Kenyan experience puts Indian boy on top in US

WASHINGTON, DC: At home in Cincinnati, 18-year-old Anish Mehta has access to high-speed Internet, pizza delivery, and about everything else he needs is on call. His mother makes authentic Gujarati food, and his school encourages him to take up as many activities as he can. He is a typical American teenager who knows what he wants and gets it fairly easily.

 

Not surprisingly, it took him time to get used to riding three hours on a Boda-Boda – a human rickshaw – from the Kenyan village of Mbakalo to the nearest city to email his parents back home. “Since one man could not run for three hours, they would transfer me to another Boda-Boda after each hour,” says Mehta.

 

He went to Kenya twice – in 2004 and again in 2005 – as part of a US-headquartered volunteer group Soteni’s project to help villagers afflicted by HIV. Thanks to his volunteering, and his exceptional academic record, Mehta was one of 20 students chosen by USA Today this year for its 2006 All-USA High School Academic First Team, USA Today's recognition program for outstanding high school students.

 

The 20 members of the 20th annual First Team receive trophies and $2,500 as representatives of outstanding students.

 

Mehta was among the top 20 chosen from 1,700 students whose schools filed nominations from across the US. Mehta’s Indian Hill High School in Cincinnati nominated him for several reasons – he was the school’s student body vice-president, he was a class topper, and had taken 15 advanced placement courses, including calculus, European history and Latin (he is co-president of the school’s Latin Club and earned a perfect score at the National Latin Exam).

 

He is a drummer, leading his school’s band on the drum-line. He is also the drummer in the local rock band Too Many Milos.

 

He set up a chapter of Soteni in school to create awareness about orphans in Kenya.

 

Says Dr Victoria Wells, the founder of Soteni, “Anish went through a rigorous screening process to be chosen for the Soteni project. We had applications from Australia, Kenya, Chile, Venezuela, England, Germany and even India. I guess his determination to do something different made us choose him.”

 

Mehta says his parents encouraged him to go for the Kenya project. “My father is an engineer and my mom’s a doctor, but both were born in relative poverty in India,” he says.

 

“They have seen what poverty can do to you. When I saw Kenyan kids living in abject conditions, I was depressed. It took a lot of getting used to.”

 

What depressed Mehta was the lack of opportunity among Kenyan villagers to build a comfortable life. “Despite this, they were seemingly happy. They were hospitable, and more importantly, were hopeful.”

 

Mehta is a strict vegetarian, and he ended up eating the local staple diet of rice and beans for nearly a month each time he went. “It was called Ugali,” he says, “and that is when I missed mom’s food the most.”

 

That was the beginning. Mbakalo had no electricity and no running water. This meant most of Mehta’s time would be spent chatting up people, and talking about life. He spent the rest of his working day going house-to-house to build a census database of HIV-affected in Mbakalo, one of the four Villages of Hope that Soteni created in Kenya.

 

“It was like any other country – AIDS was a stigma, so to get authentic information was tough,” Mehta says. “If someone died they would say she died of malaria or cholera.”

 

He has taken admission to the University of Pennsylvania where he hopes to major in Biochemistry. “I will then go to medical school,” he says. Once he completes that, Mehta wants to go back to Kenya, and spend time on the Soteni project. For now, he says, he wants to concentrate on his university course, and getting admission to medical school after that. Given his record, that won’t be tough.