It has been nearly two years since I traveled to Kenya on a mission trip. I can still smell the smoke of goat stew cooking and hear the guttural songs of the Maasai—and in my mind, I can still see the vibrant colors of Africa.
Aside from the opportunity to see a completely different culture (and lions, zebras, and elephants in their natural habitats), I had the opportunity to reevaluate my identity as a classical singer.
I have always had a plan for my singing career. Because of this experience, however, I began to see my past viewpoint as very narrow indeed. What does it mean to be an “opera singer” in a Third-World country, where no one understands what it is that you do?
How I came to the decision to go on this trip is, surprisingly related to singing. Shortly before returning to school for the second semester of the first year of my master’s degree, I received an e-mail saying that a group traveling to Africa through my school that May needed sopranos and would provide a scholarship for the travel expenses.
Yes, sopranos. In Africa.
Intrigued, I asked for more information about the trip. It seemed that the students going on the mission trip were divided into teams, teams for engineering, for working with children, and so on. I would be part of the “Music Team,” which would go into orphanages, schools, churches, and villages to sing, in the hope that music could help cross the cultural boundaries.
Initially, I had doubts. I wondered what my ability as a singer could possibly bring to people confronting far more immediate and life-threatening problems than I ever will. In the end, however, my curiosity and sense of adventure far outweighed any fears. Besides, it was only a two-week trip. What did I have to lose?
No amount of preparation for the trip—buying mosquito nets, sporting equipment, and school supplies for orphaned children; the typhoid and yellow fever shots; the warnings about consistently taking your malaria medication; reading countless travel books and explanations of cultural practice—could have prepared me for the intense fear that set in at 3,000 feet as we began our descent into the Nairobi airport.
What had I gotten myself into? I was a singer and a microphobic, wimpy, bookish singer at that. My original thought that this trip would help me develop spiritually disappeared instantly. I should be in a practice room, or the library, or a coaching, I thought. I began to think that my family, who disapproved because of concern for my personal safety, had been right, and I never should have gone.
Stepping off the plane into the Nairobi sunrise, with the peak of Mount Kilimanjaro barely visible in the distance, the sense that I had entered a completely different universe revived me. It was as if my reason for being a singer, the one with which I’m sure most singers can identify, burst forth. The song that was in my heart simply had to be heard.
The music team understood and appreciated my feelings. The group consisted of voice performance, church music, and music education majors, as well as professors in fields from finance to theology who just loved to sing. Although diverse, we became a very tightly knit group in a short period of time. We helped each other face many of the difficulties so apparent in a country such as Kenya.
Confronting the AIDS crisis in Africa first-hand brought much sadness. Even with celebrity outreach promotion, and church and community fundraisers, there are no words to describe the severity of its effect on the people. Despite this grim situation, donations and clinics have brought about many changes, including giving women some power over their social and sexual rights, and providing education on the transmission and treatment of AIDS. These positive changes give a small glimmer of hope in an area where there had been none.
Now, back in the United States, I try to use my talent and my voice to support this fight as much as I possibly can. I feel a sense of personal responsibility to these people that I didn’t feel before.
One reason for this is the connections we made with these people through song. Unlike the other teams, native Kenyans invited the music team into their homes. We were able to bond through music with the families we met.
One of my favorite memories is of having lunch after singing in a church service in Nakuru with the family of a woman named Sho-Sho (literally “grandmother”—she asked that everyone she met call her by her familial title), to celebrate her 80th birthday. We taught them some of our songs and they taught us some of theirs (though just the simplest, linguistically).
Swahili and English are the official languages of Kenya. Most people also speak a tribal language. Nearly everyone spoke some level of English, but it was difficult to communicate through speech nevertheless. Conversely, in singing, we crossed the boundaries of culture, language, and comfort zones almost immediately. I made some field recordings with my digital voice recorder, and to this day I cannot tell which voices are American and which are African. To me, that says a great deal about the primacy of the human voice and our capacity for expression of great emotion.
Some encounters were touching and sad, others joyful. Many I can only describe as terrifying. Walking into slums larger than Central Park, for example, bound for an orphanage with our arms loaded with enough food to feed 150 children for a week, we had armed guides to prevent serious crimes by vicious street gangs. (Nairobi isn’t called “Nai-robbery” for nothing.) Or forgetting to use bottled water to brush my teeth and waking up with a severe stomachache. Or camping in an abandoned mission in a remote village and waking to find spiders described as “very dangerous, kill people” hanging on the outside of my mosquito netting.
These experiences make even the most competitive auditions seem but a trifle.
I learned to deal with these life-threatening situations in a calmer, more controlled manner than I had managed to summon when I approached my own problems, including performance anxiety. When I see the behavior of other singers who don’t have any concept of a world outside of their own, and I think about how these experiences have contributed to my growth, I want to work even harder to make my actions match my sense of true danger versus minor inconveniences.
I saw evidence that the smallest things we do here can make a world of difference a world away. A slightly more expensive product that is certified as fair trade makes a measurable difference in someone’s quality of life thousands of miles away.
Wearing the jewelry I bought in Kenya provides a physical reminder of my changed world view that I can take to auditions and rehearsals. I try to share my experiences as often as possible with as many singers as I meet. I find that no matter what, they all have something they can share that relates to it, and we connect through our passion for making the world a better place through means beyond our singing careers.
This trip changed my life, and not just spiritually. It has made me a better singer, though not in respect to my technique. It has altered how I view music and the level at which I involve myself in the characterization and general “feel” of a piece.
Going to Kenya has helped me to become more like the person, and subsequently, the singer, I want to be.
