Jon Mark Beilue: Impacting lives – including their own

WT students’ November trip to South Africa ‘literally life-changing’

Perhaps Dr. Enyonam Osei-Hwere was making up for lost time. Or perhaps she had a grander vision of what West Texas A&M University could accomplish on a trip more than 13,000 miles away and simply needed more participation and collaboration.

“This one was a little bit different,” said Osei-Hwere, associate professor of media communication.

For 16 days in November, Osei-Hwere led her third Study Abroad trip to South Africa. It was the first one since early January 2020, two months before the COVID pandemic.

Two trips were on hold waiting for international travel such as this to get the all-clear sign. When they did in 2022, Osei-Hwere was ready.

Twenty WT students, and one from Amarillo High School, were among a party of 31 which traveled to Lavender Hill, a township of Cape Town, to impact lives. That included their own.

“It was amazing,” said George Graybill, a senior animal science student from Keenseburg, Colorado. “It was literally life-changing and one of the best times I’ve ever had.”

The previous two trips were taken by smaller groups, mostly from one of Osei-Hwere’s classes. This trip included students and faculty across six departments and three colleges—the Paul Engler College of Agriculture and Natural Sciences, the Sybil B. Harrington College of Fine Arts and Humanities, and the College of Nursing and Health Sciences.

Osei-Hwere has a contact person in Cape Town (population 4.6 million) who recommended groups and schools that need help. Osei-Hwere then talked with the leaders of different organizations to determine what could be accomplished in the nearly two weeks that WT students were there.

“It’s really important that my students get a great experience from the trip, not just a cultural experience, but also things they can put on a resume when they are competing for jobs,” Osei-Hwere said.

It was the most ambitious trip yet, one that required more participation. Just getting there was a challenge. Scholarships from the departments of agricultural sciences and communication, as well as the Study Abroad program, helped defray some student costs, but students paid for approximately half of their trip. They left on Nov. 10 from Dallas to Dubai to Cape Town. All told, they were in the air for 25 ½ hours.

“It was not a trip for the faint of heart,” Osei-Hwere said.

Expanding a community garden

Photo: WT students Ashtyn Kardosz, from left, Lauren Fritzler and Madison Colvin help install a new planter in a community garden at the Phillisa Abafazi Bethu shelter.

The WT contingent went across the globe to aid Phillisa Abafazi Bethu, a domestic violence women’s shelter in Lavender Hill. They did so through enhancing their website and social media reach; doubling, if not tripling, their community garden; and painting a mural on the shelter designed by Jon Revett, associate professor of art.

In addition, they came loaded with children’s books, more than 1,350 books, to distribute to seven schools, four of them primary schools.

“I wanted them to take away the idea that life is not about what we want to give ourselves and things we want to do for ourselves, but it’s about serving one another,” said Osei-Hwere, a native of Ghana. “Serving one another doesn’t require getting on a plane because the things that are needs in South Africa are also right here in the Texas Panhandle.

“So when they come back, I wanted them to come back with the same enthusiasm about serving needs in their communities and giving back to those communities in the same way we did in South Africa.”

The women’s shelter often struggles financially. Phillisa Abafazi Bethu grows much of its own food in a garden near one of their two safe houses. The shelter also sells produce for income.

WT’s group, under the supervision of Dr. Brock Blaser, assistant department head and professor of plant science, added eight large commercial-sized planters, invested in quality soil, installed an irrigation system, prepared ground, bought seeds from greenhouses in Lavender Hill, planted and constructed netting protection from birds and animals. The community garden tripled in less than two weeks.

“The WT ag students were magnificent,” Osei-Hwere said.

“In America, food, for the most part, is so industrialized and so available to the masses,” Graybill said. “There, they don’t have a big grocery store they can just go to. Food is really a necessity there even more so when they don’t have as good an access. For us to help produce a garden and show them better agriculture practices, it’s really cool and makes me proud of being an ag producer.”

1,350 books for seven schools

Photo: WT student Lindsey Sawin reads to young students in Cape Town, South Africa, while on a Study Abroad trip to the city.

The shelter also asked many months ago if a mural on one of its buildings would be possible, eye-catching art that would highlight their circumstances. Osei-Hwere knew who to contact. Revett leads WT’s Rural Mural Squad, which has made public art across the Texas Panhandle and beyond.

Revett arrived the second week of the trip and led the mural painting and the story that it tells.

“They wanted a mural that would highlight South Africa and how women have evolved as more powerful, stronger and resilient,” Osei-Hwere said. “That mural is one of the best you will ever see. It is amazing and tells the story of unity, strength and the African spirit.”

Though each of the three trips have been different, one aspect that remained unchanged is what Osei-Hwere calls “the literacy component.” On previous trips, students took gently used children’s books for schools. This time, they brought new books—1,350 of them—through a local partnership with Storybridge and Leaders Readers Network. Each book had a message of encouragement from those in the Amarillo-Canyon area.

At each Cape Town school, books were spread out and children picked ones that interested them. WT students broke into groups to read and interact with the Lavender Hill children. One asked Tyrone Leggett, a junior health sciences major from Hartford, Connecticut, how he got his muscles and said he wanted to get some just like his.

“That was transformative for my group. That’s all they could talk about,” said Osei-Hwere, a WT professor since 2008 and the 2022 Magister Optimus. “It was the maxing out of experience on both students and kids.

“For me, having grown up on the continent, education and literacy in my opinion are the single most transformative opportunity you can give those children.”

The WT group returned home on Nov. 26 on—appropriately—Thanksgiving weekend. Graybill spoke for many when he said that thankfulness was his biggest takeaway from South Africa.

“It’s just how well off we are, and how appreciative we need to be with what Americans have,” he said. “They don’t have constant electricity. Between that and safe drinking water, and who knows about sustainable food, and seeing the excitement of new books, we have all of that. I need to understand how blessed I am.”

About 80 percent of the students, Osei-Hwere said, had never been out of the United States and a few had not left the West Texas region. These were lessons learned more than 13,000 miles away.

“For the most part, we know about each other,” she said, “but we don’t know each other. My WT students would have never had that opportunity without this trip.”

Do you know of a student, faculty member, project, an alumnus or any other story idea for “WT: The Heart and Soul of the Texas Panhandle?” If so, email Jon Mark Beilue at jbeilue@wtamu.edu .

Top photo: A contingent of 31 West Texas A&M University students, faculty and staff, with others from the Canyon area, traveled to Cape Town, South Africa, for a Study Abroad trip in November.