Reading: Unbowed

Having read Joseph Lekuton’s Facing the Lion, I have been eager to continue to read about Kenya from a Kenyan’s perspective. Much of what is published and readily available comes from a western point of view, often an American or European who has been transplanted, is visiting in order to do good works, or is exploring as a tourist. This makes Wangari Muta Maathai’s book, Unbowed, a particular treasure.

In Unbowed: A Memoir (New York: Anchor Books, 2006), Maathai offers her personal perspective as a Kikuyu woman born in 1940 who, through personal courage and perseverance, has made a significant impact on her country’s environmental movement and political system. She is the founder of the Green Belt Movement, an organization that has responded to the devastating effects of the deforestation of Kenya by engaging vast networks of rural women to plant over 40 million trees since 1977. She served in the Kenya Parliament from 2002 to 2007 and as Assistant Minister for the Environment from 2003 to 2007. In 2004, she became the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

Maathai's memoir begins with her childhood and early schooling in the village of Ihithe and the town of Nyeri in the central highlands of Kenya and moves to her university study in the United States and Germany. She describes her emergence as a social activist in an era when voicing dissenting opinion was not welcomed by the Kenyan government and her eventual success as a national leader. Maathai gives us a window on Kenya’s recent history: the shift in culture, economy, politics, and the environment that has taken place over the first 60 of her now 70 years.

I found the writing in Unbowed to be straightforward to the point of being a bit stiff at times. The read is well worth it, however, since there are many understandings to be gleaned: from cultural practices to the impact of outsiders on a native culture, to economic stresses, to the power of democracy. Her work combines the notions of replenishing the land, empowering the rural poor, and promoting peaceful collaboration among the many ethnic and tribal groups in Kenya.

Claudia Daggett


This trailer from the PBS documentary, "Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai," gives a brief introduction to Maathai, her perspective, and her work:

Book image: http://greenbeltmovement.org/w.php?id=56
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5GX6JktJZg&feature=player_embedded#!

Wildebeest migration & the dwindling Mara River

This evening's episode of 60 Minutes featured the wildebeest migration from the Serengeti in Tanzania to the Maasai Mara in Kenya. Eye Witness Travel: Kenya reports that the annual migration involves up to 2.5 million animals over approximately 40,000 square miles (DK: London, 2009, pp. 124-125).

According to 60 Minutes, this is the last of the migrations of this magnitude in existence involving mammals -- with possibly only butterflies comparing in number. The migration is at risk due to the diminution of the Mara River as a result of deforestation.

The wildebeest are likely to be traveling north in Tanzania while we are in Kenya such that we'll miss this spectacle. It is a pleasure to see the event recorded, at least, and edifying to have some emerging sense of the environmental issues faced in East Africa.

Claudia Daggett

Video credit:
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6646126n&tag=cbsnewsMainColumnArea.2

Ambient awareness

When an idea or concept has newly captured one’s attention, a seemingly uncanny phenomenon sometimes occurs in which that idea or concept suddenly “shows up” with increased frequency in the environment. I’ve experienced it with vocabulary, objects, and places; you probably have, too.

Such is the case with Kenya. Attending the Northwest Folklife Festival recently, Laurel Seid unexpectedly came upon a Kenyan Kitchen concession. In my daily review of independent school posts on Twitter in the past week, I noticed that a member of the communications team at an independent school in Minnesota (@lifeatblake) has been commenting about her students’ service trip in Kenya and their blog documenting the experience. In following The White House on Facebook, I happened to see a video of Jill Biden touring Kiberia, a Nairobi slum (June 9 post).

Then, the clincher: After reading a pile of books on Africa, I decided to take a respite by returning to my other current favorite genre: foodie books. I picked up Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession by Julie Powell of Julie & Julia fame. Like the earlier title, this is a book of personal narrative -- narcissistic, edgy, and sometimes funny. This time, Powell tells the tale of her butcher apprenticeship. Imagine my surprise when, after nearly 200 pages, she veers off into a global food journey including a “cultural safari” to a Maasai settlement in Tanzania along the Kenyan border!

Mere coincidence? Serendipity? Increased awareness? Or, perhaps, evidence that Fate has a sense of humor.

Claudia Daggett

Women helping women

It was hard not to be drawn to the picture of the beautiful woman in the headwrap on the cover of the New York Times Magazine that Sunday morning at the end of August. Ever since Miss Pat, one of my colleagues years ago from Macon, Georgia, told me, "Honey, people always think it's about the color of the skin; it's really about the hair," heads and hair fascinate me. Headwraps and adornments often tell a story about a woman's culture and her place in it.

