The Hawk

Issue date: 5/10/08 Section: Features

Brittney Gangemi has been offered eight marriage proposals, which equates to roughly 96 cows in South African Zulu culture.

Gangemi, a psychology major and faith justice minor, received her proposals in South Africa last spring, where she had traveled for the semester to study public health in the province of KwaZulu-Natal.

As part of her stay in South Africa, Gangemi, who heralds from Putnam, N.J., took classes to learn the native language (known as "Zulu"), and spent time in hospitals, clinics, and orphanages in the area. She traveled throughout South Africa, living in wealthy areas with impeccable health care programs as well as rural villages with dying families.

It was Gangemi's time spent in the rural villages that meant the most to her. For the remainder of the semester, Gangemi bravely ventured out alone, deciding to return to live with a Zulu family in a rural community in order to complete a one-month photojournalism independent study.

Gangemi's new home, made of cylinder blocks and considered lavish by Zulu standards, lacked all of the basic luxuries taken for granted in the United States. There was no electricity or irrigation systems, but instead, oil lamps and a river to fetch pales of water. Ritual slaughters, a daily diet of bread, eggs, rice, and chicken, as well as hours of preaching and singing were also part of traditional Zulu life.

"There is such a sense of community there," she says reflecting on her time spent in the village. "It doesn't relate to life here."

Gangemi joined a crowded household of 12 children, not uncommon in the tightly knit community. Due to widespread diseases, such AIDS and Tuberculosis, many children are left homeless.

"[In America] those children would be sent to an orphanage or foster care," she explains. [In the village], they take in the children whose parents have died."

Yet, despite conditions that most people her age would refuse, the tiny village offered Gangemi the most precious gift of all: self-discovery.

"I learned about life there," she said. "It is the happiest that I have been in my entire life, and I can't wait to go back."

Gangemi has plans to do exactly that. She has raised enough money to return to Africa for two months immediately following graduation. While there, she plans to revisit her Zulu family in South Africa as well as volunteer at an orphanage in Malawi, doing work in public health education as well as in a pediatric unit.

In addition, Gangemi plans to donate $500 to the orphanage, as well as provide the Zulu community with books, clothes, toys, and educational games, all of which she has received from family and friends.

In August 2009, after taking Spanish classes at a school in Costa Rica, Gangemi will attend John's Hopkins University's School of Nursin, in Baltimore to become a registered nurse practitioner.

"I like kids," she said, tucking her curly sandy brown hair behind her ears. "They need help and I have the time to give them."

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