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Kemi Reid's Brave New World
Pondi Road
Sunday, November 01, 2009
"Climb every mountain, ford every stream. Follow every rainbow till you find your dream!" -- Mother Superior to Maria in The Sound of Music
In the 1998 vehicle for Gwyneth Paltrow, Sliding Doors, she plays a woman whose entire life hinges on whether or not she catches the train to work one morning. The movie follows her life along two parallel tracks, one where she catches the train and goes on living with the man she is already with, and the other track where she misses the train and goes home to find her lover in the arms of another woman. Our life trajectories can hinge on small or large decisions and random events. I caught up with Kemi Reid in the midst of her "sliding doors" moment; her life trajectory is taking a radically different path because of a decision she made almost two years ago.
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| Kemorine Reid is the Jamaican student selected to receive one of the highly coveted Pearson College scholarships. She is doing us proud as a great ambassador to the school. |
Two five-hour plane rides, one two-hour ferry ride and a one-hour car drive later, I arrive at Kemi Reid's current address: the Lester B Pearson College of the Pacific in Vancouver Island, Canada. Clustered on the wooded shores of Pedder Bay with cedar buildings nestled among forest trees lies one incredibly special educational institution.
Pearson College provides a two-year, pre-university education for 200 kids selected entirely on merit from over 75 countries around the world. All students are on full scholarship covering tuition, room and board, and they live together on school grounds while studying the rigorous International Baccalaureate Program.
The place is designed around confronting and uniting "differences". They are known for doing insane things like putting an Israeli and a Palestinian together as roommates, or sending meat eaters and avid vegetarians on the same camping trip. Putting culturally disparate kids together in cramped quarters forces them to bump up against each other and negotiate shared space. As a result, near impossible bonds get formed. If you think a devout Christian and an atheist cannot find common ground, Pearson begs to differ. If you feel you can't live with a lesbian dorm master and her girlfriend? Get over it; they are not changing your dorm. Here tolerance is not a mantra, it is a lifestyle. And beyond tolerance, there is love and interpersonal bonding which is where most of the kids eventually end up. Yes, even the Israeli and the Palestinian bawled when they had to leave Pearson and return to their divided lives on opposite sides of a civil war. Somehow, here at Pearson the differences disappear or seem less relevant.
I had no idea what Kemorine Reid looked like. I had never met her. I had simply e-mailed and told her that I would be in her neck of the woods and would love to see the school.
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| Kemi hanging in the Pearson cafeteria with her Caribbean posse from the Bahamas, Trinidad and Haiti. |
I arrived on the Pearson campus around noon and asked a Polish girl if she knew who Kemi was. "Oh, she is in her room waiting for you," she said, and pointed me in the direction of Kemi's dorm.
I went upstairs and knocked. Twice. No one answered. So I did what no proper gentleman would ever do, I turned the knob and walked in to look at her personal space sans Kemi. After all, if she was not waiting for me in her room it surely meant that I was welcome to see her room even if she was not there.
She shares the space with three girls from Peru, Canada and Zimbabwe. There are two twin beds and four desks on the ground floor and two beds in the mini-loft. Like students' quarters everywhere, the room is cluttered with too many books and too much paper. The girls' personalities are on display in the unique selection of personal effects, like the large national flags on the banister, the requisite girly stuffed animals, knitted artwork and a Spongebob poster. (For the record, Kemi did in fact take me back later for a legit tour of her dorm room but I never let on that I had already been inside.)
After violating her personal space, I was making my way around campus taking photos when, suddenly, a beautiful black woman with expressive cat-like eyes and a magnetic smile called out, "Is that you? Are you looking for Kemi Reid?" Well, actually I was. And that was her cue. She graciously embraced me and then launched into being an impeccable host.