The Burundi woman on the cover revealed little as she stared straight ahead, unsmiling. Inside, the feature essay, "The Women's Crusade," by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, authors of Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide (Random House, 2009), provides the shorter version of the message in their compelling book: it takes so little money in US dollar terms to enable a woman to have a decent life. As rich and full of research, facts and figures as this essay and book are (highly recommended), the essay which actually drew my attention was Lisa Belkin's, entitled "The Power of the Purse," about women helping women.

Wait a minute! A small group of women in my neighborhood has done the very thing she writes about. Many dots in my brain suddenly have connection. Prepare for shameless promotion: WMI, Women's Microfinance Initiative, has become the cause d'etre for the women I know and it all seemed to have started because one of the women had a vision, after meeting a group of women from a sister church in Uganda. The work of WMI now includes a project in Kenya, as well. According to WMI, it takes as little as $25 US to enable a woman to start a small business. These businesses enable women to sustain their lives, as other traditional ways of living become eroded and changed by politics and other shifting cultural factors. The hope and the real support provided by organizations like WMI enable women and their families to live with more dignity.

I marvel at it all: how little it takes to improve a life, how dreams become realities for all of the women involved, and how beautiful a global sisterhood can be. There are many ways to get involved should you desire to do so.

Laurel Seid


Video credit: http://www.wmionline.org/

Naturally and unnaturally migrating people

Part of our work in Kenya will be connected to the Maasai, the traditionally nomadic people whose grazing land occupies parts of Kenya and Tanzania. Our host, Joseph Lekuton, wrote eloquently about his life as a young Maasai boy and student navigating between the life of his family and the life connected to his government school. At present, Joseph continues his work on behalf of the Maasai as a member of the Kenyan Parliament. The challenges facing peoples for whom the need to traverse great tracts of land is vital to their cultural sustainability seem well documented. I want to keep my heart and mind open to what we will experience when we are there.

Thinking about the impact of the restrictions on the migrations of the Maasai led me to contemplate another concept closely associated with Africa -- that of refugees or people who migrate unnaturally or against their will due to war and other civil unrest. The most well known situation now centers on Darfur in western Sudan with a current estimate of around 2.5 million displaced persons. The impact of the Darfur situation is felt by all surrounding countries, including Kenya. It will be interesting to know if we will come to a deeper understanding of the challenges faced by the refugees when we travel to the north of Kenya.

As a teacher, my thoughts naturally turn to the effect on the children in these situations. How are they impacted? What will their future be? How can their stories be known and their voices heard? How do we tell their stories to the children in our schools for whom concepts of war, poverty, hunger and homelessness represent an otherness as to make them nearly unreal?

Recently I had the pleasure of viewing Brownstones to Red Dirt, a documentary about a project which connected children in an elementary public school in the Bronx with children living in an orphanage in Sierra Leone. Through a Canadian organization called Respect Refugees, the children in Bed-Stuy undertook both a pen pal project and a fund raising effort for the students in Salone, all beautifully chronicled throughout the year of their relationship in the film. It reminded me that it is possible for the stories to be told. Who better to do that than the children themselves! Across continents and across cultures, they shared stories and interests and ultimately broadened their understanding in real and relevant ways.

I remain ever hopeful that our journey to Kenya enables us to deepen our human understanding and think about the ways in which we can bring meaningful experiences back to our schools and our students. We hope you follow along with us on our blog!

Laurel Seid


Map credit: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/map_sites/country_sites.html
Image credit: http://brownstonestoreddirt.blogspot.com/

Reading (and films): The American perspective beyond the news media

Wangari Maathai, author, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and former member of Kenyan Parliament, writes of the European influence on Kenya’s development:

“The missionaries were followed by traders and administrators who introduced new methods of exploiting our rich natural resources: logging, clear-cutting native forests, establishing plantations of imported trees, hunting wildlife, and undertaking expansive agriculture…" -- Maathai, W. Unbowed: A Memoir. Anchor Books: New York, 2008, p. 17

As Americans, if we look beyond the news media, our view of Kenya is likely to be based primarily on stories from the perspective of those Europeans, many of them independently wealthy.

