Harvard and MIT visit

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On the 4th of April we had the privilege of visiting two of the most prestigious schools in the world Harvard and MIT. I’m sure most of you have seen Legally Blonde and 21, how they try to capture the lifestyle at these schools however they do little justice for them as they don’t show what’s beyond and within.
Antony’s friend, Martin is a Kenyan who graduated from MIT and now works at Harvard in the Treasury Department. Despite his busy schedule he managed to give us a day long tour around the two campuses.
Elvis the only Kenyan senior at Harvard gave a short tour; we went round to their dining hall and met their friendly Dining Hall Manager who told us that their number one priority is preparing good quality meals for the high achieving students. Sodexho hmmm...
We went on to the Harvard school of Business; Law and just when I thought we had covered the whole perimeter I was informed that there were 7 more schools we had not seen. They also have the Entrepreneurship Building which is shown in the pictures.
John Harvard’s statue is located at the heart of Harvard; he looks on to a large quad ever so green in spring time. I was wondering why one of the statues shoe was so shiny and the other was not...could it have been an architectural defect of environmental attributes? To my amazement I learnt that if one rubs the right shoe of John Harvard they will be clever hence you see us in the pictures trying our luck ...you never know..... :-)
The same applies to a statue in one of MIT’s hallways, it has a shiny nose and I bet most of the prospective students rubbed on it with hope to get into the prestigious school.
My preconception of MIT was definitely wrong; I had a mind image of geeks who spent most their time talking, breathing and eating science and maths. And yet this might be true for some individuals there but my experience at MIT was different, insightful and comforting.
I say comforting since the people we met where just normal I like us who had really worked hard to get where they are now. We sat in the MIT African Society meeting and never before had I felt at home; it was like an ALA in the USA.
It wasn’t really surprising that like ALA, the country which dominates the African population at MIT is (drum rolls)....Kenya! They were having elections for the incoming committee. The candidates spoke casually and there didn’t seem to be any objections it must have been because they were munching on West African rice or that the candidates didn’t have any opponents.
We finished off walking by the Charles River which is one of Boston’s pride and joy, it embraces all kinds of people the adrenaline junkies who take up water sports and also the lovers who take the strolls at dusk. All in all the experience was great and refreshing.

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