Name: Kelly Duggan
Year: Second
Hometown: Austin, Texas
Major: Environmental Engineering
What’s your favorite part about UVa?
As cliché as this sounds, I love everything about UVA. Someone asked me recently how it felt to be back at school after summer break. I told them that coming back was my favorite part of the summer because I was home. What makes this place so special to me are my friends. From all over the world, my friends enrich my life. I’ve never met such an amazing group of people in my life. My friends are my family. I feel like I was supposed to meet them, like we were made for each other. I love learning and growing together as we go through the four best years of our lives.
What Clubs/Organizations are you involved in?
I am a member of Kappa Alpha Theta. It’s so nice to walk into a house and know that I’m surrounded by a group of like-minded girls. They are strong, smart, beautiful, and hilarious. I know I can count on my sisters for anything from advice on boys to binge watching the Bachelor to tips on professors. They make me feel like I can accomplish anything. Witty, fun loving, and accepting, they always pick me up when I’m down.
What was the most interesting thing you did this summer?
I spent the first half of my summer taking some of the more challenging engineering school classes. After, I traveled around a bit with friends and family. The most exciting stop was Tanzania. I’ve traveled to Tanzania almost every summer for 6 years to volunteer at an orphanage that my family supports. However, this summer, I decided it was about time I climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro. Five and a half days up and 19,340 feet high, I couldn’t believe I was standing on top of the tallest peak in Africa. After hiking from midnight to 7am, we watched the sunrise out of the clouds and over the other peaks. I wanted to stay there forever, but unfortunately my partner was getting low on oxygen, so we needed to begin our day and a half decent.
For the following week, I worked at the orphanage. The kids are absolutely incredible. They all aspire to help their country and their people. One child, Johnson, is 8 years old and wants to be a doctor. His motivation is his uncle who took him out if his hostile home environment and raised him alone. After his uncle died suddenly of heart disease, Johnson’s neighbors took him to the orphanage where we instantly fell in love with him. His sweet demeanor melted my heart. Incredibly intelligent, Johnson was accepted to a top international school in Arusha, Tanzania. He hopes to go to medical school one day and return to Tanzania to help his village.
Along my travels, I came into contact with a job opportunity to rescue Elephants in Kenya for next summer. This is a cause that has always piqued my attention and I can’t wait for the adventures that lie ahead.
What is one thing people don’t know about you?
My little sister is adopted from Tanzania.
My mom runs a non-profit organization for abused children in Austin, Texas. One summer, I convinced her that we should go global and help children around the world. We went to Thailand to work in a shelter for sex slaves and then Cambodia where we worked at an orphanage. The following summer, we went to Tanzania to work at a baby home for children ages 0-3 years old. With no intentions of adopting, we fell madly in love with 3-month-old Emmy. At the time, we joked saying “We should just put her in our suitcase and say Kelly had a summer romance.”
After two weeks of being back in America, we were still thinking about Emmy and realized she was meant to be an addition to our family. So, we booked a ticket for the next day back to Tanzania. We tracked down her father and heard more of her story. Her mother died during childbirth after hemorrhaging in the villages, far away from any kind of hospital. Her father had no way to take care of Emmy as no one else in the village was nursing at the time. On top of that, Emmy’s father was the only one who worked to provide for his village. So, he put Emmy in the baby home with plans to take her back in a couple of years. Being from the Masai tribe, family and culture is very important. When we approached him with our hopes of adoption, he knew that we would provide a better life for her. Despite his extended family’s rejection to Westerners taking away the new baby, Emmys father signed the papers. That December, we had Emmy in the US on a visa. She was the best Christmas present our family ever received. And 2 years later, she was ours.
Now, Emmy is four and a half and perfect.