Happy Easter!

Dear friends and family,

I send you Blessings and greetings from Kenya. I hope you are healthy, happy, and enjoying the beginning of springtime. I am writing to update you on my life and my research in Kenya, and am relieved to say that I am taking a break from ranting about politics ☺

I will say that the political crisis seems to be improving since the peace deal was signed by President Mwai Kibaki and ODM leader Raila Odinga on Feb. 28, and was passed by Parliament in mid-March. However, Kenya is still facing a major crisis due to the post-election violence, mainly about potential food insecurity and resettling the estimated 600,000+ internally displaced people. Please join me and keep praying for peace and justice in Kenya.

I am now back in Mwatate, after spending three weeks in Nairobi. The long rains have come, bringing fresh air, an abundance of water, fresh fruits and vegetables, and green foliage. The farmers are planting again, grateful for the rains that will produce their largest crop of the year. It is really beautiful here and I am grateful to be in a rural community where it really feels like spring back in Ohio.

The Taita International School is continuing to grow and change. We have almost 90 children now enrolled in the school’s nursery, primary and secondary classes. The dormitories for girls and boys are now full to capacity! I have moved into the girls’ dorm and am enjoying spending more time with them, braiding hair, telling stories, studying, and playing. The boys were sad and jealous when I moved out after Joe left – they said that they will really miss having us live in the boys’ dormitory with them. I think it is mostly because of Joe - he always let them listen to his IPOD and brought them chocolate treats from time to time. Many of the boys have told me that they really admire Joe for his kindness and commitment to hard work.

We also received a shipment of 6 boxes of beautiful books sent from Joe’s mom, Nancy Beres. Thanks to all of you who donated funds to help make this happen. We received an entire collection of leather-bound Encyclopedia Brittanica, another set of World Book encyclopedias, a Bible, and a few dozen wonderful children’s books (including my favorite Dr. Seuss stories). The children and teachers are very excited to have these resources available for their library and for research projects. Thank you!!

A group of nursery school students participated in a poetry and drama competition for Mwatate Division, and they won! Then they went to Mombasa, where they competed with other schools from around Coast Province. Many of the little kids had never even left Mwatate before, and they were excited to see the ocean, to watch the fish, and to ride the Likoni ferry across the harbor. They performed a skit with half of the kids acting as judges and the other half were children, and debated on behalf of children’s rights. They won third place in the province. Sammy, a four-year-old boy, recited a moving poem about HIV/AIDS. His poem won first place for Coast Province, and he was selected to participate in the national poetry competition in Nakuru, which is eight hours away by bus. He will travel there with the nursery teacher, Mr. Mwachia, on April 8th. This is a huge boost for all of us, and has everyone in the community praising the school.

We had an amazing and lively Easter church service at the school this weekend. The children sang and danced and rapped and laughed – they had so much fun! The staff congratulated the students for their talents, and Leonard Mjomba (the patron of the school) made them all laugh when he got up and danced for them. He encouraged them to nurture their talents for music, singing, dancing, and public speaking, and said that these were valuable skills for life and important parts of their culture that they should not lose. The janitor then gave the sermon about the significance of Jesus’ resurrection at Easter, and encouraged the children and youth to celebrate their lives, believe in themselves, and to keep Jesus in their hearts. I am impressed with the deep spirituality and religious devotion of the children and staff at the school, and of the Taita people. I really feel that the Sunday church services are a powerful way to build a sense of love, community, and cultural appreciation in the school.

The day before Easter, I traveled to Wundanyi to visit the Nyambu family, who were my hosts during a two-week homestay back in 1994. That was my first visit to Kenya as a college student, and their family left a deep impression on me. I will never forget the kindness of Mama Lisper, her deep faith and spirituality, and her devotion to her family and her work as a farmer, a mother, and a wife. We had a joyful reunion this weekend, and I was amazed to find out that her children, who were 12, 10 and 5 when I lived with them, are now all grown up. Her eldest son John is married and they are expecting their first baby. The younger children, Judy and Niko, are both in college in Nairobi. Judy and I had a wonderful time reconnecting and it turns out that we were neighbors in Nairobi! She has invited me to come stay with her then when I return to the city from time to time. I also met Lisper’s husband, Paul, for the first time, and we had a lively discussion about politics in Kenya and the U.S.

