This illustration accompanies a first-person essay by a student at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. In the essay, Waruguru Wanjau describes her first posting as a newly minted physician in her home country of Kenya. A city dweller all her life, Wanjau ends up in a remote village whose inhabitants “do not wear modern clothes; they do not speak the national language. Most people do not live in permanent structures, and they still hold dear their cattle herds. That is their currency.” During her time in this posting, Wanjau gains skills she couldn’t learn in medical school.
From the Judges
Our first thought was that was a good, old-fashioned illustration that you don't see as often as you used to. Nice balance of colors. It's both simple and complex: You can look at this as just a beautiful illustration, or you can find all of the interesting details woven in. One judge noted that the illustrator definitely researched the clothing and all of the details, and it shows. Seeing it in the spread, next to the opening text, we wondered if the text was too tight. It felt like a lot next to a a very busy illustration. It was hard to know if this was intentional or whether there were space constraints. (Oh those writers who never want to cut!)
