The Blue Sweater

What a wonderful coincidence! I did not bring enough reading material on our trip to Kenya, so when Laurel said she had a few books, I took her up on her offer to borrow The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World by Jacqueline Novogratz (Rodale Books, 2010). I can honestly say that the combination of this book and our trip radically transformed my worldview in a most important way. Novogratz begins her book by saying:

“They say a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. I took mine and fell flat on my face. As a young woman, I dreamed of changing the world. In my twenties, I went to Africa to try and save the continent, only to learn that Africans neither wanted nor needed saving. Indeed, when I was there, I saw some of the worst that good intentions, traditional charity, and aid can produce: failed programs that left people in the same or worse conditions.”

Reading her story while traveling through Kenya was a powerful educational experience.

Much of my service experience in schools has been to help the children collect money, books, clothing, etc. to give to others less fortunate than we. While the intent may have been good and the results may have been better than doing nothing, Novogratz cites example after example to show the problems with this model. She talks about a woman named Aisha in Kenya who told her that she and her friends were tired of white American women coming with answers without knowing enough about the people they were trying to help to even have any questions. Novogratz and her foundation strive to identify the most competent people in an area and invest in and support them to bring about change. She sees these people as partners and collaborators rather than poor people who need to be saved. The changes brought about by this model have proven to be much more sustainable and therefore effective.

Our ESHA group has struggled with the following because of our experience: What if our desire to help causes a culture to change dramatically or even disappear? For instance, could efforts to help educate more Kenyan children receive an education lead them to turn away from their traditional occupations or cause certain dialects to die out and be replaced by Swahili or English -- and should we worry about that?

As is often the case, the more we come to know, the more we want and need to know. This book and this trip certainly made us want to learn even more.

Muddy

Laurel reads to Pauline Labarakwe and Ntacha Orbora, Ngurunit

(Photo credit: Muddy Waters)

Discussing the Trip with Colleagues

Muddy talked with colleagues about our trip and his responses to it on October 19 at the Annual ESHA Conference in a session entitled "Seeing the World from a New Perspective: ESHA In Kenya." In a recent post on her blog, Shared Leadership, Jamie Feild Baker offers a summary of that session and some good, provocative questions that came from the discussion on topics of service learning, cultural literacy, and how we and our school communities view our own lives.

Claudia

Seeing the World from a New Perspective

After offering a post here detailing our itinerary, Muddy shared an overview of the trip and his reflections in a post on a school blog. Entitled "Seeing the World from a New Perspective," you'll find it at Journeys: Explorations by Pike Faculty and Staff.

Photo:

"Collecting rocks for a school foundation," Ngurunit, Claudia Daggett

Schools Visits Prompt School Thoughts

It never ceases to amaze me how much teachers enjoy visiting other schools, and our curiosity about the Kenyan education system had been piqued from the first thoughts about the trip. Imagine our unmitigated delight when we discovered Salato School near our manyattas in Ngurunit, a school Steven Labarakwe has worked hard to build with the support of his Dutch supporters at Ayuda en Todos Partes. We spent our service time in the local Ngurunit Primary School located near the town center and built by missionaries years ago. Steven's proudest achievement, however, was clearly the school compound he built in 2009 (again, in part with Dutch support) in the remote village of Mpagas. It was on our journey to Mpagas that we read the thorough reports by his head teachers accounting for everything from test scores to inventory. These reports were simultaneously impressive in their comprehensiveness and humbling in the kinds of issues faced by school leaders in this remote region.

As we know all too well, the state of the physical plants of our schools, while important, represents only one of the things which command our time and attention, and this is no less true here. In conversations with Steven, he emphasized the need for teacher training and school resources in the form of everything from water supply to desks to curriculum materials. In setting the priorities, he set all of our thoughts in the direction of ways in which we, as individuals and in our roles as school and association leaders, can direct our support.

Laurel


Photos: Claudia Daggett

"Through the Gate, Salato Primary School"
"Head's Office, Ngurunit Primary School"
"Salato Primary School"
"Arrival at Ngurunit Primary School"
"Through the Classroom Window, Ngurunit Primary School"
"Head Teacher at the Blackboard, Ngurunit Primary School"
"Service in Ngurunit: Painting the Blackboards"
"Service in Ngurunit: Collecting Rocks for School Foundation"
"Walk on the Campus of Mpagas"
"Visit to Mpagas"
"Discussing a Penpal Exchange, Mpagas"

Reflections on Cultural Survival

Half of our time in Kenya, more or less, we spent tucked into the Samburu village of Ngurunit. While visiting schools and lending our efforts to two service projects, we enjoyed getting some sense of the rhythm of daily life in this pastoralist community. Highlights included the singing well, an impromptu market of local crafts, and a performance of traditional dance by the moran – the young men who are warriors from the time of circumcision in puberty until they reach the age of “young elders.” Perhaps most edifying, however, was the opportunity to simply be present and observant. We offer a few photos here, many taken by our guide in the village, Josephat Lemalio (whose delight in the digital camera could be counted as another highlight). Nigel Pavitt has written a wonderful book, Samburu, full of photos of the people and descriptions of their traditions and beliefs (1991, London: Kyle Cathie Limited).

In making the journey from Ngurunit to Maasai Mara toward the end of our trip, we stopped at a local Samburu place of lodging modeled after the safari camps of the game parks. This one differs, our host Steven explained, in that it was established by a local Samburu, Diipa Lenanyangara, who developed it with local materials and labor. As we asked him about his efforts, with Steven translating, Diipa left us for a moment and returned with the spring 2010 issue of Cultural Survival Quarterly -- a magazine published by a non-profit organization based in Cambridge, Massachusetts! The cover article, “Samburu Under Attack," features Diipa Lenanyangara and addresses the recent conflict between the Samburus and the Kenyan government regarding cattle ownership.

Throughout our visit and afterward, I found myself wrestling with how to reconcile my desire to respond to a request from this community for help and partnership and my concerns about whether Western points of view and involvement will mean the inevitable end to the distinctions of indigenous cultures. This led me to return to the work and words of Wade Davis, an ESHA conference keynoter in 2009. In Light at the Edge of the World: A Journey through the Realm of Vanishing Cultures (2002, Washington, DC: National Geographic), he points to "the desert peoples of Kenya -- Turkana and Boran, Rendille, Samburu, Ariaal, and Gabra" -- as examples of endangered cultures. Wade Davis quotes anthropologist Daniel Maybury-Lewis in saying, “Too often we meddle with lives we barely understand.” (p. 122)

Nigel Pavitt urges financial and material support for the culture’s physical survival, emphasizing the Samburus’ need for help in creating infrastructure for basic needs such as water supply while respecting the culture’s integrity. Help in the area of education seems a more complex matter. Pavitt states his belief that the moran will become a thing of the past as more boys attend school. And, yet, are all children entitled to an education? If so, how do American educators offer a hand with full respect for the culture?

Claudia

Photos: first three, Claudia Daggett; all others, Josephat Lemalio