The Cat's Meow

Ramadhan & Eid in Lamu

2008-10-21T12:10:00.000-07:00

October 20, 2008

Asalaam aleikum! Peace be with you!

This is my final update letter to you from Kenya, as I will be returning to the U.S. on October 31. I am excited to be heading home soon, although sad to be leaving my friends and extended family here in Kenya. I can’t believe how fast a year has gone!

Of course, everyone here is anxiously awaiting the U.S. elections, and they forgive me for leaving when I explain that I am going home to vote. Kenyans are very excited and hopeful about Barack Obama’s campaign!

The past month has been really busy. I returned to Lamu – a small island on the northern coast of Kenya, near Somalia - for another month of fieldwork, and had an incredible experience there. I have been dividing my time between Taita and Lamu to compare women’s and girls’ education and women’s groups in different communities of Kenya’s Coast Province. About 90% of Lamu’s population is Muslim and semi-urban, with an economy largely oriented around fishing, boating, tourism and trade. It is an interesting place to compare and contrast with Taita, which is about 90% Christian, and mostly rural and agricultural.

I arrived in Lamu during the middle of Ramadhan, the holiest month of the Islamic year, and learned a great deal about fasting, prayer, charity, and other aspects of Muslim life. I also stayed through Eid-ul-Fitr and witnessed three days of celebrations. During Ramadhan, all Muslims practice fasting, as this is one of the five pillars of Islam. People eat a small amount at about 4:00 a.m. and then do not eat or drink again until the sun sets around 6:20 p.m. Fasting is a good way to show one’s devotion to God, to feel the pangs of hunger, to practice moderation and discipline, and to cleanse the body. One man told me that, like our cars need an oil change, our body also needs time to rest and clean itself out, to purge excess fats, sugars, toxins, parasites, etc.

Also, fasting is a good way to remind oneself of the pain of hunger and thirst so that we can understand the need to give alms, or charity, to the poor. During Ramadhan and Eid, it is expected that Muslims will give charity, known as “sadaka” or “zakah,” to poor people in their community. This is a good way to distribute wealth to the needy and to remind privileged people of their obligation to assist the poor.

When I arrived in Lamu in mid-September, I decided “when in Lamu, do as the Lamuans do” and I fasted for about two weeks, with no food or water from dawn to dusk. The dehydration was really difficult due to the heat and humidity! It was a good experience, though, and I felt really healthy and energized most of the time. At night I celebrated Iftar (breaking of the fast) with friends, and tasted a number of special delicacies such as a variety of fruit juices, vegetable and bean stews, bhajias (fried lentil balls), samosas (stuffed meat pies), mkate wa nazi (coconut bread), mandazi (donuts), chapattis (fried flatbread), wali wa nazi (coconut rice), tambi (spaghetti with raisins, coconut milk and sweet spices), ndovi (green bananas with shrimp and coconut milk), viazi vya nazi (potatoes with coconut milk), fish and seafoods, etc. The food was absolutely delicious and I spent a lot of time cooking with friends and learning some new recipes. I was lucky to meet Khifa Soud, the author of the Swahili Cuisines cookbook, and I got several copies of her book so that I can continue cooking these dishes at home!

In the spirit of “participant observation,” I also decided to wear the “buibui” and “hijab,” a long black robe and headscarf that is worn by Muslim women at the coast. Although it was hot to wear this over my other clothes, I grew to really enjoy wearing it as I felt more anonymous and less exposed as a White woman. I found that I was greeted with a great deal of respect and friendliness when I wore this, and was treated less as a tourist and more as an esteemed visitor and fellow believer. It is imperative for Muslim women to cover all but their hands and face when walking around in public, and it was much easier for me to meet with men and religious leaders, and to speak to students in schools. The local women also praised me for wearing the buibui and said that they appreciated that I showed respect for them and their culture. I learned that there is a great variety of styles and decorations of the buibuis, ranging from traditional Swahili designs to more modern fashions from Dubai and Saudi Arabia. I also had my hands and feet painted with henna and piko, with beautiful designs of flowers and vines. Many people exclaimed that I looked like “bibi harusi,” a bride!

At the end of Ramadhan, we all anxiously awaited the sighting of the crescent of the new moon. When the moon was sighted, the muezzins called from the mosques “Allahu Akbar!” (God is Great) and children marched through the streets chanting “Kesho ni Eid! Kesho ni Eid!” (Tomorrow is Eid!). That night, men stayed up late at the mosques reading the Qur’an, praying, singing, playing drums and flutes. Women prayed in their homes and got ready for Eid by cleaning their houses, baking cakes, and preparing gifts and new clothes for their children. It felt a lot like Christmas Eve.

On the first day of Eid, everyone had the day off and went around visiting each other in their homes and eating together. Children dressed up in their new clothes and went all around town for “mkono wa Eid” (the hand of Eid), which is kind of like trick-or-treating. They went from house to house and were given coins or sweets by their neighbors, relatives, shopkeepers, and others. They would usually spend the money on toys or candy or pretty jewelry, hair barrettes or handbags.

Then the children all went to the fete, which is like a county fair held at the Lamu Boys School for the three days of Eid. For ten shillings (15 cents) they could ride camels around the school grounds, or take a ride on a carousel or ferris wheel or the scrambler. These are like the fair rides we have in the states, only they are mechanical and pushed by hand, and seem awfully precarious! There was also an area where a DJ was playing “Bongo” music (Swahili hip hop), and boys and girls could dance in separate rooms (they are not allowed to dance with each other, but they were all checking each other out anyway!). The fete is the favorite Eid event among children in Lamu, but the community elders feel that it is an inappropriate venue for boys and girls to mix among each other. Luckily, it was held for the first time after many years, and the young people had a blast!

I also celebrated my birthday in Lamu with a day at the beach, where I enjoyed swimming and floating in the ocean at my favorite spot on a 12-km white sand beach. I felt such complete peace and surrender while floating in the salty water, and meditated on my gratitude for being carried through this life by the ocean and the earth and the kindness of strangers. That evening my friends cooked a delicious dinner of grilled lobster, crab and fish with coconut rice and vegetable curry. We ate and had a bonfire at Coconut Beach on the edge of town with a diverse group of friends from Kenya, the U.S., Norway (via Pakistan and Kashmir), France, and Germany (via Brazil). It was like a United Nations meeting on the beach! It started to rain lightly while we were eating and my Norwegian friends said that it was a curse, while the Kenyans insisted that the rain signified blessings and good luck!

Throughout the month, I met hundreds of people, and made a lot of new friends. I interviewed a number of women’s groups, youth groups, community leaders, educators, development workers, health experts, and religious leaders. I visited three schools and gave presentations to students about the importance of girl child education. I interviewed principals, teachers, and religious leaders at Mkomani Girls’ Primary School, Lamu Girls’ Secondary School, and Swafaa Academy (a Shia Muslim private school which integrates Islamic and secular curricula). I also attended the annual prize-giving ceremony at Lamu Girls Secondary School. I am working to establish a pen pals connection between these Lamu schools and the Indianapolis Public Schools via a friend who works there.

In my research, I learned a great deal about the Islamic educational system and the conflicts between Islamic and secular education. I learned that Islamic education is a very old system in East Africa, and that all children attend madarasa schools from a very early age to learn to read and write in Arabic, to read the Qur’an and Hadith, and to learn the stories of the prophets and the five pillars of Islam. I learned that the government schools are referred to as “skuli za Kizungu” (English schools) and that they were initially resisted by people in Lamu as they were associated with missionaries and the British colonial government. Some elders insisted that their children should not attend these schools since they feared they would be converted to Judaism or Christianity. Today, however, many parents are embracing both Islamic and secular education for the benefits associated with each system. Most people in Lamu use at least three or four languages – Kiswahili, Arabic, English and local languages – so it is important for them to have a well-rounded education in all of these languages.

I also interviewed Islamic educators who discussed the need to integrate Islamic and secular educational systems, and who revealed that education is compulsory for all devoted Muslims. In fact, the first commandment that Allah gave to Mohammed was “Iqra” – which means “Read!” It is said that all Muslims should study throughout their lives, and should seek as much knowledge as possible, even if they have to travel all the way to China. I also learned that the Qur’an does not discriminate between boys and girls in terms of educational opportunities, although it does insist that boys and girls should learn in separate classes or schools. All Muslims are obligated to study and learn, regardless of gender or race or class.

However, the pre-Islamic “mila na desturi” (customs and traditions) of the coastal cultures of Kenya have prevailed and prevented girls and women from having equal opportunities for formal education. Throughout the Coast Province and Northeastern Province, which have the largest populations of Muslims in Kenya, there are high rates of illiteracy among adult women. Girl children were disadvantaged in the past due to negative attitudes about educating girls, fears of sending girls to mixed schools where they would mingle with boys, and beliefs that girls should just get married and become mothers. Many girls were expected to marry when they started puberty, and few girls would continue their education past the 6th or 7th grade. Education was also very expensive and necessary only for formal workers, so mostly it was reserved for boys. The divisions of social class, religion, race and ethnicity have further separated the communities and led to conflict and inequality in access to education.

Today in Lamu, most parents struggle hard to send all of their children to school to ensure their ability to support themselves and their families. Economic changes have necessitated that both men and women should work outside the home, as it is difficult for families to survive on one income. Also, the high rates of divorce and widowhood have showed women that they need to become independent in order to support their children. One 6th grade student told me that women must become independent in case their husbands leave them, and that they must work hard to educate and feed their children. Other girls told me that “elimu ni mwangaza” (education is light) and that they wanted to excel in school so that they can work in a number of professions and to lead their country.

Many people in Lamu told me that girls are actually performing very well in schools these days, and are even outperforming the boys in terms of their good discipline and behavior and their scores on achievement tests. They insist that girls have many advantages over boys in academics, as the community has been very focused on protecting girls and providing scholarships and support for girls’ schools. Girls are socialized to be obedient and modest, to go to school and to go home. They are not permitted to roam around the town, so they are more focused about their schoolwork. On the other hand, boys are given a lot of freedom, and they spend a lot of time playing football (soccer), fishing, swimming, riding donkeys and boats, using drugs and skipping school. Therefore, many people in Lamu are now discussing the need to support “boy child education” and want to assist boys who are now seen as being at-risk and disadvantaged.

Nevertheless, because of the lack of access to education in the past, many adult women in Lamu are illiterate and lack the skills necessary for formal employment. As I have witnessed throughout Taita and other Kenyan communities, women in Lamu have also organized themselves into small women’s groups for informal and peer education. The groups help women to pool their resources, start small businesses, and to educate themselves in a variety of life skills. Kikozi is an impressive organization that has organized a savings and credit cooperative of over 500 members on the islands and mainland villages throughout Lamu district. They have assisted hundreds of women to start small businesses and to buy household items. They have also raised money to renovate a number of schools and to send 12 local girls to university. Another women’s group is called Anaswiha, a group of Muslim women in Lamu who gather to advise each other, to teach each other skills such as cooking and sewing, and to discuss personal issues, relationships and safe sex. They also raise funds together to buy household items and to assist members in times of need. The Khairat Women’s Group has organized an orphanage in one of the slums on the edge of Lamu town, where they educate and care for children whose parents have died of HIV/AIDS. Finally, the Sauti ya Wanawake (Voice of Women) group is organizing activities to raise awareness during “pink month” about cancer prevention, and is creating space for women to speak out about HIV/AIDS, drug abuse, female genital mutilation, domestic violence, land grabbing, environmental problems, and other issues facing the Lamu community.

One of the most impressive examples of popular and informal education that I witnessed in Lamu is the APHIA II project, which is supported with funds from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). This project is a community education program for HIV/AIDS prevention and awareness that is cooperatively organized by 15 women’s groups, 6 men’s groups, and 11 youth groups. Peer educators have been trained from all of these groups to conduct workshops and to perform community-based theater in villages, towns, and mosques throughout Lamu district. I attended one of the workshops that was organized by women, for women. The presenters included a local poet and singer, a group of young girls singing and performing a play about HIV/AIDS, a local imam (religious leader), a number of women activists and educators, a hospital nurse, the head of the community AIDS control council, and others. The workshop was held on the edge of town on a holiday, and attracted over 100 girls and women to come and listen to the presentations. At the end of the workshop, there was an opportunity for people to get tested at a VCT (voluntary counseling and testing) center. I was very impressed with the level of organization and the quality of facilitation of the discussions at this event. This is a powerful example of popular peer education to teach about an important and life-saving issue that is too often shrouded in secrecy, silence and shame.

So, that is a snapshot of my research and experiences in Lamu over the past month. If you want to know more, you can read my dissertation!

I am looking forward to seeing some of you when I return home to Ohio at the end of this month, and hope to continue communicating with the rest of you by email. Take care of yourselves and keep in touch.

In Peace and Justice,

Cat Cutcher

International Literacy Week

2008-09-09T16:04:00.000-07:00

September 9, 2008

Dear friends and family,

It’s International Literacy Week! Because you can read this letter, and I can write it, let’s give thanks!! Over 8 million adults in Kenya do not know how to read or write …. and over 60% of them are women.

And Happy Ramadhan! It is now the holy month of Ramadhan, which started with the new moon in early September. For the entire month, Muslims are fasting from sunrise to sunset – they do not drink or eat during daylight hours, and only break the fast in the evenings. This is a month of atonement and solidarity with people in need – a time to feel the pangs of hunger so that one understands the importance of giving alms to the poor. It is one of the most important holidays of the Islamic faith. I am looking forward to returning to Lamu soon to join in the fasting and prayers and cooking with Muslim women.

I have had another busy and exciting month here in Kenya. An overview: I had an article published; learned about school violence; returned to the Taita International School; witnessed a rite of passage among the Mwakitutu women’s group; attended a peace and justice conference in Nakuru of the National Council of Churches of Kenya; went on safari and witnessed the wildebeest migration at the Maasai Mara wildlife reserve; listened to lectures on national gender issues; interviewed more activists and educators in women’s organizations; and attended the International Literacy Day Festival in Nairobi.

I will start with a highlight for all you animal lovers: in late August, Mama Mjomba and I traveled to Maasai Mara, a huge game reserve in the Southern Rift Valley, on the border with Tanzania. We went on a safari for three days, and had a wonderful vacation together. We saw lions, cheetahs, serval cats, elephants, zebras, giraffes, wildebeests, hippos, crocodiles, ostriches, and dozens of species of antelopes, gazelles and birds. One of the most incredible sights was the wildebeest migration, an annual event that is considered one of the “seven wonders of the world.” Thousands of wildebeests migrate from the plains of northern Tanzania into Kenya in search of grazing land from July to September. They are a sight to behold, especially when they start running – it is like a huge wave of animals moving in formation. We also saw a family of six adolescent lions – 3 males and 3 females – the largest number I have ever seen in one place. One lioness climbed a tree like a leopard, to the great delight of our guide, Kaka, who said he had never witnessed such behavior. We also were lucky on the last morning to see a mama lioness with two babies – they acted and sounded just like kittens! We also saw a whole herd of elephant mamas and babies – including an elephant breastfeeding her baby! Amazing. Mama Mjomba said that she had always wanted to visit Maasai Mara, and that this was the highlight of her retirement. We stayed in a very nice tented camp with beds and hot showers, and delicious meals prepared by a cook who was very attentive to Mama’s diabetic diet. After three days in the Mara, it was difficult to leave, but we were grateful to have some time in the wilderness to witness God’s creation and to restore our spirits.

The rest of the month I have spent very much immersed in the world of humans. My last posting to you included an article that I wrote about the tenth anniversary of the bomb blast at the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi. I was in Nairobi when the embassy was bombed in 1998, and I have been trying to write and speak about it ever since. After I attended the memorial service in Nairobi on August 7, I wrote an article. My article was published in the “Reader’s Forum” column of The Athens News, my hometown newspaper. It was also published in Pambazuka News in the column “Pan-African Postcard.” Pambazuka News is a website publishing news on social justice issues in Africa, and has been elected as one of the top ten websites changing the internet and politics.

In July and August, many schools around Kenya were still reeling from the outbreak of violence and riots in over 300 schools. The violence was mostly located in schools in Nairobi, Central Province, the Rift Valley, and Western Kenya. Students burned dormitories, labs and classroom buildings, and attacked their teachers and fellow students. They caused millions of shillings’ worth of damage, and created a climate of fear in schools throughout the country. There was a national debate about how to control the youth, with some members of Parliament suggesting that the “cane,” or corporal punishment, should be reintroduced. Adults admonished the youth for being corrupted by drugs, alcohol, sex, TV, and rap music. Some also pointed out that perhaps there was “too much democracy” in Kenya, and that young people had learned bad habits of violent protest, mass action, and civil disobedience from the recent post-election violence.

Many teachers are now requesting a 200% raise and are complaining that the costs of providing education and food for schools is rising, yet the government is not providing enough support. Many of the youth interviewed by the media stated that the school system needed to be reorganized and made relevant to the realities of 21st century Kenya, preparing the youth for the world that they are going to inherit. They said that the riots were the result of students protesting bad food, authoritarian teachers, corrupt principals, and anger over examinations. They were angry about the increasing focus on “high stakes testing” – or examinations at the end of primary and secondary school that would solely determine their future success. There is little time for children and youth to explore, or to relax, or to do the things that we normally associate with childhood. Sound familiar? The Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) and Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) have become the focus of the curriculum, and many students feel very stressed and pressured to achieve high scores. Nevertheless, last year over 40,000 students’ scores on the KCSE had to be changed due to computer glitches and the leakage of test results.

Although some schools in Taita were also affected by violence, the Taita International School has remained peaceful. When I returned, the school was closed for the August holiday, so there were few students around except for the “tuition” program. This program provides additional tutoring and educational activities for community children – it is similar to the “Kids on Campus” program at Ohio University, where both Maria and Mjomba worked as teachers when they were in Athens. This tuition program has been very successful in Taita, and has attracted new students from the community.

When I arrived in Taita, I brought all the gifts and donations that I could carry from my recent trip to Ohio. Mjomba and Maria were grateful for the cash donation, and they matched it for a down payment on a piece of land in Mwatate, where they will start to build permanent school buildings. They are currently renting, and they are looking forward to building on a site that they will own – this will save a lot of money in the long run. They were also thrilled to receive all of the books, maps, games, toys, CD-Roms, Video games, digital camera, and other educational supplies that were donated. We discussed the pen pals program, and we will recruit students when they return from school holidays. I have already received feedback from many of you who are interested in recruiting pen pals in your own communities.

