Kyle Henderson searches out a close understanding of the Middle East

Kyle Henderson in the Simien Mountain National Park in Ethiopia. (Courtesy Photo)

For many students, traveling abroad has become the definitive aspect of the college experience. For Kyle Henderson, a Bromfield graduate of 2003, the Middle East will always be associated with his college memories.

After graduation, Henderson left Bromfield ready to attend New York University in Greenwich Village. As if that lifestyle change was not enough, he also decided to travel to the Middle East during his junior year.

“I designed my own major at NYU, concentrating on politics and Middle Eastern studies,” he explained, “So the region for study abroad was the obvious choice.” Faced with the options of Cairo, Beirut, and Damascus, Henderson finally chose Cairo, since its Egyptian dialect is the most widely used throughout the Arabic world. With a population close to 20 million, “Cairo is also far more exciting, and it serves as a gateway to Africa and the rest of the Middle East,” he said.

Upon his arrival in January 2006, Henderson attended American University, conveniently located in downtown Cairo on Tahrir Square. This private university is known as a highly respected overseas study spot for American students and is a temporary home to 225 of them at any given time. For admittance, students must be attending a college and studying material relevant to the Egyptian culture. Henderson said that it was easy to do well if effort was evident. “Beside the language classes,” he recalled, “All are taught in English and most of the Arab students speak and write fairly well in English, as they are mostly of high socioeconomic strata.”

Seeking to improve his language skills, Henderson left Cairo and headed down and across the Red Sea to the old city of Sana’a, Yemen. For one month he met four hours a day, five days a week with a private language tutor.

At the end of his stay, Henderson met up with a friend from Cairo and together they spent 18 days backpacking through northern Ethiopia. In addition to tackling five key cities and villages, Henderson and his companion hiked for five days through Simien Mountain National Park, home to the fourth-highest peak in Africa.

Due to the continuing Israel-Lebanon conflict, however, he altered his original plan of visiting Lebanon and Syria and redirected his sights to Jordan. “With our Arabic confidently conversational at that point, we rented a car and drove around for a week finding points of interest wherever they found us,” he explained. From there he headed into the West Bank and spent several days visiting different Palestinian cities such as Hebron, Ramallah, and Nablus. Before returning back home in mid-August, Henderson toured through Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. In the blink of an eye his “pretty epic” trip had ended.

Nevertheless, certain world ideals and principles seemed more evident to Henderson during his Middle East experiences. “I’d say my outlook on life hasn’t changed significantly, but my understanding of the world has,” he explained. “It may seem silly, but I came to realize the importance of sharing a conversation with someone of a different cultural background.”

While in Yemen, Henderson’s tutor, as well as numerous other natives, helped to confirm his new-found understanding. But putting aside the breathtaking landscape of “unreal” mountains and deserts, in the end it was the people that intrigued him the most.

Henderson and his tutors had the chance to discuss all sorts of issues every day for hours on end. “Everything from what my house looks like, to how our favorite Arab musicians measure up, to the various aspects of September 11, was thrown on the table,” Henderson said, “And oftentimes the conversations became very heated and upsetting.” Eventually, he learned that although the political spectrum in Yemen would say that his tutors were liberal, by American standards they were very conservative.

Henderson realized that communication creates an understanding and a common bond between two different people. “All the racism and hatred seen throughout American and Middle Eastern cultures today,” he explained, “could be alleviated so easily through the process of dialogue.” He feels that if you “stick to your nightly news station” it would be hard to believe that in fact the whole world often carries the same basic value systems.

All in all, Henderson said, his trip to the Middle East “made [him] realize the immense power of a foreign language: probably the best tools to carry on are dialogue and the democratic tradition of communication.”

Note: Krystina Konop is a sophomore at Bromfield. This article was previously published in the January, 2007 edition of The Bromfield Mirror.