Remarkable Experiences

Stanley award recipients share their stories
by Lini Ge

Six University of Iowa undergraduate and graduate students who received Stanley Scholarships and Grants for International Research traveled to different parts of the world in the summer of 2007 and all returned to Iowa with fruitful experiences.

Some of the students arrived to their sites equipped with foreign language skills and abundant knowledge of the area. Others were surprised by unique local cultures and had to go through cultural adjustments.

Their research processes were not always fun. Being sick, working in 115-degree heat, and living in places with scarce electricity and running water would probably make any travel-abroad experience memorable. But still, many of the students said they gained a much better understanding of their research topics at the end of the trips.

Below, students Irund A-Wan, Andrew McDowell, Kate Karacay, David Riep, Nicole Alexander and Elinathan Ohiomoba share their remarkable experiences from the summer of 2007.

Irund A-Wan - Yavina, Peru

Irund A-Wan, like other civil engineering students in the UI College of Engineering, is required to do a final design project before graduation. But unlike most students who bring the projects to class for discussions and never put them into practice, A-Wan, together with four friends, helped build a bridge in Yavina, a remote village in southeastern Peru, last summer.

“My team and I wanted to do something in the developing world, meaning that we would not only be involved in a senior design project, but also helping people in need,” said the senior civil and environmental engineering major. “We were looking for tangible results.”

A-Wan said the idea of constructing a footbridge in Yavina struck him when he heard about some tragic stories of the local children. Located over the peaks of the Andes mountain range, Yavina is roughly “three hours’ walk from the closest computer and nine hours’ drive from the nearest airport,” A-Wan said. About 150 children, all under the age of 12, go to school in Yavina. Many of them walk nearly two hours before arriving to school and have to cross as many as three rivers en route. In the last two years, three children have died as they were trying to cross the river.

The Continental Crossings Team formed by A-Wan and his friends traveled to Yavina in November 2006 to conduct a preliminary survey for the bridge. The team was responsible for creating drawings and an erection manual for bridge replication, as well as on-site surveying, material selection and the resulting design that was constructed by a local mason and volunteer community labor.

The team worked closely with Bridges to Prosperity, a volunteer-based charity that seeks to empower poor African, Asian and South American rural communities through footbridge building. A-Wan and his teammates also received support from a local nongovernmental organization, Ayuda en Acción. The two NGOs helped find materials for the bridge and transportation from Lima – the capital of Peru – to Yavina. The NGOs also organized meetings between the team and local government officials and the community. They also facilitated discussions between local professors and the team for future joint projects.

A-Wan and his teammates started the design process in January 2007 and concluded at the end of February. The plans were sent to Peru in March. The community immediately launched the foundation construction. A-Wan’s team returned to Yavina on May 17 and helped with the completion. By June 7, 2007, the bridge was inaugurated.

On the day of inauguration, A-Wan and his teammate, Ryan Wallace, were invited to “christen” the bridge by breaking alcohol bottles on either end as a grand opening. According to A-Wan, the locals repeatedly called him and his teammates heroes. Angonieta Rayan Huamami, the principal of a local school, approached A-Wan with pictures of one of the drowned children being pulled out of the river. She said to A-Wan, who was known to the village as Sergio, “Sergio, I want you to keep these pictures.” With his eyes filled with tears, A-Wan said to the principal that the child’s parents might not let him take the pictures. But the principal said, “Yes they would, because they know what you have done for us.”

A-Wan said that the experience in Yavina granted him much more than he expected.

“Only after the bridge was completed I realized that our presence in the community was as important, if not more so than the actual product. Teams of international aid workers, whether they are bridge engineers, health care workers or Rotarians, should all be prepared to listen to and learn from their communities and let go of the idea that they know the answers,” A-Wan said. “Truly collaborative work results in the best product and although I feel that I was unable to accomplish some of my original goals for the trip, I walked away having gained more from them than I could ever have given.”

While A-Wan was contributing to the completion of the bridge, he also took efforts to evaluate Bridges to Prosperity’s design process and to create an improved methodology with which future bridges will better serve local needs. The main goal of A-Wan’s research was to “create a methodology of incorporating local input in the material and design selection, as well as a curriculum for incorporating education into the construction sessions to enable the local community to replicate similar bridges with the assistance of local university students, without depending on international intervention.”

A few weeks after he left Yavina, A-Wan received a letter from Ayuda en Acción informing him that the local government has approved the construction of six more bridges similar to the one he and his teammates designed and helped the local people build.

Andrew McDowell - Hatipura, North India

When Andrew McDowell returned to Iowa from a field trip in Hatipura, a small village in Rajasthan, North India, he had to try to mentally separate the two lives – one in Iowa and the other in Hatipura.

