Suburban woman bringing solar-powered computers to Kenya

As a school kid, Megan DaPisa's hand would shoot into the air before the teacher could finish any "I need a volunteer to-" request.

Now the 24-year-old Arlington Heights native is using that same moxie to orchestrate an ambitious project that uses her suburban roots to improve the world halfway around the globe.

As part of her Peace Corps volunteer gig, DaPisa is working to build a solar-powered computer lab at the school where she teaches deaf students in the rural village of Mokowe, Kenya.

"This has been an amazing experience," DaPisa e-mails. "This project is very exciting, and so many people have shown a lot of interest and support."

A graduate of Rolling Meadows High School who went on to get a degree in special education from Minnesota State University at Moorhead, DaPisa grew up in a comfy environment where a dropped cell phone signal, sluggish microwave oven or slow wireless Internet connection might elicit groans.

Now, she washes her clothes by hand and cooks all her meals on a small camp stove called a paraffin jiko.

"There is no running water, and the power is erratic because it is powered by the sun," DaPisa notes. She fills her toilet with water every day, battles the heat by walking to the duka in the hope the shop might have ice for a cola, and does her best to avoid insects.

"The bugs are awful. It seems like a new creature comes out every couple of weeks so I am constantly on my toes!" DaPisa writes. "If they are slow moving, I'm OK. It's the quick spiders or flying roaches/beetles that I don't like!"

But she says all those inconveniences fade in the face of the joy she gets from her work with the Peace Corps.

"I've heard many people say that once you travel somewhere in Africa, it just gets under your skin and becomes a part of you. Kenya will always be a part of me!" DaPisa writes. "Kenyans are wonderful people. It is such a welcoming and friendly culture here. There are so many great people that I am so lucky to have in my life now."

The Kenyans are lucky to have DaPisa, as well.

DaPisa's e-mails to her friends in the suburbs about her dream of setting up a computer lab for her students struck a chord with Nanette Sowa, who runs the fundraising arm of the Northwest Special Recreation Association and has been a friend since DaPisa was a high schoolgirl who volunteered with the Special Olympics.

Eager to help, Sowa says she thought her friend Gail Komarek, a library media director at Windsor Elementary School in Arlington Heights School District 25, might be able to find one of those erasable white boards DaPisa was seeking for her classroom.

"Do we have one?" Komarek says she asked Chris Fahnoe, director of technology and assessment for District 25. "He said, 'No, we don't. But we have computers.'"

Instead of recycling the no-longer-useful supply of 7- and 8-year-old iBook laptop computers, Fahnoe gave 25 laptops to DaPisa's parents, Bob and Terry DaPisa. It didn't cost the district anything to help the project, Fahnoe notes.

Getting the computers to Kenya took all of DaPisa's cunning. She wrote to a U.S. Marine base in Kenya, where military officials agreed to store and deliver the computers.

So Bob and Terry DaPisa loaded up their son's pickup truck and drove the computers 1,000 miles one way to Camp Lejeune, the Marine base in North Carolina, which found room for them on a flight to Africa.

"Whatever we needed to do to make that happen was an easy investment to make," Terry DaPisa says. "Megan has always been a change-the-world kid."

Her parents and grandparents set a good example as volunteers.

"She's seen volunteering in action," Terry DaPisa says of her daughter. "Volunteering in the Special Olympics helped her find her life's passion."

In the meantime, Megan DaPisa needs a little help. The Peace Corps has set a July 15 deadline for her to raise the $15,768 needed to set up the computer lab. The people of Mokowe have raised $5,526 and DaPisa and her suburban friends have raised even more. DaPisa says she hopes readers of this column will help her reach the goal by the deadline. To find out more about the project or donate, please visit the Web site www.peacecorps.gov, click on the link for donations and search for DaPisa's project or go to the link www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=615-172.