Northern Illinois University Professor Dr. Andrew Wasonga Otieno and his wife started a girl’s school in Kenya to give back to their native country and give underprivileged youth a chance to go to college.  Named after his wife’s mother, Otieno told Sycamore Rotarians the Jane Adeny Memorial School for Girls (otherwise known as JAMS) opened in 2011 with a dozen students (10 of them orphans).  It now serves over 200 students.  Most of those students would not be getting an education if it weren’t for JAMS because there is no free secondary schooling in Kenya.  Successful passage of a national high school achievement test opens the way to college admission which is subsidized.  Graduates of JAMS consistently exceed the state exam passing score.

 

Otieno said an education at JAMS is unique in several ways.  To begin with, open discussions and questioning of statements are encouraged.  In other schools, any challenge to what a teacher says could lead to corporal punishment.  The school also focuses on self-sufficiency with students assisting in activities such as a dairy operation, care of chickens, and vegetable growing thanks to a Greenhouse funded through Rotary.  Otieno said the basics of milk, eggs, and meat come from right on the property.  He also noted that the school has its own water system and recently completed solar installations to fully serve their campus.  They even allow neighboring schools water access and invite other schools to use their library.

 

The “Friends of JAMS” non-profit was launched in 2014 to help expand the school campus and add scholarship dollars.  Their fundraising helped with construction of a science building and a computer lab.  Other donations are also welcome.  Sycamore Rotarian Paulette Renault has donated clothing items and most recently gave about 300 T-shirts to the school.  Further information is available at the JAMS web site:  www.jamskenya.org.

August 4, 1901 – Jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong is born in New Orleans, Louisiana.

 

August 4, 1961 – 44^th U. S. President Barack Obama is born in Honolulu, Hawaii.  He wins the Presidential election of November 4, 2008 to become the first President of African American origin.

 

August 6, 1809 – British poet Alfred Lord Tennyson (who authored “The Charge of the Light Brigade” among other works) is born in Somersby, Lincolnshire, England.

 

August 7, 1876 – International spy Mata Hari is born in the Netherlands.  She was arrested by the French in 1917, tried as a German spy, and executed by a firing squad.

August 6, 1945 – The first atomic bomb is dropped on Hiroshima, Japan killing over 105,000 people.  Another 100,000 die later from the effects of radiation.

 

August 7, 1947 – Norwegian anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl captains the balsa wood raft Kon-Tiki to completion of a 4,300-mile, 101-day journey from Peru to an island near Tahiti to prove his theory that prehistoric South Americans could have colonized the Polynesian Islands.  His account of the journey became an international best-selling book and a film documentary of the journey would win an academy award in 1951. 

 

August 9, 1974 – Effective at noon, Richard M. Nixon resigned from the Presidency as a result of the Watergate scandal.  

 

August 9, 1936 – African American track star Jesse Owens wins his fourth gold medal of the 1936 Berlin Olympics striking a propaganda blow against Nazi leader Adolf Hitler who was touting Aryan superiority.