“As most people in Hatipura live their whole day on less money than I spend on a morning coffee, it was very hard to compare the two,” said the senior anthropology and international studies major in the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

McDowell spent two months last summer in Hatipura investigating health perceptions and access to medical care in rural areas.

He said his research was originally inspired by the people in his hometown of Iowa Falls.

“I am inspired by the people from my own rural community who have had to fight to keep good health care in our area and prevent widening health care disparities between rural and urban areas. So for this reason I wanted to look at a rural area and see how this disparity affects others in the world and how they deal with these disparities,” McDowell said. “I feel very passionately that health care is a human right and a responsibility of any good government.”

The government hospital that serves Hatipura’s county is nearly empty, according to McDowell. In Hatipura, there is a government nurse/midwife, who is frequently called away to other areas when those areas are short on staff, leaving Hatipura’s small health center locked behind her. Many people in the village do not like the nurse since she is not in the village often and tends to treat people in a hostile manner. Instead, some people choose to visit a Bengali doctor, who claims to be from West Bengal and trained in some medical care there. Aside from these two practitioners, there is a folk corps of faith healers who use religious beliefs to treat patients and herbalists who cure illness with local plants or by burning the skin in areas of chronic pain.

One major challenge McDowell faced during his research was how to approach the practitioners and villagers with appropriate questions. He started off by getting permission from the local government and talking to the nurse and the Bengali doctor about his research. Then he approached many villagers with a set of questions about heath and health care perceptions. McDowell said he had to be conscious of what he was asking his subjects.

“I had to constantly adjust my questions so that people would not get sick of talking to me about certain topics and build on and verify the information I had learned from the previous person.”

He tried to pick his informants more systematically by making a map of the village with people who knew more about local health. He plotted every house, health provider and place of religious healing, as well as midwives, faith healers, village leaders and practitioners of traditional medicine. He also discussed health perceptions and access-related issues in greater depth with a group.

He said he benefited greatly from the trip in terms of how to conduct ethnographic research.

“I learned that sometimes people do not conceptualize things the way the researchers do and the researchers are the ones who must change their angles to understand more about their topics,” he said.

McDowell said he also learned that even though many Westerners view biomedicine as the best option of medical treatment, people from other parts of the world might have a different take. Though most Westerners do not see a Bengali doctor, who usually used only a few treatments, primarily IV fluids for diarrhea and malaria treatments for any fever symptoms as the most effective treatment, many people in Hatipura do.

“From a Western perspective they do not seem to be very effective, but people trust them as healers more than the nurse, who is viewed as not even smart enough to give an injection,” McDowell said. “It is our responsibility to understand that not everyone holds our own views. And also understand that many people do not go to biomedical doctors, however it does not mean they do not prefer them. Instead we need to be interested in medicine they use and see if there are reasons people cannot access biomedicine.”

Kate Karacay - Antalya, Turkey

When Kate Karacay went to Antalya, Turkey, to conduct her research on the problem of human trafficking this summer, she did not expect much surprise. The master’s student in interdisciplinary studies with an emphasis in international studies in the UI Graduate College is married to a Turkish scientist and has been to Turkey four times. But she was taken aback on this trip.

“I was surprised by how many hotels in Antalya front as illegal brothels,” Karacay said. “There were several small hotels near my brother-in-law’s home that I discovered were also illegal brothels and I had no idea I was walking past them everyday. These small hotels were losing business to bigger, fancier resorts and had turned to illegal prostitution to keep afloat financially.”

Karacay said her research was prompted by her interest in the phenomenon of human trafficking and the human rights abuses manifested in its perpetuation. She has also worked on human trafficking problems in Iowa, serving as an advocate for the Iowa anti-trafficking law that went into effect last year.

Karacay spent most of May and June 2007 in Antalya. She also visited government officials in Ankara, the capital city of Turkey. The focus of her research was how women’s groups, international organizations such as the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and the Turkish government create policy on dealing with human trafficking in Turkey.

“Addressing the realities of prostitution and irregular migration is crucial to realistically dealing with human trafficking and dealing with it in a way that does not create new human rights abuses,” Karacay said.

While at Antalya, Karacay and her 4-year-old twin daughters stayed with her husband’s family. The city was caught up in one of the worst heat waves in 80 years, with temperatures above 115 degrees during the day and staying in the 90s at night, and air conditioning was not the norm but “a precious commodity,” according to Karacay.

Despite the heat, Karacay tried to interview as many people as she could, including a human trafficking program coordinator with the IOM; a representative from the Human Resources Development Foundation, an organization that runs a trafficking shelter in Istanbul; and members of the Turkish government. She also corresponded with representatives of the Women’s Solidarity Foundation, which runs the human trafficking shelter in Ankara.

