Fresh from the Field
A taste of South Africa sparks Jensen Lowe’s interest in international relations and issues facing developing nations.

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This article was published in Abroad View's fall 2009 magazine.

Jensen Lowe (second from left) and his classmates pack out an impala they tracked in Kruger National Park, South Africa.

By Molly Lister

The Foreign Studies Program Jensen Lowe attended in the fall semester of his junior year strives to give students a global perspective through field trips and research in South Africa, Lesotho, and Namibia. Through this program, students gain firsthand experience with issues of population, land and water use, resource management in southern Africa—and, sometimes, a few new tastes. Thanks to the program, for instance, Lowe knows the flavor of an impala. “I just had to take one bite,” he says. “It was very chewy. It tasted gamey.”

Right before that first bite, Lowe was on an ecological field study with the Foreign Studies Program in Timbavati, a private game reserve attached to Kruger National Park in South Africa. The topic of the day was ruminants, or animals that have multiple-chamber stomachs. They watched one of the guides shoot an impala, which is a type of antelope. They then tracked its blood, loaded its body onto the truck, and brought it back to the campsite to study. “We dissected it piece by piece and examined every part of it,” says Lowe, who was the first to volunteer his help.

Fresh experiences like this one were one reason Lowe chose the Foreign Studies Program in the first place. “I thought that one of the best ways to experience a completely different and new place would be through a structured program that allowed you to see different aspects of the country,” he says.

Before heading on field trips like the impala hunt for scientific research, Lowe, who majors in environmental studies and government at Dartmouth College, and his fellow students studied in a classroom and had rural homestays in a farming village. These experiences were meant to prepare them for the possible issues they would encounter on their trips. For Lowe, this was one of the most challenging parts of the program. Students also conducted interviews, researched their final papers, and took advantage of a little downtime.

“It was somewhat indicative of the villagers’ lifestyle because there isn’t always an opportunity to do something, like get a job. It’s one of the major problems in these villages,” Lowe says. “There were large chunks of time with nothing really to do, but it was a valuable experience to feel that.”

The students spent much of their free time playing with the kids, teaching them games, and dancing together. One of Lowe’s favorite memories was “playing soccer with the kids, barefoot, with donkey dung everywhere,” he says. “It was the first time in the rural homestay that I didn’t feel like a makua (foreigner).”

The program culminated with a seminar taught by a Dartmouth faculty member and a group project and paper. Although only a mock assignment, the group used its research and experience to come up with health recommendations for the South African Ministry of Health. “South Africa faces the double burden of disease. It faces the plagues of a developing nation, including poverty and infectious diseases,” Lowe says. “It also faces the issues of the developed world, including obesity and tobacco use. This must be looked at in conjunction with the AIDS epidemic.”

The group tried to work with resources that were already in place. Ninety percent of South Africa’s children go to school, for instance, so Lowe’s group suggested using schools to help teach about prevention and drug treatment of schistosomiasis and malaria. They also offered taxing tobacco to reduce regular usage as another solution.

Inspired by his study abroad experience, Lowe completed an internship at the U.S. State Department in the Bureau of African Affairs this summer and is now considering a career in international relations. But, more than anything, Lowe’s time abroad has affected how he sees his place in the world. “I believe in the recognition that we are all global citizens, something I had not necessarily thought about before,” he says.

Although the statistics are sometimes jarring and the challenges can be overwhelming, Lowe says he ultimately walked away with hope. “When I was traveling around southern Africa,” he says, “I saw so much that sparked optimism that it renewed my belief that striving for development is a worthy and potentially achievable cause.”