Pembroke Academy senior sees herself working outside the U.S.

Hooksett Editor — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 19:19:00 GMT

BY JENN McDOWELL

Anna Freeman-Woolpert is going the farthest away for college out of her circle of friends, but having already traveled to Kenya last summer, she’s at least semi-ready to leave home.

“I don’t think you can really prepare in your mind for getting out of the house,” the Pembroke Academy senior joked, taking a sip of the mellow, sweet Kenyan tea she brought home with her.

The graduating senior is going to Gilford College in Greensborough, N.C., in the fall, and said she hasn’t quite settled on a major. “Right now, I’m interested in psychology and education and about 10 other different things,” she said. “I just want to get through graduation, then I’ll think about school.”

Freeman-Woolpert traveled to Kakamega, Kenya, last summer with about a dozen others from her Quaker organization to volunteer at an orphanage there. While there, Freeman- Woolpert stayed part of the time with a host family and the other part at the orphanage, working with the more than 40 children who worked there and about 60 more who just came by now and then to get food and interact.

Traveling through Nairobi on the way there, Freeman-Woolpert said the city looked like any other in major hub in the United States.

The outskirts, however, were a different story. Many families lived in slums and neighborhoods plagued by disease and crime.

It occurred to her to feel guilty that her own life in Pembroke had been so privileged in comparison, but that wasn’t exactly what tugged at her heart the most.

“What really struck me most was I think how it seems normal to them to not have that much. It wasn’t like they were in this constant oppressed state,” said Freeman-Woolpert, adding the Kenyans had fruit fields and livestock that they offered to just about everyone.

“In some aspects, they were living a beautiful life,” she said. After all that worldly experience, Freeman-Woolpert was still ready for her senior year, earning a 93 average for the year. She and her mother, Julia Freeman- Woolpert, have also been working with a refugee family from Sudan since Anna was a freshman.

“Anna worked with the kids and did a lot of language activities,” Julia Freeman-Woolpert said. “Anna’s really become a role model for the kids.”

In addition, she has been heavily involved in Students Against Destructive Decisions (SADD), plays the piano and takes voice lessons.

It’s not likely we’re going to see her on “American Idol” anytime soon though. The music is just for her, she said. “I think it has a different feeling when you do something for yourself than when you do it for someone else,” she said.

Long-term plans, the soon-to-be graduate said, are still up in the air at this point. “I have so many (plans) that I don’t know if they’ll fit in one lifetime,” she said.

Freeman-Woolpert said she’d like to live outside the United States for an extended period. When she was in Kenya, she said, she knew she would be leaving.

“I was still a tourist there,” she said. “The people treated me differently because they knew I was an outsider.”

She added she could see herself teaching eventually, particularly in another torn country.

This year, she completed an internship with Three Rivers School teacher Amy Tremblay, teaching vocabulary to eighth-graders. “She’s a wonderful girl,” said Julia Freeman-Woolpert. “I’m looking forward to seeing her get to college.”

Pembroke News : college

Pembroke Academy senior sees herself working outside the U.S.