In inner-city Baltimore, 76 percent of African-American boys don’t graduate from high school. And, as the school system complained to the president of a philanthropic foundation five years ago, five percent of troublemakers were making learning nearly impossible for the other 95 percent. The solution they came up with was Baraka School, an experimental school in Kenya–yes, Africa–where “at-risk” kids are shipped to get a radical education away from the influences of drugs, violence, and poverty. In the east African language Kiswahili, “baraka” means blessing, and for some of the boys featured in the new documentary Boys of Baraka, it seems a fitting name. Shot over three years, the film focuses on a handful of boys as they face loneliness, discipline, and catharses in Kenya:
Devon, now 15 and a ninth grader at the Academy for College and Career Exploration in Baltimore, recalls a moment that changed him. After he deliberately bumped a teacher, two counselors took him for a “night walk,” far from campus, and left him to find his way back. The chattering of baboons filled the dark skies. “Tears were running down my cheeks,” he says. “That was a lot more scary than Baltimore. I was walking all by myself, thinking about everything [my grandmother and teachers] always told me about doing good. I wasn’t so tough. That was when I started to listen.” Richard struggles with his reading — “something wrong with my brain,” he says with a laugh — but one night, to grand applause, he shares a poem he has written. The title: “I Will Survive.” Devon and Romesh make the honor roll, and Montrey, by now reading books on his own for the first time, earns 95s. “Before Baraka, I always failed math,” says Montrey, now 15 and a Baltimore City College freshman. “I never went [to class]. With all those teachers coming after me, I learned to value my education.”
The Boys of Baraka screens at the Walker on March 16 as part of the 2006 Women with Vision festival of film and video. Watch the trailer here. To hear this morning’s review on NPR by Los Angeles Times critic Kenneth Turan, click here. Look for more Women with Vision preview posts in weeks to come…
Get Walker Reader in your inbox. Sign up to receive first word about our original videos, commissioned essays, curatorial perspectives, and artist interviews.