I also continued with my research with women’s groups in Taita. The Mwakitutu Women’s Group is a group that I have been working with since January. One of their members, Jerusha Nyange, suddenly died on June 30 at the age of 75. She had been a member of Mwakitutu for 25 years, and the members of the group were very saddened by her death. The funeral took place while I was in Ohio, but the group decided to pay a visit to her family in mid-August to express their condolences and to help with the funeral expenses. I was grateful to be included in this ceremony. We gathered at her home and said prayers around her grave. Then we met, offered our gifts, and drank chai with her children, grandchildren, and her co-wife (her husband had two wives). They told us that Jerusha had attended school up to Standard Four (4th grade) but dropped out when her parents could no longer afford the school fees. She married her husband, Amon, when she was still a teenager. She gave birth to seven children, but only one survived to adulthood, a daughter named Daisy. Her co-wife gave birth to five children, but only two survived. Jerusha loved and cherished all of these three surviving children and her six grandchildren. She was an active member of her church and the Mwakitutu Women’s Group. She seemed to be in great health, and was still farming, carrying firewood, and working as she always had done. But on June 30, she did not return from her shamba. When they went to search for her after dark, they found that she had died in the garden. They thought that maybe she had been bitten by a snake or had a heart attack, but an autopsy revealed that she had a large cyst on her liver. Her children said that she had never complained of any pain, and that she had probably not wanted to spend the money on her own medical care.

Her family talked a lot about how much her women’s group meant to her. She joined the group in 1983 when she was attending adult education classes at the Mwakitutu Primary School, next to her home. She learned skills in literacy and numeracy from the classes, and the group continued to stay strong over the past 25 years. Her children said that the group helped their whole family with the installation of water tanks, assistance with farming, construction of buildings, and payment of school fees that sent all three children through college. The group had also helped her to build a small shop where she sold candies and sugar cane to students at the local primary school, providing her with an income after her husband died.

After her death, her daughter Daisy found a letter that Jerusha wrote in May, which stated “Mimi nikifa mtoto wangu Dezi achukue nafasi yangu ya gurupu. Mimi Jerusha.” (When I die, my child Daisy takes my place in the group. Me Jerusha.) This note was like her last will and testament – not describing how to deal with her property, but identifying her wishes for her daughter to be “inherited” by her women’s group. This group practices this system of “inheritance” of daughters or daughters-in-law after a woman dies, which ensures that the group keeps living, and that the collective wealth created stays within the families of the original members. The group invited Daisy to join them, and they were excited since she is a nursery school teacher and has literacy skills that will help them with record-keeping, taking minutes of their meetings, and writing letters to government officials and banks. Daisy was nervous to join since she has a busy schedule as a teacher, and is unmarried. They told her that she can send her sister-in-law to work with them in her place. And if she gets married and has to move away to her husband’s land, then her sister-in-law can become a member. Daisy was ecstatic after the meeting – although she was still bereaved and shocked over the death of her mother, it was like she had inherited a whole group of mothers!

After this event, I felt like I had just witnessed a very important rite of passage among women’s groups in Taita. Not only do women’s groups provide important support for women, but their influence extends throughout their entire families and communities. And not only do they work together and assist each other with making an income, but they provide an important source of counseling and social support in times of grief and bereavement.

In the meantime, I have continued to work on writing my field notes and transcribing interviews – a long process. I am amazed at how much information I have collected in just ten months, and I still have two more months to go! Luckily, I got assistance translating the Kiswahili and Kidawida (the Taita language) interviews from three research assistants – two Master’s level students from Kenyatta University and a relative of a colleague from Taita. It has been good to start getting these transcripts in print, and to start re-reading and analyzing the things that have been discussed in interviews – very rich data and powerful stories.

Lately, I have been primarily focused on the life history of Mrs. Joan Mjomba, who is the mother of my friend Mjomba and an amazing community leader in Taita. I was first introduced to Mama Mjomba through my professor, Dr. Lisa Aubrey, who met her back in 1992 while she was doing dissertation research on the national women’s organization Maendeleo ya Wanawake (Women’s Development). Dr. Aubrey has sent numerous interns to work with Mama Mjomba since then, and Mama was one of my key contacts for my Fulbright application. She was a leader of Maendeleo ya Wanawake for Taita District and Coast Province, and also served as the treasurer for many years. She is an educator and one of the first women in Taita to be trained as a teacher and an education officer. She also served in the Town Council and as the first mayor of Voi for many years – the third woman in Kenya to serve as a mayor. She represented Kenya at the United Nations in New York and at the U.N. Conference for Women in Beijing, China in 1995. She is also a farmer, a wife, a widow, a mother, a grandmother, and is considered a strong leader of her extended clan. In her retirement, she is really focused on growing food on her shamba, especially to support the Taita International School. She says that it is the role of the grandmothers to grow surplus food and to ensure that all of the children in the community have enough to eat in times of famine. She is also serving on the Board of Trustees of the National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK), a national ecumenical organization representing 50 Protestant churches throughout the nation. Although she is almost 75 years young, she continues to travel and to stay engaged in national committees about church matters, women’s issues, the post-election violence, and the educational system. We have recorded over a dozen long interviews, and I am now adding this data to a book that was started by her son, Leonard Majalia Mjomba. We are hoping to finish a rough draft of the book in time for her 75th Birthday in November. Her stories will also feature prominently in my own dissertation about popular education among women’s organizations in Coast Province.

Mama Mjomba invited me to attend the National Pastors’ Conference of the National Council of Churches of Kenya, which was held in Nakuru in Rift Valley Province from August 20-23 at Kabarak University. I was thrilled to be included in the team representing the Anglican Church of Kenya (ACK) of Coast Province. I joined the conference with over 1,300 church ministers and lay leaders from every province of Kenya, and was overwhelmed by the messages of the speakers and everyone I met. The theme of the conference was “…and the Truth will set you free” (John 8:32) and the focus was on national healing and reconciliation after the post-election violence. Church leaders spoke about the need for the churches to take a more pro-active role to stopping violence and teaching peace and justice in their communities. There was a lot of discussion and Bible study about the need for repentance, forgiveness, and conflict management. The church leaders also admitted that they had made mistakes, had gotten involved in partisan and ethnic politics, and had been too slow to act when violence rocked the country. We also listened to former President Daniel arap Moi, who visited the conference for a brief speech on Friday. He discussed the need for political leaders to bring the country together in unity and to reject negative ethnicity and patronage. He defended his 24-year rule, saying he was “misunderstood to be a dictator” because of his “strict policy of instilling discipline” throughout the country. He claimed, “many people would say that Mzee Jomo Kenyatta or Moi did not do this or that but I wish they were in our shoes.” It was interesting to listen to Moi discuss his presidency and to reflect on the recent post-election violence. Overall, the NCCK conference was an incredible week filled with tears, laughter, and a lot of learning. I met dozens of new friends and interviewed women from various churches about the role of women’s groups in their churches and communities. It was an excellent opportunity to learn more about the role of faith in women’s lives, and the growing potential for women’s leadership in Christian churches in Kenya. As African philosopher John Mbiti claims, “Africans are notoriously religious,” and it is believed that over 95% of Kenyans are active participants in their churches, mosques or temples, as well as indigenous religions.

After our trip to the NCCK conference, Mama Mjomba and I then went on our safari at Maasai Mara for some much-needed R&R. Mama then returned to the Coast, and I stayed behind in Nairobi to visit some doctors and to continue with research here. I am living with an excellent family in Nairobi – Dan and Edwinah Ogola and their two adorable sons, Leanew (6) and Kyle (8 months). They run a socially-conscious tour company, a primary school in the Kibera slums, and have started a medical foundation called the Matibabu (Treatment) Foundation. Matibabu provides medical care in rural medical clinics and hospitals in the Nyanza Province of Western Kenya. I have met some interesting doctors and health experts from the U.S. who are teaching me a lot about women’s health and the challenges of educating and caring for patients with malaria and HIV/AIDS.

At Kenyatta University, I have met with my advisor and my research assistants, and attended the Gender Roundtable Discussion about “African Feminisms” where I met some interesting professors working on gender issues. I also attended a Gender Forum of Kenya’s Chapter of the International Committee of Jurists analyzing the gender dimensions of the “Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission” bill. I have interviewed several leaders of women’s organizations and civic educators working in Nairobi and throughout the country. And I attended the International Literacy Day Festival at Nyayo Stadium in Nairobi, where I met educators, activists, and government officials working to promote literacy throughout the country. I met one woman who started in a basic adult literacy class, then went on to finish the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education, and is now enrolled in a university and is the Director of the Kenya Adult Learners Association. I also met an 85 year old man who went back to school when the government instituted free primary education – he just received an award for finishing the 8th grade! The Literacy Festival included songs, dances, poetry, and drama performed by children and adults from throughout Nairobi. I also listened to the Minister of Education, Sam Ongeri, give a moving speech about how education is a basic human right for all people. He discussed the need for more resources and teachers directed to Adult and Continuing Education in Kenya – and for more cooperation with NGOs and community-based organizations - which is one of the major findings of my dissertation research!

So, life is good and I am happy. I will spend the next month in Lamu, where I will continue with my research with women’s groups and adult education programs. I hope to learn more about how Muslim women’s faith influences the work of their organizations, and about the teachings of Islam regarding education. After that, I will have just a few more weeks left in Kenya - I am planning to return home to Ohio on Halloween. While I am getting sad about my imminent departure, I am also excited to be home again soon! It is good to have family and friends all over the world….. after all, wherever you go, there you are.

Well, take care of yourselves, and keep in touch.

Peace,

Cat Cutcher

A Memorial to Terror: Ten Years after Nairobi Bomb Blast

2008-08-10T14:42:00.000-07:00

NAIROBI. It was August 7, 1998. Suicide bombers exploded 700 kilos of TNT in a truck outside of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya. The bomb blast ended the lives of 257 people, injured 6,000, and destroyed a fragile peace in a bustling city. At the same time, another explosion rocked the U.S. Embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. A little-known terrorist network named al Qaeda organized the attacks, led by Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden.

Ten years later, the survivors and the victims’ families continue to mourn and to seek justice. Last Thursday, Kenyans from all walks of life gathered at the site of the blast in Nairobi, to remember the dead and to call for greater vigilance. The site has been transformed into the “August 7 Memorial Park” with monuments and gardens and trees. Once called “Ground Zero,” a site of terror and pain, it is now a place of respite, a green corner in a busy city. A granite memorial wall bears the names of the 257 dead, including 12 Americans.

I joined the memorial service last Thursday. In 1998, I was also one of the survivors, an American student learning Kiswahili and international affairs. I rode into Nairobi that day in a matatu minivan, and was just 8 blocks from the embassy when the explosion rocked the city. I recall feeling the blast deep in my body, a vibration so shocking that words cannot express. I watched in horror as a mushroom cloud of dust and smoke and debris rose over the city that I had come to love.

It has taken nearly ten years for me to get over the trauma of that day and the days that followed. The repeated scenes of blood and death and anarchy. The paranoia at any loud noises. The nightmare of uncertainty. The knowledge of so much pain and suffering all around me. The fear of being an American targeted by al Qaeda. The guilt of survival. The anger, then desperation, at my own government’s response – retaliatory attacks in Sudan and Afghanistan.

On September 11, 2001, I was back in the USA, and it was déjà vu. Twin bombings in New York and Washington, DC. Glass, steel, and concrete crumbling into dust. Lives extinguished in a gulf of flames and smoke. The fear and anguish amplified by repeated scenes in the media. The fear of airplanes, of future attacks. The utter sense of insecurity and helplessness. The mantra “Why Us?” resounding in my heart. Anger and desperation at the “War on Terror,” a war without end, without rules, without known enemies.

After 9/11, the U.S. Congress ruled to grant compensation to the survivors and the families of the victims of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Former U.S. ambassador to Kenya Prudence Bushnell says that “in an emotional reaction” the U.S. Congress established “a very difficult precedent.”

In the U.S. today, the Kenyan victims of the 1998 American embassy bombings have been nearly forgotten. The victims’ families and survivors in Nairobi have sought compensation for their losses in the U.S. courts. Phillip Musolino, a Washington attorney, represents hundreds of Kenyans injured, blinded or bereaved by the attacks ten years ago. He is now engaged in a legal battle over some $7 million in frozen assets from al Qaeda sources, and claims that this money should be used to compensate the Kenyans.

However, there has been a double standard for Kenyan victims of al Qaeda. American judges have not been sympathetic to arguments that the U.S. should be held liable for the damages. U.S. government attorneys insist that al Qaeda should be held responsible for the suffering and the losses, and that the U.S. was itself victimized by the attack. To add insult to injury, the surviving perpetrators were extradited to the United States, and were first charged with just 12 counts of murder, for the 12 Americans who were killed. They are now serving life sentences in U.S. prisons.

Current U.S. Ambassador to Kenya Michael Rannenberger insists that the U.S. has already provided more that $42 million to Kenyan victims “to assist children with school fees, to provide medical assistance, to facilitate the resumption of livelihoods, for reconstruction, and for the creation of the Memorial Park.” Kenyans, however, will point out that most of these funds have been used to build a new fortified embassy and to buttress security and anti-terrorism surveillance. They insist that little has been invested in the people who were most affected by the violence.

Ten years later, the fragile peace in Kenya was once again unsettled by a very divisive election. The post-election violence claimed over 1,200 lives and displaced an estimated 350,000 Kenyans from their homes. Eight months later, many are still living in fear of the unknown, or fear of their neighbors and fellow Kenyans. Suspicions and assumptions and accusations abound across ethnic, gender, and class lines. Many still do not know where to call “home.” Terror has returned to Kenya.

And the Kenyan police are still engaged in a manhunt for al Qaeda mastermind Fazul Abdullah. Fazul organized the 1998 attacks in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, as well as the 2002 bombing of an Israeli-owned coastal resort, the Paradise Hotel in Kikambala. Fazul was nearly apprehended last week in Malindi, another coastal city, where he was detected communicating with al Qaeda associates by cell phone and email. He is believed to be planning yet another terrorist attack in Kenya.

May we all remember how the events in 1998 brought together a divided Kenya in acts of heroism, mercy and solidarity. May we remember those who gave their blood, sweat and tears to save lives, to honor the dead, and to heal the survivors. Perhaps these collective memories may be the inspiration needed to bring Kenyans together across their differences, and to remind Americans of our commitment to justice and equality.

Catherine Cutcher is a U.S. Fulbright Student in Kenya. She is a Ph.D. Candidate from the Ohio University College of Education.

Homecoming Report

2008-07-27T16:12:00.000-07:00

Dear friends and family,

I have returned to Nairobi, Kenya after a wonderful, although brief, vacation in Ohio. Thanks to all of you who met me or attended the parties and presentations that were organized during my visit. It was great to be home and to delight in the green farms and forests of Ohio, to swim in the pond, to eat fresh fruits and veggies from the garden, and to bask in the glow of my loving family and community. Thanks to all of you who made my visit memorable, and who helped me to remember all the things I love about home. Please forgive me if I did not get a chance to see you while I was in the States – I will be back in November.

Highlights from my trip included a presentation at Ohio University on July 15. Over 75 people attended the slide show and discussion about “Reflections from Kenya,” and I addressed questions about the post-election violence, conflict resolution, media, technology, education, child development, gender issues, women’s organizations, environmental issues, geography, history, cultural diversity, and other concerns. This was a great opportunity for me to reflect and articulate on a number of issues that I have been grappling with here in Kenya. Thanks to all of you who attended and helped to publicize the talk.

I also was invited to give a presentation on July 18 at the Greenfire community near New Marshfield, OH at a Permaculture Workshop led by Peter Bane, editor of the “Permaculture Activist” magazine. Again, I showed my slides and responded to questions about agriculture, land access and tenure, herbal medicines, nutrition, water, human-wildlife conflicts, and low-tech solutions for sustainability and prosperity among Kenyan rural communities. It was interesting to discuss these issues with others who are learning about and committed to principles of sustainability, self-sufficiency, and creating systems for prolonged agriculture and human culture. I concluded that Kenya is filled with excellent examples of permaculture, as people have lived here for thousands of years and have created excellent systems for agriculture, natural building, water collection, land use, and informal education for life skills.

I also want to thank those of you who donated items and funds for the Taita International School. I raised $600 in cash donations, and was given dozens of books, videos, computer games, soccer balls and shoes, art supplies, pencils, board games, puzzles, a digital camera, a walkman, sewing patterns, cake decorating supplies, and other items. I have carried many of these donations with me to Kenya, and will ship the rest. Thanks to all who generously gave resources for the school. For those who would still like to donate, you can send items to the school at:

Taita International School
P.O. Box 181-80305
Mwatate, Kenya

Please note that the U.S. Postal Service only sends packages via air mail to Kenya these days, which costs $4 per pound. If anyone has information on how to inexpensively ship packages by boat, please let me know.

I also found some young Ohioans who were interested in becoming pen pals with students at the Taita International School, and who wrote letters of introduction that I have carried to Kenya. I am still seeking pen pals – if you know any young people from the ages of 4 to 18 years old who might like to write to a Kenyan student, please send their letters of introduction and photograph to the Taita International School (Attn: Pen Pals) at the above address.

While I was home, both The Athens Messenger and The Athens News published articles about my research and experiences in Kenya. My friend Ernest Waititu, a Kenyan journalist who I studied with at Ohio University, wrote a great piece based on an interview we did in Nairobi – you can read it online at:

http://www.athensnews.com/news/local/2008/jul/14/ou-student-sticks-it-
out-through-election-violence/

Matt Gallagher also wrote an excellent article in the Athens Messenger, but I cannot find a link online –the article was on the front page on Wednesday, July 9, 2008.

There also was an article published in the “Athenaeum,” the Ohio University College of Education magazine. I have attached a copy of the article to this message.

I read a great book during my trip home, and I encourage others to read it as well – “Dreams From My Father” by Barack Obama. This is Obama’s autobiography and a wonderful account of his childhood, education, family, travels, faith, and growth as a community organizer, legal advocate, and politician. I especially loved the final section about his first voyage to Kenya to meet his father’s family, and his impressions of urban life in Nairobi and in the rural village of Alego, near Kisumu. Obama is Kenya’s favorite prodigal son, and Kenyans often ask me about his campaign for the upcoming U.S. elections. I am grateful to know more about the man behind the iconic image presented in the media.

I will be here for another 3 months, and will return to Ohio in early November. I will continue my research with women’s grassroots organizations in Taita and Lamu districts in Kenya’s Coast Province. Stay tuned for future updates on my studies and travels.

Take care and keep in touch.

In peace and love,

Cat Cutcher
www.catsmeowinkenya.blogspot.com

Homecoming

2008-07-10T22:19:00.000-07:00

Dear friends and family,

Greetings from Nairobi!  I hope that you are happy and healthy.  I am writing to
let you know that I will be traveling home to Ohio on July 1 and will stay until
July 21.  I will then return to Kenya until November.  I hope to see some of you
while I am visiting the U.S.

