Growing to Love Learning
hello
my name is beatrice bohoja i’m
originally from kenya
and today my topic will be to spark
having to come from a
background of a science university like
youth sciences
so for me this park i decided
to give it my own meaning so
s is for science
p is for
progress e is for academic
r is for their results
when you get your grades and k is for
knowledge
i pick those things because they are
relevant to
what i’ll be speaking on but not to go
so far
i will introduce myself and say where i
come from
originally i come from kenya born and
raised
i am from a small village in
kakamega i come from the buniore
tribe and i
love being me
so i’ll start when i was a kid
i come from a family of eight
i had um four brothers
and three sisters plus me i was a middle
child and as
i found out later on medium children
have middle child syndrome
of which i didn’t know but i embraced it
when i was young my life was the best
i cannot complain and lie and say that i
came from
poverty just like how it’s reflected
everywhere
no i wasn’t i went to beautiful schools
i went to kilimani primary i went to
highrid primary i even went to school in
my chat cause i went to my tacos primary
and finally i had
to go to pangani girls and then sent
mary’s
later on i ended up in kenya polytechnic
and that’s where i’ll start my story
from when i was young
when i was young life was sweet life was
beautiful
everything was just dilly dally we were
allowed to
go out and play after we finished chose
in the house
my mom was very particular but
surprisingly
we always had house help and my mom used
to say that even if there is house help
in the house
we should learn how to do certain things
as a little girl it was so
frustrating to wash my little socks and
just to make myself neat and do things
that i need to do as a child
um in those days we made our own dull
dolls like you all have barbie dolls we
made our own
original dolls and the dolls were so
funny looking but to us we thought they
were dolls
after that when we grew a little bigger
we started making our
life more interesting we used to go and
play
you know games that all children play
we played many games that were so
fantastic
and we were so creative in our days
we were so creative in such a way that
we would make a game last
forever we knew how to use
stones and a one ball and we had two
teams team
a and team b so what we did
is we played the game and we tried to
put stunts that cannot be put together
until they caught we called the game
seven stones
we would play with the seven stones and
every time we ran around we played the
game the whole day
i had talked earlier about my love for
languages
so this one is the one that i’m going to
entertain you all so that you can laugh
your heads off
i had gone to the market with my
girlfriend i had a beautiful girlfriend
of mine her name is betty
and uh when we went to the market
uh she used to speak very nice a law
law is president obama’s father’s
language
and um i i was wondering you know what
maybe i should try to speak this
language because how come
every time i go they’re talking the
language
and making you know me feel a kind of a
way so i started
picking up on the language very well uh
there was another time i was just here
in the united states
and i had a friend of mine the sister
had brought like artifacts from
tanzania and they wanted to sell it to
us so i just went to her place
but i think she didn’t know that i know
lua language
and she starts saying ah um
i this one we are going to charge her a
little higher
than what the actual price is and i
looked at her and i replied in the
dialect i said i am not going to buy if
you’re not going to sell for me
in the original price that it’s
originally sold
i don’t think i am going to buy it and
she was so shocked because
maybe because she knew that yes i come
from kenya
and yes i speak kinore she thought i
could not speak kelowo
but people get a surprised when
i can switch from one language to
another
to be patient to persevere
to endure and just to look forward
to do anything is something that is
inbuilt
and something that you grow with
i started going to uh read and study in
the library when i was 13 years old
my dad was sick and tired of me going
out and playing
and just fighting around and just not
acting like a girl and coming in the
house i’m not
looking like a beauty i’m just looking
like a ruff ruff
i would climb the trees out go and try
to fight where necessary
and that was life then so my dad
he just thought that i was a brilliant
little girl but i just
used to like to play a lot so one time
he decided to
make sure that i’m paying attention on
my
education and so he said my young lady
dress up for i will drive with you and
then we can go to the library
and i know you like the annie blydon
book so you can be able to read them
so i went and um took
a couple of chances with daddy and i
just loved it
and he told me to you know my beautiful
daughter
when you go to the library maybe you
will not be
liking just put on you know shorts and
and and you don’t want to dress like a
girl maybe you will pick up something
from the ladies because the librarians
are usually dressed well so at age 13
i started knowing how important it is
for people to study
and then i was curious i wondered how
they put the books back on the
shelves and i would go and ask the
ladies at the desk and say can i know
how to place back their books and
they’ll say okay we’re gonna show you
and then i started just being good with
this
but i didn’t know when i had just
finished my
high school an opportunity came by and
an opportunity opened for me to go to
kenya polytechnic
at work in the kenner polytechnic
library it was very fun to work there
the people they were very nice and you
know i was around college students for a
while
and also got an opportunity to go to
london
i studied uh you know attempts
polytechnic
what i just found out is i’m usually
surrounded with students
and students are just the best people
you could have around you
when i was working at the jw england
library
i have seen the way
