Dunia Duara

So we have been learning Swahili proverbs KiSwahili. It is a traditional approach to learning the language that has been used ever since East Africans have been teaching KiSwahili formally. The last title, Kuelekeza si kufuma ~ to aim is not to hit, is used to encourage the youth to realize the goals they set for themselves. Dunia duara ~the earth is round~ is used to remind people of the circle of life and that no matter how far you go away from home you will eventually end up in your backyard. I am posting the first paper I had to write for my Political Culture of Kenya class. We were asked to write about a critical incident that challenged us. Here is what I had to say:

Let's Get Personal

I can’t say I was shocked by the conversation I had with our housekeeper Phyllis, but I was stunned at the seriousness of her reaction to my answer of why I actually came to Kenya. Her and I were standing in the kitchen together, she was drying dishes as I made toast with peanut butter and jelly. We were exchanging niceties about our lives and families, laughing and I was telling her about AU Abroad Kenya. She was delighted by the description of our program but it wasn’t enough; she wanted to know why I, Justine Raschio, actually had come to Kenya. I explained that I am exploring international development as a career and that I wanted to experience development outside of a textbook and the classroom. She laughed uproariously in my face. I stood silent for a moment and then asked her to explain her amusement. She said, “I’m laughing because Kenya is not developing. If anything, this country is going backwards. Any visible progress is surface level. I have this job, but I still can’t feed or take care of my two daughters like a mother should.” Immediately I asked her to qualify “backwards” to draw some meaning from her observation and she told me, “Everything is moving backwards; there is no real progress. The progress you see is only on the surface.” She put away the last dish, I finished my toast and we both exited the kitchen to go our separate ways for the evening. As she walked out our front door I wondered where she would go home to, what her daughters would be doing, and what they all would eat for dinner, because I knew as I walked to the bathroom I would be in my upscale apartment, with my roommates eating a three course meal and probably going out at night. Phyllis and I talked for ten minutes, but her reaction has concerned me ever since, especially because we have a new housekeeper now so Phyllis and I may never be able to finish our conversation.
Later that evening, my roommates and I went to Gypsy’s and I overheard a young Kenyan woman consoling one of my roommates after a man had told my roommate she would never make a difference in Kenya. The woman said, “Of all the things that you came here to do, the most important thing is that you came here to change your own life.” Her thoughts in conjunction with my conversation with Phyllis earlier thoroughly confused me and forced me to rethink my purpose here in Kenya I realized that maybe I had overlooked my personal reasons for coming here. The Gypsy woman’s comment forced me to think more critically about Phyllis’ comment about surface level development. Scholars, do-gooders and ethical multinational businesses usually have honest intentions to make positive changes through their development initiatives, but from the two women’s comments I have come to learn that sometimes as much these agents of change may think they have made substantial changes in a foreign country, it may be difficult to quantify how deeply into the cultural fabric they have truly penetrated. The combination of the two comments helped me realize that maybe I will be changed far more than I will make change. The women really challenged me to think that I may be significantly changed and may not have made a positive “developmental” impact on the people and community I work with.
As I reflect on the experience to write this paper, I feel like at the moment Phyllis floored me by laughing at my reason for visiting Kenya I failed to react. I was so stunned, and her laugh was so funny that for a second I just stood there with her. I reacted inwardly to the woman at Gypsy because she wasn’t talking to me. Mostly I am confused and interested by the insight of these women’s personal experiences with the development culture in their home country. I think my reactions were appropriate, or at least I can’t think of any other way I would have responded to these experiences besides further personal introspection. At the least I am very glad Phyllis’s response to my answer was so genuine because it has forced me to reach inside myself to find a truer reason for why I came to Kenya and the woman at Gypsy forced me to question more critically what I see as my own personal development versus community development during my time here.
In all honesty, I don’t know how well I understand either of these experiences. I have taken into consideration that these women come from entirely different socio-economic classes and their comments reflect the experiences they have had with development. Phyllis represents the bottom level of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and the woman at Gypsy represents the top. Phyllis wants to see development change her personal life and the woman at Gypsy is concerned with how other’s interpret the way development affects their own lives. I do think these experiences will lead me to think more critically about the work I do with ISSA. If anything, those experiences have already changed my entire perspective of my purpose for studying abroad in Kenya. I would consider that refinement of purpose to be monumental and I am interested to see how that change will manifest itself in my behavior throughout the rest of the semester.

