DeKalb native affects students at Kenyan school for girls through music education

DeKALB – Creating a music education program for an all-girls school in rural Kenya was not in the original plan for 22-year-old Nelle Conley of DeKalb.

Conley graduated in May with a music education degree from Augustana College. Hailing from a family in which “music is huge,” Conley said she felt destined to use music in her career somehow. Her mother is a music therapist with DeKalb County Hospice, and is one of seven siblings, all musical. Conley and her sister, along with their mom, would often sing in trios together, and even held a benefit concert to buy her first plane ticket to Kenya.

“I wanted to do something kind of unique with my degree, instead of just getting a job, because I’d be in the workforce forever,” Conley said. “I found out about the school at Mayfield Church in Sycamore, because they sponsor a girl every year.”

That school is the Jane Adeny Memorial School for Girls in Muhoroni, Kenya, founded by Northern Illinois University professors Teresa Wasonga and Andrew Otieno.

Conley connected with Wasonga – who’s from Kenya herself – and Otieno to finalize a plan for teaching, and she was soon off, first for a brief period in summer 2017 to get her bearings and see where she would be teaching. And from July to December to spend her first few months living on campus and teaching choir, ukulele, recorder and piano to freshmen and sophomores. She just returned to the U.S., and is already planning a second stint in April 2019.

The high school sits on 10 acres of land and is a boarding school, as are most schools in Kenya. Unlike most schools, however, 80 percent of the 160 students at JAMS are receiving a full scholarship to attend.

“High school, even public, is not free in Kenya, and most schools are boarding schools,” said Diana Swanson, president of the Friends of the Jane Adeny Memorial School for Girls 501(c)(3) which is a charity that helps collect funds to benefit the school, based out of Sycamore.

“So not only do parents have to pay for tuition, various fees, books, school supplies and school uniforms, they have to pay room and board fees,” she said. “So for poor families, this is a huge barrier.”

Wasonga's passion for empowerment dictated that her school would be accessible to "rich and poor alike."

Conley said a majority of the girls she teaches have endured tremendous hardship in their lives, which is all the more reason she’s set out to do her part by bringing a little joy and agency back to her students.

“There was a student named Ruth, I ended up getting really close to her,” Conley said. “Ruth doesn’t have a very good home environment like a lot of [my students]. Getting an education is really important to them because it’s their only way out.”

Conley said Ruth would not have been able to afford to go to school were it not for the scholarship paving her way to JAMS. Ruth was Conley’s first student who indicated she wanted private lessons. So Conley taught her ukulele, and piano, which Ruth picked up right away and “ended up being absolutely amazing,” Conley said.

“[Ruth] is one of the coolest human beings I’ve ever met,” Conley said. “It was really cool to be able to show her that she is really good at something, and give her something of an identity.”

Conley said many of the girls she teaches choose to spend their allotted two hours of free time in private lessons with her, and preparing for weekly choir performances held at church on Sundays.

In an average day at JAMS, students – who spread out among three different dormitories – wake at 6 a.m. for breakfast, and then attend classes until 10:50 a.m., when they break for tea. During the morning, Conley – who also lives on campus but gets a private room like the other 10 teachers, all Kenyan – assists with English classes. Classes reconvene from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., with a break for lunch, and then more classes from 2 to 4 p.m., during which Conley will teach one or two music classes. Free time for the girls would go from 4 until 6 p.m., then comes dinner, and then more classes or study time from 7 to 10 p.m.

“It’s definitely a grind,” Conley said. “But we all eat together. That was one of the things [Wasonga and Otieno] really wanted to focus on, was kind of equalizing [the community].”

Conley currently is working to fine tune her music education program, and will be presenting on the program and its benefits to the rest of the JAMS teachers when she returns in April. She said the language barrier was the hardest to get past at first but, like everything else, it’s falling into place. She finds her experience overall a challenge to describe.

“The hard parts were really, really hard, but the good parts were absolutely amazing.”