Rambo gives East Cooper Montessori a taste of Africa

By Ali Akhyari

Moultrie News

The students at East Cooper Montessori Charter School had a special guest on April 27.

Lee Rambo, children’s author, traveled from Columbia, S.C. to tell students about her experience in Africa that inspired her book, Books for Oliver, and to entertain questions from students.

She taught elementary school in New York City and Charlotte, N.C. before her Africa experience.

“The thought of writing a book never crossed my mind,” Rambo recalls after her trip to Kenya. “I was moved.”

Rambo, originally from Concord, N.C., is a mother of two. She had traveled to the highlands in the western part of Kenya with her husband, who is a medical doctor, years ago before her children were born.

Although the South Carolina heat could be reminiscent of parts of Africa, this day she sat in a comfortable, air-conditioned classroom surrounded by curious East Cooper children.

The filter of the classroom’s turtle tank circulated the water, providing a sound like a gently flowing mountain creek in the middle of summer.

As if sensing an aura of a traveler who had been to the cradle of civilization, a cockatiel, which had remained silent beneath a blanket in its cage, helped finish the mood when it began to sing as Rambo recalled her journey.

The area, she says, is not the flat, dry desert one typically thinks of when imagining Africa.

“It’s more like the mountains of North Carolina,” she says.

There was plenty of rainfall, and the temperatures were relatively cool in western Kenya. The landscape was quite beautiful.

Rambo helped teach at a primary school there. Although there are many regional and tribal languages in Africa, the students there spoke English in the classroom.

Rambo told her young audience how life in Kenya was different from life in the east of the Cooper.

“The people were warmer, friendlier, and lovelier than I imagined,” she says. There was also more poverty than she could have imagined.

She says most homes there are made out of mud and dung and have straw thatched roofs. The Kenyan children played games that did not require equipment and made toys out of things such as used tires and other items generally regarded as trash.

In the classroom the floors are all dirt, and most students do not have shoes. There is no running water. Instead, students use a pit latrine when nature calls. Children do not have individual desks, but share long tables with a bench. There is a single chalkboard, and the walls are pretty much bare.

When she explained that there was no electricity, Rambo let the students point out what would be missing in the Kenyan school that they have have here.

The children pointed out computers, radios, refrigerators and lights for a turtle tank.

But, ironically, the most important thing lacking, which inspired her book, were books.

Rambo recalled the crucial moment.

During her time at the Kenyan school, the teacher rang the bell to gather the children into the courtyard. This gathering was not in the schedule she had been accustomed to. Once the children gathered, the teacher began reading names of students off a list. Those children whose names were called left the school and headed home.

They would not return.

They were not trouble makers. In fact, Rambo says the students there are among the most well-behaved she has experienced. The reason the students had to leave was because they did not have any books. The schools, obviously lacking in funds, do not provide books for students, and most families struggle for the extra $12 that would provide all the books a child would need for one year.

Witnessing children turned away from an education stirred Rambo’s emotional pot.

A friend told her a true story shortly thereafter.

The story is about a widow who, like many, had a small farm where a meager livelihood was scraped together. This woman, also, could not afford to buy books for her child. Although the farm was not even productive enough to pay for books, she decided to sell a part of it so that her child could go to school.

This story forms the basis for Books for Oliver. It is classified as fiction, but the story is a common one and could easily be about the life of many African children.

“It’s important for me to tell this story to remind us how really lucky we are,” Rambo says.

As the students of East Cooper Montessori bombarded Rambo with questions, it was apparent that the story had struck their hearts.

One student wanted to know how they could help because they have so many books here. Another student explained that they do a “year-long” project that is supposed to help the community somehow. She wants her project to help provide books for African children.

Books for Oliver expanded her vision to encompass a world community.

Rambo is currently working on a second children’s book. The first one took five years to complete. Jim Larkin, an old college friend of Rambo’s, helped co-author.

Her husband still goes to Africa on an annual basis to work in the hospitals.

She would love to go back and is only waiting for her two young children to get a bit older.

“I feel like we got so much more out of it than we gave,” she says.

Books for Oliver is published by Mondo Publishing. For more information or to purchase a copy visit www.booksforoliver.com