I will present a slide show and discussion, “Reflections from Kenya,” on
Tuesday, July 15 from 7-9 p.m. at Ohio University, Bentley Hall, Room 306. I
will be discussing the elections in Kenya, the post-election crisis, conflict
resolution, and other issues related to my research with women’s organizations.
Please join us.

I am also writing to request your assistance.  I have been asked to gather some
supplies for the Taita International School and I am looking for donations of
the following:

Sports equipment i.e. soccer balls and outdoor games
Video games for kids (compatible with PC Windows systems)
DVD videos – comedy, action, musicals, documentaries appropriate for ages 4 - 18
Educational CD-roms for PC windows systems
Digital camera
Digital camcorder (mini DV) & video tapes
Digital voice recorder
Walkmans
Rechargeable batteries and charger
Science lab supplies
Cake decorating supplies (for kitchen staff and fundraiser for school)
Songbooks or CDs of children’s songs
Foreign language textbooks or dictionaries (Spanish, French, Italian, Arabic,
Chinese)
Maps
Jigsaw puzzles
Pens or pencils (especially from OU, Ohio State or Hocking College)
Colored pencils, crayons, watercolors & other art supplies
Clothing patterns for sewing class


If you can donate or help me to gather any of these items, please let me know by
email at cutcher@ohio.edu or phone at 740-742-3012.  I will be gathering these
supplies during my visit in Ohio and would appreciate any assistance you can
offer since my time and budget are limited.

Thank you for your attention.  I look forward to seeing you soon,

Sincerely,

Cat Cutcher
www.catsmeowinkenya.blogspot.com

Greetings from Taita

2008-05-26T15:25:00.000-07:00

Dear friends and family,

It has been nearly a month since I last wrote to you, and much has happened here in Kenya.
The good news is that I have completely recovered from malaria, and received a clean bill of health from my doctor a couple of weeks ago. Although it was no fun being sick, I must say that I enjoyed having the opportunity to take it easy for awhile, and to let my “mamas” here take care of me and teach me all about medicinal herbs and traditional remedies for curing malaria. I drank a bitter tea made from the bark and roots of the "Muarobaini" tree, which is known to cure 40 diseases (arobaini means 40 in Arabic and Kiswahili). The tea is nasty and strong but not bad with a large helping of local honey stirred in (like Mary Poppins says, "Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, in the most delightful way....").

I also have been eating a lot of "mchunga" - these wild herbs that are harvested during the rainy season, and considered a local delicacy offered to guests. They are known to prevent and treat malaria, and are loaded with iron, which is important to renew the red blood cells lost by malaria. They are also very bitter but are boiled in water, then stir fried in oil, onions, garlic and tomatoes (like “sukumawiki”). With plenty of salt and “ugali” (corn meal porridge), they really aren't bad. I have been eating these almost every day.

Aside from this very intimate exploration into local knowledge about medicinal herbs, I have also been enjoying being back in Taita and learning more about women’s groups and agricultural production. As is common throughout Africa, women comprise an estimated 80% of Kenya’s agricultural labor force. Since this is the rainy season, much of the focus in women’s groups here has turned to farming, and I have been meeting with groups who have taken me to their “shambas” (farms) where they are cultivating maize, beans, millet, sorghum, amaranth, arrowroots (nduma), cassava (mihogo), sweet potatoes, greengrams or mung beans (pojo), pigeon peas (kunde), pumpkins, sunflowers ….. the list goes on and on. The hills and valleys are so green and filled with vegetation these days after two months of heavy rains. I have met with members of the Mwakitutu Women’s Group, a group that I have been working with since January, and have also met two groups of “Farmers’ Field Schools,” which are groups that focus on agricultural production, and teaching new sustainable farming techniques to others in the community. It is inspiring to witness women working together collectively, sharing their harvest, and supporting each other in the many tasks and difficult labor of food production. Most of the cultivation is done here by hand, so often you will see a group of women with “jembes”, or heavy iron hoes, digging and tilling the earth in a line – like a collective human tractor. It is really difficult work and they are really strong.

I have not yet mastered the art of swinging the jembe, but I have enjoyed helping with the harvesting, drying, seed saving, and processing of food. (This is also my usual job at my own “shamba” at Willow Farm in Ohio!). I have especially enjoyed learning more about growing grains and beans, which is also a new area of food production that Joe is exploring with other farmers back home in Ohio. It has been an interesting conversation whenever I tell the women about our “shamba,” and they are delighted to hear about the foods that we grow, and the goats, chickens and donkey that we raise on our farm. They are really eager to know more about small farms, the local food system, organic foods, agricultural marketing, and other food issues in the U.S. We have been talking a lot about the increase in food prices – many basic food staples have almost doubled in price this year. They are surprised to know that this is also an issue in the U.S. and that there is a worldwide food shortage, as they thought that it was primarily due to the post-election violence here in Kenya. They are interested to hear about the revival in interest in “local foods” in the U.S. and are amazed when I tell them that there are people in the States who do not know how to grow their own food, or who do not know that milk comes from a cow, or who would rather buy their food in a grocery store than from a local farmer.

In many ways, Kenyans have a distinct advantage over Americans in terms of their knowledge about food production and their well-developed system of agriculture. Many of the small farmers here can sell pretty much everything they grow locally, as long as they are close enough to a town or a major road to get it to market by public transport. However, the local food system is being challenged by a dependency on foreign oil for transport, and the insistence upon using chemical fertilizers, pesticides and genetically modified seeds that were brought here in the guise of the “green revolution” of agricultural development. Moreover, climate change has resulted in increasing aridity of the land, and rainy seasons are less predictable than ever. As water becomes an even more precious resource, farmers’ harvests are also affected, and women’s labor becomes more intense as they must carry water from even greater distances – often in large containers on their heads or backs.

Aside from agricultural production, I have also been learning more about some of the basic challenges to women’s organizing in rural areas, especially here in Taita. One of the major themes I keep hearing about is the resistance of men to women’s groups. Many of the women have said that they would have a lot more freedom and ability to participate in development projects if they were “allowed” by their husbands, but that many husbands feel suspicious of women’s groups. Part of this is that they fear that once women become economically independent and self-sufficient, they will begin to demand a greater share in the decision-making in the home, or they will challenge their husband’s authority if they make more of an income than their husbands. Some husbands also say that they fear that their wives will get new ideas from other women, and they will bring these ideas home to challenge their husbands. The resistance to girls’ and women’s education and empowerment among men is emerging as a major theme in my research – it seems like a much more controversial issue than I anticipated. Women’s education, empowerment, and organizing seems to contradict some deep-seated cultural attitudes about women’s proper “place” and behavior – and it also represents an aspect of social and economic change that seems to threaten the very structure of families and rural communities here in Taita, and also in Lamu (although for different cultural and religious reasons).

Another challenge is related to illiteracy among adult women, which is becoming a major theme of my research. As many women were denied access to education in the past –whether for economic or cultural reasons – there are large numbers of adult women in rural areas who do not have basic skills in literacy or numeracy. This makes it extremely difficult for women to organize themselves into groups or small businesses, as they are required to register the group with the government, write a constitution, keep minutes of the organization, or do financial accounting to keep track of expenses and income. Some groups are also involved in scientific “research,” such as testing new seeds or tracking crop production in the Farmers’ Field Schools, and they also need to develop skills in record-keeping. Some women’s groups, however, are engaged in adult literacy classes where they are learning these basic skills while they are also involved in income-generating activities. I have been meeting with a number of adult educators in the community and learning more about the provision of adult education in Kenya. However, the government seems more focused on supporting basic primary education for children in Kenya, and is working toward provision of free secondary education as well. Adult basic education remains a neglected program of the government, and many teachers complain that the need is much greater than the government is able to handle. Nevertheless, adult education services are a valuable link for women’s groups to connect to resources and assistance within the local government.

For example, the Mwakitutu women’s group was started in 1983 as an adult literacy class, taught by my friend Julius Mwakio Katuu. The group officially registered as a women’s group and they have been active for 25 years now. They have been involved in many projects – building water tanks, farming, selling charcoal, weaving beautiful sisal baskets, and building houses and rental buildings. They continue to struggle with basic literacy, however, and they often call on Julius and his wife, Mama Agneta, for assistance with organizational issues. Recently I assisted them by helping them to plan and write a proposal to the Women’s Enterprise Fund, which was initiated this year by the Government of Kenya to provide micro-enterprise loans for women’s groups. The program is well-intentioned, but it seems inaccessible to many rural women’s groups as the forms are written in English and require a lot of organizational skills such as preparing a budget, business planning, etc. However, the Social Services officer in Mwatate Division taught the women about the process and translated the forms, and Julius and Agneta and I interviewed them about their plans and assisted with the writing of the proposal. The proposal was accepted by the local government and has been forwarded to Nairobi. If they get the funding, the Mwakitutu group will have support to build a six-room structure on their land in Mwatate town, where they currently have several other structures that they have rented out to carpenters’ shops, kiosks, and small restaurants. They are excited about this opportunity to expand their investments in real estate, which will help them to generate even more income for their other projects. I have also been involved with them in examining their property lines and thinking creatively about how to approach other businesses that have encroached upon their land. It has been a fascinating process of watching them examine and solve problems based on their own experiences and practical wisdom, and of seeing their difficulty in accessing government services without the benefit of literacy. It has also been encouraging to see how they manage to work around the bureaucratic system through skillful negotiations, and by getting help from their local adult literacy teacher. I also have to give great kudos to Julius, who I think is a powerful example of a man who is gender sensitive, deeply dedicated to women’s empowerment, and is so humble and respectful in his interactions with women. This whole process has been a fascinating journey into “popular education” and the “pedagogy of the oppressed” (a la Myles Horton and Paulo Freire).

Aside from my work with women’s groups in Taita, I have also continued to support the Taita International School. In early May, I was approached by Aruna Amirthanayagam, the Cultural Attache of the Public Affairs Section of the U.S. Embassy, who is my supervisor for the Fulbright Program. Aruna was interested in visiting the school since he is responsible for organizing educational and cultural exchange programs between the U.S. and Kenya. He and a Kenyan staff member, Rukiya Mwinyi, visited the school on May 12, and it was a sight to behold. The students were fabulous, and they organized performances of poetry, skits, singing and dancing of traditional songs, and speeches. The Mwakitutu Women’s Group also attended the event, where they sang traditional Taita songs and demonstrated basket weaving. Then all the teachers and staff gave short speeches, telling about the history and significance of the school. The Embassy officials donated several boxes of books for the secondary school students, including a brand new set of World Book Encyclopedias, another set of MacMillan textbooks for the new Kenyan curriculum, a set of wall charts for Chemistry and Biology, and a huge map of Africa. These books are a valuable addition to our library, and the teachers were raving about how they had wanted to purchase the MacMillian books but the school just couldn’t afford them. The Embassy staff also promised to send more boxes of books for the nursery and primary school children. They also promised that we would begin an ongoing relationship between the Taita International School and the U.S. Embassy, with assistance in the form of scholarships for girls, summer camp enrichment programs, and other educational support. At the end of our visit, Rukiya and Aruna told me that they have visited dozens of schools throughout Kenya, but they have never been welcomed so warmly by any school or had such an impressive presentation. They said that they were so impressed with the school and were amazed at how much it has been developed in just a year and a half. I think that organizing this visit was perhaps my greatest accomplishment and legacy so far in Kenya, and I hope that this will lead to more scholarships and opportunities for Taita’s students in the future.

The next day, I traveled to Mombasa with Aruna and Rukiya to visit the Sheikh Khalifa bin Ziyad Secondary School. This is a private Muslim high school, and is one of the top 10 private schools in Kenya and among the top 20 of all high schools for students’ achievement in the national Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) exams. Although the school is mixed, it is still segregated by gender in keeping with Islamic tradition, as the boys and girls are separated in different classrooms and by a big partition between them in the auditorium. Last year, the U.S. embassy had organized a national essay competition for high school students to write about the importance of democratic elections, and the top three winners of the essay contest were girls from this school. We presented the girls with certificates and cash prizes (the First Place winner won 10,000 shillings, which is about $150). We also presented the school with a big check for 130,000 Kenyan shillings, which will support a tuition scholarship for one student for two years. Aruna asked me to present a short speech to the students, and I spoke in Kiswahili to the crowd of about 1,000 students to their delight and surprise – the whole auditorium was howling with laughter and cheers when I greeted them “Asalaam aleikum” (Peace be with you) and explained my research to them. I congratulated them on their academic achievements and encouraged them to study hard and they too could study abroad in the United States someday. It was really delightful to speak to them and to live my dream of making a whole roomful of people crack up with laughter! (I just hope I didn’t make any big mistakes and say something stupid or offensive – it is easy to mistake a vowel and completely change the meaning of a word…..)

After our trip to Sheikh Khalifa, I stayed in Mombasa for another two weeks, where I continued with my research and writing and visiting with women’s groups and friends throughout Mombasa. It was a wonderful visit and I am once again amazed at the polycentric, multicultural space of that city. It is so exciting to live in a place that is influenced by so many peoples from throughout the world, and especially around the Indian Ocean region. It is a testament to the polycentric nature of globalization – that “globalism” does not just mean the cultural dominance or neo-colonialism of the West over the Rest, but that there is a complex interweaving of cultural influences from Africa, Arabia, India, China, Indonesia, Europe, and beyond. Although British hegemony and the English language are still an issue in post-colonial Kenya, issues of identity are far more complicated by the reality of the post-modern world and influences of media from around the Indian Ocean region. It is interesting to note how young people on the Kenyan coast today look to the Arab world, India, China, Nigeria and other African countries even more than Europe or Hollywood. I hope to write about this issue more in my research someday.

Otherwise, life is good and I am happy. I hope that you too are enjoying life, wherever you are, and remembering to be grateful. I look forward to seeing some of you when I am home in Ohio – I will be home from July 2-20. Then I will head back to Kenya to continue my research until November. Please take care and be in touch.

Peace and Love,

Cat Cutcher

Happy Maulidi from Mombasa

2008-04-20T15:28:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends and Family,

Greetings from beautiful Mombasa, Kenya. I am writing with some great news today – I have received an extension of my Fulbright Fellowship, which will allow me to stay in Kenya for a full year until November 2008. I will still come home for a visit in July, but then will head back to Kenya to continue my research until the late fall. I also was awarded a dissertation fellowship from the American Association of University Women, which will support me for another full year so that I can finish writing my dissertation when I return to Ohio. I am very excited about this opportunity and grateful to have the support of such an incredible organization. The AAUW supports research to increase equity and access to education for women and girls around the world.

The Taita International School has been closed for three weeks for the April holidays, so I took the opportunity to travel and continue my research elsewhere in Coast Province. I have spent the past two weeks in Lamu, a small island off the northern coast of Kenya on the Indian Ocean. Lamu is a special place – a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the oldest and most-intact Swahili settlement in East Africa. It is hard to describe Lamu without resorting to clichés – the place has a mystical appeal and is known by many as the “Kathmandu of Africa” or a “travellers’ paradise.” I was first introduced to Lamu as a student and a tourist in 1994, and initially thought of the place as a “timeless” and “unchanging” society that has preserved traditional Swahili culture and Muslim traditions. However, after my third visit to Lamu, and experiencing more of the local culture through the eyes of women leaders, I have discovered a complex and dynamic society that is facing many of the same issues that are present throughout Kenya today.

The geography of Lamu is striking. The Lamu district includes an archipelago and mainland region that lies on the northeastern coast of Kenya, just south of Somalia. Lamu town is the administrative center of the district, and the oldest town in Kenya with over 1,000 years of continuous settlement and trade. All transport on the island is by boat, donkey or foot, as there are only four motorized vehicles on the entire island. Travel away from the island is entirely dependent on boats, and must be timed during the high tides. The “streets” of the town are narrow alleyways and labyrinthine corridors winding around ancient stone, sand and coral homes, with open sewers filtering underneath (sanitation and waste management is a major problem). Beyond the old town, new settlements are growing, and their names reflect the globalized sensibilities of modern Lamu – Kandahar, Kashmir, Bombay. Beyond these settlements, the island flattens out into an immense expanse of “shambas” (farms) of coconut, mango and cashew trees. There are also large areas for grazing cattle, goats, and sheep. On the far side of the island facing the open ocean, the landscape rises into large sand dunes, which dips down to a 6-km long, crescent-shaped beach.

The Lamu population is 95% Muslim and is characterized as a Swahili trading town where ethnicity and race tend to be fairly fluid categories, and intermarriage is common. The population of 20,000 or more people is a creolized mixture of Swahili, Bajuni, Omani Arab, Persian/Shirazi, Kore, Kikuyu, Luo, Indian, and European people. For the majority of the Muslim Swahili residents, modesty and chastity are the hallmarks of this conservative culture, but there is also a hidden element of romance and allure. Women in Lamu are often clad entirely in black “buibuis” or “shugas”, a full-length black robe, with a black “hijab” or headscarf and sometimes even a “ninja” which covers all but their eyes. However, once you go inside their homes, you realize that underneath the buibui, they are elaborately adorned with beautiful clothing, henna designs on their hands and feet, and ornate golden jewelry. Men are also covered with a full-length white “kanzu” robe and an embroidered cap or “kofia” worn on their heads, which is also worn over other clothing.

A sign at the Lamu jetty greets visitors with this message: “Lamu County Council welcomes you to Lamu. Beach wear and scanty dresses not desirable in the town. Thank you for respecting our cultures.” This conservative attitude puts off many visitors to Lamu. But a little modesty goes a long way, and I found that when I covered myself with long skirts and a scarf draped around my shoulders, I was greeted warmly by both men and women. The “Rough Guide to Kenya” explains an interesting aspect of Swahili modesty: “Outsiders have tended to get the wrong end of the stick about Swahili seclusion. While women are undoubtedly heavily restricted in their public lives, in private they have considerable freedom. The notion of romantic love runs deep in Swahili culture. Love affairs, divorces and remarriage are the norm, and the buibui is perhaps as useful to women in disguising their liaisons as it is to their husbands in preventing them” (Trillo, 2006, p. 537). The veiling of Muslim women was a topic of conversation throughout my interviews and observations in Lamu, and I hope to write about it more in my research at some point.