By the end of her research, Karacay had concluded that governments need to work closely with civil society to address the problem of human trafficking. More importantly, NGOs and governments need to be sensitive to the causes and realities of irregular migration and illegal prostitution.

“People are going to move to wherever they can make a better life for themselves. Many organizations and governments look at human trafficking through a narrow lens of ‘rescue the victim and punish the trafficker.’ It’s not that simple,” Karacay said. “There is a lot of gray area in dealing with human trafficking, prostitution and irregular migration. Laws and aid programs must look more holistically at the experiences of irregular migration to prevent further human rights problems such as laws that punish foreign prostitutes and police that fine foreign prostitutes and workers that have overstayed their visas.”

Karacay said she learned a lot about the challenges of researching human rights problems overseas this summer. “If I ever do it again, I will feel much more confident and prepared,” she said.

David Riep - South Africa & Lesotho

David Riep, a doctoral student in art history, specializing in African art, in the School of Art and Art History, took nearly 4,000 photographs of South Sotho art objects, murals and artists during his trip to South Africa and Lesotho last summer.

“I gathered more material than anyone has ever gathered on Basotho art,” Riep said.

During his seven-week trip, Riep visited 13 museums, galleries and art institutions in seven cities, collecting images and conducting preliminary research for his dissertation on the South Sotho art.

“This research is necessary because no one has done any extensive research on the art of the South Sotho,” Riep said.

Riep said he was inspired to pursue the topic after working with a nongovernmental organization in the Free State province in South Africa between 2000 and 2002, where he worked with homeless Basotho boys and took an interest in their culture.

The murals Riep has photographed, which are part of an even larger collection of artwork, have impressed him the most. “Finding them is like a treasure hunt. You just drive into the country and scout around the huge plots of farmland until you stumble upon one,” Riep said. “It is amazing because they are always different – different patterns, different colors – and unique to each artist.”

The Brenthurst collection at the Johannesburg Art Gallery, which, according to Riep, is probably the finest collection of southern African art in the world, was another memorable photo shoot.

“It was amazing to see and touch the actual pieces that I’ve read about for so many years,” Riep said.

Riep said he also enjoyed observing ordinary people who incorporate art into their daily life. He talked to women who painted their houses, and filmed Linky Nhlapo, an elderly Basotho woman who was practicing the art of pot making.

Although Riep conducted extensive field research for his master’s thesis on the art of the South Sotho culture in South Africa and Lesotho in 2003, which led to his master’s thesis on art in South Sotho culture, he still found that he was challenged with the task of “sifting through 19th century Western aesthetic biases.”

“The Sotho, unlike their Western counterparts, did not create any institutions through which to distinguish fine and functional arts,” Riep said. “There were no shrines, sacred installations or hallowed performance pieces that distinguished the objects as dwelling in a separate realm beyond the commonplace.”

Yet, Riep said he identified a complete range of Basotho art forms throughout the trip and has discovered some type of repetition in all types of art.

“The decorative patterns are usually very symmetrical and usually repeat a single shape or design throughout,” Riep said. “There is also a very strict sense of order – every shape has its place within a system. There are no random shapes or designs ‘floating’ on a surface.”

Riep said his research trip last summer was a preliminary one to gather images, where he also made important contacts in the museum and academic circles, as well as Basotho friends. He plans to return next year to conduct interviews with Basotho individuals regarding the history, use and meanings behind the art objects.

“This will help me to develop a well-rounded art history for the South Sotho, which will include customs, beliefs and oral history,” Riep said. “I hope to use this information to write my dissertation and publish the first catalogue raisonné of South Sotho art to date. The catalogue will present a complete range of art and their contextual and historical importance.”

Nicole Alexander - Tanzania

Nicole Alexander, a senior pre-med and international studies major with emphases in global health and African studies in CLAS, spent seven weeks in Tanzania researching the complications of pregnancy in the rural parts of the country.

During her time there, she traveled throughout the country with her boyfriend Brad Wilson, a senior psychology and pre-med major, getting used to the customs and native language while staying at the home of her Swahili teacher from Iowa, visiting homes in different villages and interning at a government hospital through an nongovernmental organization based out of Iowa.

“Almost every day I experienced something I didn’t expect,” she said.

In one instance, Alexander was taught and sent to deliver babies on her own at the hospital. Another time, Alexander and Wilson visited a local orphanage with only a tarp for a roof and sticks as toys for more than 100 children. They sadly faced the reality of Africa when the doctor with whom Alexander was conducting research with died of a heart attack. Alexander said he might have survived with proper emergency medical treatment.

