Club helps teenagers find the past in Africa

The revelation hit Philip Ali Salahuddin like a brick more than 10 years ago.

It was 1996, and Salahuddin and his wife, Helen McCrary Salahuddin, had just arrived in Senegal on what would become the first of many trips to the African continent.

As his feet touched Senegalese soil, Salahuddin said he had the overwhelming feeling that he "finally had found the place where I belonged."

He turned to his wife and said, "We've got to bring the kids to Africa."

But Salahuddin, a retired businessman, wasn't talking only about the couple's biological children.

He also was thinking of the scores of Philadelphia-area children who were involved in the d'Zert Club.

At the time, the d'Zert Club mainly provided positive entertainment for young people on Saturday afternoons. Helen McCrary Salahuddin, an entertainment lawyer, started what was first called the Dessert Club in 1992 after she and her daughter had visited a similar club in New York. Around 1994, the couple changed the Dessert Club's name to the d'Zert Club to reflect a more hip-hop style.

But in Senegal, Philip Salahuddin saw a new role for the group.

Visiting Africa, he said, would give black children "a sense of being. Right now, it's like they're in limbo, with no past and no future. That they're just here for the moment. . . . If they don't value the past, they don't see a future. Every child of African descent really needs to experience this," Salahuddin said he told his wife.

In 1997, the Salahuddins began a two-year study program with the first class of students who would travel to Egypt the following year.

And tomorrow, 10 years later, the group will again take young people, along with many of their parents, to Africa.

About 60 travelers from the Philadelphia area, including about 20 children aged 7 to 16, will leave for four days in Egypt followed by about seven days in Ghana.

Over the years the d'Zert Club has branched out to other cities; this year, the Philadelphians will be joined by travelers from Atlanta, New York, Chicago, Detroit and Washington, D.C. Salahuddin said a total of about 210 are traveling together this summer.

Salahuddin often quotes "the law of the territorial imperative" described in a book by Robert Ardrey. Basically, "in order for a person to reach his or her full potential, they must have a positive relationship with the land of their ancestry," he said.

The Senegal trip occurred one year after Salahuddin had taken part in the Million Man March in 1995. There, he had come back focused and determined to make good on the pledge he and other men had made: To return to their home cities and towns and make life better.

So Salahuddin and his wife began an advertising campaign in early 1997, offering free trips to Africa for young people, aged 10 to 14. The trips would also be available for parents who signed on as group leaders.

People were skeptical at first, the Salahuddins said.

But the catch was that the club members had to earn the African trip by completing a 24-month curriculum designed by Edward W. Robinson Jr., an author of the book, "The Journey of the Songhai People," which examined sophisticated societies that developed in 7th- and 9th-century Africa.

Robinson was also key in developing the African-American history curriculum in the Philadelphia School District.

The other catch for d'Zert Club members is that all the teens and parents are expected to participate in fundraising that pays for the trip at the conclusion of the two-year program.

Helen McCrary Salahuddin said fundraising - mainly selling ads for each class' yearbook or raffle tickets - "builds self-reliance. . . . It's a skill, and it teaches them how to be assertive, how to speak to people."

It seems to work: She said children have also come back from the trip and haven't been afraid to speak up in school "when they hear things like Egypt is not in Africa, but in the Middle East. "

"They will say, 'Excuse me, I was just in Egypt and believe me, Egypt is in Africa,' " she said.

Salahuddin said the group has taken about 2,000 people to Africa since its first trip in 1998.

The movement continues to grow. There are now d'Zert Club classes beginning in Newark, N.J., Buffalo, Brooklyn and Baltimore. Their members will be eligible to travel next summer.

The annual trips to Africa are called Teen Summit 1000 because the goal is to take 1,000 teens from the United States to Africa to meet and interact with teens there.

Sam Melendez, a senior account executive at Peco Energy, went to Egypt last summer with his 14-year-old daughter Lauren.

Melendez said there were two times when he became misty- eyed during the trip.

When the group was in Cairo and Giza, visiting the Pyramids, he said the people always said, "Welcome to Egypt. Welcome to Cairo."

But when the group traveled south to Aswan, "we saw people who looked like us," Melendez said.

In a hotel lounge, while looking for a napkin to wipe the sweat from his forehead, he met one of them. "There was a gentleman there, and he looked at me, and he said, 'Welcome home,' '' Melendez said.

"That was the first time I got misty-eyed."

The second time was also in Aswan, he said, where the group pulled up in a boat along the shore and there were rows of children singing a welcome song and swaying in their brightly colored clothing.

The d'Zert Club members were bringing notebooks and other school supplies to the children.

Lauren Melendez, now 15, also talked about that greeting in Aswan as her favorite moment in her trip last year.

"We saw a whole bunch of children [who] looked like us, like the people who you would see every day in the neighborhood," she said.

And after their return from Egypt last year, Sam Melendez said he saw a new maturity in his daughter.

Said Lauren: "Small things that would normally make me frustrated, I began to think, 'Why is it such an issue when there are people in Africa who don't have enough food?' "

Lauren lives with her family in the Cobbs Creek section of the city and will be a sophomore at the Country Day School of the Sacred Heart, in Bryn Mawr, in the fall.

She said her exposure to travel has made her more concerned about others. This summer, she's just competed a week of camp called "Spark the Wave,"that gets teenagers involved in volunteering.

Her father said she has taken volunteerism seriously. She came home from the camp with a flier about donating canned goods for a food drive that she wants him to help her distribute in their neighborhood.

Lauren said her advice for the children and teens attending this year's d'Zert Club trips to Egypt and Ghana is to "keep an open mind because [what they see about] Africa is stereotyped."

"On television, you see the poverty and the negative points. But they don't show the stuff that makes Africa look good.

"I was hesitant [to go at first]. But I'm very glad that I went," she said. "I'm very inspired. I'm going to change the world." *