I traveled to Lamu for a “spring break” with two other U.S. Student Fulbrighters to celebrate Maulidi, an Islamic festival celebrating the birth of the Prophet Mohammed. This is a revered event throughout East Africa, and Lamu hosts what is considered to be the best Maulidi Festival in the Indian Ocean region. The tradition started when Habib Swaleh traveled here from the Comoros Islands in the mid-1800s and founded the Riyadha Mosque. It is said that he is a direct descendent from the Prophet Mohammed, and that he brought the Maulidi tradition to Lamu which has survived to this day through his hundreds of descendents. An estimated 50,000 Muslim pilgrims travel to Lamu every year from throughout the world to celebrate the revered holiday, which is a month of activities culminating in a three-day festival. Some people even say that “two trips to Lamu are equal to one trip to the Hajj” at Mecca in Saudi Arabia. I met many new friends from Kenya, Tanzania & Zanzibar, Somalia, Ethiopia, Libya, Egypt, Iran, the UK and elsewhere. I even met a Somali-Ohioan, a man who moved to Columbus, OH almost a decade ago as a refugee from the Somali civil war. We met in a café one day and talked for almost 3 hours - he was also excited to meet me since I am from Columbus and we know a lot of the same people and neighborhoods.

The events of Maulidi kept me really busy for the first week I was in Lamu. We spent a lot of time watching the singing, drumming and dancing at the Riyadha Mosque, which was the center of the religious festivities. There were also nightly performances of Taarab music in the town square, with men singing religious songs with a band playing flutes, drums, synthesizers and stringed instruments. The National Museums of Kenya also organized a number of secular events as well, which made it feel like a county fair with donkey races, dhow (sailboat) races, a football (soccer) tournament, a children’s Arabic calligraphy competition, henna painting, and daily gaming competitions in the town square with old men playing strategic games such as dominoes, bao (like mancala), and dumna (like chess). My favorite competition, however, was a “greased pole contest” at the jetty, where young men tried to balance on a greased pole to grab a flag at the end before slipping off into the cool waters of the Lamu harbor. It was really hilarious to watch.

After the Maulidi events, I spent a couple of days relaxing with my friend and fellow Fulbrighter Valerie at the beach. On Sunday, we went on a dhow trip with some local guys and spent the day sailing, fishing, snorkeling, swimming and sunbathing at the beach on Manda Island, just across the harbor from Lamu Island. One of the guys, Bakari, caught a black snapper fish with a spear, and our other friend Baji roasted it on a charcoal grill with lime juice and chili. It was truly delicious and melted in our mouths. We also ate rice cooked with coconut milk, vegetarian curry, and a dessert of mangoes and bananas. I also spent two other days at the beach with friends over the next week, and am sure that Lamu’s beaches are the most beautiful in the world – white sands, a long stretch of sand dunes, large waves, and the great Indian Ocean on the horizon.

We also spent a day at a “shamba” (farm) of our friend Omari Hassan and his family. We walked and rode donkeys for an hour or two across Lamu Island to the remote shamba in the interior, near the sand dunes. The shamba was like an oasis with palm, coconut, mango, cashew, pomegranate and guava trees. We spent the day playing with Omari Hassan’s four nephews (aged 6-10 years old) who were really silly and ornery and fun. We played cards, sang songs, chased each other up and down the sand dunes, and followed as they led us on a tour of the shamba and encouraged us to taste every piece of fruit they could find. It started raining a little bit and we ran back to the house to cook with Omari’s sister, who said that we had brought the rain as a blessing to their shamba. She taught us how to grate coconuts with a tool called a “mbuzi” and to strain it with a woven raffia sieve called a “kifumbo.” She added rice to the coconut milk and cooked it over an open fire, along with a delicious vegetable curry and beef stew. We ate from a common bowl with our hands while sitting on a woven raffia mat called a “mkeka.” After lunch, we relaxed on the mkeka for a siesta under a large acacia tree. Then we roasted cashew nuts over an open fire. The cashew shells are so oily that they catch on fire, and we had to douse them in the sand to let them cool down before shelling them. The boys had a competition shelling the nuts and then we ate the warm roasted cashews with sweet ginger tea. Tantalizing!

Throughout the next week, I stayed in Lamu and was busy with research interviews and meetings. I met with members of local government and leaders of women’s groups, and tried to learn as much as I could about education and organizing among women in Lamu. I interviewed the Lamu District Gender and Social Development Officer, who told me that there are over 400 active women’s groups in Lamu District alone. She is from Taita and shared some interesting insights into the similarities and differences between cultures, religions and women’s organizations in Taita and Lamu districts. She discussed the “geography of women’s organizing” and talked about how women’s groups operate differently and take on different roles, projects, and income-generating activities based on their environment and local economy. This is a theme that is really emerging from my research and conversations with people throughout Kenya.

I also met with Ombuya Amele, the Lamu District Adult Education Officer, who informed me about the challenges of providing adult education services in rural Kenya, and especially in a district as diverse and widespread as Lamu. He said that there are just 100 teachers for the whole of Lamu district, but the need is far greater since there are such high rates of illiteracy, especially among women. He believes that women’s groups are uniquely placed to deliver these services and are a valuable partner for raising awareness and education among adult women in Lamu.

Another day I met with Hadija, an American art historian who has lived in Kenya for the past 30 years, and who has married a local man and settled in Lamu with her family. She is the editor of Lamu Chonjo, a magazine promoting the Lamu Archipelago and reporting about community development issues facing the area. She said that she has confronted many gender issues as the mother of two girls in Lamu – wanting them to both appreciate their local Swahili culture but also strive to understand the world and their opportunities beyond Lamu. It was fascinating to listen to her ideas about female space, Swahili women’s culture, and the major obstacles to women’s and girls’ education in Lamu. She was an excellent person with whom to discuss and interpret these issues since she represents a bridge between the U.S. culture and Lamu, and could explain things in a language that I could really understand.

Another Westerner who has made Lamu her home is Julie, a former VSO volunteer from the UK who has started an NGO called “Lamu Safi” (Clean Lamu). Julie specializes in sanitation and waste management, and has worked to sensitize the local population about proper waste disposal, composting toilets, and recycling. She works with women’s groups on garbage collection and ecological restoration. She also works with youth groups to use drama and role playing to raise awareness about environmental issues in schools.

I also met with Amina Hussein Soud, a Lamu native and former Fulbright Scholar who studied at Yale University and has a Master’s in Environmental Studies. She is currently the director of Red Cross and the Spanish-sponsored organization ANIDAN, an orphanage and school in Lamu. Amina is a superwoman – the mother of 4 children, a wife, a community leader, a scientist, a humanitarian…. We had a fascinating interview about the role of women’s groups in Lamu in promoting microfinance, in developing small businesses, in encouraging girl child education, and in contributing to community development. Amina said one thing that I will never forget: that as a woman in Lamu, she works behind the scenes, while men want to take all the credit - but that she can get a lot more done as long as she understands that. Good advice.

I also met with Maryam, who also studied in Cleveland and returned home to Lamu. She taught me about the ways that women’s groups are educating the public about domestic violence, HIV/AIDS, girl child education, microfinance, and small business development. Maryam revealed that divorce and domestic violence are very common in Lamu, leaving women and children particularly vulnerable. However, she also said that it is a controversial issue to discuss domestic violence, or provide services for women survivors, as it is a small town and one could be accused of trying to break up families. (This reminds me of the secrecy surrounding “My Sister’s Place” in Athens.) She said that the role of mothers is essential in promoting girls’ education in Lamu, as women are now sensitized to the importance of educating their girls and ensuring that they can become self-sufficient.

Then I met Rukiya, a mother, grandmother, and community leader who has been a central figure in promoting girls’ education, poverty eradication, and women’s empowerment in Lamu. She was born and raised here and has lived her whole life in the working-class neighborhood of Langoni. She is a respected elder and has been particularly active in promoting “merry-go-rounds,” or small microfinance groups that have helped women to save and invest their money for income-generating activities. She discussed many of the biggest problems facing women in Lamu – divorce, drug abuse, domestic violence, unemployment, lack of child support, HIV/AIDS. She also discussed how Islam promotes women’s rights and how women can refer to the Qur’an and Sheria laws to demand equality and protection.

Another day I visited the Lamu Education Development Foundation Trust, a community-based organization that supports girl child education and family empowerment in Lamu District. Their director is Amina Kale, a teacher and community-based educator who is also a dynamic leader in the community. Their mission statement reads: “To mobilize people to work together in promoting educational standards and other sectors of development for the present and future well being of Lamu and Kenya.” They also support Kikozi, a “merry-go-round” or savings and credit association with over 600 members in Lamu District. They are particularly involved in educating women about microfinance, small business development and cooperative marketing to assist in raising money for school fees for children. Many of their board members are prominent teachers and educated professionals in the district who are invested in promoting opportunities for girls to excel in education.

Last but not least, I met with a Kikuyu woman from Mpeketoni on the mainland of Lamu district, who started a small community-based group called the Lamu East Poverty Eradication and Education Women’s Group. She told me more about the relationship between the mainland and Lamu town, and the differences between different ethnic and religious communities in the district regarding women’s education and organizing. Her group is primarily involved in agriculture, tree planting, waste management, and small business development.

After two weeks in Lamu, I left last Tuesday. I am now in Mombasa, the largest city on the coast, where I am sweating in the humidity and enjoying the island breezes and full moon. I have been making use of having some down time, and have been catching up on writing my field notes from my intense interviewing and observations in Lamu. I found an amazing place to stay in the Old Town, near Fort Jesus, with a family who rents out the top floor of their home to American students for Swahili studies and international exchange programs. I have the whole top floor to myself and have set up my writing table and laptop on the balcony overlooking the ocean. It is one of the most inspiring settings I have ever had to write, to think, and to be. Mombasa is an endlessly fascinating city and a truly multicultural space influenced by the fusion of African, Arab, Indian and European peoples. From the ancient Fort Jesus through the meandering streets of the Old Town, to the colorful market filled with carts and stands piled high with tropical fruits, vegetables and spices, to the textile shops filled with sumptuous fabrics, this is a city that appeals to all of my senses of romance and drama. Mombasa is a truly cosmopolitan and diverse space, where the whole world seems to meet and reside together. One local professor recently told me that Mombasa is a city that has historically welcomed people of every race and nationality and religion and language, and that the rest of Kenya and the world could learn a lot from this society about conflict resolution and embracing diversity. He is organizing a conference this summer on Swahili culture and conflict resolution, and I hope to have the opportunity to participate and learn more about this topic.

This weekend I visited John Nyambu Njore and his family in Nyali, on the north shore of Mombasa. I stayed with John’s family back in 1994 in Wundanyi, when he was just 12 years old, but today he is 26 and just became a father when his daughter Martha Kimbaya was born two weeks ago. I am excited to see him again, to meet his wife and daughter, and to reconnect with him as an adult. It is really wonderful to have long-term friendships with people here, and I am grateful to have the chance to cross paths with this family again.

I will return to Taita for a while to continue with my fieldwork there with women’s groups and adult education classes in Mwatate and Wundanyi. I am also planning another trip to Nairobi in the near future. I have been invited to participate in some interviews with women’s groups and displaced women in the internally displaced persons (IDP) camps in the Rift Valley, in cooperation with an intern from the Kenya National Human Rights Commission. I am looking forward to learning more about the issues confronting women in the IDP camps and meeting with women leading the peace and reconciliation process.

So, that is my life of the past month. I hope that you are also happy and healthy wherever you are. Please do write to me sometime and let me know what is up in your world – I am really missing home and am craving hearing some news from my friends out there…..

In peace and freedom,
Cat

Happy Easter!

2008-04-01T00:26:00.000-07:00

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

Kenya and U.S. Elections: Danger and Opportunity

2008-03-08T08:12:00.000-08:00

Greetings from Nairobi. Thanks to all of you for keeping in touch and giving me feedback now and then. I really appreciate the input and guidance that many of you provided after my last message.

As you know, after 2 months of violence and instability in Kenya following the Dec. 27 presidential elections, I was feeling ambivalent about the possibility of continuing my research. However, I have decided to stay and feel confident and positive about the potential for peace and justice in Kenya. I have already invested so much in my research and relationships here in Kenya, and I feel that I am not taking any risks that those around me are not also taking. I feel protected by my friends and family in my local community here, and by the local government leaders with whom I am working. The Fulbright Program at the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi has also been diligent about keeping in touch, and has assured me that we are all safe and should continue with our work.

One exciting development this week has been the invitation to attend the International Women’s Day reception on March 11 at the residence of U.S. Ambassador to Kenya, Michael Ranneberger. This will be an opportunity to meet with hundreds of women’s rights activists, community organizers and educators from throughout Kenya. As you know, I also attended a similar reception about violence against women in November, which led to incredible contacts and ideas and helped me to “take the pulse” of the Kenyan women’s movement. I look forward to meeting more colleagues and making more connections next week before heading back to my fieldwork site in Taita.

As a U.S. Fulbright Scholar, an activist, and student of international affairs, it has been fascinating to witness the process of international diplomacy and peacemaking over the past two months. As an American friend to Kenya, it has also been intriguing to compare and contrast the events following the contested elections in Kenya to what I have witnessed in my own country. I am working on an article based on these observations, and I hope that you will send me some input or editorial advice on the following section of this letter.

Please continue to take care and keep in touch. I look forward to communicating with you.

Peace and progress,

Cat Cutcher

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KENYA AND U.S. ELECTIONS: DANGER AND OPPORTUNITY

Kofi Annan has taught Kenyans that the Chinese word for “conflict” includes both “danger” and “opportunity.”

Kenya has experienced the worst conflict in its 45 years of independence after the announcement of the results of the presidential election on December 30, 2007.

Many lessons can be learned from Kenya about both the limits to and potential for democracy. They also point to the importance of diplomacy and peacemaking to diffuse violence and war.

Two months of violence and instability have the potential to either make or break this East African nation. While revealing the deep divisions in Kenyan society, they have also demonstrated the deep connections between Kenya and the international community, especially the United States.

ROOTS OF THE CONFLICT

Prior to December 30, the 2007 election represented the most free, fair and open election in Kenya’s history. The political campaigns were conducted in a climate of open debate and a free press that covered all of the political parties and candidates. Thousands of new voters were registered, including an unprecedented number of women and youth. International election observers flocked to the country and thousands of local volunteers signed up to assist in the electoral process. While there was some violence leading up to the elections, it tended to be isolated in the rural communities of the Rift Valley and Mt. Elgon. Many Kenyans believed that the 2007 elections would demonstrate that Kenya’s democracy had matured in an open and inclusive political climate.

However, everything changed after Kenyans went to the polls on December 27. There were widespread reports of disenfranchisement of voters, stuffing of ballot boxes, and violence at the polls. Opposition leader Raila Odinga appeared to be leading in the tallying of votes in the presidential election for several days, and six of the eight provinces declared him as the winner. . However, the results that were counted at the local and provincial levels were different than the results announced at the national tallying led by the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK), which was appointed by the incumbent President. ECK Chairman Samuel Kivuitu announced in Nairobi on Dec. 30 that incumbent President Mwai Kibaki was the winner after receiving the majority of the popular votes. Kibaki was quickly sworn in as the President in a private ceremony in State House.

Since December 30, Kenya has been engulfed in waves of violence and destruction. Over 1,000 people have died and an estimated 600,000 people are internally displaced throughout Kenya. Rapes, mutilation, torture, and other forms of violence have left deep scars, trauma and divisions in society. Human rights have been violated and anxiety and fear have become commonplace. Ethnic tensions are on the rise, as the political crisis amplified deep differences and suspicions between different ethnic communities. The economy has been affected, with thousands of businesses destroyed, jobs lost, and livelihoods threatened.

During the past two months, former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan led an impressive and difficult task of bringing the two parties to the table to negotiate a political settlement. Hundreds of international visitors, journalists and mediators have flocked to Kenya. The list of VIPs has included a host of leaders, including South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Ghanaian President John Kufuor, former Tanzanian president Benjamin Mkapa, former South African first lady Graca Machel, current Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete, and current Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also visited Kenya to send a strong message of friendship and an insistence on peace and power-sharing on behalf of the United States.

The Kenyan negotiators from the two political parties had a long list of issues to address, and it was difficult to compromise on some of the key issues, such as the creation of a Prime Minister position for the opposition leadership. At one point the discussions reached a stalemate. The government Party of National Unity (PNU) insisted that the current constitution should be respected, while the opposition Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) insisted that the constitution no longer reflected the desires or realities of current Kenyans. In the last week of February, ODM started to threaten that they would call for mass actions and demonstrations again if progress was not made.

On Feb. 28, the peace process reached a climactic turn of events as President Mwai Kibaki and ODM leader Raila Odinga signed a peace agreement to share power between the two parties and to reform the constitution. The whole country seemed to breathe a collective sigh of relief and Kenyans danced in the streets with hope for peace to return.

However, as an African proverb warns, “When the elephants fight, the grass suffers.” The conflict between the two political parties is just the tip of the iceberg. Many Kenyans believe that the real work has yet to begin. The elite deal of power-sharing between Raila and Kibaki is just a step toward a government that will be accountable to the millions of people left in poverty and suffering in the wake of a divisive election, and years of historical injustice. A great deal of work remains to heal the country from the recent devastation and violence, and to address issues of social and economic justice.

To ensure that Kenya remains united, the deep divisions of ethnicity, race, religion, gender, language, age and class remain to be addressed. As Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wangari Maathai states, Kenya is a nation comprised of many “micro-nationalities,” and tension often leads to an assertion of these ethnic identities and languages.

Of particular importance is the issue of land, as communities have been shifted over centuries of migration, colonial rule, ethnic cleansing, cattle raiding, and urbanization. As the displaced are resettled, care must be taken to ensure that they are not sent to areas where they will be again vulnerable to attacks, or encroaching on other people’s land. The issue of land distribution is critical as the country considers where the internally displaced people will be resettled. Discussions of economic justice reveal the deep privileges and disadvantages inherent in land ownership throughout the nation.

INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMACY

The international pressure on Kenya over the past two months has been staggering. The international community showed the best of its abilities in diplomacy and peacemaking. It has also revealed Kenya’s importance in regional stability for East Africa, its leadership on the African continent, and its strategic position as an ally in the “War on Terror.”

The peace process has been a delicate balancing act between helping to find a “Kenyan solution” and insisting on real change. The involvement of the international community has revealed many double standards, and the tension between respecting the sovereignty of the nation-state while also putting pressure on the government to recognize Kenya’s importance in global politics.

Kofi Annan assured Kenyans that the international community was not here to ‘impose’ a solution but rather to ‘insist’ upon one. The diplomatic efforts have called into question the reality of post-colonial (or neo-colonial) international relations. While Kenyans are deeply grateful to the international community for stepping in to negotiate, some are suspicious of the intentions and the results of this deal. Indeed, the very role of the international community in conflict resolution has been deeply examined, and the unequal power between nations has been revealed.

What pressure is appropriate for other nations to use in expressing solidarity or “insisting on” solutions? What role can other nations play when internal divisions make it difficult for countries to develop solutions and create peace? At what point is it appropriate for other nations to step in? And what are the intentions of nations that support peace and power-sharing in Kenya after turning away from war and genocide in other East African nations, such as Rwanda, Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo?