Alexander learned from her research that as of 2000, Tanzania has the sixth highest maternal mortality rate in the world at 1,500 per 100,000 live births. Most of the complications experienced in Tanzania are related to the environment, lifestyles, access to a maternity clinic and cultural practices and beliefs. Though the women of each village experienced similar complications, the difficulties varied from village to village.

“Most surprising to me was that, with proper education, most of these complications could be avoided and better treated,” Alexander said. “Better health education through access to maternity clinics in Tanzania is a big step to decreasing the maternal mortality rates.”

Alexander and Wilson also made public health visits to homes in different villages with other students volunteering with the NGO. They discovered that in most cases, people had never been visited by a community health care worker or a doctor before. On the visits, they taught people basic hygiene, the importance of boiling water, how to build latrines, and the benefits of not sleeping in the same area as their livestock. They also set up local clinics to treat patients.

During free time, Alexander observed and enjoyed the Tanzanian culture.

“The culture was so different than in America which made this trip so unique,” she said. “The transportation was usually a ‘dala dala,’ which was basically as many people as one could pack into a 10-to-30-year-old van that broke down daily. In some places roads were obsolete so I learned quickly that the pace in Africa is ‘polepole’ – very slow! There is virtually no sense of time or urgency.”

Unfortunately, Alexander had to cut her trip short after she contracted malaria and amebic dysentery. Under the urging of her parents and the physician whom she works for at UI Hospitals and Clinics, she returned to Iowa early.

“I was disappointed and it was hard to come home to say the least,” Alexander said. “But, I still had a wonderful time and enjoyed the whole experience.”

Despite the setback, Alexander said she benefited “enormously” from the trip.

“I can easily say that this trip changed my life,” she said. “It changed the way I live my daily life, as I am now not only thankful for the material possessions that I have, but also aware of how little I can live off of. Seeing African culture has shown me how important it is to be proud of my culture and background, as I have seen how Africans embrace theirs.”

Alexander said she hopes to travel back to Tanzania next summer and get more students from Iowa involved. She plans on attending an osteopathic medical school next year with a dream of starting an orphanage or medical clinic as a physician in Tanzania.

Elinathan Ohiomoba - Lourdes, France

Elinathan Ohiomoba, a Master of Fine Arts student in fiction writing at the UI Writers’ Workshop, went to Lourdes, France, last summer to gather information for her novel about a visionary. The focus of Ohiomoba’s research was to recreate the cultural and social network of Bernadette Soubirous, a 19th-century Senegalese-French woman who saw visions of Mary 18 times during her life.

What fascinated Ohiomoba were the town itself and the thriving tourism economy prompted by Soubirous’ legendary life story. Lourdes has the second largest number of hotel rooms among cities in France. The main street has souvenir stores jammed up against each other as well as stalls selling Soubirous’ pictures, rosaries, icons and other religious memorabilia. Restaurants and hotels serve pilgrims from all over the world.

“There is an interesting dynamic that speaks to a modern idea of the pilgrim that is also great for fiction: hordes of people looking for the same thing but still sequestered in their own worlds,” Ohiomoba said. “The structure of my novel is set up this way: a whole cast of characters whose lives intersect only because they’re after the same experience.”

During her stay at Lourdes, Ohiomoba visited the Mill, where Soubirous spent her childhood, and the Cachot, which was the prison cell where Soubirous’ family stayed when they were very poor. She also visited a few museums that focus more on Soubirous’ religious life and was intrigued by newspapers published at the time of the revelations.

“The revelations weren’t immediately accepted by the Catholic Church. Some people in the Church didn’t believe her. She went through a long ordeal and questioning by senior church officials before the revelations were made official,” Ohiomoba said. “But I think she found that it was a difficult and ultimately rewarding experience.”

Ohiomoba said she became interested in the idea of her novel while writing her senior thesis. She likes history and the technical challenges that arise in retelling an old story.

“My major issue was how to effectively use this history in the conception of my novel. My protagonist is African and the narrative is set in the late 20th century, while Bernadette was French and died in the 19th century,” Ohiomoba said. “As of now, Bernadette figures in my novel as sort of a universal symbol of the young female visionary. By no means will the work be a strict interpretation or narrative of her life.”

Ohiomoba found her research quite helpful in reconceptualizing the characters in her novel. “The dynamic between the town and the pilgrims really influences my characters. The ‘pilgrimage’ setting figures heavily in the novel,” she said. “I also decided not to rely as much on history. I thought I would do more justice to the story by having an African protagonist.”

Leaving Lourdes with a fruitful experience, Ohiomoba said her ideas about her novel have been sorted out and made coherent.

“I have a better idea of what I’m going to write about now. It was much more abstract before,” she said. “It’s easy to say you’re going to write about a place until you go and see it and realize what resonates with you and the characters you have planned.

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