Millersville biology grad heads to Africa to be a volunteer teacher and start an HIV program
By JON RUTTER
Lancaster online
December 27, 2009
The 31-year-old Lancaster woman said last week that she plans to establish a science lab at L'ecole des Sciences de Musanze, the boarding school where she'll volunteer as a biology and chemistry teacher throughout 2010.
She also wants to launch an HIV education program.
Eck, who will be working with some of the children of 1990s genocide victims, is traveling under the aegis of WorldTeach, a 23-year-old nonprofit service project based at Harvard University.
Her destination is Musanze, a northern Rwandan town in the mountains about two hours away from the capital city of Kigali.
She'll undergo about three weeks of orientation. Then, said Eck, "I'll be on my own" at the school.
She speaks not a word of Kinyarwanda, a main Rwandan tongue. She started to study Swahili, another one of the country's common languages, but is still in the beginning stages. "I can say 'The car is pink,' " she joked.
Fortunately, added Eck, there's a move in the country to teach all science courses in English. Too, the school headmaster, a priest, speaks excellent English.
She learned last week that she'll live in an apartment at the school and have access to a toilet and running water, almost unimaginable luxuries in a developing country.
"I'm very, very lucky" to have those amenities and also get a shot at bettering people's quality of life, the aspiring doctor said.
"A perfect world," she mused, "would be everyone taking care of their neighbors."
Teaching the world
WorldTeach, which operates in 19 countries, launched its Rwanda program in 2008.
The organization sent 18 teachers there last year. It's dispatching 18, including Eck, in 2010, said Becky Davis, the group's program manager for Rwanda.
"The Rwanda program is special" because many of the students are genocide orphans, Davis said.
The secondary school where Eck will be stationed has about 700 students, ages 12 to 25. She said she expects some of her charges to be HIV positive.
The disease is rampant in Africa, where cultural traditions hinder the fight against it, Eck added. "Some people think that it's not sexually transmitted or that a healer can get rid of it."
Gender inequality and discrimination against gays are among the social injustices still gripping Rwanda, Eck said, but the country has evolved light-years since mid-1990s Hutu/Tutsi tribal war stamped a violent image on the world.
"They're all Rwandans, now," she said. "There's been a really amazing policy of forgiveness."
Eck, a 1996 graduate of Penn Manor High School, said she's yearned to return to Africa since visiting Egypt with her mother as a girl and dreaming of becoming a scientist who studies apes and monkeys.
She earned a biology degree from Millersville University in 2006. Her interests were parasites, insects and infectious diseases –– all of which plague Africa.
Eck, who has tutored and taught English as a second language for the Lancaster Literacy Council, said she left her biochemist's job at Lancaster Laboratories last spring to plan the next stage of her life.
That turned out to be WorldTeach.
Eck will maintain a photo blog about her experience, emmateachrwanda@blogspot.com.
She expects to spend about $10,000 "pretty much out of pocket" while pursuing the program, she said.
But she has the support of her partner of 14 years, Ben Kreider, among others, she added. "My boyfriend is staying here to pay the mortgage."
MU faculty members are also backing her in the project.
Ryan Wagner, an assistant professor of biology who formerly taught Eck, worked with the school to donate a dozen microscopes left from Millersville State College days.
The microscopes, though old, are perfectly functional, Wagner wrote in an e-mail. Six of them magnify cells and tissues 430 times lifesize while the others are dissecting microscopes used to view larger structures, such as the surface of leaves.
Eck will lug some of the equipment herself and ship the rest, 150 pounds, in all.
She suspects she might have to build much of the science lab from scratch. "If I have to make an overhead projector" to show slides, she said, "I'll make it."
Otherwise, she said last week, she's prepped and curious.
She had her long hair cropped close. She swallowed malaria pills, bought a water purification device and packed some dressy outfits in which to teach, as befits Rwandan custom.
She plans to hike and study for her medical school exams in her free time and attend medical school when she returns.
She's excited about exploring mountain gorilla terrain with Kreider when he visits, she added.
She's prepared to give up ice cream for a year and subsist on goat meat, bananas, milk and potatoes.
She'll pick up a cell phone overseas- Rwanda is technologically advanced in that respect –– but do without computer, TV or Internet.
Leaving behind the modern "sensory barrage" for a while is not unwelcome, Eck added.
"They just move at a slower pace" in Rwanda. "It'll be a change of pace that I'm really looking forward to."
Donations to Eck's project should specify her name and be made through WorldTeach.
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Jon Rutter is a staff writer for the Sunday News. His e-mail address is jrutter@lnpnews.com.
posted by Mamadou Kouyate @ 2:48 PM
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