The diplomatic corps in Kenya has been active in negotiations, with U.S. Ambassador Michael Ranneberger and British High Commissioner Adam Wood putting pressure on the Kenyan government to admit that the elections were flawed and to create a power-sharing, coalition government.

A number of Kenyan government leaders were suspected of inciting violence or blockading the peace process. They were issued warnings that they would be denied visas to enter the United States. They were told that the ban would be lifted if they would write an essay defending their position and explaining how they were contributing to peace in Kenya.

Martha Karua, the Minister for Justice and Constitutional Affairs and the head of the PNU government’s delegation in the peace process, responded to the ambassadors’ call for power-sharing and denial of visas to Kenyan leaders. She declared that Kenya is a sovereign nation and wanted to remind the ambassadors that they were “low level civil servants” who were just expressing their own opinion but were not eligible to express the policy of their countries. She also reminded other countries that Kenya is “not a colony” and that they should allow the government to solve its own problems. She declared that the opinions of these diplomats were completely “irrelevant.”

When U.S. President George Bush visited Africa recently, he avoided Kenya due to the current violence and alleged corruption of its government, and instead sent U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as an ambassador. Rice sent a strong message of “friendship” that insisted “there must be no violence” and that the two parties must agree on a “power sharing government.” While in Rwanda, Bush warned that the international community must act quickly to prevent genocide and violence in the future. The U.S. warned that unless a power-sharing deal was struck, there would be no “business as usual” between the two countries. The peace deal was settled by Kibaki and Raila shortly after receiving these strong warnings from the United States.

CLOSER TO HOME: US ELECTIONS AND DEMOCRATIZATION

Ironically, the closest example to the electoral problems and alleged corruption in Kenya may be found in the United States. In fact, we have a lot more in common with Kenya than we would like to admit.

When similar concerns about election rigging were raised in the U.S. elections in 2000 and 2004, they were swiftly swept under the rug. Did the Republicans talk about sharing power with the Democrats? Did the international community rush to the aid of the American people whose votes had been stolen? Are U.S. citizens confident that their votes will be counted in 2008?

No, and neither has the U.S. stopped insisting upon democratization abroad, while its citizens keep struggling to defend democracy at home.

In 2000, questions were raised in the U.S. presidential elections in Florida and the closest election in U.S. history. Concerns arose about “hanging chads,” the disenfranchisement of African-American voters, and the biased roles of Republican Secretary of State Katherine Harris, who had been the co-chair of the Bush campaign in Florida, and Governor Jeb Bush, the younger brother of George W. Bush. Bush was declared the winner after receiving 537 more votes than Al Gore in Florida, out of more than 5.8 million votes cast. In spite of a recount, when Gore and the Democrats took the issue to the U.S. Supreme Court, the results of the election were decided by judges, not by voters. Protestors flocked to the streets to protest the Bush inauguration, and they were met with rubber bullets, tear gas, police batons, and arrest.

In 2004, the results of the U.S. presidential election were similarly contested, and all eyes shifted to the swing state of Ohio. Again, there was widespread evidence of disenfranchisement of African-American voters in Cincinnati, Columbus, and Cleveland. Absentee and provisional ballots were still uncounted when John Kerry conceded the presidency to George Bush the morning after the election. Voting machines were reportedly “hacked” or pre-programmed to deliver the result of a slim 51% majority for George Bush. These voting machines were created on a government contract by the Diebold Corporation based in Columbus, Ohio, whose CEO is one of Bush’s campaign contributors. Walter O’Dell, the head of the company, told Republicans in a 2003 fund-raising letter that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." The final decision about the contract for the voting machines and the final results of Ohio’s elections were directed by one man, former Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell. Like Katherine Harris in 2000, Blackwell was also a Bush supporter and campaigner for the Republican Party. Despite widespread suspicion and evidence of election fraud in Ohio, Bush was declared the winner of the 2004 national election. Again, the second Bush inauguration was met with thousands of protestors in the streets of Washington, who were kept out by metal fencing barriers and an army of police.

Given, following the contested U.S. elections in 2000 and 2004, we did not see the extent of the violence that erupted in Kenya, or the massive displacement of American citizens from their homes. Indeed, the majority of the American people seem too comfortable and too unwilling to give up their privileges and their property to engage in oppositional politics.

The opposition movement in the U.S. may be gaining momentum, but it has not the organization or the militancy which was witnessed in Kenya. Over the past eight years, the American Left has become galvanized in its opposition to the Bush Administration, and to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Anti-war protests were organized before the wars even started, and have continued to gain momentum as the wars drag on and as U.S. soldiers and Iraqi and Afghan civilians die by the thousands. Hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens have gathered to protest the Bush administration’s policies, but the fear of the police and the power of our institutions are overwhelming to the majority of U.S. citizens. Moreover, a deep disconnection and mistrust has grown between the U.S. anti-war opposition activists and the formal opposition of the Democratic Party.

For the majority of Kenyans living on less than a dollar a day, many felt they had nothing to lose and everything to gain from engaging in mass action and demonstrations. They have also been joined by a large contingent of militant, unemployed and frustrated youths who are increasingly tempted to engage in crime and violence.

The dynamics of these two countries’ elections are all the more intriguing in 2008. Barack Obama is rising as the favored candidate of the Democrats and activists in the U.S. presidential race. Obama would be the nation’s first African-American president. Coincidentally, Obama is Kenya’s prodigal son, the child of a Kenyan man and a European-American woman.

Obama was raised in Hawaii and Indonesia and has traveled extensively around the world. A photo of Obama was recently circulated in the U.S. media that was taken during his visit to Wajir, in the Northeast Province of Kenya. He was dressed in a turban and wrapped in the traditional garb of a Somali elder, a sign of respect and reverence for important visitors. This photo was used on the front page of the New York Post with the headline “Bum Wrap.” The photo was cynically used to scare Americans into thinking that Obama is an Arab or Muslim sympathizer. A recent interview with the Somali-Kenyan man who dressed Obama in this outfit revealed that he did so out of deep respect for the potential U.S. President and a beloved son of Kenya.

According to his supporters, Obama is articulate, inspiring, highly educated, and has the potential to unite the U.S. across our divisions of race, class, religion, gender, and politics. He also has the ability to reach out to nations around the world in friendship and solidarity, and improving the image of the United States as a partner with other nations in global leadership. Unlike his competitors, Obama is the only candidate who has consistently voted against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is a statesman and a global thinker who has supported international diplomacy and peacemaking over war and violence.

The Kenyan press has been eagerly reporting the Democratic primary elections in the U.S., with a keen eye on Obama. A recent political cartoon in the Daily Nation depicted many Kenyans’ wishes to vote for Obama in the 2008 U.S. elections. The election of Obama is the dream of thousands of Americans and Kenyans who are seeking real change and a peaceful and respectful form of diplomacy between the U.S., Kenya and other nations.

Kenyans and Americans are joined today in friendship and in our hopes and struggles for democracy. Elections present both the danger and opportunity of democracy. We can all hope that the 2008 U.S. elections will be peaceful, free and fair. We owe it to Kenya and the rest of the world to truly practice what we preach.

*** Catherine Cutcher is a U.S. Fulbright Student in Kenya and a Ph.D. Candidate in Cultural Studies in Education at Ohio University. She is currently engaged in dissertation research on the Kenyan women’s movement.****

Kenya Update from Taita

2008-02-11T08:39:00.000-08:00

Dearest Friends and Family,

Greetings from Mwatate, Kenya. I am writing to update you on the situation in Kenya and to let you know that we are still safe and sound and enjoying life at the Taita International School in Mwatate. My research is really taking off and I have been very busy with meetings, interviews, field visits, and writing. I have been welcomed warmly by the local government officials and folks in the Dept. of Social Services and Adult Education, which work directly with women’s groups in the area. I attended a meeting at the chief’s office with local women’s groups to teach them about the new “Women’s Enterprise Fund,” a national loan program to support women’s groups and their income-generating projects. I have also met with and interviewed adult educators and others involved in extension activities with women’s groups – they say that the majority of adult learners are women since so many women were denied access to education in the past. I am discovering that adult education programs have been successful in teaching rural women skills, not only in reading and writing and math, but also in self-sufficiency and empowerment at the local level.

I have also been meeting with and interviewing members of several local women’s groups, who are involved in various projects such as basket weaving, building water tanks, farming, agroforestry, bakeries, microfinance groups called “merry-go-rounds,” and other small business ventures. One group, Mwakitutu Women’s Group, has “adopted” me and they have spent a lot of time with me and Joe over the past few weeks. I have also been “adopted” by Mama Agneta and Julius Mwakio Katuu, a couple who are friends of my professor Tom Wolf. He is an adult educator and she is a seamstress and a member of many women’s groups in the area, and they have been really supportive of my research and have helped me with the difficult task of translating my research questions into Kiswahili. They have also worked with dozens of Kalamazoo College students in the past and they even hosted a friend of mine, Elizabeth Stands, while she was doing her senior thesis research in Kenya in 1995.

I have also been interviewing Mama Mjomba intensively about her own life history as a community leader, teacher, mother, wife, the first mayor of Voi, and a longtime champion of women’s rights in Kenya. We have become very close friends and this weekend she took us to her ancestral rural home in the mountains of Mbololo, a beautiful region of the Taita Hills. We stayed at the homestead of her husband’s family, who are farmers with terraced gardens producing maize, beans, arrowroots, mangoes, avocados, bananas, oranges, limes, and other nutritious and delicious foods. I learned more about why she is so committed to agriculture as a “farmer’s daughter” and a lifelong gardener. It is really exciting and I am grateful that she has opened up so much to me and Joe.

This weekend I was invited to attend a leaders’ meeting to discuss the peace process in the Mwatate Division. Out of 80 people at the meeting, there were just a dozen women, and I was the only foreigner there. I was welcomed warmly and I even got to eat lunch next to the District Comissioner! (like our county commissioners in the U.S.) I learned a lot about peace and justice issues in the Mwatate Division at this meeting, and I met a lot of the local leaders who were supportive of me and my research. Mainly they discussed the need for justice to restore peace in Kenya, particularly relating to income inequalities, resource allocation, and land ownership. While they insisted that Taita is a peaceful place and that they doubted that violence would come here, they also said that the way to “sustainable peace” is by ensuring that all Kenyans, particularly the poor, have access to the resources that create and sustain life. They also talked about the need to engage youth in positive action for change, and they said that the primary reason for the violence in Kenya (aside from the elections and resource inequalities) is the fact that so many youths do not have access to education or employment to support themselves, and so they are easily manipulated by politicians and get caught up in violence and crime. This really resonated with me since I spent my early years in Kenya working with street children and other marginalized youth – I recalled that many of them felt so desperate that they had nothing to lose and everything to gain by engaging in crime and violence. I think that the ongoing violence in Kenya may be attributed to this problem – just like the wars in Sierra Leone, Uganda, the Congo, and other African countries have often been fought by frustrated and alienated youths looking to belong, and looking for a way to find some power and meaning for their lives.

I have been continuing with my work and am grateful to be in a place that is relatively quiet and calm. The Taita hills and the Coast Province have remained undisturbed save for a day or two of protests in Mwatate and Voi. The ODM MP for Mwatate, Calist Mwatela, has been very outspoken about the limitations placed on journalists from critiquing the government or attending government meetings. He has also been critical of decisions to ban rallies and demonstrations. He led a rally at Kamukunji grounds in Mwatate to protest the electoral results, and this was subsequently dispersed by police who shot warning shots and teargas. Since then, however, Taita has remained relatively calm and life is pole pole (slow and peaceful).

I am grateful for the opportunity to be here, even in the midst of the crisis, for it has given me a new understanding of the effects of violence and has made me even more committed to working for peace and justice. We have been in constant contact with the U.S. embassy and friends around Kenya. I know that many of you are worried for our safety and I want to let you know that we are weighing our options and consulting with the embassy and others regarding what we should do. I am not sure what this means for my research or my ability to stay here as long as I had planned. Many people in the U.S. have been worried and have asked me to consider returning home soon. Joe is leaving at the end of the month, and he has asked me to come with him. Part of me thinks that I should go home, but I have some fears about having to leave early, since I feel like I have just gotten started on my research, and since the Fulbright is such a prestigious opportunity and is my only source of financial support. I also feel some guilt about leaving when all of the people I am working with will remain here, and they seem fairly confident that Taita will remain peaceful. But I also do not want to risk my safety or my life by staying here much longer than I need to, in the event that things get worse than they are. I have been receiving daily text messages and email updates from the U.S. embassy, which helps to inform me about the security situation throughout the country. I also have been in touch with the Public Affairs Section, which administers the Fulbright Program – they called me last week to check in and said that I should stay where I am for now to wait and see, and they think that I am probably safer in Taita than I would be in Nairobi. However, other embassy staff and Peace Corps volunteers have been evacuated from Western Kenya, and they are encouraging all “non-essential” staff and other American citizens to leave the country. They have offered assistance in making arrangements in case we decide to leave early. I guess the question is, what do you think that I should do? What would you do in this situation?

I am writing now to inform you of the events “on the ground” so that you can get an accurate picture of how things are developing in Kenya right now. I am sharing the burden of this knowledge with you, in the hopes that you can begin to understand the extent of the violence and that you will continue to pray for peace in Kenya. It is heartbreaking to witness such events in the country where I have spent so much of my adult life and where I have made so many friends over the past 14 years. I am dismayed to realize that every time I come to Kenya, something catastrophic happens –the street children I worked with were jailed in 1995, the U.S. embassy was bombed in 1998, earthquakes rocked the Rift Valley region in 2007. However, rather than turning away from these hardships, these catastrophes should also be featured in my research. I cannot pretend to continue with my planned business without dealing with the issues of the violence and how this is affecting women and their families and communities. I believe that women’s groups and other community-based organizations (CBOs) have a key role to play in peacemaking and reconciliation as well as providing services to people in need.

Since the announcement of the election results on December 30, violence and instability has erupted throughout Kenya in response to the disputed tallying of the votes. The dispute over the election results initially led to widespread violence, looting and burning of shops reported in Kisumu, Mombasa and Nairobi as well as smaller cities and towns throughout Kenya. Since then, the post-election violence has claimed over 1000 lives and has displaced an estimated 350,000 refugees. Many are insisting that Kenya needs a new Marshall Plan to overcome the tragedy and humanitarian crisis.

Here are some personal stories: Our taxi driver in Mombasa (the largest coastal city) told us that he spent two nights in his car in the airport parking lot because he was afraid to return home to his family in Mikindani, an estate near the airport where a number of shops were burned and looted. His wife and children were trapped in their house for four days (like everyone else that I know in Mombasa). He also reported that over 500 families had fled Magongo, a small estate next to the airport, and camped in a large field in front of the airport for several days.

Many people have been evacuated from Eldoret, Kitale, Nakuru and Kericho in the Rift Valley, where violence has been the most extreme both before and after the elections. Our friend, OU alum and fellow Fulbrighter Opolot Okia told us that a man was murdered right in front of his house at Moi University in Eldoret, presumably just because he belongs to the Kikuyu ethnic group. Opolot and his family have been on “house arrest” on and off since the violence began – we have been communicating by cell phone and email.

There has also been a lot of violence in Nyanza and Western Provinces. Our friend Martin, who is from Siaya district near Kisumu, was harassed in Kisumu and suspected of being a “Mungiki” gang member because he has dreadlocks – he has since left the country and returned to the U.S. Also, our friends Tanja and Josh were here visiting family for the holidays. They left their family farm in Western Kenya in early January in the middle of the night, and drove 12 hours on back roads to avoid the main highway to Nairobi. Although they were able to leave safely and returned back to South Africa, their family farm was later attacked, and the workers had to fight off the invaders. They are hoping and praying that the farm is not attacked again.

I read an editorial in last week’s Sunday Nation and have done some more research about how women and children have been suffering from the post-election violence. It is estimated that at least two-thirds of the internally-displaced people are women and children. Unfortunately, as in many situations of conflict, rape has become rampant throughout Kenya, as well as forced circumcisions and genital mutilation. The Nairobi Women’s Hospital has reported record numbers of patients seeking care, including women, girls and boys. They have estimated that there are even more women in the slums and estates surrounding Nairobi who are too afraid to report their rapes, for fear of retribution and because they are afraid to leave their homes. As the police and GSU have surrounded some of these areas, women have become trapped and have been unable to access medical services or legal assistance. Groups are now forming rape crisis centres in the estates surrounding Nairobi to provide home-based or community-based care for rape survivors. It is still unknown how many other women have been raped in other parts of the country. Many women have been raped or sexually abused in the refugee camps and have no recourse or assistance to deal with their trauma.

The camps for internally displaced refugees have also faced numerous problems. There is little water and food available in the camps, and many fear an outbreak of diseases like typhoid or cholera. Mothers have given birth while displaced from their homes, and are not eating for days at a time, so they cannot breastfeed their babies. Some of the camps have also been attacked at night, with little security available for the displaced, who have had to continually flee from their settlements. Although some humanitarian assistance has been delivered by the UN, Red Cross/Red Crescent, FAO, UNICEF, and other groups, it has not been enough for the estimated 300,000 internally displaced people. Also, the Western and Nyanza provinces have also had large numbers of displaced people, and some have fled across the border into Uganda. The Ugandan military has established a border patrol and they are fearing a humanitarian and refugee crisis.

Children are unable to go to school and makeshift schools are also being formed in the camps. Some children have not been able to go to school because they are displaced, while other schools have become refugee camps and are no longer suitable for education. An estimated 4,000 schools have not yet opened due to the violence. Teachers have reported a great need for counseling and intervention with their students, particularly those who have witnessed or experienced violence. Teachers have also reported an increase in ethnic conflict, hate speech, and violence among children in schools. There is a great need for teachers to supported and trained to manage issues relating to cultural diversity and non-violent communication. I have noticed some of the high school students at the Taita International School who have been outspoken about their hatred for particular communities in Kenya. The teachers have also been preaching peace here at the school, both in the classrooms and in church services on Sunday.

