Local couple offers gift to generous Malawians

In one of the poorest nations on Earth, Ken and Sylvia Gentili have had some of the most personally enriching experiences of their lives.

The Gentilis, both retired educators from University Place, traveled to the southern African nation of Malawi last year for a 21/2-month stay from August to mid-October. Ken recently returned from a second six-week trip there, arriving home in early June.

They traveled at their own expense, paying the $2,300 per person round-trip air fares. They traveled because “we love to travel,” Sylvia said. More significantly, they traveled because “while Ken wasn’t teaching classes anymore he still felt he had something to share,” she said. She felt the same way.

In partnership with the University of Livingstonia in northern Malawi, the couple taught Malawian teachers techniques to help them become more effective in the classroom.

A former British protectorate bordered by Zambia, Tanzania and Mozambique, Malawi uses a British teaching method in which students are taught by rote repetition of facts gleaned from textbooks and lectures. Ken, 67, who taught physics and engineering at Tacoma Community College for 38 years, did training in what Sylvia calls “participatory learning,” which encourages students to think for themselves rather than parrot back what they’ve been told.

Ken’s students were studying to become high school teachers. Sylvia, 66, a specialist in early childhood education who was on the faculty of Bates Technical College for 27 years, worked with preschool and primary school teachers to instruct them in similar techniques aimed at getting students more interested and involved in their lessons.

Conditions were primitive. Incomes in Malawi are low, and most of the residents are subsistence farmers, Sylvia said.

A preschool class she observed met in a chapel where there were no chairs for the children. They had to sit on the brick floor.

“There weren’t any pictures on the wall. There were no toys to play with. There were no books to read,” she said.

In a first-grade class she worked with, students used bottle caps they found to help them learn to add and subtract.

Last year’s trip was not the first time Ken had been to Africa. In the late ’60s he worked in Ethiopia as a member of the Peace Corps. In the decades since, he often thought about returning to the continent. “I wanted to see what had happened 40 years later,” he said. Last year he finally got his chance.

The chance came through the Fircrest Presbyterian Church where the couple worship. They learned that the Presbytery of Olympia, the denomination’s umbrella organization for churches in this area, had entered into a partnership with the Presbyterian Synod of Livingstonia, a city in northern Malawi.

In 2003, the synod founded the University of Livingstonia, the only private university in Malawi, with help from Henry Kirk, the recently retired president of Centralia College, and his wife, Jenny Seldon Kirk.

The Kirks belong to the Westminster Presbyterian Church in Chehalis. When Ken mentioned to an official at his Fircrest church that he wanted to revisit Africa, the official suggested he contact the Kirks. The two couples met, and it wasn’t long before the Kirks talked the Gentilis into going to Livingstonia to teach new instruction methods to faculty and students at the university’s College of Education.

When they arrived, the Gentilis were captivated by the land and its people. Livingstonia, with a population of about 6,700, is named after 19th-century missionary and explorer David Livingston, whose explorations took him to the area.

At 4,500 feet above sea level, Livingstonia’s climate is mild with temperatures ranging from around 65 to 85 degrees year-round. Ken said the landscape is reminiscent of New England with its mountains and its leafy trees. He calls it “a beautiful paradise plateau.”

The people are as hospitable as the climate, Ken said. “Malawians are known as the warm hearts of Africa.”

They’re outgoing and “very good about sharing,” Sylvia said. “Even when they don’t have anything to share, they still find a way to help one another.”

Ken recalled an evening when a choral group came to give a concert in Livingstonia and complained about the amount of diesel fuel used driving up the steep, narrow switchback to get to the city.

“So Malawians, true to their hearts, went out in the middle of the night and came back in the midst of the festivities with 20 liters of diesel fuel to get them back home. Mind you, the nearest fueling station was three hours (and 75 miles) away,” he said.

Soren Andersen: 253-597-8660

INSPIRING OTHERS

Since returning from their first visit to Malawi in 2007, Ken and Sylvia Gentili have given more than two dozen presentations to church and civic groups discussing their work. And as they’ve spread the word, other people from around the Puget Sound area have come forward to donate time and materials to improve life in Livingstonia.

• Even before they left on that first visit, Daniel Heath, a professor of mathematics at Pacific Lutheran University, donated two microscopes and a telescope for the couple to take with them to Livingstonia. “Students had never seen a microscope and had never worked with one before and they were quite excited,” Sylvia said.

• A friend of the couple, Marilouise Petersen, a retired director of human resources with the Sumner School District, decided to go to Malawi herself after hearing them talk about their work there. She’s currently in Livingstonia teaching leadership skills to staff and faculty at the university, Sylvia said.

• Area Girl Scout troops are collecting sewing and school supplies to send to the nation, and the Scouts and other organizations are holding fund-raisers to buy textbooks and school supplies.

• Ken is working with a Denver-based organization named Water for People that is developing a $700,000 project with Rotary International to build a pipeline system to serve some 15,000 people living in 10 villages in the Livingstonia area.

• Ken also is working to get Internet service by satellite to the remote community, which does not have any online access.