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
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Homecoming
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
Monday, May 26, 2008
Greetings from Taita
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
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
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Happy Maulidi from Mombasa
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
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
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Happy Easter!
Dear friends and family,
I send you Blessings and greetings from Kenya. I hope you are healthy, happy, and enjoying the beginning of springtime. I am writing to update you on my life and my research in Kenya, and am relieved to say that I am taking a break from ranting about politics ☺
I will say that the political crisis seems to be improving since the peace deal was signed by President Mwai Kibaki and ODM leader Raila Odinga on Feb. 28, and was passed by Parliament in mid-March. However, Kenya is still facing a major crisis due to the post-election violence, mainly about potential food insecurity and resettling the estimated 600,000+ internally displaced people. Please join me and keep praying for peace and justice in Kenya.
I am now back in Mwatate, after spending three weeks in Nairobi. The long rains have come, bringing fresh air, an abundance of water, fresh fruits and vegetables, and green foliage. The farmers are planting again, grateful for the rains that will produce their largest crop of the year. It is really beautiful here and I am grateful to be in a rural community where it really feels like spring back in Ohio.
The Taita International School is continuing to grow and change. We have almost 90 children now enrolled in the school’s nursery, primary and secondary classes. The dormitories for girls and boys are now full to capacity! I have moved into the girls’ dorm and am enjoying spending more time with them, braiding hair, telling stories, studying, and playing. The boys were sad and jealous when I moved out after Joe left – they said that they will really miss having us live in the boys’ dormitory with them. I think it is mostly because of Joe - he always let them listen to his IPOD and brought them chocolate treats from time to time. Many of the boys have told me that they really admire Joe for his kindness and commitment to hard work.
We also received a shipment of 6 boxes of beautiful books sent from Joe’s mom, Nancy Beres. Thanks to all of you who donated funds to help make this happen. We received an entire collection of leather-bound Encyclopedia Brittanica, another set of World Book encyclopedias, a Bible, and a few dozen wonderful children’s books (including my favorite Dr. Seuss stories). The children and teachers are very excited to have these resources available for their library and for research projects. Thank you!!
A group of nursery school students participated in a poetry and drama competition for Mwatate Division, and they won! Then they went to Mombasa, where they competed with other schools from around Coast Province. Many of the little kids had never even left Mwatate before, and they were excited to see the ocean, to watch the fish, and to ride the Likoni ferry across the harbor. They performed a skit with half of the kids acting as judges and the other half were children, and debated on behalf of children’s rights. They won third place in the province. Sammy, a four-year-old boy, recited a moving poem about HIV/AIDS. His poem won first place for Coast Province, and he was selected to participate in the national poetry competition in Nakuru, which is eight hours away by bus. He will travel there with the nursery teacher, Mr. Mwachia, on April 8th. This is a huge boost for all of us, and has everyone in the community praising the school.
We had an amazing and lively Easter church service at the school this weekend. The children sang and danced and rapped and laughed – they had so much fun! The staff congratulated the students for their talents, and Leonard Mjomba (the patron of the school) made them all laugh when he got up and danced for them. He encouraged them to nurture their talents for music, singing, dancing, and public speaking, and said that these were valuable skills for life and important parts of their culture that they should not lose. The janitor then gave the sermon about the significance of Jesus’ resurrection at Easter, and encouraged the children and youth to celebrate their lives, believe in themselves, and to keep Jesus in their hearts. I am impressed with the deep spirituality and religious devotion of the children and staff at the school, and of the Taita people. I really feel that the Sunday church services are a powerful way to build a sense of love, community, and cultural appreciation in the school.
The day before Easter, I traveled to Wundanyi to visit the Nyambu family, who were my hosts during a two-week homestay back in 1994. That was my first visit to Kenya as a college student, and their family left a deep impression on me. I will never forget the kindness of Mama Lisper, her deep faith and spirituality, and her devotion to her family and her work as a farmer, a mother, and a wife. We had a joyful reunion this weekend, and I was amazed to find out that her children, who were 12, 10 and 5 when I lived with them, are now all grown up. Her eldest son John is married and they are expecting their first baby. The younger children, Judy and Niko, are both in college in Nairobi. Judy and I had a wonderful time reconnecting and it turns out that we were neighbors in Nairobi! She has invited me to come stay with her then when I return to the city from time to time. I also met Lisper’s husband, Paul, for the first time, and we had a lively discussion about politics in Kenya and the U.S.