As I said before, over 900 people have been killed in the last month. The media reports that most of the killings have been by the police, who have used excessive force on demonstrators, and civilian militias and individuals have also been responsible for much of the killings. Since Kibaki was declared President, the government has engaged in a crackdown on the opposition and a suspension of civil liberties. Public demonstrations and rallies organized by the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) have been banned. The Kenya Police and the General Service Unit (GSU) military police have used teargas, water cannons, and automatic guns to control the people and to disperse demonstrators. The police, military and GSU have been given orders to “shoot to kill” and have been widely criticized for using “excessive force” to break up demonstrations. One officer was caught on videocamera shooting and killing a 10 year old boy, while another has been charged with killing an opposition Member of Parliament (presumably over a love triangle). We have also seen an increase in militias of frustrated and unemployed youths, armed with bows and arrows, pangas/machetes, knives, and homemade guns. Many people claim they have been attacked for no reason and with no provocation, and have often been singled out because of their ethnicity – this has primarily been targeting the Kikuyu, Luo, Luhya and Kisii ethnic groups. The doctors in hospitals and mortuary staff are totally overwhelmed and working round the clock to deliver the needed services – they are filled to capacity with patients and bodies and are struggling to work in an atmosphere with little security even for medical staff. The wounds have been severe – deep panga cuts, gunshots, burns, multiple stabbings. The extent of this violence is intense and scary.

Civil liberties have also been a casualty of the conflict. The Kenyan constitution protects freedom of assembly, freedom of association, and freedom of speech and press, and yet all of these rights have been curtailed in the national emergency. Some journalists have been killed or harassed or had their equipment stolen, while others have been prohibited from attending and writing coverage of public meetings due to their criticism of the government. Although the Kenyan media is usually very reliable and robust, the government has censored the media, banning all live broadcasts on TV and radio. After live hearings by the ECK were broadcast after the elections, all future hearings were pre-recorded and edited before being broadcast. KBC, the government-controlled TV channel, which is the only station available in most remote rural locations, lost its sound for 4 crucial days and has regular technical difficulties. The other public TV stations of KTN, NTV and Citizen were also censored. Fewer copies of newspapers have been available in remote locations since fewer papers have been printed and transported due to the fuel shortage in Kenya. It has been very difficult to get information, in rural areas especially. On the other hand, I have found that the information about the crisis in Kenya available online or sent via email from the U.S. and European media has been sensationalized and decontextualized – focusing primarily on the ethnic dimensions of the conflict and ignoring the political and economic dimensions, or the dispute over the electoral results.

Moreover, Parliament has been postponed from meeting since the MPs were sworn in and Speaker of the House chosen in early January. Since half of the MPs and the Speaker and Deputy Speaker are all representing ODM, their power could overwhelm the President. In fact, when Parliament convened on Jan. 10th, the 95 ODM MPs refused to stand when the President entered the room. Some people guessed that Parliament might decide to put forward a vote of “no confidence” in the president. In the 12-hour Parliamentary session on Jan. 10th, many of the MPs debated the elections and discussed the need for redress. The session was broadcast live, and the new Speaker Marende promised that all Parliamentary sessions would be broadcast live during his leadership. As a result, their power has been limited and they have been prohibited to meet for all of January and February. This is also seen as the President’s interference in the Legislative branch and a limitation to the checks and balances promised by the Kenyan constitution. In this atmosphere of limiting civil liberties, many people are becoming even more angry and suspicious of the government’s motives and are insistent that they are holding on to power illegally.

Nevertheless, there has been a surge of renewed violence rocking the Rift Valley and Western Kenya over the past two weeks. Killings, beatings, burning of homes, property destruction, looting, and internally displaced refugees are the product of this violence in Nakuru, Eldoret, Naivasha, Kisumu, Busia, Siaya, and Nairobi. Illegal roadblocks have been put up on the Nairobi-Nakuru-Kisumu highway, and roads and bridges have been destroyed. There has been a disruption in traffic and transport of goods not only to Western Kenya but throughout East Africa, which has disrupted the volatile regions of Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Eastern DRC. Kenya has always had relative stability in the region and has played a key role in keeping goods flowing and in peacekeeping as well as providing a safe haven for refugees from these countries. The port of Mombasa, the highways and railroads in Kenya have been essential to bringing goods into these countries as well. Kenya’s instability affects the livelihoods of people in the whole region.

Meanwhile, the Kenyan economy is also suffering, with billions of shillings in estimated property damage, job losses, and businesses ruined. An estimated 400,000 jobs have been lost in the past month of violence, and many people have lost their livelihoods. Farmers’ crops have rotted in the fields and drought has not made matters any easier. The food security of many communities is really threatened. Tourists have mostly left the country during the peak of the season, which has devastated the coastal areas that are dependent on foreign exchange provided through tourism. Many hotels have had to lay off their staff and have closed early. Foreign investors are also pulling out and the Nairobi Stock Exchange is really suffering from divestments. Aid agencies and foreign governments that previously provided assistance are threatening to impose economic sanctions if the two parties of Kibaki’s PNU and Raila’s ODM cannot agree to settle their disputes and work towards reconciliation. This is devastating particularly for the majority of Kenyan people who are living on less than $2 per day and who are now living in a heightened atmosphere of tension and insecurity and poverty. Many people are afraid that Kenya will be unable to bounce back economically from the devastation of the past month.

Claims that Kenya is on the verge of another African civil war or Rwandan genocide have been largely dismissed by the Kenyan media and people, but some remain fearful that things are not improving as fast as they had hoped. Many Kenyans insist that this violence is temporary and that peace and justice will prevail. In fact, many people believe that ethnic conflict has been overplayed too much in the international media. They insist that the reason for the conflict is not ethnic differences but rather the anger that Kenyans feel about the rigging of the election and the alleged corruption of the Kenyan government. Many people feel that this conflict could either lead to more violence or, if resolved peacefully and thoroughly, could lead to a more robust, transparent, accountable, and democratic government. Many Kenyans feel that they are ready for a change and that the increased awareness about the faulty electoral system is exposing a long tradition of corruption and conflict in Kenya to the global community.

The political resolution remains fragile at best. Initial hopes of mediation by South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Ghanaian President and African Union Secretary-General John Kufuor were fruitless. Kibaki’s government refused to acknowledge that there were any problems with the elections and his Minister for Foreign Affairs Wetangula said that these mediators were not invited by the government and so they could not intervene in the sovereign affairs of the Kenyan nation. Kufuor was also said to be Kibaki’s age-mate and colleague and he could not therefore intervene – he was just here to have a “cup of tea” with Kibaki before returning to Ghana. After this fruitless effort, the African Union decided to appoint a team of mediators comprised of eminent persons – including: Kofi Annan, former secretary-general of the United Nations from Ghana; Graca Machel, former first lady of Mozambique and South Africa and the current wife of Nelson Mandela; Benjamin Mkapa, former president of Tanzania; Kenneth Kaunda, former president of Zambia; and the former president of Mozambique. At the same time as their visit, President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda also arrived in Kenya to meet with the team and with President Kibaki. The team has been here for two weeks and they have been meeting with leaders as well as ordinary citizens to assess the situation. They traveled to the Rift Valley and visited several refugee camps, which they described as “heart-wrenching.” Graca Machel had a tender moment with a bereaved and grief-stricken woman, whose face she held in her hands as they cried together. The teams’ greatest achievement so far has been to bring Kibaki and Raila together for a face-to-face meeting and to begin discussing the negotiations. The two were filmed shaking hands and smiling, and many Kenyans became hopeful to see a beginning to the end of the political impasse. However, the way ahead is long and it will be difficult to convince the two leaders to make the “hard choices” necessary to move beyond their entrenched positions and to try to compromise a settlement that might bring peace and justice. ODM leaders are already criticizing the African Union eminent persons team for being too focused on peace and humanitarian efforts, and for not addressing the issue of the rigging of the elections and the need for electoral reform. They claim that the government is trying to control the mediators’ movements too much and is directing them to dealing solely with the humanitarian crisis - and diverting their attention from the political crisis of the elections which sparked the violence.

Many are now insisting that the violence that has been rocking Kenya for the past month goes far beyond the elections. Many claim that this has opened up festering wounds that reach deep back into Kenya’s history. While Kenya has been hailed as a beacon for democracy, economic growth, stability and peace – the tensions of ethnicity, sexism, violence, economic inequality, and injustice have been the roots of violence throughout the country’s history. Indeed, crime, terrorism, land grabbing and disputes over wealth and ownership of property have always been very present and prevalent in Kenya. Since multi-party elections were introduced in 1992, the Rift Valley has been rife with election violence and with incidents of land-grabbing, cattle-stealing, ethnic cleansing, armed militias, etc. Kofi Annan and others have insisted that the solution to Kenya’s current crisis must reach beyond the disputed election results, beyond a re-tallying or repeat of the elections, and must address the fundamental problems facing Kenya’s existence as a nation of different peoples with often conflicting interests and divergent identities and histories. Many are beginning to question Kenya’s ability to remain united as a sovereign nation without being divided into majimbo, or different states with decentralized governments. This is seen as a lesson in the problems inherent in the post-colonial African state and the struggle for democracy.

Many are criticizing both Raila and Kibaki for failing to address the needs of the people while they are protected in State House and in a palatial mansion in the Karen suburbs. They are arguing that these elites have more in common with each other than with the majority of Kenyans, and that their children and families continue to live life undisturbed, to go to school, to eat 3 meals per day, while the regular wananchi are suffering so much. Many feel that they are being used by the political elites as pawns in a game of political one-up-man-ship, and they resent being the fodder for their political careers. The unity of the nation is really what seems to be at stake now.

Meanwhile, life continues for the majority of people in an atmosphere of instability, insecurity and anxiety. The whole country seems to be suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. It is difficult to discuss any matter these days without referring to the violence and the need for unity, prayer, faith, and hope. Although Kenya is a nation full of God-fearing people, many are afraid that God has forsaken them, or that God will never forgive the nation for what has been done. It seems that many people’s faith is being tested, and yet they still are coming together to pray, to talk, and to support each other.

Thank you for taking time to read and understand more about the crisis in Kenya. I hope that you all are doing well and I hope that you will join me in praying and working for peace and justice in whatever corner of the world you are living in right now.

Take care and keep in touch,

In peace and justice,

Cat Cutcher

Update From Kenya

2008-01-23T04:01:00.000-08:00

Dear Friends and Family,

Greetings to all of you. Joe and I are doing well and we are back in Mwatate in the Taita-Taveta district in the Coast Province of Kenya. We traveled back here from Lamu on January 14 and have been busy at the Taita International School ever since. We are reunited with the Mjomba family and we are very happy to be together. I have been continuing with my research and have been guest-teaching in the geography classes for the secondary school students. Joe has been busy building a new classroom building for the students at TIS. The school has received over 70 students for the new year ranging from nursery school students (3-4 year olds) to Form 3 students (11th grade of high school). We are happy to be staying at the school and to be involved in the growth of this important community institution.

I will be sending another message in a few days with more details of the current situation in Kenya regarding the post-election violence. For now, I would like to refer you to two resources for more information on Kenyan politics and the humanitarian crisis. The first resource is the Daily Nation, Kenya's Daily Newspaper, which has included informative reporting and commentary on the crisis:

www.nationmedia.com/dailynation/

The second resource is Pambazuka News, a weekly online newsletter on social justice in Africa. There are some great articles posted there this week critiquing the use of the word "tribe" and other dangerous and pervasive myths in international reporting on Kenya's post election crisis. Please read more at

www.pambazuka.org/en/

Also, I have an article that was just published on the Ohio University Research Communications website about my research in Kenya and Tanzania. You may read this article "Grad student examines women's issues in Kenya" at

news.research.ohiou.edu/notebook/index.php?item=449

There is a related article, "What Climate Change Means to Africa," posted on the same site. This article describes a research project on climate change in the Mt. Kilimanjaro region, which I was involved in last summer.

news.research.ohiou.edu/notebook/index.php?item=448

I am trying to post photos on my blog soon. Please bear with me as I am technologically-challenged re: digital photos.....

Take care and keep in touch,

Sincerely,

Cat

Catherine Cutcher
Ph.D. Student
Fulbright Scholar in Kenya
Cultural Studies Program
College of Education
Ohio University
email: cutcher@ohio.edu

"You gain strength, courage, and confidence
by every experience in which you really
stop to look fear in the face ....
Do the thing you think you cannot do."
- Eleanor Roosevelt

Pray for Peace in Kenya

2008-01-03T02:53:00.000-08:00

Dearest friends and family,

We greet you with hopes for peace in the New Year. As you have probably heard, there is much unrest in Kenya following the national elections on Dec. 27. We are fine and are staying in Lamu, a small island off the northern coast of Kenya, just south of Somalia. This is a very peaceful place and a small town where everyone knows each other. It is a popular tourist destination that is very friendly and welcoming to outsiders, and we are meeting a lot of other travelers here as well – from the States, England, Canada, Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Israel, France, Spain. We are staying here until things cool down on the mainland. The locals have told us that there is very little crime or violence in Lamu, and that this is the best place we can possibly be in Kenya during this time of conflict. We have actually been having a great time here and have made the best of our situation by spending time sailing, fishing, and swimming at the beach. Life in Lamu is continuing as normal and the locals are reassuring us that Lamu will remain peaceful and safe.

We are not sure what news you are getting about Kenya right now, but we know that many of you have been afraid for us. We thank you for your concern and your prayers of peace and protection. We hope to share some more information with you so that you will have some stories from the ground here in Kenya (not the sensationalized version that is undoubtedly being reported on CNN, Fox News, etc.).

Here is the background as far as I can explain it:

For several months, polling around Kenya revealed that Raila Odinga (of the opposition Orange Democratic Movement party) was the leading candidate, although incumbent President Mwai Kibaki (of the Party for National Unity) was starting to catch up. Kibaki’s campaign slogan was “Kazi Iendelee!” (Let the work continue) while Raila’s symbol was the orange and his slogan was “Chungwa Moja. Maisha Bora” (One Orange. Better Life.). Many people we interviewed said that they preferred Raila to Kibaki because they want change, a new constitution, and an end to corruption.

A bit of history: Kibaki was elected president in 2002, representing the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC), a coalition of many opposition leaders including Raila Odinga and Kalonzo Musyoka, the opposition presidential candidates this year. In 2002, NARC promised to end corruption, to change Kenya’s constitution, and to end the “tribalism” or ethnic divisions in Kenya. However, since 2002 the Kibaki government has been implicated in several scandals, with evidence of widespread corruption and grabbing of land, money, and government contracts. Also, Kibaki tended to nominate and hire mostly Kikuyu people from the Mount Kenya region in major government positions. And the referendum for a new constitution was stalled and beaten by Kenya’s Parliament. Although the Kibaki government claims that they have improved the Kenyan economy and have developed roads, schools, markets, and hospitals, the majority of the Kenyan people continue to live in poverty and unemployment. There seems to be widespread criticism of the policies of this government and agitation for change.

Right before the 2007 elections, the polling revealed that Kibaki and Raila each had about 40% of the votes, with Kalonzo Musyoka of the ODM-Kenya party trailing with 15% of the votes. There was some violence leading up to the elections, especially in the Rift Valley where there were clashes over land between Kikuyus and Kalenjins. There was also some violence directed to candidates, especially women candidates for Parliament and between ODM and PNU supporters.

On Dec. 27, Kenyans went to the polls. The election itself was mostly peaceful although some people complained that they could not vote and were told they were not registered. There was some violence at some polling stations, and there were some election workers who protested that they were not paid enough. Raila himself went to vote in his district of Langata/Kibera, and found that his name was not even printed on the ballot! Election observers from the European Union, the U.S., and other countries were deployed throughout the country, and they have reported widespread problems with the way the election was conducted and how the votes were counted.

It appears that the presidential election may have been rigged, since it took almost four days for the election results to be counted and declared. The elections had been decentralized with individual polling stations in charge of counting the votes from their constituencies. Although the votes were counted locally, they were then sent to the Kenyatta International Conference Centre (KICC) in Nairobi, where the Electoral Commission of Kenya was meeting.

Raila Odinga was first declared the winner, with a margin of 300,000-1 million votes more than Mwai Kibaki. On December 29, Raila’s apparent victory was printed in the paper and declared on national television. We watched a hearing with the Electoral Commission of Kenya which reported the results stating that Raila had won the majority of the citizen’s votes in seven of the 9 provinces. The only provinces where Kibaki was leading were the Central and Eastern Provinces.

However, on December 30, the Electoral Commission had another hearing declaring the “Final and Official Election Results”, declaring that Kibaki was the winner. It is said that there was a power outage in Nairobi, where the votes were being counted, and that afterwards Kibaki was found to have 40,000 more votes than Raila. Right after these results were declared, Kibaki was sworn in as President on the same day. Later, the ECK chairman Kivuitu said that he was pressured to release the results before he was really sure of the accuracy of the counting. As of Jan. 2, he said that he is still not sure whether or not Kibaki really should be president, since it is not clear who has the majority of the votes.

As a result, there has been violence, looting, and killing in some parts of Kenya – especially in the Western Province near Kisumu and around Nairobi and Mombasa. These are large cities and the violence has mostly been centered around the cities. We have been communicating with the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi and with friends in the cities who have reported widespread fighting, killing, rapes, looting and burning of stores and houses. The worst situation was a church that was burned with dozens of women and children trapped inside who were seeking refuge. There have been over 300 reported deaths so far, and over 150,000 internally displaced refugees. Many others are staying home, and they have no access to oil for transport or cooking, or to food since the shops are all closed or destroyed. There are also widespread power outages, and the banking system is completely down. There is little access to cell phone credit, which is a pay-as-you-go system, so it is difficult to keep up communications with friends and family in distant places. Everyone is staying close to home and there has been no traveling for several days.

On Jan. 2, we heard that Nairobi and Mombasa had cooled down, and that the General Service Unit (GSU military police) and other police were heavily deployed throughout the cities. Shops had opened again in the cities and it seemed that things were returning to normal. However, Raila called for one million people to come to an ODM rally to be held at Uhuru Park in Nairobi, the large central park next to downtown, on Jan. 3 (today). Kibaki banned the rally and called for heavy police deployment throughout the city. This morning we have heard that the rally is taking place and a large crowd is moving from Uhuru Park to Kibera and Langata, Raila’s home constituency. Police have been deployed heavily throughout the city. Kibera is the largest slum outside of Nairobi and has been the center of much of the violence so far. We are praying that the rally will be peaceful and that Raila will ask his supporters to protest without violence. However, the situation is very tense and it might escalate again after today’s rally.

We are staying in Lamu now and just waiting for things to cool down. We came here the day after Christmas on a bus, and we are glad to be safe and surrounded by kind people and new friends. On election day, we were impressed that everyone we interviewed in Lamu told us that they will accept whoever becomes president, that they are just praying for peace. Everyone went to the mosque or to church that day to pray. This town is predominantly Muslim and everyone is continuing to pray and work for peace. The central teaching of the Islamic faith is “Do No Harm”, and Islam itself means “peace.” The clerics in the mosques are urging everyone to continue to be peaceful and to love one another. Although Raila is also the preferred candidate here, there are a few PNU and Kibaki supporters who are mostly Kikuyu migrants from upcountry – who come from either the Central Province or Nairobi. It is very peaceful here and the locals have assured us that there is little risk of violence here since they have much security with the police, Administration Police, the Kenyan Navy base and the U.S. Marine base.