the students here they come i’m an
evening supervisor
before and then i become an evening
coordinator
and we would stay with the students then
they would study until
12 sometimes we had extended hours until
two o’clock in the morning
and sometimes over finals we would of
help
in just opening the library until uh
morning but that was just a courtesy
being
given for us to do but that didn’t mean
that
um the way the students here
they pay attention on their majors the
majors are very complicated
and what i like about them they’re just
like me
they work so hard and the
curriculums are very vigorous and what i
do with them when they are working
because they’ve given their title
uh library student workers but it’s
called work study
so i’m always uh an annoying mommy
and i tell them haha you’re not going to
study i want you to study i want you to
make the grades you know
make us proud because your parents are
not here now i’m gonna be your parent
here
make sure that your homework is done and
they’ve been doing a good job
and in any case if you find the student
workers work in the library or anybody
who has been connected to me
either they have one two or three jobs
there they volunteer and they do i tell
them to
stretch themselves and not to be whiners
and i also
encourage them to look out for the
school i always tell them that when you
graduate and you make the big money
please don’t forget to donate to the
university and then what
claim it as a tax at the beginning of
the year and
i always emphasize and tell them
take your studies very serious as uh
i’m their library mother and also their
counselor i have so many hearts to deal
with this
my lovely students i also tell them now
after you have donated and taken it as a
tax whatever
next year bring money and add on campus
and also i told them not to be whining
and complaining and saying oh my
professor is not good no
let me tell you i tell them the
professor is not someone that you can
say is supposed to be good
the professor is your teacher they have
already given you and blessed you
with the syllabus they have given you
the title of the books that you’re going
to use in class
and even they bless you with lecture
caption
something that we never even had in our
life they’ve given you all those things
your work is to find a solution
to study and make the grade and so what
even if you get a c
on one exam go and talk to your teacher
make the study group
make sure you have friends who take
academic
a serious issue
i have been privileged
to not only work in the library
but also to be a professor and
that is one thing that uh makes me
unique
um i have been a professor at university
of pennsylvania a professor at community
college of philadelphia
and also a professor at university of
miami online
i also did a middle school i would and
everybody else
i am an advisor of international society
and an advisor of
um culture shock my dance group
and os so those groups they come
together with different perspective
the girls in the dance group they go and
showcase
different cultures using music from
africa
caribbean and if they can embrace they
also embrace
other cultures of the world if you come
in but now
for international society we had decided
that
everybody has to stop the ignorance
of not knowing where everybody is coming
from
just because i come from kenya i will
not be able to answer questions about
nigeria
or even south africa because that is
where i was not ethnically
raised that way so the international
society just brings back
cultures from all over the world plus
even you can be born in
new jersey and you have your own type of
thing that you embrace in new jersey
like i know they have beautiful apples
in new jersey they have their beautiful
shows
if you go to new york they have their
pizza and then they have all the malls
and everything so everybody comes in
with a different culture
but from different ways so my students
have formed different groups on campus
and also collaborated with everybody
this i would like to say because
we have done collaborations with uh
community college of philadelphia and
penn and uh our own students
from youth sciences who go to study
abroad
and that brought just a different thing
that we
could not even believe that students can
put things together and make it
successful
to me diversity is very important
and you know cultural awareness
in terms of learning other people’s
culture
and background to me has always
led me to be who i am
remember i was this young
um light-skinned child
and sometimes you know going to
different schools
my father just realized that he cannot
put me
in just regular schools at the beginning
because uh
the kids would want
to bully me but that did not even work
but he decided to take me to schools
that
were accommodating
to all cultures instead of just like
regular public schools and that is what
made me realize that it’s really
important
to have culture awareness
the where i was brought up
we use um color when we are going to the
market to buy like you know
yellow bananas green vegetables
that’s when we use the color but
anybody can choose what color they want
to be i have
my friends who if you ask them
they don’t know whether they are white
green
yellow or blue and which is a good thing
to know but also for me
i like when everybody just agrees
with each other and there’s no tension
because of racial
biases and that’s why most of the time
i would advise my nice students
and this is coming straight from my
heart so that they
instead of losing good friends that they
would have made for life
they start having barriers because of
background
or religion or where they come from
i have really made important friends
that come from various backgrounds i
don’t choose where you come from
you can be white you can be black you
can be yellow red whatever color you
choose
sometimes i think my color is blue
students have learned how to diversify
and be together and study together
because at in the library when i see
them
they’re just like a big family and that
is one thing that has made me
happy as one of the
workers at the university