My research is continuing well and I continue to be amazed by the wonderful contacts that I have made here. Since I sent my last message to you, I spent three weeks in Nairobi and conducted many interviews and made valuable contacts. I attended a reception for International Women’s Day at the U.S. ambassador’s residence in Nairobi, where I met a group of women affiliated with the Association of Women Journalists of Kenya, a women’s professional association that encourages reporting and community outreach on gender issues. I also met bankers, lawyers, politicians, diplomats, scholars and activists. The most valuable contact I made at the reception was with Dr. Helen Anyiso-Oduk, a professor at Kenyatta University who specializes in gender philosophy and who is also involved in the Gender Roundtable Discussion Series that is organized by my KU advisor, Godwin Murunga. I met with her later that week for lunch and we had an incredible conversation about changing gender roles in various Kenyan communities, about which she wrote her dissertation.

I also visited Kenyatta University’s Department of History, Archaeology and Political Studies, which is my affiliated department in Nairobi, and had a very good meeting with my advisor. I visited the library and received a tour from the head librarian, who introduced me to the different departments and collections and has offered to facilitate my research when I return to Nairobi. I was impressed to find a huge collection of Africana literature, particularly related to education, gender issues, history, culture and politics.

Later that week, I visited the University of Nairobi’s library and bookstore with my friend and fellow Fulbrighter, Opolot Okia, who is a historian. We enjoyed perusing the impressive collection at the UON library and I purchased several books from their bookstore that would be difficult to find back in the States. I also went back later that week and met with a researcher in the Institute of Development Studies, where I learned that I can also register as a research associate and get access to their special library collection as well as publish my research findings in their working papers series. I am really considering doing this, as some of the professors there are doing cutting-edge research on gender and development, and informal education and employment.

Later that week, I interviewed representatives of several women’s organizations who I met at the reception at the ambassador’s residence that I attended back in November. I visited the offices of the Society for International Development and Maendeleo ya Wanawake Organization (Progress/Development for Women), where I got information and contacts for future meetings. I met with a woman who works with the Forum of African Women Educationalists (FAWE), a regional organization that works for gender equity for women and girls in education in 33 different Sub-Saharan African countries. She gave me some valuable insights into their work with governments, universities, and teacher training programs in various countries. She also told me that there is a FAWE office for Kenya in Nairobi, and that I should contact them to get more insight into how they are working in schools and universities to promote gender equity in Kenya. They are really involved in training teachers in gender-responsive and non-sexist teaching methodologies. They also work to sensitize Ministers of Education and university administrators about the importance of gender mainstreaming, or ensuring that the leadership of schools includes at least 30% females, to work toward gender equity. They also work with adolescent girls to teach them about puberty, or how to practice good hygiene and to make their own sanitary napkins. She said this is important since menstruation is one of the major causes of teenage girls’ absences and dropping out from school, and can become a major barrier of shame if the girl cannot afford to buy menstrual pads.