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| Floating laboratory where the students study marine biology, among other subjects. |
She had arranged for us to have lunch with some other Caribbean students. Over some pasta alfredo, we broached all kinds of topics, including living away from home, campus rules, career choices, dating, negotiating changing personalities with parents. We could have gone on for hours. These kids showed incredible maturity and wisdom for their age. They are all going through the same process, feeling confident yet unsure. They know who they are but are struggling with who they can become. It was exhilarating to sit with their sense of possibilities. I had fun.
Kemi is the daughter of Reverend Wayne Reid and his wife, Dawn. Reverend Reid is the minister of Christiana Moravian Church in Manchester and Mrs Reid is a guidance counsellor at the Christiana Moravian Primary School. Along with Kemi's sister Maya, they seem a pretty close-knit family.
Originally a native of Manchester, Kemi was living in MoBay when she got the call to apply for the Jamaican spot to Pearson. While attending Montego Bay High School for Girls, she was form captain and vice-president of the Red Cross Society, among a host of other activities. Despite a crushing extra-curricular schedule and helping around her dad's church, she passed 10 subjects at CXC with 8 distinctions and two credits. Yes, you read that right!
She was ambivalent at first about applying to Pearson with there being only one space for a Jamaican. Clearly tough odds! Moreover, the interview process was quite intimidating. A large panel of educators, artists and business people fired questions asking who she was, what she wanted out of life and how she intended to contribute. "Why should you get the one spot?" Well, whatever she said impressed the hell out of them - as she did me.
She is now a little over a year into her two-year Pearson experience and it has been a helluva ride.
First, there is keeping up with the rigorous academic standards. She is studying anthropology, economics, English, math, marine science and French. She is also actively involved in leadership positions with the drama group and the Pearson yearbook.
Added to all that, there is the pressure of being so far away from home. She sometimes feels uprooted, lonely and homesick but has also made some incredible new friends. Pearson provides a golden opportunity for her to intersect with so many differing points of view and ways of living. Isolated from the familiar, these kids form unbreakable bonds that take them past their own cultures and into a broader understanding of human nature. They break each other down and then help each other heal, creating new selves. The gal who started out in a quiet town in Manchester is transforming rapidly into a member of the cosmopolitan cognoscenti with a global network of contacts and friends.
Kemi says she is "surprised at how much I have grown since being here. I've already had some of the best and worst moments of my life in this place, but it is a part of why I love it so much".
How will Kemi change? How will she grow? Who will she become? Some changes will undoubtedly make her parents very proud. Her evident fortitude and independence already constitute grounds for familial celebration. Other changes will disappoint. She is already going to church far less often than her dad would like. She struggles with all this as she goes into exams and makes plans for what her and her gal pals call the "dreaded life after Pearsons". For now, she hopes to study International Relations and Women's Studies at university in the US or Canada. She is at a crossroads, and it feels a little daunting.
Many of the Jamaican graduates from Pearson end up at places like Harvard, Brown, Princeton and other breeding grounds for the educated elite. Kemi feels the pressure of that legacy. A profile in the Style Observer probably doesn't help ease the pressure either. LOL!!
"Oh God, I am just not getting economics," she groans and goes on to list her perceived inadequacies. I roll my eyes. Dear Minerva, oh goddess of wisdom, why are the very talented always plagued with self-doubt, while the buffoons have no such hang-ups?
At critical moments in life transitions we invariably feel the most vulnerable. Are we good enough? Are we strong enough? She is. Will we make it? She will. That girl's got the "stuff!" She is smart, charismatic, beautiful, warm and funny, a lethal combination for success.
Congratulations are due to the dear Reverend and Mrs Reid. They have raised a first-class human being. Kemi cannot see how it will all unfold, but there is little doubt that she is on the verge of an extraordinary life adventure. She has already experienced what most Jamaicans many years her senior will only dimly ever know.
"This incubation period has given me the time I need to truly find myself, my own identity away from my role as the minister's daughter and other cultural stereotypes. Being here separates me from it all; I can become whoever I want to be and I am not constrained by the expectations of others." The words of Kemorine Reid.
May her God bolster her courage as she sails into that Brave New World!
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