Wilton native finds the ‘sand in her shoes’ in Africa

WILTON – Before graduating from Mt. Blue High School in 1989, as part of the largest class to come through the school, Sarah Yates recalls spending her days in her hometown’s former “Green School.”

Third grade, in particular, was a significant one for Yates.

“I remember watching a film strip about the San people of the central Kalahari. They carried water in empty ostrich eggs and hunted giant giraffe with tiny bows and arrows. It was then that I knew I wanted to go to Africa and see the Kalahari for myself,” Yates said.

Years later, living in Botswana, Yates would spend every weekend out in the Kalahari Desert, driving around exploring national parks, looking for indigenous wildlife. It was there that she finally realized the meaning of the African saying of “getting sand in your shoes.”

“Africans say you have ‘sand in your shoes’ if you’ve been so changed by your experience there that you will probably never leave- because you can never shake the sand from your shoes,” Yates explained.

At the time she was working in Botswana’s capital of Gaborone, conducting research on HIV treatments. Although Yates described the job as “pushing a lot of paper and managing data,” she was part of a team that was finding solutions for the country who had one of the highest HIV infection rates in the world.

The small-town Mainer would describe her upbringing to co-workers, who were shocked at the similarities between life in an African village, and that of rural America.

“Most people I worked with came from rural areas across the country. They were surprised to find that I was also from a small town, that people in my community also grew our own vegetables, walked to town to do our shopping and sometimes we raised or hunted our meat. They imagined America as a place with many people and very tall buildings, and found my description of small-town life to be recognizable to their own,” Yates said.

Recognizable aside, of course, from the tales of four to six feet of snow- enough to cover an entire car.

By 2005 Yates grew restless with her job and life in Gaborone. Following a life long dream of becoming an anthropological paleontologist, excavating the remains of ancient human ancestors in the Rift Valley, Yates took a job working in Nairobi- only a half hour drive from the Rift Valley. Again, Yates found herself working on solutions for the HIV epidemic- which brought her all over East Africa, from Rwanda to Uganda.

Eventually life in a gritty East African city caught up to Yates. The number of people, the traffic and the pollution pushed Yates to request a transfer, moving back down the continent, this time to South Africa. Along with finding the sand of her new home in her shoes on a daily basis, Yates was playing a more and more important role in the goal of eradicating HIV and TB.

“What I do now seems to be pretty far away from the kid who wanted to go hang out in the desert and dig up fossils. But since my high school years I have had a love of science,” Yates said.

She went on to attribute much of that love to teachers she encountered at Mt. Blue. People like Ms. Millette, Mr. Trefethen and Mrs. Stinneford, who first instilled her love of the scientific world, and supported her inquisitiveness in the natural sciences.

“I can’t stress how important it is to have a strong math and sciences program starting even before high school. Especially for young women. Especially for those who don’t feel like they’re ‘good’ at it. It may seem like a big jump from Wilton, Maine to Johannesburg, or Nairobi, or Gaborone, but people face the same health challenges everywhere. Growing up and living in a small community, we have much in common with other small communities world-wide, we have the same needs and we face the same challenges,” Yates said.