Toto's Got Nothin' on These Kids

By Shannon in Arts & Entertainment on May 22, 2007 6:00PM

Chicagoist is insanely jealous. We’re approaching our late 20s, and we’ve only left the country once. England hardly counts, either; for Americans, it’s the most vanilla, non-challenging place to visit, outside of Canada. (No offense meant.) So we read through green eyes about two lucky teens who get to go to Africa (freakin’ Africa!) through an opportunity with the Field Museum.

Shellay Hubbard and Ex’zavier Pierce are freshmen at the Calumet campus of Perspectives Charter School on the South Side. Both kids earned the chance of a lifetime by winning their school’s essay contest, which was sponsored by Ernst & Young. That means not only do they get to go to Kenya’s Mt. Elgon to participate in an archeological dig, they’re doing it all at no cost to them. Normally only college students go on such excavations, but the Field Museum changed its tune recently, allowing the teenagers to plug away right alongside their undergrad neighbors. Let’s hope there’s not much to chug out in Kenya.

Chap Kusimba, the Field Museum’s contact, discovered the Mt. Elgon site along with his wife Sibel. Kusimba’s overseeing the digging for the five-week student participation. The dynamite part? “We'll take one weekend and drive up to Sen. Obama's village,” he claims. Holy crap! That’s right, Hubbard and Pierce get to possibly make earth-shattering discoveries that will rock the world of science and visit the homeland of Barack’s father. Have we mentioned how jealous we are?