Prophetic voices are shouting -- how can we not hear them?

Sorry I haven’t been keeping up with this blog so great guys! (I swear I wrote this entry 5 days ago…but haven’t been back in the office to access the net since). Things are happening kinda fast. I’m still falling in love with Kenya and I’m still meeting all kinds of amazing people! There are far too many stories to share, so I’ve decided to start each blog entry with one.

Damaris lives in the Gatundu region of Kenya and is a mother of four children. When her assistant chief asked her to represent her village on the district’s CDF committee*, she refused—she was much to busy running support groups (for HIV positive women), doing home-based care (where women of the community seek out women or orphans who are very sick with AIDS and care for them in every way possible), and interacting with the area’s youth group (which does support, home based care, and many awareness type activities). The third time she was asked, her village had convinced her how badly they wanted her on the committee, and she agreed. Now, she says, she is a voice for orphans and poor women. She passionately explained that when project proposals come up that benefit those who don’t need the money as much as the more vulnerable in society, she firmly opposes them. Referencing a particular initiative, she stated that if the committee doesn’t listen to her concerns, she’ll “go straight to my MP. Why should I be afraid of him?”
As context for this story, I want to mention that at this workshop (a paralegal training for people interested in helping women in disinheritance cases) some women were agreeing it was OK for their husbands to beat them for being lazy or refusing sex. One argument ensued between a Luo older man who claimed that in the old times, men could never beat women to harm them, they could only threaten them to show they were in charge. But the younger women, who had seen their mothers beaten and perhaps been beaten themselves, were under the impression that the practice was traditional. I use this as a contextual example for how powerful Damaris’ story is.

Now, latest crystallization of further internalizations. Get ready for a rant…. :

If your heart is touched by seeing Africans living in conditions you wouldn’t allow your dog to live in – if you find that Africans stir your humanity, the last thing you should do is try to ‘help’ them.
They don’t need your help.
They don’t need your pity.
I’m meeting Kenyans with better models of NGOs, better ways of galvanizing and empowering, better ways of celebrating each and every person’s right to full personhood, than most organizations I’ve seen or worked with in the States. What these Kenyans need is for the West to shut up, sit down, and LISTEN. NGOs need donors to give them grants that will allows them to become self-sustaining, not grants with strings attached that itemize how they are to be spent. Governments need the freedom to do what they really want to do for their people—freedom from an American Empire breathing down their backs; freedom from billions of dollars in illegitimate debt to the IMF and the World Bank, freedom from foreign aid that comes in the form of expensive experts and consultants who bring fancy machines that governments could hardly hope to afford to maintain, and industry that will benefit local commerce only in their craziest dreams.
I say to you this: If you feel there is any degree of injustice in the fact that you are more likely to commit suicide than to die from diarrhea, which kills countless African children daily; if it bothers you to any extent that the best known novel about Africa is a blatantly racist colonial account written by a white woman (Out of Africa); if you feel, to any degree, that the humanity of Africans is tied up in your own ability to be fully human, then this is my plea: turn your critical lens on yourself. In what ways do you perpetrate circles of ignorance among the affluent? In what ways do you privilege the voices of the powerful over the voices of those at the margins? In what ways do you bow down before the Empire by choosing to consume, by silently consenting to violence when peace is possible, by remaining complacent in the face of apathy and indifference to suffering? Turn your critical lens on the way your church, your school, your volunteer organization contribute(s) to the numbing of the masses by ignoring those within their own ranks whose lived experiences are delegitimized when the institution defines reality. Turn your critical lens on our articulation of the capitalist system, which values the dollar over the child, which replaces our deep desire to be in community with one another with a desire to be better than one another. And then, my friends, turn to your neighbor, your colleague, you’re your pastor, your friend, your teacher, your professor, your fellow students, and enliven their consciousnesses. See them as full and beautiful people, dwell in their realities, and challenge them to expand the borders of their realities as you have expanded yours. Demand that they make space in their world views for the voices of the Africans. And in the spirit of solidarity and profound communal humanity, proclaim that when they disrespect Africans, they are disrespecting themselves. Friends, this is the most powerful thing you can do for Africa. It’s the most meaningful thing you can do for anyone, any people, who are silenced by the powerful.

…  … Please, if any of that didn’t make sense, or if you disagree, or if you think I’m an angry punk with too little life experience, I want to be in dialogue! The usefulness of monologues are so limited. We have much to learn from each other. Likewise, if you’re feeling me, shout it. The benefits of solidarity and community are without limits! Let us never become complacent or silent or comfortable with the way the world works.


* Constituency Development Funds are funds allocated by the Kenyan government to local districts for development purposes. The idea is that those at the local level understand the needs of their community best, and they are supposed to be distributed by a committee (example projects are roads, water projects…and if more women have their way, home based care supplies, youth projects to raise awareness about AIDS, etc.). However, sometimes it is still the voices of the powerful who are heard on these committees, and some MP’s are still using CDF to get themselves reelected—they go around their districts taking credit for projects that are really CDF projects.

rmonkey

Shoo! my week at GROOTS is done and i moved to stay with Lucy, the director of SIDAREC. She is an amazing woman. Was a journalist for 5 years but decided she wanted to give her life to seeking justice in the settlements. I'm quite excited about spending the next few weeks hanging out here with SIDAREC. Today we visited the community center in Pumwani, one of the settlements. Saw the community library, which they're working to catalogue, and the nursery school (kids age 1 till they're old enough to attend primary school). I'm in a constant state of being impressed by the people i'm meeting. Some of my favorite sentiments:
--How insistent Lucy, and the women at GROOTS, are that being poor is merely a state. They truly understand, in a way that so many folks in the States don't, that people living in the settlements are full of potential/capacity/ability (just as much as any of us) to contribute to kenyan society if only the space is created for them to do so; if only their voices are lifted up instead of being silenced.
--everybody's determination and resilience, commitment to the process, and recognition that if you're just looking for results you're missing the point and only creating short term change.
--the way SIDAREC insists on doing the best it can, insisting that people in the settlements deserve no less than other folks. The library, recording studio, wireless tower, afternoon cartoon time for the kids, trainings, bringing in experts to teach business skills etc...all exemplify taking a preferential option for the poor, the way it should be done. and by the way, SIDAREC only employs people who live in the settlements (although many who were once employed or still are have since moved out and found jobs or are studying somewhere).

i feel like i'm a loafer on vacation compared to the work they're doing.

it was also humorous to be introduced to everyone here as 'the monkey girl'. back when i first started emailing SIDAREC last year, i remember the name that came up on my email was Rmonkey (an old middle school nickname) because that was the name i'd originally set up my email account under and then couldn't figure out how to change. So they got a good laugh, wondering why my last name is monkey. What can i say, my reputation preceeds me.

and i went to my first church in kenya yesterday--a mega church, Nairobi Baptist Church. it was huge. holy moley. lol, i go kenya and i end up at a mega church.

learning from the prophets

So days have been busy and wonderful! Research is going fantastically; I can't believe this is only my third day here for all i've learned.
I spent the afternoon in Mathare, one of Nairobi's largest people's settlements (what we're now calling the slums--seizing back words and definitions from the Man), and met some of the most amazing women. Women who are changing the atmosphere by holding elected officials accountable, serving their neighbors in need, and partnering with youth organizations that are doing the same (this doesn't happen too often). GROOTS is quite a model for how organizations should operate--the women in the main office do no project implementation, they only serve as networkers and resources, to hook up women's organizations w/each other so they can learn from each other and not feel so isolated.

I promise more in a week, when i have better net access!

Kenya rocks my socks off

I'm here, it's perfect!