Do not worry about us – we are safe here in Lamu and we will be careful about waiting until it is safe elsewhere before traveling from here. The only concern here is that we are very remote, and that the supplies to the island come from the other cities on buses and boats. Since there is an oil shortage and a ban on traveling in the cities, there are few supplies coming to the island now. Our biggest concern right now is not having access to our money, since there is one bank in town and its ATM machine is broken. The bank is only accepting cash for exchange. We are saving the little we have and have been helped by some friends – other travelers and the local people. We had a kitchen at the guest house where we were staying, so we could cook food and boil our drinking water. We have stockpiled dry food supplies and we have access to fresh water. If we run out of food, we can also go fishing with local friends – there is a great supply of fish in the ocean, and there are coconuts and mangoes growing on the island. We figure that if we run out of food, we can live a long time on fresh fish and ugali – corn meal porridge which is very filling.

We have had to move from our guest house since we had no money, but we are staying with a friend’s family. As luck would have it, on our second day in Lamu we met a young Rastafarian artist, Gitaa, who was a friend to Jack O, a boy that I lived with in Nairobi back in 1995 with my friends Martin and Wilberforce. Jack was 15 back then and I was 21. He moved to Lamu three years ago to stay with his sister Rose and her family, and he works at Kizingo, a hotel on the other side of Lamu. He happened to be in town on Christmas and New Year vacation, and Gitaa took us to his house. Jack was so shocked to see me and was so happy that we were brought together. He kept saying “This is like a miracle!” and “This is Jah’s plan!” He introduced us to coconut wine one day in the village of Wiyoni, where we met a lot of local people who were happy to celebrate with us. We also had a great time together for New Year’s Eve, when we drank a few beers at a quiet bar on the beach, and then took a long walk for three hours around the island. We walked along the beach, watching the fireworks and the moonrise, and explored the sand dunes and coconut and mango groves in the moonlight. The next day we went sailing in a dhow, an old wooden sailboat, with some other friends. They sailed around the “mashindano”, a race of sailboats in the harbor by Shela beach, and we watched from the water as the sailboats sped by. It was the best New Year’s celebration that we have had in a long time.

When Jack had to go back to work at Kizingo, we asked his sister Rose if we could stay with her. She still remembers me also from 1995 and has welcomed us warmly. We are staying with her and her eldest daughter Melba, who is home from college in Uganda. Melba also cannot travel back to school now. Rose’s other children are in Nairobi with their father, and she is very worried about them as the men in the community have to stay up at night guarding the houses with machetes to ensure that no thieves come in. Rose said that we can stay with her in Lamu until her children return from Nairobi. By that time, we hope that it will also be safer for us to travel back to Mombasa and Taita, to reunite with Mjomba and his family.

As far as we know, the Mjomba family is fine and we are still communicating with text messages, and I talked to Mjomba on the phone on New Year’s Eve. They say that Taita is peaceful but Mombasa has been violent. The Mjomba family members in Mombasa are staying in their house for now, waiting for things to cool down. We hope to see them again soon.

My research has been stalled since we cannot return to Taita, but I have been making good connections with women’s groups here in Lamu and I am considering interviewing them and learning more about their work. In Wiyoni village, I met a large group of women who recently started a women’s community development organization called Tuungane Wiyoni (Let us join together Wiyoni). I also met a woman named Mama Naomi who is a seamstress who started the Lamu Women’s Poverty Eradication and Education Program. I also met a British woman who has lived here for 4 years as a volunteer with the British equivalent of the Peace Corps. She started a waste collection and environmental conservation program called “Lamu Safi” (Clean Lamu). All of these women have invited me to work with them and they are excited about my research.

We hope that you all are well and that you will keep in touch with us via email. We do not have much access to email or internet right now but you can text message us or call us and it does not cost us anything. Again, my cell phone number is 011-254-725-285-351.

We love and miss you and ask you to pray for peace in Kenya,

Cat and Joe

Cat and Joe Update #2

2007-12-17T03:52:00.000-08:00

Dear friends and family,

It has been a busy couple of weeks since we last wrote, and we have a lot of stories to tell. Notably, the last few weeks have contrasted a lot with our first letter to you about city life in Nairobi. After a couple of weeks in the “concrete jungle,” we are now staying in a rural area, in a small town called Mwatate, about 1.5 hours from the coastal city of Mombasa. We are staying at the Taita International School, a small private school founded by Mjomba and his wife, Maria. We are surrounded by children from pre-school through high school, who love to play, sing, dance and ask questions about our life in the U.S. The air is fresh and clean, and the rains come every morning or evening, making the whole area so green and beautiful. Every morning we are awoken by the songs of thousands of birds and the scampering of lizards and geckoes on the tin roof over our heads (a bird just flew into my room through the open door as I wrote that!). We are enjoying eating fresh mangoes, bananas, and chewing sugar cane. We will be staying here in the Coast Province for the majority of our visit here in Kenya.

I hope you are staying warm in the midst of the snow and ice - hard to comprehend since it is so hot and sunny, though rainy, here. I am actually sunburned! The short rains have come here, with torrential downpours almost every night, and mudslides and floods claiming a few lives. It is amazing to see how quickly the landscape changes from a dry, arid area to a totally green, fertile, lush savanna and forest landscape. Rain is truly precious here as water has become such an important and scarce resource.

After we sent the last letter, I met with Bill Karanja, the head librarian at the Daily Nation, Kenya’s national newspaper, who will be helping me with archival research on articles about informal education of women and girls in Kenya. They are in the process of digitizing all of their newspapers back to 1960, which will make it possible for me to search the archive on a computer – this will really simplify the research process and I am grateful that I arrived just in time to be one of the first to use this digital archive.

We also met with Magdalene Bariki, who works with the Green Belt Safaris ecotourism program of the Green Belt Movement in Nairobi. She welcomed us into their office in a building downtown, and served us chai to welcome us. She told us all about the organization of the Green Belt Movement, explained how the organization was founded and administered, and explained what is involved in a Green Belt Safari. She showed us photos of a high school group from New York who visited the GBM for homestays and to work at tree nurseries in the Central Province. She is from Taveta and told us that there are GBM grassroots groups working in the Taita-Taveta district, where I will be working with the Vindo Multipurpose Cooperative Society, and in Kwale in the southern Coast Province. This is auspicious since it means that I can observe GBM activities nearby rather than having to leave Taita for research in the Central Province, which was my original plan. It is still unclear if I will have open access to this group, but I think that we have established a good rapport with Magdalene and hope that she will help us to make contacts. She also said that we can participate in a Green Belt Safari program in the Central Province near Nairobi on Feb. 4 with another group that has made plans to visit then. We are considering this but we are nervous about the potentially high costs and the possibility that we might be limited in seeing a superficial perspective on their work, without getting deeper into the organization. However, we also understand that this is the mechanism that the organization has set up to allow outsiders to get exposure to their work, and to raise funds, so we want to respect their system as well.

Before we left Nairobi, I had the opportunity to visit the Nairobi Muslim Academy, an Islamic school connected to the South C Mosque, close to our apartment in Nairobi. I visited this school at the invitation of Fatima, a Somali woman who is the principal of the school, and whom I met during the meeting of women activists that I wrote about in my last letter. The school serves both boys and girls for preschool and primary grades, and is the only boarding secondary school for Muslim girls in Nairobi. I was led around the school by Safiya, a young Somali Kenyan woman who is the assistant to the principal and a recent graduate of the University of Nairobi. Fatima and Safiya explained to me that Muslim girls face special disadvantages in education in Kenya, as many schools were established either for boys or by Christian missionaries who did not accept Muslim students. The Islamic madrasa schools that did exist often only served boys. Prior to the establishment of the Nairobi Muslim Academy, many Muslim girls would either not go to secondary school or would attend Christian schools where they may have faced some discrimination or alienation. Safiya told me that she had attended a Catholic school which was fairly liberal, as they let her wear trousers and a hijab with her school uniform, and they let her pray during school at the regular times. But one thing she did not like about the school was that she was forced to attend Mass, which she felt was wrong since the school knew that she was a Muslim and would not be converted to Catholicism. Today, Muslim girls can now attend the Nairobi Muslim Academy, where they can receive instruction in the 8-4-4 national curriculum of both secular education and Islamic Religious education. The school is very impressive and large, and provides a well-rounded curriculum for students from pre-school through Form 4, the senior year of high school. They have a modern computer lab and physics and chemistry labs that were built with the support of the Islamic Development Bank in Saudi Arabia. Currently they are serving almost 650 children in the surrounding community – predominantly Somali Kenyans or refugees coming to Kenya from Somalia or other countries. I am very glad that I had the opportunity to visit this school and to learn more about Islamic education in Kenya.

The next day, Joe and I decided to go to the National Museum of Kenya, which we realized was still in the process of being renovated and was closed to the public. We decided to walk around the grounds instead, and enjoyed exploring the gardens and the tree nursery surrounding the museum. We realized how starved we were to see greenery as we wandered through the wooded park. We saw multiple species of Acacia, Jatropha, Euphorbia, Aloe, orchids and vanilla. As we were exploring a garden filled with aloe, we were approached by two men – one who appeared to be a security guard and the other who claimed that he was a guide at the Snake Park (but his breath reeked of alcohol and I did not trust him). They said that we were not allowed in that area without paying admission to the Snake Park. When I explained in Swahili that we did not know that we were in the park and that we would just leave, they said that we were already guilty and therefore had to pay something. We did not want to pay the full price for non-residents of 800 shillings each (about $12), while residents were charged just 100 shs - so they said we could compromise and just pay what we wanted to pay – we agreed to pay 400 shillings for the both of us ($5) and they agreed. However, the “guide” insisted that we pay him directly, which seemed like a con to us, but we didn’t know what else to do and so we went along with it. But even if it was a con, he led us into the Snake Park and proceeded to give us an amazing tour, and by the end we felt he was very friendly. He knew a great deal about all of the species of fish in the aquarium, including Nile Perch (the illustrious imported fish which have destroyed the Lake Victoria ecosystem – they can weigh up to 25 kg and have eaten tons of the indigenous species of fish – they are the subject of the film Darwin’s Nightmare). He then insisted that we go in to see the crocodiles and the snakes. We saw Black Mambas – the most poisonous snakes in Kenya that leave their victims with either 7 steps or 7 words before death – as well as huge pythons curled around their eggs, puff adders, spitting cobras, green tree snakes, and these scary vipers with huge mouths holding collapsible teeth that are 5 cm long. We also saw huge pancake turtles with soft shells that live in water, and tortoises, which he claimed are the reason why they say “No Hurry in Africa.” He showed us the difference between the crocodile and the American Alligator (whom he nicknamed “George Bush”) – the crocodile has a distinct smile, with teeth pointing out, a pointy nose, yellow-brown scaly skin and barbed tail, while the American alligator has a broader nose and distinctly dark green scaly skin. We were amazed and impressed by our tour of the Snake Park and glad that we were able to learn so much about the reptiles from this guide. He then took us up to the National Museum, where there was a reception for European Union diplomats who were supporting the renovation of the museum. We did not want to crash the party but he and the other staff insisted that we relax as we mingled in the crowd, sipped sodas and ate snacks. Then he proceeded to take us inside to see the unfinished renovations, where we saw an impressive collection of taxidermy – we saw a stuffed zebra, giraffe, rhino, elephant, cheetah, hippo, and a huge collection of birds. We also saw a skeleton of a mastodon with tusks that weighed 50 kg each, and another skeleton of a dinosaur that had been discovered in Kenya. We are really looking forward to going back to visit the museum when the renovations are completed – I would really like to learn more about Kenya’s geology and the archaeological history of hominids from the region. Luckily, our “guide” turned out to be a nice guy and we learned a lot from him.

The day after our museum visit, we finally left Nairobi to go to Voi and Mwatate in the Coast Province. We borrowed a car and went with Mjomba and his brother-in-law, Philip Mwasi, who lives in Dubai but is home visiting Kenya on a business trip. We had a great time on our drive, although the road was really bad most of the way with lots of diversions, potholes, and gravel roads – ironic since this is a major highway in Kenya. The nice thing about having our own car was that we were able to bring most of our stuff with us in the car without the hassles we might encounter on public transport. Also, we were able to stop along the way for food and drinks, and we were able to take our time to enjoy the scenery. As we moved down in elevation from Nairobi, we could see the change in topography and ecology. The highlands gave way to grassy savannas filled with Acacia trees, Euphorbia, and other succulent plants that thrive in a drier environment. We saw many more herds of cattle, sheep and goats. When we passed into Ukambani, the land of the Kamba people, we also began to see more Maasai herders. Also, the usually dry landscape was filled with green, since this is the rainy season, and it was truly beautiful. We also started to see many Baobab trees, which have huge trunks up to 10 meters in diameter, and which were covered with lush green leaves. These majestic trees are my favorite trees in Africa – they are known to collect water, prevent soil erosion, and are locally revered for their connection to the ancestors. Cutting such a tree is known as bad luck in many communities in Kenya, and they preside majestically in many savanna ecosystems.

When we arrived in Voi, we went to meet Mama Mjomba, the mother of Mjomba and a community elder and leader. I met Mama Mjomba when I visited Kenya last July, and we had arranged that I would work with her in my research on women’s organizations and popular education of women and girls. Mama Mjomba is now in her mid 70s and has enjoyed a long career as a teacher, mother, wife, politician, church leader, women’s rights advocate, and the first woman mayor of Voi town. She was widowed at the tender age of 40 and raised and educated her 7 children on her own after that. She founded the Vindo Multipurpose Cooperative Society (VMCS), a land cooperative which she established particularly to assist poor people and widows to purchase land as a cooperative. She has helped hundreds of people to become more independent, self-sufficient, and food secure. She was very happy to see us this evening and she and her family members had cooked chapattis and chicken stew for us. We prayed and sang and discussed politics, since it is getting closer to the elections. Mama showed us some of the awards which she was given this year by President Kibaki, including the “Golden Warrior” award for national service and another plaque for her service as the only woman on the Board of Trustees of the National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK). She also offered us fermented honeycomb from her farm, which is a traditional welcome gift to visitors. I was dismayed to see bee larvae squirming around in the honeycomb, but Joe was delighted and Mama was happy to hear Joe proclaim that this was powerful medicine.

The following day we relaxed at the Taita International School in Mwatate, our permanent home here in Kenya. The Taita International School is a community-based private school which was founded by Mjomba and his wife, Maria. It is located on a hill outside of the small town of Mwatate, and is surrounded by rural homesteads, trees, and set against the striking backdrop of a mountain with a rocky peak. It is beautiful here, with fresh air and surrounded by banana, papaya and mango trees. And the best part is that we are constantly surrounded by children. The sounds of children playing everyday is truly a balm to our hearts. Although the month of December is a school holiday elsewhere, the Taita International School has an enrichment program modeled after “Kids on Campus” in Athens, where Maria used to work while attending Ohio University. The children are wonderfully creative and sweet and smart and funny and helpful. They are involved in every aspect of taking care of the school, and they really take pride in their work. We feel really lucky to have this opportunity to work with the children and to assist this school in its beginning stages. Joe taught a martial arts class one morning to the whole school, including pre-school kids up to teachers. We had a lot of fun, though it was challenging to describe all the movements from English to Swahili.

A few days after we arrived, we visited Mama Mjomba’s “shamba” (farm), which is part of the land purchased by the Vindo Multipurpose Cooperative Society. We were impressed by the variety of food crops that were planted – including maize, beans, millet, mangoes, papaya, passion fruits, and a wide variety of flowering trees. There were a number of beehives hanging from the trees to collect honey and to assist with pollination. We helped Mama, her friend Mama Alice, and some men who work at the farm to clear a large plot of land of weeds and sod. The work was difficult and hot – Joe and I both got sunburned – but it was gratifying to finally put our hands into the soil and to do some hard labor. The soil was impressively loamy and sandy. We planted over 80 Jatropha seeds – plants which can produce biofuels – which Mama had been given by the local agricultural officer. She explained that he often comes to give her seeds for new plants that they are experimenting with, since he knows that she is an innovator. She is excited by the possibility of raising Jatropha for biodiesel and said that this could be a cash crop that might be very valuable to her and her family. We also helped to plant 9 passion fruit vines around several different fruit trees, as well as several rows of millet, maize, pojo (pigeon peas) and other seeds. We harvested mchungu, wild greens that are also called “bitter herbs” that we fried in oil with onions – they are bitter but are medicinal and full of vitamins and minerals. She told me that she was really impressed with our work and that anyone who loves agriculture is a friend to her. As she watched Joe working with the other men, she commented “AI! This man can WORK!” and “He and I could get a lot of work done together.” At the end of the day she exclaimed that she had never seen a mzungu (white person) who was able to work as hard as Joe on the farm, and that she is really excited about having him here to help for the next few months. Mjomba said that we may have prolonged her life by this experience and the hope that she has in working with us.

The following day, Joe and Mjomba went to Mjomba’s uncle’s farm, which is about an hour’s walk from the Taita Internaitonal School. They have worked there three days this week, and cleared a large area with Mjomba’s sons so that they can plant beans and vegetables for the school. They are hoping to develop this farm as a demonstration farm for the school and a source of fresh fruits and vegetables to supplement the children’s diets. Having a school garden will really help to teach agricultural skills to the children and will make the school more self-sufficient in its food security. The farm is plagued with baboons, who destroy crops and steal fruits – they are like deer or raccoons to an Ohio gardener. Uncle Wilson told us that if you throw a rock at a baboon, he will pick it up and throw it back at you!! It will be challenging to design a baboon-proof garden.

On Sunday, we rested most of the day and then hiked for about 2 hours through the Mwatate area with Mjomba, Maria, and her brother John. We walked to the Mwatate Dam, a large water reservoir constructed for irrigation by a huge sisal plantation nearby. Many children and women walk there daily to collect water, which they carry in buckets on their heads back to their homesteads. The dam was surrounded by reeds and filled with water lilies. We greeted many people along the way and noticed that people in the rural areas are so much friendlier toward visitors than in Nairobi. We walked along the railroad, which connects Mombasa to Nairobi. Then we walked down into a swampy wetland, which was planted with mango, banana, papaya and apple-mango trees, as well as maize and other crops. We were amazed to see huge trees literally covered in ripening mangoes! We also noticed thousands of birds flying above the wetland, and remarked that Kenya is a popular migration zone for birds traveling from Europe to South Africa. The weather had cooled down as it was early evening and the rain clouds were gathering on the horizon. It was truly a beautiful evening and we felt great getting so much exercise and fresh air. We feel so lucky to have this opportunity to live in such a gorgeous place as the Taita Hills in the rainy season.

