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The News Hole

Boys of Baraka Subject Held on Drug and Murder Charges

June 18, 2010
By

Romesh Vance (right) and his brother Richard, pictured at the Baraka School in the mid-'00s.

The Baltimore Sun is reporting that 20-year-old Romesh Vance was indicted this week on drug conspiracy charges along with 21 others in a federal narcotics case centered around dealing in West Baltimore’s Gilmor Homes project. If Vance’s name sounds familiar, it may be because he was one of the Baltimore students featured in the 2005 documentary The Boys of Baraka, about the famous Baraka School in Kenya. The Baraka program is designed to intervene in the course of at-risk young men by sending them to boarding school in Africa. After his transition back to life in Baltimore, Vance may not have deviated from his previous course enough: When indicted for the drug conspiracy, he was already being held on a first-degree murder charge.

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  • Jordan

    Man, i watched this documentary and my heart broke for this kid. He really had high hopes for himself after the first year in Kenya. When they closed the school the second year, he was devastated. He really was crushed and whoever did the documentary did nothing to help this kid. It is so dangerous to use kids in this manner because you give them a chance and then pull the rug out from underneath them, they dont know where to turn or what to do and fall into depression that is excrutiating. At one point in the documentary, after the school was close, the brothers are talking and the younger one says to his brother, “Our life is going to be bad from her on out.” He says it so matter of factly, it hurts. I so wished that this romesh could have been helped after the school closed. So sorry Romesh. I thought you could have gonefar with your determination. I am sorry you did not have better guidance after the wonderful experience you had.

  • Renthandy

    this is why i dont like martin omalley he will do things to make you think he cares,but in reality he is just looking out for himself

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_D7XJ3DORJTUM7VEPLWZAWLDHKI Elle H

    I watched this documentary recently for a class, and this breaks my heart. I thought for sure he would do great, but he seems to have taken the wrong track. I have to wonder why he and his brother took such different paths. Richard went to jobcorp and has a family now……..I wish the Baraka school would have done something more. You can’t blame the director of the documentary. It was the fault of the school, for not creating new programs.

  • Kevin Prem

    I am an alumni of the baraka school (kevin prem) and i just saw the movie for the first time. i must say that baraka changed my life and altered the path that i was destined to go down. when i heard of the baraka school closing i was heart broken. the fact that these boys didn’t get the full effect of baraka as i did. they should not have been left to chance like that there are other programs that they could have been sent to such as pineywoods. anything could have done them some good.

  • Josephhoman

    As soon as these kids got home they faced extreme critisizm from there peeps…I dont know them personally,,,But its just like the “junkie” in the tv series “The Corner” said..When 1 crab is almost to the top of the crabpot and close to escape,another crap grabs him and pulls him back down…These kids were set up to fail..The City of Baltimore paid for 1 year of school in africa and then cancelled it,,Why do it at all..That little experiment even made it worse for those boys…

  • ldbigg

    It was evident to me that of the four boys featured, Romesh seemed to be the one who would eventually succumb to the streets. He really didn’t want to go and he didn’t seem to want to live a different life. His brother Richard on the other hand really wanted it but he knew it would be hard.

  • http://twitter.com/Trpster P.J. Trpster

    According to the NY Times 31 AUG, 2005:

    “The four boys, and several other Baraka students who were sent home in 2003, ended up at William H. Lemmel Middle School in Baltimore. The principal there, Vera Holley, had put together a special program for troubled students, who include, she said, around 100 of the 920 children she refers to as “my babies.”

    She is seeking funds to renew the program, offering intensive educational and social care to children, 90 percent of them boys, who are not succeeding in a traditional school environment.

    The Baraka boys were doing well by the time high school beckoned a year later: Montrey and Romesh won scholarships to a boarding school in Mississippi, the Piney Woods School, near Jackson. Devon, already a part-time preacher who hands out cards marked “a young man, all about business,” was president of his ninth-grade class at a new high school in Baltimore. He has also stayed in touch with the mayor’s wife.

    Richard, 16, who worked behind the scenes at “The Wire” this summer, said he planned to return to school and graduate: “I promised myself. I ain’t doing it for nobody else but for myself.”"

    *Note that Romesh Vance won a scholarship to the Piney Woods School that a poster mentioned above, so I do not think you can blame the makers of the documentary, the charity that paid for and ran the school, The Abell Foundation., or society at large.

    I can not find information as to if Romesh did, or did not go to the Piney Woods School, but I really do think that the young man bears the responsibility for his own actions, and we do need to stop trying to blame someone else in this case.

    I believe that he knew the consequences to his actions and chose to take them. I am very sorry that he did.