I decided I needed some help with my decision of which country I should apply to visit through the travel grant so I decided to call Lois. Dr. Lois Petrovich-Mwaniki was the perfect person to discuss this with. She has been my thesis adviser in graduate school at Western Carolina University and was the former Chair of the Art Education Department there. She has recently retired as the Director of International Programs and Services at Western and was very familiar with traveling abroad. On top of that we had been part of a the Global Partnership grant where we both got to host and stay with Japanese educators. She knows me, my personality, and my love of creating and teaching global connections (she was actually a big part of teaching me how to do this) and... I trusted her opinion.
When I called her she was thrilled to help me and had more information that I could even take in all at once. I took notes as we talked and I asked many questions about the art in different regions of Africa, the safety of traveling alone, the geography/animals, and the connections to schools she already had there.
Lois gave me her suggestions and I decide to rank my three choices as 1) Kenya, 2) Tanzania, and 3) South Africa. One of the biggest reasons I ended up choosing Kenya was because Lois is actually married to a Kenyan man, Dr. Nyaga Mwaniki, who also was a professor at Western Carolina University and he had been taking students to Kenya through the Anthropology department for years. I could basically mimic the trip that he took his students on with an emphasis on art. I now had the connections I needed to get into some of the schools in Nairobi as well as personal friends of Lois and Nyaga to take care of my well being.
When I called her she was thrilled to help me and had more information that I could even take in all at once. I took notes as we talked and I asked many questions about the art in different regions of Africa, the safety of traveling alone, the geography/animals, and the connections to schools she already had there.
Lois gave me her suggestions and I decide to rank my three choices as 1) Kenya, 2) Tanzania, and 3) South Africa. One of the biggest reasons I ended up choosing Kenya was because Lois is actually married to a Kenyan man, Dr. Nyaga Mwaniki, who also was a professor at Western Carolina University and he had been taking students to Kenya through the Anthropology department for years. I could basically mimic the trip that he took his students on with an emphasis on art. I now had the connections I needed to get into some of the schools in Nairobi as well as personal friends of Lois and Nyaga to take care of my well being.