Before we conclude, we also want to highly recommend a phenomenal book to you that we read recently – The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. Our friend Michelle Ajamian sent us the book before we left (thanks Michelle) and we both read it within 24 hours. This book chronicles the life history of a young man from Kabul, Afghanistan, who later became a refugee in California. His life story is set against the backdrop of the wars which have raged in his country since the 1970s. It is a powerful story of survival, love, friendship, and redemption that has really touched our hearts. We hope that you all will enjoy it as much as we have.

Please keep in touch and let us know what you are up to. We have missed you and hope that your holiday season is full of love, peace, hope, and light.

Sincerely,
Cat and Joe

Taita International School (TIS)

2007-12-10T06:39:00.000-08:00

Taita International School (TIS)
P.O. Box 181-80305
Mwatate, Kenya
Tel: 011 254 43 36062
E-mail: simba_tsavo@yahoo.com

Vision: To be a leading, world-class center for learning

Mission: To prepare well-rounded global leaders

Goal: To inspire, nurture, teach, train, mentor, and equip
for the information-based, technologically-driven 21st century global village.

Taita International School (TIS) is a community-based, privately-owned educational institution consisting of pre-school (ages 3-6), Primary (ages 6-14) and High Schools (ages 14-21). Dr. and Mrs. Majalia founded the school and opened its doors on February 5, 2007. The school is set within the sprawling Taita Hills, which are surrounded by the Tsavo National Park, the largest wildlife preserve in Kenya. TIS is located in a small market town called Mwatate, along the busy Mombasa-Tanzania highway, about 100 km from Mt. Kilimanjaro. (The spectacular Mt. Kilimanjaro is the tallest mountain in Africa and is commonly referred to as the “Ceiling of Africa.”) Mwatate has one of the highest rates of unemployment and HIV/AIDS infections in the country.

Education is the pillar of development in any society. Increasingly, it has been shown that the quality of education is correlated to the development of a community, region, and nation. A majority of the young people in Taita community lack access to quality high school education because of poverty and other harsh social realities. Few professionals are being adequately trained by the existing institutions. This means that the community is being shortchanged in terms of home-grown experts who have the needed know-how and experiences to solve local problems. The over-reliance on outside expertise to bring about development in this area increases dependency and disempowers the locals, making them feel helpless, hopeless, and marginalized. It is towards this endeavor as natives, educators, international scholars, and concerned community members who want to give back that we founded Taita International School.

TIS offers a broad-based 8-4-4 curriculum (the Kenyan system of education) plus a whole lot of talent-nurturing experiences that include: computer literacy, foreign languages, performance arts, intercultural exchanges, outward-bound courses, college preparation, orientation to study abroad, financial literacy and character building. Our mission is to prepare well-rounded global leaders who can effectively negotiate the information-based, technologically driven 21st century. We put a lot more emphasis on character building as we strive for academic excellence. Our goal is to inspire the young to dream big through a process of nurturing, teaching, training, mentoring and role modeling.

What makes TIS special?

TIS provides rigorous instruction in Kenya’s 8-4-4 curriculum, with courses in Mathematics, English, Kiswahili, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Agriculture, Business Education, Computer Literacy, and other subjects. This curriculum prepares students for the national examinations, which are necessary for admission to higher education. The school also provides physical education, drama, music, dance, science fairs, poetry readings, and other co-curricula subjects which are not examinable but are essential to children’s growth and development.

TIS also offers a number of after-school enrichment programs to the underserved children and youth from the local Mwatate community. The target audience comprises of children and youth from 3 years to 20 years of age, who attend various public and private schools within the locale. The after-school enrichment program includes remedial work tuition, computer literacy, library services, reading programs, sports, games and balanced meals. The enrichment program runs throughout the school terms from 6 - 8:00 p.m. in the evenings and the whole day during Kenya’s school holidays in April, August and December. The parents pay a subsidized fee per week for each child. These programs have run for one year.

For the last one year we have served about 100 children with the following services….

Computer Literacy: It is common knowledge that the digital divide is widening. It is imperative that urgent steps are taken to provide access to computer technology to the marginalized. Using one PC and two laptops, we offer computer literacy courses to children, youth and adults who come from the local community. We are striving to get about 20 computers by 2008.

Library Services: TIS offers library services to children and youth ranging from ages 3 years to 20 years who study in different schools but reside within the local communities. The students register by paying a small fee and they are allowed to borrow one book for a week. Hardly any local school has a library and there is no public library in Mwatate town. The reading culture is absent and thus needs to be cultivated. Our aim is to develop the library to include web-based resources (Internet) and other cutting-edge research materials, e.g. databases. We have about 500 books, mainly juvenile literature, donated from our own store, relatives and friends. The literature includes National Geographic, Readers’ Digest, children’s books, novels, encyclopedias, and other educational materials. Our target is to have a library with over 10,000 books and many other library-based resources by early 2008. We seek donations of books and funds to purchase current literature that is relevant to this target audience.

Reading Program: During school vacations, TIS runs an English language reading program to inculcate a reading culture among the children and youth. The children work with a mentor, a youth in high school who helps them to learn how to read. English is the official Kenyan language used in schools and offices, so additional exposure to English is very beneficial for young people.

Sports & Games: TIS offers a strong physical education program. The program includes soccer/football, volleyball, roller skating, netball, basketball, track and field. We also provide instruction in cooperative games such as puzzles and board games. We especially promote sports and games in TIS during the weekends and school vacations.

Education Scholarships: TIS offers educational scholarships to those children affected by HIV/AIDS and poverty. 10% of the current students are under this scholarship scheme.

Benefits Accrued from the Enrichment Program thus far…..

1. These vulnerable children have found a safe haven after school and during school holidays to learn, share, grow and expand their horizons in a nurturing environment.

2. The youth, who mentor the young children, are kept busy and away from drugs,
alcohol, and HIV/AIDS infection. They also get time to read, learn and grow.

3. The health and wellness of this target group has improved because of the balanced meals,
the mental stimulation and spiritual soul food provided in these programs.

4. Parents from the local community can now concentrate on their work during school
holidays, knowing that their children are in a secure development and growth centre.

5. Increased international and intercultural awareness through cultural exchange programs organized by the patron.

Making the Dream Come True:
Dr. & Mrs Mjomba Majalia

Experiences: Combined, over 40 years in teaching & administration of schools & colleges

Individualized Attention: Maximum 30 Students per class

Maria Majalia – School Principal
Dip Ed., ATS 1- Kenya Science Teachers
Math Education – Ohio University

Principal – Taita Academy ‘05-‘07
D/Principal – Taita Academy ‘04-‘05
Teacher of Mathematics & Chemistry from ‘86

Mjomba Majalia – School Patron
PhD., Communication Studies – Ohio University
MA, International Affairs – Ohio University
B. Ed. – Kenyatta University

Lecturer in Communication, Daystar University, Nairobi, Kenya.
Communication Studies Professor at Bloomsburg, Ohio & Monterrey Universities
Principal – Allan Mjomba High School ‘93-‘97
Principal – Dr. Aggrey High School ‘91
D/Principal –Dr. Aggrey & Ngangao‘91-‘93
Teacher of Physics, Physical Education & Biology from ‘83

Cat and Joe in Kenya!

2007-12-03T03:32:00.001-08:00

We have arrived here in Nairobi and have had a busy first week. We are very excited and grateful for this opportunity and look forward to sharing our stories with you. The following letter is an overview of what we have been doing here in Nairobi since we arrived last week. The first part is a travel log narrated by Joe (with embellishments from Cat) – this is Joe’s first trip out of North America! The second part is from Cat, reflecting on her research so far.

Joe says: All is well, disregarding the stomach flu, which is now gone. We are in Nairobi with our buddies and enjoying the city life. We have been riding matatus – which are the local minivan taxis with screaming music and ridiculous driving. The traffic is like New York City – 24-7 – with diesel fumes and no street lights. There is no such thing as a passive driver – everyone is aggressive. The streets are also full of “hawkers” these days – people selling everything from vegetables and fruits to clothing, shoes, electronics, CDs, DVDs, and other cheap goods (most likely imported from China). The people are really nice – everyone seems very friendly. Everybody keeps calling me Jesus. I think that’s a good thing, because nobody wants to steal from Jesus.

Mjomba has been a very good host. As some of you know, he is a Kenyan friend who was a classmate of Cat’s at OU, where he got his Ph.D. in Interpersonal Communication. He lived in Athens for 8 years and lived with us at Willow Farm for awhile, where he worked on the farm. He says that his time in Rutland was his best experience in the U.S., as he got to see what “real life” is like, not the life at the university. He remembers fondly our friends, drum circles and parties, slaughtering our goat “Zeus”, and the quiet life on the farm, even though I kept him busy weeding and digging in the hot sun. Now he says it is “payback time.” We will be staying with him and his sister here in Nairobi, and then will live with his family at the rural school they started in Taita. He is excited that I will be working at his family farm, and that Cat will be working with the Vindo Multipurpose Cooperative Society, an organization that was led by his mother for many years.

Anyway, Mjomba has kept us busy here in Nairobi already. He has introduced us to many of his friends, relatives, students and colleagues. He has taken us to the City Market, where we saw crafts, a meat market, and we met an old flower farmer who seemed very interesting and had a wealth of knowledge about flowers and plants. We ate a great fruit salad bowl with watermelon, papaya, passion fruit, pineapple, banana, avocado, and topped with shredded beets.

Mjomba also took us to his classes at Daystar University, where we introduced ourselves to his students and talked about life in the U.S. They seemed shocked that we could have farms and live in the forest, and that we raise goats. They were really interested in hearing about Willow Farm and about organic farming and the food system in the U.S. Each time we spoke in his classes, we made contacts with people who knew people at OU. Small world.

Mjomba also took us all around South C, the community where we are living, and the Industrial Area. We also went to an exhibition at the Kenya Industrial Research and Development Institute, where we saw alternative energy being displayed i.e. solar, hydropower and biodiesel. We also saw bamboo crafts and furniture and classes being offered on how to grow and use bamboo. We also met metal fabricators who could shape any type of metal and make replacement parts for cars, tractors, etc. We also met some weavers who worked on a beautiful wooden loom that they use to make fabric and clothing, and we got a nice white cotton woven shirt from them. We also met herbalists, who are marketing nettle tea, Artemisia annua (a malaria remedy), soy products, and other medicinal herbs. We also met people advocating the use of Jatropha, a local plant which grows in arid areas and that can be processed for biofuels, iodine, and other products. We also met women who were making and selling beautiful arts and crafts such as baskets, handbags, jewelry, paintings, banana-leaf collages, fabrics, and other curios.

We went to the Industrial area to try to find a surge protector for Cat’s computer, where a guy tried to sell us a 35,000 shilling converter (which is about $500), but then we laughed heartily. Instead, we bought ourselves a surge protector for $40, which does the trick!

We have been enjoying eating samosas and chips (French fries). We have also eaten some good Tilapia fish from Lake Victoria and have been drinking Tusker and Citizen beers, which are the local Kenyan brews. At home, we have been cooking with Mjomba and his sister Mary and nephews, where we have made stews, ugali (corn meal porridge that we eat with our hands), sukumawiki (fried collard greens), rice, beef, and fish.

On our walk home one day we took an off route, where we found a Chinese doctor. We stopped to speak with her but she was rather cold and didn’t have much to offer. (We hope to find another Chinese doctor or acupuncturist – we have seen many signs for them here.) So we moved on, and then we found a backstreet shopping area with chickens running around, and people lying around. One young man in his late teens or early twenties, high on something (probably glue), was trying to get money or sell us some pills, and he was very persistent. Mjomba made short work of him, and we moved on.

That evening, we went to a diplomat’s house, a nice Sri Lankan-American family who work with the U.S. embassy and USAID. The security in their neighborhood was like the Alamo!! There were walls everywhere, and security guards at every gate, and even in the house, the security guards made their rounds. Funny, because everything here seems so peaceful. They lived in a very wealthy, westernized home with a huge backyard with gardens and a cathedral ceiling. They had a nice art collection with Tibetan paintings, Indian and African art, and beautiful furniture. They had a spread of fine Indian food made by their servants, two local Kenyan women. We met another Fulbrighter who is a computer scientist from MIT and his girlfriend. We also met a great Jamaican-American woman from New York who is the ambassador’s assistant. We really connected with her and she invited Cat to a special meeting of women activists at the ambassador’s house (more on this later). We also met a great American guy who works at the embassy, and who seemed really down to earth and fun.

Later that week, we went to the U.S. Embassy outside of Nairobi. The embassy has been moved outside of the city, near the United Nations complex in a beautiful forested area. The security is very high since the 1998 bombings (which Cat survived in her last visit to Nairobi). We got to use their library facilities, which were very nice and they had a super-fast internet connection. We had to be escorted everywhere because they don’t recognize us as citizens yet until we go through our orientation and security briefing – which everyone keeps telling us are scare tactics. (We have since done this – it was very intimidating, actually.)

When we left the embassy, we saw a big election rally outside with people dancing and playing drums and blocking the street and traffic. We stepped to the side to avoid getting in the middle of it, and watched them pass by. Everybody seemed really happy and joyful – they were promoting a candidate for a Member of Parliament from the Westlands Constituency in Nairobi. The elections will be held on December 27, and this is a really big deal here. There are 3 major presidential candidates – Mwai Kibaki (the incumbent), Raila Odinga (a longtime MP), and Kalonzo, who is trailing in the polls. There are over 600 political parties with candidates running for Parliament. It is very exciting to witness this time before the elections, and to talk to people about our electoral system in the U.S. Kenyans are intensely political people and it has been exciting to witness a different approach to democracy.

After we left the embassy, we went and met with our new friend Catherine Mwangi, who is Mjomba’s student at Daystar University. She is the owner/manager of a very high-class apartment complex, where a lot of Americans and foreign diplomats are referred. She had a swimming pool, weight room facilities, a restaurant and bar, and it is close to the Sarit Centre mall, which is like a Westernized mall (like Easton mall in Columbus). Five stories of overpriced goods, and lots of white people walking around. As Mjomba said, “the cream of the crop of Kenya.” Catherine fed us a really great meal and talked our ear off. She is friends with our friend Wamucii’s mother – we met Wamucii at Ohio University, where she was studying Communications for her Ph.D. Catherine had attended Wamucii’s wedding in Athens and she was happy to know we were from there.

Over the weekend, we relaxed at home, which was nice after our hectic few weeks of preparations and travel. We got lots of rest, cooked food, listened to music and watched movies with Mjomba’s nephews, who are college students. It was nice to just rest and let our spirits catch up with our bodies.

Cat says: On Monday, I went to a meeting and reception at the U.S. Ambassador’s residence outside of Nairobi to celebrate the International Day for Elimination of Violence Against Women. This is a United Nations initiative with 16 days of activism around the world, to raise awareness about women’s rights and equality. I attended a roundtable discussion with women activists from all over Kenya. I met educators, lawyers, judges, Members of Parliament, doctors, counselors, diplomats, and other activists and leaders. This was an important event for my research and a great networking opportunity as I met with the movers and the shakers of the Kenyan women’s movement. I was very inspired and energized by listening to their stories and their ideas about future directions for women’s activism. Many talked about the importance of education, both formal and informal, to raise awareness about gender equity and the protection of women and girls from gender-based and sexual violence. I learned about some of the problems facing Kenyan women, including rape, sexual assault, domestic violence, early marriage, and female genital mutilation (circumcision). I learned that some of the female candidates running for Members of Parliament have been assaulted and harassed recently. In response, the Kenyan Police Commissioner recently declared that the police will provide protection for all women candidates running for office. This is a major victory for Kenyan women seeking political office.

I also met Njoki Ndungu, a famous female Member of Parliament who has been one of the leading activists for women in Kenya. She talked about the challenges of working within Parliament to pass legislation for women’s rights, including the Sexual Offenses Act, the Affirmative Action Act, the Children’s Act, and others. She said one of the major barriers has been the attitudes of men in Parliament, an “old boys network” who have an old-school mentality that women are inferior and who believe that issues of sexual violence or domestic abuse are better left to the home. However, an older woman who was an MP in the 1970s said that the passage of the Sexual Offenses Act was like a “Miracle” – she could never have done this in the 70s, and she believes that things have really changed for women in Kenya. The U.S. ambassador and many of the women there talked about how women have been at the forefront of political, social and economic change here in Kenya, and that things are continuing to change for the better.

This experience really makes me realize that I am on the right track with my research about informal education and leadership development among Kenyan women’s organizations. Indeed, the Kenyan women’s movement is growing and is influencing every sector of society in Kenya. Gender issues are the subject of many personal conversations and media outlets, including TV, radio, and newspapers. Although there is still a lot of work to do for gender equity in Kenya, I am encouraged by the energy and dedication of the women’s movement here.

I made many contacts at this meeting, and came home with a stack of business cards and many new numbers in my cell phone. I am hoping to visit some of these women in their offices for preliminary interviews before I go to start my fieldwork in Taita, in order to get a better sense of the breadth and depth of the women’s movement in Kenya.

One exciting outcome of the meeting was that I was invited to visit the Nairobi Muslim Academy by the Principal of the school, a Somali woman named Fatima. This school is actually in our neighborhood here in South C and is connected to the mosque here, which I have been hoping to visit but didn’t know how to approach them. It turns out that 15 students of their school are being sponsored by the U.S. embassy, and they recited an incredible poem and song at the reception. I talked to some of the girls from that school and another high school, and I was impressed by their poise and confidence.

I was also invited to attend an alternative rites of passage program in a Maasai community in Southern Kenya next week, which is a program being organized by a women’s group called “Cherish Others.” This program hopes to develop an alternative to female circumsion (or female genital mutilation), which is widely practiced by the Maasai community. They will have a three day initiation period for girls. I might try to go to the celebration on the last day. This will be an important experience for me as I attended a Maasai girls’ circumcision ceremony back in 1994 during my first trip to Kenya. It will be interesting to see how women in the local community are now organizing to develop an alternative education program that does not include cutting. While they recognize the importance of initiation to help girls make the transition to womanhood, they also recognize the damaging effects of circumcision on girls and women.

I also met an incredible young woman who is the head of a group for leadership development among young women and girls in Kenya. She is advocating for self-defense workshops and is outspoken about the need for empowerment of girls as well as gender sensitivity training for young men and boys. She also invited me to come visit her at her office and to attend the self-defense workshops!

So, as you can see, we have been busy already, and life is good. God keeps putting us where we need to be to make connections and to have a good time. We are blessed and happy to be here. We hope that you all are doing well, that you had a happy Thanksgiving, and that you will keep in touch. Send us messages to let us know what is up in your lives!! Although we are glad to be here, we also miss you. There’s no place like home……

Peace and Love,

Joe and Cat