My research is continuing well and I continue to be amazed by the wonderful contacts that I have made here. Since I sent my last message to you, I spent three weeks in Nairobi and conducted many interviews and made valuable contacts. I attended a reception for International Women’s Day at the U.S. ambassador’s residence in Nairobi, where I met a group of women affiliated with the Association of Women Journalists of Kenya, a women’s professional association that encourages reporting and community outreach on gender issues. I also met bankers, lawyers, politicians, diplomats, scholars and activists. The most valuable contact I made at the reception was with Dr. Helen Anyiso-Oduk, a professor at Kenyatta University who specializes in gender philosophy and who is also involved in the Gender Roundtable Discussion Series that is organized by my KU advisor, Godwin Murunga. I met with her later that week for lunch and we had an incredible conversation about changing gender roles in various Kenyan communities, about which she wrote her dissertation.
I also visited Kenyatta University’s Department of History, Archaeology and Political Studies, which is my affiliated department in Nairobi, and had a very good meeting with my advisor. I visited the library and received a tour from the head librarian, who introduced me to the different departments and collections and has offered to facilitate my research when I return to Nairobi. I was impressed to find a huge collection of Africana literature, particularly related to education, gender issues, history, culture and politics.
Later that week, I visited the University of Nairobi’s library and bookstore with my friend and fellow Fulbrighter, Opolot Okia, who is a historian. We enjoyed perusing the impressive collection at the UON library and I purchased several books from their bookstore that would be difficult to find back in the States. I also went back later that week and met with a researcher in the Institute of Development Studies, where I learned that I can also register as a research associate and get access to their special library collection as well as publish my research findings in their working papers series. I am really considering doing this, as some of the professors there are doing cutting-edge research on gender and development, and informal education and employment.
Later that week, I interviewed representatives of several women’s organizations who I met at the reception at the ambassador’s residence that I attended back in November. I visited the offices of the Society for International Development and Maendeleo ya Wanawake Organization (Progress/Development for Women), where I got information and contacts for future meetings. I met with a woman who works with the Forum of African Women Educationalists (FAWE), a regional organization that works for gender equity for women and girls in education in 33 different Sub-Saharan African countries. She gave me some valuable insights into their work with governments, universities, and teacher training programs in various countries. She also told me that there is a FAWE office for Kenya in Nairobi, and that I should contact them to get more insight into how they are working in schools and universities to promote gender equity in Kenya. They are really involved in training teachers in gender-responsive and non-sexist teaching methodologies. They also work to sensitize Ministers of Education and university administrators about the importance of gender mainstreaming, or ensuring that the leadership of schools includes at least 30% females, to work toward gender equity. They also work with adolescent girls to teach them about puberty, or how to practice good hygiene and to make their own sanitary napkins. She said this is important since menstruation is one of the major causes of teenage girls’ absences and dropping out from school, and can become a major barrier of shame if the girl cannot afford to buy menstrual pads.
Later that week, I met with Gladys Boss Shollei, the CEO and editor of the Kenya Law Reports at the National Council on Law Reporting. This government agency was created through an act of Parliament in 2000, and Mrs. Shollei has led the organization from its inception through the past 6 years. She said that the law reports were not documented for over 20 years from 1980-2000, and it had become difficult to work in the judiciary since the Kenyan legal system is a Common Law system and decisions are supposed to be made based on precedents. She had been a law professor at the University of Nairobi and was determined to document the legal history of Kenya. In the past six years, they have increased their staff to 42 people and have had 15 law students as interns each year. They have successfully documented and printed 15 of the 20 years of precedents and have collected and printed all of the legal cases since 2000. All of this information is also digitized and available online. She explained that women’s rights are really limited in Kenya, and that it has been difficult to pass laws supporting women and girls such as the Children’s Act of 2001 and the Sexual Offenses Bill of 2006. However, the judiciary has been successful in creating a Family Division, which specializes in cases of domestic violence, divorce, child custody and support. She said that this division is the one that most women deal with, and that they are getting more support and training for gender-responsiveness among judges and lawyers. She argued that women have difficulty accessing the legal system in Kenya since they often are not educated about their legal rights nor do they have the resources to pay for legal representation. However, there are women’s organizations that support civic and legal education, and that also offer pro-bono services to represent the women. She is a member of two of these women’s professional organizations - the Kenyan Women Judges Association, as well as FIDA, the Federation of Women Lawyers of Kenya. She has also been involved in trying to promote women to become more involved and more prominent in the Kenyan judicial system in order to promote more gender sensitivity and gender responsiveness from within the system. She offered to introduce me to three of the leading women judges in Kenya, including the first woman to be a judge in the High Court. She also generously invited me to visit her rural home in the Rift Valley Province near Eldoret, which was an area where a lot of people were displaced and which was the center of a lot of the violence in January. I am hoping to do this later in April or May, as I think it will be important for me to visit and meet with some of the displaced women to learn more about how women’s groups are working to assist victims of the post-election violence and to teach affected women about their rights and options.