Karen Blixen and her husband, Baron Bror von Blixen-Finecke, left Denmark in the early 1900's and created a coffee plantation in the Ngong Hills of British East Africa (now Kenya). She wrote about this experience, her life there, and her relationship with big-game hunter Denis Finch Hatton in Out of Africa under the name Isak Dinesen, published originally in 1937 (Modern Library, 1992). Probably more familiar is the Oscar-winning Sydney Pollack movie by the same name starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford (1985). To its credit, the film shows beautiful scenes of Kenya and does not dodge the contradictions in the character’s lives. Having watched it recently, I’m still pondering the scene of Finch Hatton toting around large ivory tusks in an early segment of the film juxtaposed against his lament of man’s interference with the natural environment in a later monologue.

Italian socialite Kuki Gallmann, author of I Dreamed of Africa, developed a ranch near the Great Rift Valley of Kenya in the 1970’s before dedicating her life to conservation (see Gallmann Nature Conservancy). This memoir, too, has been produced as a film by the same name (2000). I give Roger Ebert a “thumbs up” on his review – which makes it clear that the film, starring Kim Basinger, is entirely missable. I was further disappointed to learn that much of the filming was done in South Africa rather than Kenya.

Less well known to Americans (probably because it hasn’t hit the big screen) is Sir Wilfred Thesiger’s My Kenya Days (Harper Collins, 1994). Thesiger, recognized by the BBC as one “one of the 20th century's greatest explorers,” writes of his early game-hunting treks in Kenya, a period as honorary game warden, and his settlement there in the last chapter of his life. The book reads more like a trail guide than a memoir, as Thesiger describes the setting, wildlife, and native people with what seems an anthropological air. I kept a detailed map of the country close at hand and found the book a good primer on geography, particularly of the Rift Valley and Northern Kenya. Throughout the reading of this book, I had a disquieted feeling that I could not fully articulate. And then, in doing a bit of research, I ran into this quotation from Michael Mewshaw of the New York Times:

“Wilfred Thesiger has long had a reputation as a legendary traveler, in his words ''perhaps the last explorer in the tradition of the past.'' But while his courage and resourcefulness are admirable, his autobiography indicates no awareness of how much his expeditions depended on poor, tractable people in dictatorships and colonial regimes. That this type of travel is no longer possible might strike some readers as less a tragedy than a cause for relief.” -- “Barbaric splendor suited him.” A review of Thesiger, W. The Life of My Choice in The New York Times, March 20, 1988.

Claudia Daggett

Kenyan Kitchen

When I saw this at the Northwest Folklife Festival, I took it as a good sign of wonderful things in our future. Get ready for piri-piri sauce!

Laurel Seid

(Photo: Laurel Seid)

Reading: Infidel

My local library book group read Infidel for its March selection. While the book is not about Kenya, per se, many of the chapters are set in Nairobi and others in its neighboring countries. A memoir written by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the book tells her story, that of a Somali woman who comes of age in Nairobi and wrestles – in Kenya, Somalia, and Holland – with the impact the fundamentalist Muslim culture in which she was raised has on the lives of women.

Infidel is a controversial book. Publishers Weekly (253, no. 50, December 18, 2006: 57) is among those that consider it a significant contribution: Hirsi Ali "delivers a powerful feminist critique of Islam informed by a genuine understanding of the religion." However, Ian Buruma in the New York Times Sunday Book Review (March 4, 2007) finds her descriptions of western life so idealized as to resemble "a comic book." And Lorraine Ali in Newsweek (February 26, 2007) states, "Hirsi Ali is more a hero among Islamophobes than Islamic women" and "sounds as "single-minded and reactionary as the zealots she's worked so hard to oppose."

Hirsi Ali describes the limited choices available to women in her culture of origin, illustrated by her own struggle to accept an arranged marriage. Most disquieting were her explanations and anecdotes about shunning, physical abuse of children and women with honor killings the most extreme example, and female circumcision or, more accurately, "excision." In addition to the human rights issues she raises, Ali’s many examples of the Somali’s strong clan identification and lack of tolerance for differences within one’s own ethnic group gave me pause for reflection. There are parallels, certainly, in all cultures, although the societal mores regarding violence vary.

Ali’s contrast of her Somali and Kenyan peers, noting the different attitudes and codes for behavior borne out of Muslim and Christian beliefs, and her references to the significant poverty in areas of Nairobi are interesting to consider as we prepare to travel to the region.

