After four years spent making the short walk between Eliot House and Harvard Yard each morning, Cristiana Strava ’09 will spend her next year trekking across the Sahara Desert with a semi-nomadic tribe in Morocco. Strava is one of the six seniors who received the Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Fellowship for a year of post-graduate exploration of another culture.

The six senior recipients, chosen from among 87 applicants, include Strava, Lauren E. Brants, Wilmarie Cidre, Nicholas A. Rizzo, Nora A. Sluzas, and Brittan Smith.

Each recipient will receive $18,000 to travel abroad to a country of his or her choice. The six will be dispersed across Africa, Asia, and South America, using the year to learn about a foreign culture and self-reflect.

WANDERING THE DESERT

Strava, an anthropology concentrator, will live with the semi-nomadic Tuareg people in Morocco and film a documentary of their travels while collecting their short stories and songs.

“They’re a very interesting population,” said Strava, who first encountered the Tuareg tribe during travels in west Africa.

Strava, who said she had no idea what she was going to do after graduation, called the news of her win “overwhelming.”

“It was a very tough process especially if you put your soul on paper, which it requires you to,” Strava said.

DAY OF THE DEAD

Brants, a history and literature concentrator, will spend her year in Puebla, Mexico studying the Day of the Dead and death rituals related to mourning.

“I lost my father at the end of my freshman year, so I’m interested in how different cultures deal with death,” she said.

Brants, who is also a self-described “foodie,” said she chose to travel to Puebla because the region is known for its cuisine, and she would like to study how loved ones remember the dead through cooking.

Merging these two interests, she said she hopes to produce a cookbook integrating recipes, interviews, and photographs.

EXPLORING THE HIMALAYAS

Like Brants, Rizzo will be exploring how people deal with suffering. He will be examining it in a religious context in Himachal Pradesh, a state in northern India.

“What I’m going to explore is important to me personally, and this was the only fellowship that would give me the space, time, and means to do that,” Rizzo said.

As an experienced park ranger, Rizzo said he was also attracted to India because of its proximity to the Himalayas and opportunities for mountaineering.



WHY MARRY?

Cidre, who had originally discounted the fellowship as an option until three weeks before the application due date, will be studying marriage choices in Chile.

Chile has the fifth lowest divorce rate in the world and divorce was illegal until 2004, according to Cidre, who is also an inactive member of the Crimson’s Business Board.

“One of the big questions I have is: Is the divorce rate so low because people are promising their eternal love to each other or because of the government?” she said.

Cidre learned that she had won the fellowship only six hours after her interview. She received the phone call while studying in Widener Library.

“I couldn’t scream because they would have kicked me out, but I was in shock,” Cidre said. “I couldn’t even walk. My legs were shaking. I was about to cry.”

Cidre is pre-med, but plans on using the year to self-reflect.

“It’s exactly how I dream of having my year after college, with something new and exciting,” Cidre said. “There’s always a deadline here at Harvard, but now I have a year to think.”

CHINESE ENERGY

Inspired to explore renewable energy in China by her thesis, Sluzas will be living in a Chinese community that has been affected by renewable energy installations.

“I want to see what’s on the other side of the science and the math and the models,” Sluzas said.

While Sluzas has yet to choose a concrete place to live, she is considering a city near the Three Gorges Dam, a hydroelectric river dam in China whose construction required a massive relocation of over a million Chinese residents.

PHOTOGRAPHING HIV

Smith will work on educational organizations and explore photojournalism in KwaZulu-Natal, a province of South Africa.

A lover of photojournalism, Smith said she will be taking pictures and using them to raise awareness of AIDS in Africa while helping to create educational organizations for orphans and children affected by HIV.

The most prevalent language in Kwazulu-Natal is Zulu, a clicking language which Smith plans on learning more about before her travels.

Smith said she has always been interested in race relations, and chose South Africa specifically because of its legacy of apartheid.

“The thought of having blacks imprisoned in their own country really just said something to me,” she said.

Smith said she turned down a job offer at Google when she received the fellowship.

“I was excited but a little scared, because I didn’t think I was going to get [the fellowship],” Smith said. “I already had my plans—I’m going to work at Google, I’m going to live in San Francisco. Now I have to figure it all out again.”

But Smith nevertheless said she accepted the fellowship with excitement.

“This is the only opportunity in my life where I could just get up and leave the country and figure things out,” she said.