I also had an interview one day at the United Nations Population Fund. I learned more about their educational outreach programs to teach Kenyans about reproductive health, HIV/AIDS prevention, family planning, gender-based violence, and alternatives to female circumcision or female genital mutilation (FGM). I learned that 38 of the 42 ethnic groups in Kenya practiced female circumcision at some point in their history, and that this practice continues in some communities and is often strongly defended. Recognizing the cultural importance of having a rite of passage to help teach girls about the transition of adolescence, the UN Population Fund assists women’s groups in various communities to develop alternative rites of passage programs that teach information about adolescence, puberty and reproductive health, but do not practice genital cutting. These programs are gaining wider support in their communities, and demonstrate the importance of informal education among women’s groups in Kenya.
I was amazed by the UN compound, which is the UN headquarters in Africa. I would love to work there someday. The compound is huge, filled with gardens and fruit trees, and flies flags from every country on the planet. They host offices of UNICEF, UNIFEM, UNESCO, the United Nations Environmental Program, and other development programs. The multicultural, international staff includes scholars and activists from around the world, and I heard at least a dozen languages spoken in the cafeteria. I also visited the library and found an abundance of materials that will be useful in my research. Primarily, I learned more about the UNESCO-sponsored Kenya National Adult Literacy Survey, which was conducted in 2006 to assess adult literacy in the country. This study estimates that over 60% of adult women in Kenya are illiterate, and recommends that women’s groups and other community-based organizations are valuable partners to the government in delivering non-formal education for women in Kenya.
Last but not least, I had a series of valuable and helpful meetings with my friend and former professor, Tom Wolf. Tom was the director of the Kalamazoo College Study Abroad Program when I was an undergraduate student, and he was my teacher and advisor. We have kept in touch and have met from time to time ever since 1994. He is currently working as an election monitor and researcher with the Steadman Consulting Firm. Tom knows everything about Kenyan politics. He also lived in Taita as a Peace Corps volunteer and researcher in the late 1960s and early 1970s, speaks fluent Kidawida (the local language), and knows dozens of local families. When we met in Nairobi, he introduced me to other friends of his who also work on gender and development issues in Kenya. They listened and helped me to think through some of the issues I have been grappling with in my research, and gave me valuable feedback, insights and direction. For this, I am truly grateful.
So, that’s my life in a nutshell. As you can see, I’ve been very busy but life is good and I am happy and feeling stimulated and productive. I hope that you too are doing good work wherever you are. Please keep in touch and let me know what is going on in your life.
In peace,
Cat
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
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Kenya and U.S. Elections: Danger and Opportunity
Greetings from
As you know, after 2 months of violence and instability in
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
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
Please continue to take care and keep in touch. I look forward to communicating with you.
Peace and progress,
Cat Cutcher
*******************************
Kofi Annan has taught Kenyans that the Chinese word for “conflict” includes both “danger” and “opportunity.”
Many lessons can be learned from
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
ROOTS OF THE CONFLICT
Prior to December 30, the 2007 election represented the most free, fair and open election in
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
Since December 30,
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
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
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
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
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
The diplomatic corps in
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
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
When U.S. President George Bush visited Africa recently, he avoided
CLOSER TO HOME:
Ironically, the closest example to the electoral problems and alleged corruption in
When similar concerns about election rigging were raised in the
No, and neither has the
In 2000, questions were raised in the
In 2004, the results of the
Given, following the contested
The opposition movement in the
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
Obama was raised in
According to his supporters, Obama is articulate, inspiring, highly educated, and has the potential to unite the
The Kenyan press has been eagerly reporting the Democratic primary elections in the
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
*** Catherine Cutcher is a U.S. Fulbright Student in
Monday, February 11, 2008
Kenya Update from Taita
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
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
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