Kuelekeza si kufuma

Today was a public holiday for the end of Ramadan. All USIU classes were canceled! My roommates and I walked to a friends externship site named Amani (peace) to work on externship action plans/budgets/organizational reviews and to study for our first kiSwahili exam tomorrow. Our kiSwahili prof. is a true linguist and loves to teach too! His class is a treat; we learn kiSwahili and drink Kenyan chai for two hours!

Anyway the big event is on the horizon now! Oct. 4 is Miss and Mr. Kibera Pageant. As of now the directors of ISSA have not found an NGO to fund the pageant. They assure me everything will be alright. I am concerned.

Thankfully I am not responsible for the Pageant. I have started an action plan for a fundraising dinner to be hosted at the Sarova Stanley (a very expensive hotel in town) for 150 businessmen to come and watch the Pageant and hopefully donate money to ISSA to help ISSA pay for 22 OVC (orphaned and/or vulnerable child) children to attend school in the fall. I need Haley! She's the event planner, not me!

Tomorrow I am in Kibera to help prepare the contestants for the show on Saturday and to make any final touches to a flyer and brochure I have made for ISSA. It is the final countdown for ISSA main event and it is very exciting!

Ada ya mja hunena mungwana ni kitendoí

Safari was beautiful! The animals, the scenery, the drivers, Tiplikwani MaraCamp, the food, the stars, the sunrise and sunsets, the biggest blue sky ever were unimaginable until this weekend. Saturday morning Twiga Tours (The Fun People to Safari With!) picked us at Njema and drove us through the Rift Valley on our way to the Maasai Mara. It is a 6 hour ride from Nairobi to the Mara. The first hour is in Nairobi, but the next two and half hours are spent admiring the beauty of the Rift Valley which is reminiscent of Arizona, very dry, dusty, hot with cacti and twisted trees. About the third hour you enter Maasailand, which is the land the lies in southwestern Kenya and northern Tanzania that is inhabited by the Maasai people. The Maasai are a pastoral and nomadic people, who originated in Israel and migrated to Kenya and Tanzania through north eastern Africa long ago. Now the Maasai keep their livestock in small villages and move throughout the region based on the rains and the grass. The more it rains the more cow dung they have to add to the roof of their temporary homes to keep it out and as the weight of the dung increases it begins to crush the wood and dung hut. When the hut collapses they move with the animals. The Maasai are very well known for the colorful beaded jewelry, red cloth costumes, sticks and spears the are seen with. We visited a village near Tiplikwani MaraCamp with Bipemba, a young Maasai warrior who works at the camp. At the village we were greeted with the circumcision celebration dances and a speech about Maasai culture. We walked through the village and entered two homes. The Maasai keep the older goats and cows in the middle of the village and the babies in their homes. The homes are small and dark. The women sleep in their own homes, the men sleep with one of their wives and the children sleep with the grandparents. The men at the village liked me so they gave me the Maasai name Naiulang which means that I understand their people and that I am welcomed to come and live with them whenever I wish. John told me it was a great honor. Surprising to us, the Tiplikwani is owned by two partners Yuri, a Caucasian, and John, a Maasai (his name is not John, but he uses it for ease of conversation). John grew up in Talek, a small village on the edge of the Maasai Mara Game Reserve, and he was elected by the entirety of the Maasai community to represent their people across the world. He is a truly amazing soul. His dream is to build a new camp fourteen kilometers from Tiplikwani by himself inside the Game Reserve. John also knows every line to Forrest Gump. He actually introduced himself as Forrest Gump for his talk with us on Maasai culture after our game ride on Sunday. (the name of the post today is a kiSwahili proverb -handsome is as handsome does- a gentleman will be judged by his actions. Just like Forrest -stupid is as stupid does)

We had three scheduled game rides and two informal game rides. Safari is stunning! We saw four out of the big five (leopard, rhino, buffalo, elephant, lion), we did not see a rhino. All of the animals are so beautiful. Today we saw 28 giraffes walking across the mara as we were driving out of the game reserve! The lions, the hippos, antelope, wildebeest, leopard and cheetah were also very fun to watch! Dad way to remember the binoculars!

After every ride we would be pampered with a four course meal, as much tea and coffee as we wished, turndown service and a campfire at night. Zebras on the first night and lions on the second night for campfire entertainment across the Mara river. The stars. The sky is bigger here at the equator so the amount of stars one can see on the Mara is unbelievable. The stars here twinkle too!

It's dinnertime! Olesere! (that means goodnight in Maasai) (but Maasai is an oral language, so that is my interpretation of how one would write how they say goodnight!)