Hirsi Ali spoke about the writing of this book, expanded on the issues addressed, and read passages in a sensitive and provocative On Point National Public Radio interview with Tom Ashbrook recorded on February 12, 2007 (43 minutes).

Claudia Daggett

Reading: Kenya Passage

On a lighter note this week, we share an article from the May-June 2010 issue of National Geographic Traveler: "Kenya Passage," by Christopher Vourlias. This is a colorful, ultimately optimistic account of overcoming a bit of adversity -- mud, cattle raiders, and the fear of wildlife lurking at nightfall -- while traveling through the Laikipia and Samburu Districts in the Great Rift Valley.

In the telling, Vourlias reminds us of the importance of understanding differences in the cultural views of distance and time and shares a poignant moment when he finds sympathy from Africans who have experienced much more profound hardship. He reaches his destination, of course -- and ingenuity, care for others, and patience triumph.

Claudia Daggett

HIV/AIDS: Why should we care?

In the United States, the majority of us likely still associate HIV and AIDS with the gay community. If you are a person in middle age, it is hard to imagine that, in some way, the terrible sickness and cruel death associated with AIDS has not affected you in some way in the last twenty years. As educators, we probably know well the positive impact of the education around protected sex counter-balanced by young people's desensitization regarding non-penetrative sex. We likely also know that the anti-retroviral (ARV) medications prolong life in amazing ways. People do still die from AIDS-related complications but being diagnosed with full-blown AIDS is no longer the immediate death sentence it was in the late 80’s and 90’s. We may know of the international AIDS Awareness Day on December 1. We still see the red ribbon in many places. Every so often, various businesses sponsor contributions to AIDS research and interventions. Starbucks collected contributions last winter; Nike is currently running a campaign related to the purchase of red shoelaces. So, for the most part, HIV and AIDS present themselves in ways now that make it easy for most of us to believe that we can have a compassionate but distanced understanding as involved U.S. citizens (i.e. It’s a problem but one for “other” people) and make small gestures in support of the eradication of the disease when we can.

It is well nigh impossible to travel to Africa and be similarly removed from the effects of AIDS. Billboards (yes, there are billboards) speak about everything from HIV/AIDS social service messages to ads for clinics and treatment. Newspapers contain numerous articles about public policy initiatives and personal anecdotes. Markets are filled with people clearly suffering from AIDS wasting. Orphaned children, of all ages, are everywhere. The highest rate of infection occurs in heterosexual women and then in their children through mother-to-child transmission. Often these women are unaware that their partners are HIV-infected. Often women do not have the luxury of choosing their sexual partners. Cultural taboos against acknowledging the disease exist in almost every culture, and the myths of effective treatment cloud the ability to treat those who do acknowledge. The intense cycle of poverty renders the ARVs which are available in some regions ineffective as they often require proper nutrition in order to be effective. Families sell the government or NGO-issued ARVs in order to purchase food and then, as a result, don’t have the medication once they have the nutrition. Statistics are difficult to gather as under-reporting and denial are rampant. None of this paints a very optimistic view of the future.

Three summers ago, after spending time in the south of Africa, I became intensely interested in HIV/AIDS and AIDS education. At the time I was Head of a middle school in the DC area and leading a service learning project. I wondered if it would be possible to have respectful conversations with the 8th graders about AIDS and then do service locally. It turned out that nearly one-half of the 8th grade wanted to participate in this year-long project. The positive support of the parents was tremendous; they drove groups of students to deliver meals and used contacts in the community to connect us with people working on AIDS in research and in the community. In the middle of that year, the Washington Post published an article citing new research that the rate of HIV infection in the DC metropolitan area equalled that in the south of Africa. The group with the highest rate of infection proved to be heterosexual African American women. It was a sad and chilling revelation to the students, their parents and to me that this notion that we might have had that AIDS was something that happened to poor people in third world countries far from us was, in fact, simply not accurate. We developed something along the lines of a moral imperative to work harder and become more informed and involved and became rather zealous in our efforts.

With just a few months before departing for my second trip to Africa, I think quite a bit about whether the impact of HIV and AIDS will be visible in Kenya. I wonder about what I can do to make a positive contribution, as a result. I did purchase two packs of red shoelaces yesterday. Deep inside, I feel the smallness of the gesture, and I think about other ways to get involved. Mostly, I plan to keep my heart open.

Laurel Seid

Photo: http://hypebeast.com/2009/11/nike-product-red-shoe-laces/