Winner Chosen to Accompany Nicholas Kristof to Africa

By: E&P Staff New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has chosen the person who will accompany him on a reporting trip to Africa this September.

She is Casey Parks, 23, a graduate student at the University of Missouri School of Journalism who has never traveled abroad. Parks -- of Jackson, Miss. -- was among about 3,800 American students submitting essays.

Among her words: "I want to learn by seeing. I feel deeply, and I know journalism. I'm strong, and have no need for 5-star hotels or other luxuries. In person, I'm charming and sweet and considerate, but still bold and fearless. The trip you're offering is an experience that should merge experience and inexperience, skill and desire for more. I have these qualities."

Parks also wrote about growing up poor: "I saw my mother skip meals. I saw my father pawn everything he loved. I saw our cars repossessed. I never saw France or London."

In his column today, Kristof wrote: "We'll most likely start in Equatorial Guinea, bounce over to Cameroon and travel through a jungle with Pygmy villages to end up in the Central African Republic -- one of the most neglected countries in the world. We'll visit schools, clinics, and aid programs, probably traveling in September for 10 days. Casey will write a blog about it for nytimes.com and will also do a video blog for MTV-U.

"But the point of this contest wasn't to give one lucky student the chance to get malaria and hookworms. It's to try to stir up a broader interest in the developing world among young people.

"One of our country's basic strategic weaknesses is that Americans don't understand the rest of the world. We got in trouble in Vietnam and again in Iraq partly because we couldn't put ourselves in other people's shoes and appreciate their nationalism."

Kristof, who is syndicated by the New York Times News Service, won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary last month.