Kenya Penpals

Kenya Pen Pals
In groups of two, you will be contacting and corresponding with a student attending Muhayo High School in Nyeri, Kenya. They have been busy at work on the following project regarding Kenyan culture:
“We're starting a program called the Utenzi project. Utenzi are heraldic poems from ancient Kenya, usually in celebration of some warrior or battle feat. We want to revive them in both English and Swahili, and see if we can gain insights into African culture by writing new ones. I think this dovetails quite nicely with the book you're studying (The River Between). You can see the Utenzi site at sites.google.com/site/utenziproject.”
Since this is our first time contacting the school you will need to introduce yourself. It is nice to include information about your family, interests, and community. Since this the internet age, you may also attach photos of you and your friends, family, community as well. This adds a lot to your initial contact.
For the first connection, you will be introducing yourself and starting a conversation. You can begin this conversation by asking your pen pal questions similar to the ones listed below while providing your own answers to these questions. You will both be writing your own email but can decide who will answer which of the topics below.
Adulthood
1. What is an “adult”?
2. In mainstream U.S. culture, what does a person typically need in order to become or be considered a “grown up”?
3. Are there any ceremonies in U.S. culture that mark this transition from childhood to adulthood? What are they?
4. What do most coming of age ceremonies have in common?
5. Design your own coming of age ceremony. Where would it take place? Who would be there? What would you/they do? Why? How would the actions show that you are now an adult?

Leadership
1. What is “leadership”?
2. What is a “leader”? What makes a good leader?
3. In mainstream U.S. culture, what does a person typically need in order to become a successful leader?
4. Can you think of any unsuccessful leaders? Why do you think they failed?
5. Describe an experience you had with leadership. Were you successful? How could you tell? If you had the chance to do the experience over again, what might you do differently?