave them a hand, pulled them up to a level of society where their ideas were validated and they had access to a powerful array of resources?

Change. Change might happen.

tufts

“Can you tell me about your testing requirements?” I asked. “Do you accept the IELTS or DuoLingo? And how much do SATs factor in?”

Matt smiled proudly. “Tufts doesn’t have a standardized testing requirement.”

I put down my pen. “You’re kidding.”

“Nope.”

“THAT IS INCREDIBLE.”

“I KNOW.”

And then two geeks sat in a room and geeked out over a topic obscure even by geek standards: standardized testing requirements.

“It’s preposterous to ask a kid from the village to take a Scantron test.”

“Right! Think about how weird that answer sheet would look if you hadn’t been taking these tests since you were a kid.”

“Even the motion of filling in the bubble —”

“Right?” 

-

“Native English speakers fail the TOEFL.”

“Right. Kids in the village have no exposure to this level of English. Only the wealthy can afford tutors and classes — not that they don’t also work hard —”

“No, of course, but the student from the village who speaks proficient English does so in spite of his teachers, and that’s arguably a more impressive accomplishment.”

“Ohh my god, I’m so glad to hear you say that!”

- 

“The IELTS costs $200. That’s a fortune to a subsistence farmer.”

“It’s like 2/3 of their yearly income!”

“And fee waivers are only available through programs like EducationUSA.”

“And it’s great that those programs exist, but they only have one location. At least in Malawi it’s somewhat centrally located and fairly easy to get to. What about a huge country like Zambia?”

“Exactly!”

It was all so perfect. Here was a school that understood the limitations African students face, that seemed to have a place for them, and that understood that they could be resources, not charity cases. And their mascot is an elephant.

turning the tide

It’s been this way since I was in high school, and maybe even before that: Teenagers are expected to do it all. A diverse assortment of extracurriculars, every AP class your high school offers, good grades, high standardized test scores, community service, and an after-school job. You’re cultivating your résumé before you even have a résumé.

But this push toward creating “well-rounded students” might have an unintended consequence: fostering a shitty values system.

In response to a 2016 survey that found American high school students prioritized their own happiness and achievement over caring for others, a group of admissions officers from several elite universities took a step back. Maybe, they thought, this ideal of a “well-rounded” student was actually just a narrowly defined definition of excellence. Maybe what the world of higher education needs is fewer juggling acts and more genuinely good people. To that end, they led a campaign called Turning the Tide that emphasized quality over qualifications. 

Wanna know where people still care about each other?

Malawi.

Friday doesn’t have a long list of extracurricular activities because there aren’t extracurricular activities in rural Malawian schools. But he helped his family with the garden. He tutored his younger sisters when they were having trouble in school. He stood up for his mom when his father tried to leave her for another woman. He lent a hand when he saw strangers carrying heavy loads, offered conversation to other people waiting at the bus stop, shared his food when his friends didn’t have enough, respectfully greeted his elders, and reached out to his old English teacher over Facebook messenger, just to see how she was doing and let her know she was missed.

He did this because in Malawi, people look out for each other. Kuyenda awiri si mantha, they say. Traveling together, we cannot be afraid. Malawian culture is formulated around the idea that humans are part of a community first and individuals second. Maybe that’s why, despite being one of the poorest countries in the world, it’s also one of the most peaceful. In this age of frequent mass shootings, couldn’t America stand to learn from a culture like this? And at an institution where America’s future leaders are educated, couldn’t Friday’s perspective be a valuable resource in the search for peace?

the william kamkwamba factor

Kasungu district near Wimbe.

“What we look for from students from a disadvantaged background like Friday’s is: Are they teaching themselves?”

It’s a valid question, but it’s also an extremely tall order. It’s what I call the William Kamkwamba factor.

William Kamkwamba was a teenager from the village of Wimbe in central Malawi whose family was too broke to pay his school fees. So he did something extraordinary: Went to the library, found a book about energy, and built a windmill out of bicycle parts and garbage to provide electricity to his family’s house. He was given a scholarship to the African Leadership Academy and then to Dartmouth.

This is obviously a brilliant mind that deserves a world-class education. But there’s a counterargument that if international universities only accept William Kamkwamba-caliber students, it creates the expectation that Africans have to be superheroes in order to qualify for American universities. “William Kamkwamba built a windmill. Why didn’t Friday Ganizani build a windmill?”

To which I’d respond… did you build a windmill in high school?

am i doing the right thing?

Brooke on Ngusa Hill in 2013.

