What could be more optimistic, hopeful and cheerful than a giant sunflower reaching toward the sky?
In the most lovely, unanticipated way, the sunflower became a common thread during the October visit with the African Girls Can students at St. Katherine.
First, it was interesting to see that sunflowers are grown (and pressed into oil) in the Lira District of Northern Uganda (where the girls go to school) and the neighboring, very remote and rural Otuke District (where four of the five students are from). This crop is in addition to cotton, sesame seeds, sorghum, cassava, and the world renowned shea nuts. As you bump along dirt roads, you pass lots of school kids in their brightly colored uniforms walking long distances back and forth to school – and many, many fields of sunflowers. There are also small patches of sunflowers in amongst the small vegetable gardens in family compounds.
The girls’ secondary school uniform (yellow dress and green sweater) makes them resemble sunflowers!
Finally, during the two hours we spent with the girls, we did an exercise about “Dreams.” As part of this, we gave each girl a bookmark. Alecia had made them and, because sunflowers grow where she lives in Colorado, put a sunflower on the front. It was pure serendipity.
Together, we read the poem printed on the back of the bookmark. It is by a young girl who grew up in the Kibera slum of Nairobi, Kenya. Eunice Akoth wrote:
“It’s not where I am, but where I am going that matters.
My future has nothing to do with my past or my present.
The hard times I have had, made me stronger and better.
The inner courage in me doesn’t roar. It just whispers.
So I dream my dream.”
If we did not already have a star as the organization’s primary symbol (note the school girl reaching for the star – her dream – in our logo), we would most certainly adopt the sunflower!
