Everyone has a story worth telling. At least, that's the theory. To test it, Tempo is throwing darts at the phone book. When a dart hits a name, a reporter dials the phone number and asks if someone in the home will be interviewed. Stories appear on Fridays.

        Adam Gerhardstein will tell you he wasn't a very good high school student.

        He graduated with the class of 2000 from Walnut Hills High, a school with a fine reputation. His grades were OK. But he didn't take learning seriously.

        “I wasn't there to be a student,” he says in the kitchen of his parents' Kennedy Heights home. “I was there to be a performer. I wanted to outsmart the teacher, or make a joke. Or I wanted to be the best at something, or the worst.”

        He figured it didn't really matter, as long as he was noticed.

        After graduation, the middle child of civil rights lawyer Alphonse Gerhardstein and library media specialist Mimi Gingold, decided — with his parents' blessing — to take a break from school. To make the time meaningful, he became an intern for Global Routes, a California-based community service organization that sends young people to villages in Latin America, Asia, the Caribbean and Africa.

Adam Gerhardstein's souvenirs of Africa include a basket and carved giraffe. (Glenn Hartong photo) | ZOOM |

        “I was a typical teen-ager,” Adam says. “I thought I knew everything. I left to get away, and to see something new and experience the world.”

        And deep down, perhaps, he wanted to prove something to himself: He didn't know everything.

        One early September day when most of his Walnut Hills classmates were settling into college campuses, Adam was in the back of a pickup, bounding down a dirt road in western Kenya. His destination: a poor village called Ebukhaya.

        Global Routes interns immerse themselves in the life of a community by teaching in a school and living with a family. So for 10 weeks, Adam stayed with Luke and Jescah Isiche and their five children, ages 1 to 20.

        Mr. Isiche is a basket weaver, and president of the local school's PTA. He owns a bicycle, a hand cart and a cow. His family lives simply. No phone. No electricity. Water for drinking, cooking and washing comes from a nearby creek. Walking is the primary mode of transportation.

        Adam shared a mud and stick-frame hut with the oldest of the Isiche children, Joseph. The thatched roof leaked, so he helped Joseph build a new one.

        “Spent a whole day, from 6 to 6, cuttin' grass with a big knife,” Adam says. “I had blisters on my hands so big, I couldn't believe.”

        The Isiches' second-youngest child, 3-year-old Jeremia, at first feared this mzungu, or white person. Soon, though, he was sitting in Adam's lap during evening meals, and dragging his bed to Adam's hut.

        Of all the things the 18-year-old Cincinnatian did and saw, perhaps the most significant was: He taught.

        The closest Adam had ever come to teaching was serving as a camp counselor. Now, only a few months removed from Walnut Hills High, he had his own students. More than once the thought crossed his mind: If these kids only knew what I was like in high school.

        He soon discovered just how hard teachers worked. “You can't just go in and pretend you know everything,” he says.

        Although, in a sense, he could. Often he was the only one with a textbook. If students had books, it was because they had hand-copied them.

        The African children impressed him with their eagerness to learn. They saw education as a way to escape poverty.

        “They were what (students) are supposed to be. They went to school to learn. They didn't show off. When the teacher spoke, they were quiet. They were there on time.”

        And they had precious few resources. Previous interns had built a school library, but it sat empty. No books, no shelves.

        Midway through his internship, Adam phoned home. His conversation with his mother went something like this: “How are the Bengals doing? Who's in the World Series? Can I have $1,500?”

        The Gerhardsteins wired some money that week, then they spread the word to members of First Unitarian Church. Each week, more funds arrived.

        The money allowed Adam to buy about 400 textbooks, enough to cover every subject taught in the school. He also was able to outfit the school with a rainfall collection system, so girls who made trips to the river would not miss class. Other donations paid for a bookshelf and windows for the library.

        Leaving Ebukhaya, Adam says, was “the worst feeling I've ever had. I wanted to stay, but I knew if I did, I wouldn't be able to help that much.”

        He has been home about seven weeks. And he has been busy.

        He does carpentry during the day, attends classes in English and Swahili — Kenya's mother tongue — at the University of Cincinnati in the evening. He never liked school before. Now he does.

        “I've always had a lot of energy. I didn't really have anywhere to use that energy before I went over (to Africa). I used it to have fun, and to mess around, be happy. I still have that energy, but I use it differently. To help people. To help myself.”

        Before his internship ended, he asked his host how he could continue to help people in Ebukhaya. Luke Isiche said many students have trouble paying the annual $100 school fees.

        Adam wants to remedy that. He is waiting for the IRS to grant non-profit status to an organization he formed, called Ugali, named for a staple food of Kenya. Its purpose will be to help pay those school fees.

        He looks at photos he took of his students.

        “They can't take off and fly like us,” he says. “It's one of those things that once you see, you can't close your eyes to it.”

       For information about Ugali, contact Adam Gerhardstein by writing him at 5815 Wyatt Ave., Cincinnati 45213; e-mail: adam0102@aol.com.For information about Global Routes, visit its Web site: www.globalroutes.org.

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