When I promised my kids I’d help them apply to American universities, I tried to be realistic with them. If they wanted even a chance, I told them, they had to get A’s and B’s in school. I also gave them a 400-page SAT study guide and told them to work through it pang’ono pang’ono (little by little).

And of course they didn’t. Who could blame them? Has anyone ever actually made it all the way through one of those SAT study guides — let alone one that’s in a foreign language, and you have no one to help you understand it?

Why are we still using the SAT anyway? Don’t we all know that it only measures a narrow kind of intelligence? And that the best way to study is to learn how the questions are trying to trick you?

As long as I was worrying about things I couldn’t change, how about this: Was I changing the social dynamic in Chikweo? How many of my former neighbors thought I was only helping Friday because I loved him best? Would there be jealousy, backlash toward his family? Not to mention I’m basically perpetuating the idea that the solution to Malawians’ problems isn’t to improve Malawi, but to flee to a foreign country.

But you know what? Friday had a dream, and I didn’t want to be the one to tell him he couldn’t chase it. Let the admissions departments make their decisions based on Friday’s ability — I was just introducing a talented student to some reputable schools. The world can be a harsh, unfair place. The one thing we can control is our own energy. So why not use it to be a force for kindness and equality?

According to the national conversation of the ’90s, I was doomed: a poor kid from a dinky farm-town with a single mother and a deadbeat dad. And as if all that weren’t bad enough, I was a girl. But I was lucky. There were adults in my life who shared their knowledge with me, directed me to resources, and used their energy to clear a path for me. I wouldn’t be who I am today if it weren’t for them.

I was determined to help Friday because I believed in him. But I was also doing it for my VSAC counselor Sean and Ms. Scott and Ms. Chaput and Ms. B-C and Mr. Trombley and everybody else who believed in me. For this crazy belief we share: Poor kids deserve to go to college too.

college admissions scandal

A view of Chikweo from Ngusa Hill.

This is one of the many hurdles would-be African college students have to clear: They come from an education system that doesn’t accurately reflect their abilities.

On the other end of the spectrum, wealthy American parents can buy grades, standardized test scores, and admission to elite universities. The most recent example comes from 2019, when 50 rich families were charged with using their money to cheat the system. Want to go to UCLA? Get in touch with soccer coach Jorge Salcedo. For $200,000, he’ll help two kids get in. The University of Southern California is pricier: $500,000 for two girls who’ve never rowed before to be accepted on the rowing team.

The ringleader of all this was William Singer, a college admissions consultant — hey, kinda like me! He and the parents agreed on a price, and then he bribed test administrators and proctors to tweak students’ SAT scores. Another of his tactics: working with a shady psychologist to falsify medical documents claiming students had disabilities so they could have more time to take the SAT. (Meanwhile, kids from the village who’ve never even seen a Scantron test get no additional time or assistance.)

But now that he’s out of the picture, the college admission process is fully transparent and scrupulous, right? Of course not. He’s just the guy who got caught. 

Wanna know what frustrates me most about all this? This whole thing went down the same year that I helped Friday apply to American universities. Some of the same schools and everything. My student’s honest efforts considered alongside all the lies and fraud and privilege. Like a minnow swimming among sharks.

represent the village

Friday and Brooke in 2013.

Unfortunately, MasterCard wasn’t doing the Scholars Program anymore. But I had a suspicion that their experiment had changed the paradigm in higher education. Maybe now colleges were more willing to take a chance on a poor kid from the village, might even be able to see that what initially looks like weakness is actually a tremendous untapped resource.

With a little research, I put together a list of schools Friday could apply to — schools like Duke, Yale, Harvard, Middlebury, and the University of Chicago. Notice a trend here? We were asking for a tremendous amount of financial aid: four years of tuition, room and board, books, spending money, and airfare from Malawi. Any school he applied to needed to have a lot of money.

Would Friday struggle in an Ivy League classroom? Absolutely. His freshman year would eclipse his previous ideas of what constituted hard work. But I believed he could do it. Imagine how much more he could learn if he ate three meals a day. If he weren’t studying by candlelight. If he had the internet and a tutor. If he didn’t have to work long hours in the garden. If his tremendous tenacity and work ethic were focused solely on school.

And just imagine what he could contribute.

Imagine the perspective he could provide in a class about international development. Or at the dinner table. Ivy League schools produce international aid workers and businesspeople and journalists and leaders. Imagine how much fuller their education would be if they learned alongside a member of the population they intend to help. Friday could be an ambassador of the village. He could humanize it, represent it.

Represent the Village. I liked the sound of that.