As I reflect on my time in Kenya, I realize that I have been afforded the opportunity to practice for a summer exactly what I want to do as a career. And I am grateful for it. I completed 29 interviews with boys where I  listened as they told me about their health and about what becoming a man means to them. By applying my public health knowledge, cultural competence, and qualitative skills, my job was to synthesize and relay the boys’ words to leaders of the Village for their information and for their use. While still in the preliminary stages of analysis, some emerging findings were surprising and hopeful (the young men equated manhood with educational attainment more than with any other factor!), while others present clear public health challenges (in a Village where 10% of youth are HIV+, some boys reported early sexual debut and knowledge of contraception’s purpose, but not how to effectively utilize condoms).

What was so great about this project was also the hardest for me to accept: it wasn’t about me! I have been involved with adolescent health programming for years, and it is my passion to promote and improve the health outcomes of young men specifically. This project, however, was not about me doing anything other than holding up a mirror that reflected boys’ health and masculinity experiences to the only people who can respond to that information: themselves and their village leaders. My own knowledge, beliefs, and values took a back seat to the boys’, which meant instead of offering programmatic solutions, I facilitated a deep examination of important elements of their health so others more culturally and socially attuned could respond.

I discovered a lot about the health needs of Nyumbani’s young men, but the limitations of time, space, and my culture prevented me from doing much about it on my own. As I prepare for a vocation as a practitioner of global adolescent public health, it is worth remembering how invaluable long-term relationships are to being a good neighbor and contributing to others’ health in the contexts in which they live. It will not be up to me to solve every public health challenge that I confront. But that doesn’t mean I won’t still confront the challenges I do see alongside my global neighbors, working sensitively and respectfully, to promote health.

Alex Plum: Alex is working in Nyumbani Village and will be developing a program for adolescent young men that will draw on cultural conceptions of male identity among the Kamba (the ethnic group who call Kitui County home) to support positive health behaviors and to help equip the young men at Nyumbani Village to live healthy, successful lives.