Jewell plans mission trip to Kenya

    Many college students take a vacation during their week off from classes in mid-March. Washington resident Alissa Jewell, who graduated from the University of Northern Iowa in December, will be going on a trip in March, but it won?t be a vacation. Jewell, the daughter of Mike and Deborah Jewell, will travel with a group of 22 people to a poor village in Kenya called Kwambekenya. The group will volunteer their time teaching the students to read, providing medical assistance and performing other labor intensive tasks to help the villagers develop.

    Jewell is leaving March 12 and will return on March 21. She will spend the first and last days of the trip almost entirely on a plane, because she will take a pair of nine-hour flights from Chicago to Amsterdam to Nairobi, Kenya.

    An organization called 410 Bridge is putting the trip together. The organization is active in 12 villages in Kenya and seeks to make the villages self-sufficient. Jewell is going with a group of people from Prairie Lakes Church in Cedar Falls, which has sent numerous teams to Kenya in the past. She said that the church encourages anyone to go, no matter what skills they bring to the table.

     ?The church believes that if you feel called to go on a mission trip, they?ll find some way to use you,? said Jewell. ?There are a couple nursing majors, and a couple education majors going on the trip. Then there are some people who are interested in working on the land. They?re willing to do the outside, manual labor. Wherever the people of Kwambekenya need us, they find someone to do that job.?

    Jewell graduated from UNI with a degree in teaching English as a second language. While she would be happy to be placed in any position, she said she hopes to teach young children.

    ?Our options are working on the land, working in the medical facility or working on the schools. I?m guessing that I?ll be in the schools,? said Jewell. ?They have a lack of preschool teachers. They don?t have any handouts. They don?t have textbooks. Their lessons are written on the walls.?

    Kwambekenya is a village composed of many people who were evicted from their homes in other communities. She said that children comprise nearly half the population of the village, which is 4,800.  

This will not the first time Jewell has traveled overseas. She taught English as a second language in Europe last fall. She taught English in a middle school in Austria for two months, educating not only Austrians but students from 55 different countries. She then taught English at a boarding school in Switzerland for two months. She said it was difficult to teach students who had many different native languages.

    ?In one of my classes, I had a student who grew up speaking French, another who spoke Turkish, one from Japan and two from Russia,? said Jewell. 

    The language barrier may be an issue for Jewell in Kenya. The official languages of the country are English and Swahili. Jewell said that most of the children in Kwambekenya grow up speaking a third language called Kikuyu. Because of her experience teaching English to non-natives, Jewell is familiar with how to communicate a message by using more than words.

?You have to use actions and pictures to help them learn the language,? said Jewell. ?Luckily, these are the kind of learners I?m used to and I love working with them. I hope this is what I get to do in Kenya.?

    Jewell said that her boyfriend went on the very same trip to Kenya last summer. Even after just 10 days in Kenya, she said he had a difficult time readjusting to American life.

For the full article, see our Jan. 22 print edition.