October 11, 2007 Issue                                       

©2007 The Chestnut Hill Local

‘Ordinary’ Hiller moves to Africa — to save lives
by LEN LEAR

Barbara with some of her friends in Bududa, Uganda. “They like North Americans,” she says.

“Don’t make the article too glowing. I’m just an ordinary person,” insisted Barbara Wybar in a conversation last Friday when she learned this article would be appearing in the Local.

But despite her appealing modesty, calling Barbara Wybar ordinary would be like calling Jimmy Rollins an ordinary baseball player. After all, an “ordinary” person does not climb 19,340 feet to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest peak in Africa and one of the highest in the world, at the age of 59 (in April of 2006). And an “ordinary” big city dweller definitely does not leave Chestnut Hill at the age of 61 to live in a rural village in Uganda with no running water or electricity or meat or much of anything else we are all used to.

But that is what this single mother of four adult children will do in early November when the career teacher puts the belongings from her Rex Avenue home in storage and leaves for Africa in order to care for children orphaned by AIDS and to make sure that a school she helped start continues to survive and provide a quality education. (Ironically, even though we live in the world’s richest country, many public schools here are plagued by violence, bullies, drugs, delinquency, inadequate or nonexistent penalties for horrendous behavior and a complete disdain for education, while the school Wybar helped start in one of the world’s poorest countries exhibits none of those problems. The students can’t wait to get to school.)

Wybar, who will be honored on Oct. 26 by her alma mater, The Study, a K-through-12 Springside-like school in Montreal, with its top alumna award for her extraordinarily selfless humanitarian work in Africa, began traveling to Uganda in 2003.

A second grade teacher at Germantown Friends School from 1993 to 2003, Barbara then moved to the Wissahickon Charter School in Nicetown, where she still teaches. “But since I am a teacher,” Wybar explained, “I have had summers off, and I heard about this program at my Quaker meeting (Germantown Friends).”

The project Barbara referred to is the African Great Lakes Initiative of the Friends of Peace. She began raising substantial funds and resources for the Children of Hope orphans’ vocational skills high school project in the rural village of Bududa in western Uganda. Many children in the area have been left without one or both parents because of AIDS, landslides and almost unfathomable poverty.

Starting in 2003, Barbara would spend one month each summer working in the village of Bududa. “It was so neat,” she recalled, “to break ground with 35 Africans and eight North Americans, all to build a school where there was none.” All of the building was done by hand: mixing concrete, digging and moving bricks. Last year the school had 43 students learning bricklaying, tailoring, carpentry and nursery school teaching, which is the most popular course of study. The teachers are all Africans.

“I love staying with villagers,” said Barbara, who has stayed with an AIDS widow and her five children. When she leaves in November to return to Uganda, it will be for at least nine months, possibly longer. She may stay with a community leader named George, although “his house is not very clean.” Barbara will help look after 200 AIDS orphans and oversee the budget of the school she helped to create.

Bududa is near the Equator, although it is at an elevation of 8,000 feet. It is usually in the 90s during the day but cool at night. There are almost no jobs except teaching. Most families survive by subsistence farming but just barely. By the time the planting season begins, there is little or no food left in the village.

“The staple food is called ‘posho,’” explained Barbara. “It is like corn grits or cream of wheat. I don’t like it, but they also have baked beans, which are delicious, and lots of cabbage. They eat the same thing three times a day. For a really special occasion, they might kill a chicken.”

To break the food monotony and because she can afford it, Barbara will take a one-hour bus ride to the nearest town two or three times a week to buy potatoes, rice, pineapples and avocados. “I’m an object of curiosity,” she said, “because I’m the only white person in the village, but the people there like North Americans.”

Barbara’s one-hour bus rides make Septa buses seem like Rolls Royces. “There is nothing boring about travel in Africa,” she said. “They are very, very crowded, and the rides are harrowing. There might be a goat in somebody’s lap and five chickens under somebody’s feet.”

Most Americans have trouble limiting their suitcase items when they are leaving for a one- or two-week trip, but Barbara can only take two suitcases for her journey of at least nine months. “I may send a box of books in advance because I will definitely be doing a lot of reading,” she said. “It gets lonely on a Friday evening with no videos, no movies, restaurants or entertainment of any kind. I will have to find other pleasures. I will take a laptop with me, and I hope I can get the internet. I’ll send a newsletter to the people who sponsored me and anyone else who is interested.”

Wybar’s children are Caroline, 31, of Wayne; Jonathan, 29, of Mt. Airy; Nicola, 28, who lives in California, and Jamie, 26, of Manayunk. She also has a Golden Retriever, Zubi, who is 14. “I will miss him terribly,” she said. “My older son will take care of him.”

Wybar is currently trying to raise funds to keep the school in Bududa operating for the next two years. She has already raised $14,000 of the $26,000 she needs. She will hold a yard sale this Saturday, Oct. 13, 9 a.m. to noon, at 111 Rex Ave., to raise funds. In addition, there will be a fundraising evening of professional storytelling (from Ed Stivender of Germantown and Quiet Riot) on Saturday, Oct. 20, 7:30 p.m., at Germantown Friends School, Poley Auditorium in the main building, second floor. Requested donation is $15 for adults, $7 for children under 12. For more information, call 215-242-0504. 

To contact Barbara in Africa for her newsletter, email bwybar@yahoo.com. Before then, contact her at bwybar@verizon.net You can contact Len Lear at 215-248-8807 or lenlear@chestnuthilllocal.com