Later that week, I met with Gladys Boss Shollei, the CEO and editor of the Kenya Law Reports at the National Council on Law Reporting. This government agency was created through an act of Parliament in 2000, and Mrs. Shollei has led the organization from its inception through the past 6 years. She said that the law reports were not documented for over 20 years from 1980-2000, and it had become difficult to work in the judiciary since the Kenyan legal system is a Common Law system and decisions are supposed to be made based on precedents. She had been a law professor at the University of Nairobi and was determined to document the legal history of Kenya. In the past six years, they have increased their staff to 42 people and have had 15 law students as interns each year. They have successfully documented and printed 15 of the 20 years of precedents and have collected and printed all of the legal cases since 2000. All of this information is also digitized and available online. She explained that women’s rights are really limited in Kenya, and that it has been difficult to pass laws supporting women and girls such as the Children’s Act of 2001 and the Sexual Offenses Bill of 2006. However, the judiciary has been successful in creating a Family Division, which specializes in cases of domestic violence, divorce, child custody and support. She said that this division is the one that most women deal with, and that they are getting more support and training for gender-responsiveness among judges and lawyers. She argued that women have difficulty accessing the legal system in Kenya since they often are not educated about their legal rights nor do they have the resources to pay for legal representation. However, there are women’s organizations that support civic and legal education, and that also offer pro-bono services to represent the women. She is a member of two of these women’s professional organizations - the Kenyan Women Judges Association, as well as FIDA, the Federation of Women Lawyers of Kenya. She has also been involved in trying to promote women to become more involved and more prominent in the Kenyan judicial system in order to promote more gender sensitivity and gender responsiveness from within the system. She offered to introduce me to three of the leading women judges in Kenya, including the first woman to be a judge in the High Court. She also generously invited me to visit her rural home in the Rift Valley Province near Eldoret, which was an area where a lot of people were displaced and which was the center of a lot of the violence in January. I am hoping to do this later in April or May, as I think it will be important for me to visit and meet with some of the displaced women to learn more about how women’s groups are working to assist victims of the post-election violence and to teach affected women about their rights and options.

I also had an interview one day at the United Nations Population Fund. I learned more about their educational outreach programs to teach Kenyans about reproductive health, HIV/AIDS prevention, family planning, gender-based violence, and alternatives to female circumcision or female genital mutilation (FGM). I learned that 38 of the 42 ethnic groups in Kenya practiced female circumcision at some point in their history, and that this practice continues in some communities and is often strongly defended. Recognizing the cultural importance of having a rite of passage to help teach girls about the transition of adolescence, the UN Population Fund assists women’s groups in various communities to develop alternative rites of passage programs that teach information about adolescence, puberty and reproductive health, but do not practice genital cutting. These programs are gaining wider support in their communities, and demonstrate the importance of informal education among women’s groups in Kenya.

I was amazed by the UN compound, which is the UN headquarters in Africa. I would love to work there someday. The compound is huge, filled with gardens and fruit trees, and flies flags from every country on the planet. They host offices of UNICEF, UNIFEM, UNESCO, the United Nations Environmental Program, and other development programs. The multicultural, international staff includes scholars and activists from around the world, and I heard at least a dozen languages spoken in the cafeteria. I also visited the library and found an abundance of materials that will be useful in my research. Primarily, I learned more about the UNESCO-sponsored Kenya National Adult Literacy Survey, which was conducted in 2006 to assess adult literacy in the country. This study estimates that over 60% of adult women in Kenya are illiterate, and recommends that women’s groups and other community-based organizations are valuable partners to the government in delivering non-formal education for women in Kenya.

Last but not least, I had a series of valuable and helpful meetings with my friend and former professor, Tom Wolf. Tom was the director of the Kalamazoo College Study Abroad Program when I was an undergraduate student, and he was my teacher and advisor. We have kept in touch and have met from time to time ever since 1994. He is currently working as an election monitor and researcher with the Steadman Consulting Firm. Tom knows everything about Kenyan politics. He also lived in Taita as a Peace Corps volunteer and researcher in the late 1960s and early 1970s, speaks fluent Kidawida (the local language), and knows dozens of local families. When we met in Nairobi, he introduced me to other friends of his who also work on gender and development issues in Kenya. They listened and helped me to think through some of the issues I have been grappling with in my research, and gave me valuable feedback, insights and direction. For this, I am truly grateful.

So, that’s my life in a nutshell. As you can see, I’ve been very busy but life is good and I am happy and feeling stimulated and productive. I hope that you too are doing good work wherever you are. Please keep in touch and let me know what is going on in your life.

In peace,

Cat