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As he launched his program in Baltimore, Embry at first looked to build a residential school somewhere in the U.S., but the costs were so high he felt he could never reach enough students. So he instead chose a spot beneath the foothills of Mount Kenya, where land is cheap and his teachers, half of whom are Kenyan, are willing to work for salaries as low as $5,000 a year. The focus is on boys (who more often than girls pose disciplinary problems) in the seventh and eighth grades. "That's when we lose them," says Embry. Baraka tries to save the boys with strong discipline, "tons and tons" of adult attention and an accelerated academic program that will be a source of pride to them when they return to Baltimore.
"It was hell," says Brandon of his first year at Baraka. He kept talking back to his teachers, again and again, and landed in the "boma," a crude, isolated group of tents surrounded by thornbushes that Baraka used for punishment. For smaller matters like swearing or sleeping in class, discipline worked on a point system. Staying out of trouble earned students safaris, video nights and trips to the Kenyan capital of Nairobi, three hours south of the school.
Brandon had never really studied before; he hadn't brought a single book home from school. At Baraka he had to adjust to the rigorous classes designed to raise the students up to grade level. That typically meant cramming five years of learning into two years.
The nearest town--and telephone--is at Nanyuki, a 30-minute jeep drive away, on a dirt road. There, the boys experience a sort of role reversal. The local Kenyan kids--shoeless, many of them hanging out on the street corner sniffing glue--stare at the American boys' Nike high-tops and beg for money. Suddenly the students are no longer apprentice hoodlums from the slums; they're rich Americans with more than enough to eat, and bright opportunities.
Seeing themselves in this new context seems to help many of the Baraka kids redirect their lives. Kevin Prem, now 15, joined a gang when he was only 10. By the time he was 12, his two older brothers and nine of his friends had dropped out of school. At Baraka, though, Kevin got his temper under control and won five awards for academic excellence. Now he plans to be a prosecuting attorney, so he can put in jail "people who sell drugs to kids." Daryl Stewart, now 16, had been kicked out of six schools before going to Baraka. Today he's a sophomore at prestigious City College High School (a public magnet school that sends 93% of its students to college) and hopes to be a professional photographer.
But putting together more than 40 boys with this many needs for 10 months at a time, supervised by 12 low-paid faculty, can be risky. Last year, after the school's director fired three popular African-American dorm counselors, the boys became increasingly defiant. At one point they surrounded and threatened a teacher. Seventeen of the 44 boys were sent home.
Embry blames the uprising on uneven rule enforcement and poor management, and insists that better leadership and faculty selection will prevent a recurrence. He also believes that the school needs a mix of kids, not just ones who have been disruptive, and that Baraka needs to screen out students with serious psychological problems.