The Way I See It: Beyond Traditional Borders opened my eyes to the world

The Way I See It

Beyond Traditional Borders opened my eyes to the world

BY SOPHIE KIM
Special to the Rice News

As I write this, I am sitting on the plane on my way to Lesotho, Africa. It is my third trip to the small mountain kingdom, which I had never heard of until I took a global health course at Rice two years ago and traveled there as a student intern with Rice’s Beyond Traditional Borders (BTB). Now, as I sit listening to the familiar accents of the South African Airways crew, I’m filled with anticipation because Lesotho opened my eyes to world, and I have come to love the place and its people.

	SOPHIE KIM

I was a member of the first class of seven BTB interns that traveled to sub-Saharan Africa. On my way to Lesotho the first time, I had no idea what lay ahead. For years, I had dreamed romantic visions of helping to rescue the world from illness and poverty. But with Africa looming, I was anxious about coming face to face with extreme poverty. I was afraid I would not be able to handle the harsh realities in a country that had experienced so much death and suffering. I hoped and prayed this would not be the case, and that my passion for this line of work would grow stronger from the experience.

Thankfully, it did. And as I look back at the past two years, I can see that BTB trip to Lesotho has changed the course of my life. I am grateful to Rice for all of the opportunities it offers to educate its students about the wider world. Through programs like BTB and the global health initiative Rice 360°, Rice allowed me to explore and expand interests I have fostered since childhood.

Growing up, I loved reading Eyewitness Books – educational books for children covering topics ranging from airplanes to the planets. As I journeyed from page to page, it was the beautiful drawings of physiological systems that captivated me and made me consider medicine as a possible career. That decision was cemented when I watched a documentary on the global HIV crisis in high school. Absorbing the images, I felt frustrated that treatment was not being delivered and that millions were dying without it.

This clear disconnect convinced me that I could help alleviate people’s suffering if I became a doctor. But my idea of how to accomplish that was vague at best. It was my experience through BTB, during that first trip to Lesotho, that gave shape to my dream.

When I first arrived in the unfamiliar mountainous land, I felt alone. Even with my project partner by my side, the culture shock was overwhelming. No matter how much I prepared beforehand, I did not know the people, their culture or their language. It was also unexpectedly frigid, with winter’s bitterness impossible to escape from.

It was only after building relationships with my Basotho students from the SOS Children’s Orphanage that I felt myself becoming alive in my work. I loved teaching and interacting with the youth. But as I grew closer to my students, I began to worry about their future. I dreaded the thought of what would await them in a country overwhelmed by HIV and poverty.

Every day I saw children afflicted by AIDS in the Baylor Pediatric HIV clinic where I worked. And all of my students had already been orphaned. The circumstances in the country were devastating. Yet the children’s vibrancy, hope and compassion made me believe they could beat the odds — if only they were given the chance.

I wasn’t just saddened and concerned by what I saw; I was also deeply angry at times. There seemed many cases of tragic misuse of funds, even in this country that has relatively little corruption compared with others in the region. For example, the government hospital in the capital city of Maseru was in shambles, while the Ministry of Health building across the street was new and beautiful. There was even nice furniture and the luxury of central heat, a rarity in Lesotho.

I discovered the lack of resources was only partly to blame. There was an equally devastating lack of good management and leadership. While leaders sometimes make poor choices in every country, the stakes seemed far too high here. I saw a child nearly die because the entire country had run out of oxygen tanks, and I constantly met children who did not attend school because they could not afford the fees. Meanwhile, government officials traveled in fleets of fancy luxury cars.

My BTB internship inspired me to gain a deeper understanding of the circumstances surrounding poverty and ill health – two issues that are inextricably connected. Since graduating from Rice, I’ve tried to keep learning about these problems and to find appropriate solutions for them, first as a Fulbright Fellow in Toronto and now as a Weidenfeld Scholar at Oxford.

I’m going back to Lesotho a third time, thanks to the Wagoner Fellowship, to develop a scholarship and social support program for orphaned students who do not have enough money to attend school (only primary education is compulsory in Lesotho). I largely credit my experience with the BTB program and Rice 360° for my desire to meet the world’s problems head on and make a difference. These programs and Rebecca Richards-Kortum — the professor who founded them and who taught that first global health class I enrolled in two years ago — have helped bring me closer to fulfilling my childhood dream.

I hope I am fulfilling part of it now — and giving something back. I know that having the opportunity to return — and to continue learning from Lesotho — feels like a gift beyond price.

— Sophie Kim ’08 is one of only five U.S. scholars chosen by the Weidenfeld Scholarship and Leadership Program to begin studies this fall for a master’s in global health at Oxford University. She just completed a yearlong Fulbright Fellowship, working with HIV patients at Toronto’s Centre for Research on Inner City Health. She plans to enter medical school in 2011.