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| Patrick McGrann works with children in Abéché, Chad, near the Darfur region, and hopes to set the world kite record there,
with up to 4,000 kids in a refugee camp flying kites in unison. Courtesy of Kitegang |
A 'kite runner' says it's OK to have fun in Darfur
Patrick McGrann wants to help refugee children take back their skies, create jobs for the needy, and maybe even set a world record at the 'Darfur Kite Festival.'
from the November 7, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 3
War. Hunger. Disease. Corruption. Environmental devastation. Those scourges of the developing world ... how can anyone have "fun" with those? How can you put a kite in a kid's hands and claim some sort of psychosocial victory when it's a meal or shelter she truly needs? Isn't Kitegang frivolous?
"Most people that pose that question – ... very honestly – don't have the experience that I have," McGrann counters in a recent interview here. "There are groups that are already there in Darfur, filling medical and food needs, doing so many great things. But, tell me, what happens when you hear, 'Darfur'? Let's see, I'll skip to the next article. You know it's going to be bad news.... Who wants to watch them getting a vaccination? Who wants to see another food line? That's a downer. Instead, see some kids having a good time in the worst, most miserable place on Earth, and, if we do set the [kiting] world record, well, that's surely a different spin on Darfur."
He pauses his rapid-fire self-defense, then adds, "This is what I can do. People who ask, 'Why kites?', well, they must have more money than I do. Why don't they do something?"
He's doing his Darfur project on a kitestring: about $10,000, his own frequent-flier miles for part of his plane ticket, corporate contributions of materials – like Tyvek house-wrapping material for kites from DuPont – and volunteers.
• • •
Part Indiana Jones, part Che Guevara, part Mr. Rogers, part Kofi Annan, McGrann grew up in Minneapolis, his father a well-connected Democratic lawyer and lobbyist and his mother the owner of a cutting-edge women's clothing store. After attending Breck School, one of the region's high-end private schools, he trotted off to Trinity College in Connecticut and dived into economics. After graduation, 10 years ago, he zoomed to Australia, got a job in a bank, lived on the beach, dated the bank's personal trainer; life was good. But, as the Internet began to blossom, he became intrigued with the website of a rebel group in Papua New Guinea.
Without a care but with a bulging backpack, he met up with some rebels in Indonesian Western New Guinea, hiked through that mountainous nation and, eventually, had a confrontation with machete-and slingshot-carrying gangsters. "That was the catalyst for me to go back to graduate school," McGrann says. He got his master's degree in science and technology policy from the University of Minnesota, and from there – minus the machetes – his journeys continued.
He traveled to Bolivia on a MacArthur Foundation grant, helping rural towns with economic development plans. He received a fellowship with the Congressional Hunger Center and the UN International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), first with peasants in Peru and then at IFAD's Italian headquarters.
There, in Rome, a stunning event altered his career trajectory. Some IFAD colleagues refused to go to the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002 because there were no business-class seats left on flights to Johannesburg, South Africa.
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