When you are driving through the slums of Nairobi, it is easy for them to blend together in your mind. Listless youth roving around with little to do. Garbage littering the dusty streets. Ramshackle buildings made of sheet metal. But having visited a variety of slums where the Undugu Society has fostered Street Associations, I have come to realize that there can still be healthy communities amidst an unhealthy environment.

Members of the TUFF Community youth group performing garbage collection in their slum

Picture taken by Jane Njoki, DSP Participant and Members of the TUFF Community youth group

 Yesterday, Alixa and I went to Langatta to visit Jane Njoki, a member of one of the Undugu Street Associations and a participant in the Digital Storytelling Project. Her association, the TUFF-Gong youth empowerment group is actually one of the oldest street associations Undugu works with. (See my previous blog “The Undugu Society of Kenya: a unique model for youth empowerment” for a more detailed description of Street associations). It was formed almost a decade ago by the youth in the slum. Its purpose was both social and vocational. Socially it gave the young people in the slum an increased since of community. The group also began outreach programs related to issues such as HIV/AIDS, sanitation, and civic education. Vocationally, the group provided a livelihood to its members because the group began to function in the community as the primary waste management provider.

Borrowed Wheelbarrow

What might sound like a mundane and miserable task, strangely, is a joy to watch. On the day we were with them, a throng of over a dozen youth members chattered and teased one another, towed wheelbarrows through the narrow alleys, zipped in and out of houses with blue bags in hand, and enthusiastically answered our questions and posed for pictures.

Jane taking pictures in her community

Gotta Love a Shortcut

As Alixa and I toured the slum, there was a different feeling about the place. Neighbors were visiting with one another or talking with the youth, there was less garbage on the streets and less obvious areas of open sewage. There was even a new community project underway. Apparently a women’s group in the slum had received sponsorship from an NGO that was going to put in a water system. Men from the community had been contracted by the women and were digging two foot deep ditches throughout the slum. When I asked how long they had been working on these ditches, which were in evidence everywhere, I was shocked to learn they had just begun digging the previous day.

Water Project by a Women's group

I asked Kengathe, a youth facilitator, if he felt like this community (where he too lives) is more healthy, stronger, less violent, than some of the other areas where Undugu works. He agreed that yes it was. When I asked him why, he thought it was because of its size. This slum is walled in by the National Wildlife Reserve on one side and the Wilson International Airport on the other which prevents it from the kind of endless sprawl you find in places like Kibera or Mathare. People know one another and can therefore keep each other accountable.

Wall Art

Che and Darren

The one room house is packed shoulder to shoulder with young people, all 18 to 25. I am at the officers meeting for SMART Club, a community based organization founded shortly after the 2008 post election riots. Its goal is to promote civic education among the youth in Kibera some of which were participants some victims of the election violence.

Peace Club Meeting, Kibera Slums

Kenneth Odogo Owade, the club’s founder, sits perched on the arm of one of the overcrowded sofas. He is bleary eyed because he worked three shifts in a row at the YMCA starting the previous afternoon. He will go back to work tonight, go straight to class the next day, return to Kibera for a nap, and start the process again earning in a month the equivalent of 80 US Dollars. Despite his weariness, Ken is never too tired to talk passionately about the importance of this club or the immense challenges that stand in the way of a young persons survival in a place like Kibera, a city like Nairobi, and a country like Kenya.

The name Kibera is notorious; the second largest “temporary settlement” in all of Africa, it is less than 700 acres but houses an estimated 1 million people. Despite the notoriety of Kibera, I once heard Kibera called the “most peaceful” slum in Nairobi. When I asked Henry, another attendee of the meeting about this, he at first responded with incredulity, but then after the brief pause conceded, “well, in Kibera, you won’t get mugged during the day.” At night it is a different story.

As a Muzungo (white person) I am told daily that I am a perpetual target in Nairobi and must always leave Kibera well before twilight. But squeezed shoulder to shoulder with these energetic, well-spoken young people who alternately debate and tease one another, I do not feel fear, pity, shock, or any other emotion that people who visit Kibera the first time often report experiencing. Despite the poverty and crime, the youth in this room are exactly what the world has been looking for. They are the segment of the “youth bulge” that could keep their country from plunging into the civil chaos that has plagued their neighbors Somalia, Uganda, Ethiopia, and Sudan.

Kibera Alley

Before 2008, much of the world took for granted that Kenya was a bastion of stability in the Sub-Saharan Africa. People inside and outside the country reacted with shock at just how quickly the violence spiraled out of control. Conflicts that at first appeared to be tribal feuding, it later was confirmed, were in part the result of groups of youth that had been bribed by politicians first for their votes, then for their violence. Kenneth himself at the onset went out into the city center to take pictures in hopes of documenting the atrocities, “but I took five pictures and I had to stop. It was too much.” He instead went back to Kibera and did his best to calm people and evacuate members of targeted groups to safety. In his house he hid a woman who was a member of the targeted Kikuyu tribe, telling her if people came after her, to claim to be his wife. They came, she did, she survived.

Ken is exceptional, but he is not the exception. As the young people around me discuss micro-finance, team building, creating a budget, I think about an article I recently read entitled “Kibera youth always primed for violence.” Martyn Drakard a reporter from The Observer, a Ugandan newspaper, writes about the train track that run through Kibera being torn up in protest of recent tensions between the two countries. In it he claims:

“Kibera youth can be divided into several categories: those who traipse every morning to the factories five miles away hoping to catch the eye of a sympathetic foreman; those who stay in Kibera and run or are trying to start projects, such as selling water, managing public toilets and showers, disposing of waste; those who stay at home doing nothing; and the others who are ready at a moment’s notice to take to the streets or alleys in pursuit of some cause.”

But can the youth in this room where I am sitting be easily squeezed into any of these above categories? It is convenient when you are speeding through Kibera on a high-powered train or hurrying out of Kibera before sunset to miss yet another category of youth. The kind who, in the words of Kenneth, “Don’t let Kibera be on you. You be on Kibera.” You cannot see signs of Kibera externally. They don’t look poor, or “primed for violence,” but there is a fire within them to be on Kibera, on Nairobi, on Kenya to start opening pathways out of poverty and marginalization. To give them a platform for participation that is more permanent than the settlement in which they live. To pay attention to the youth before they tear up more than the train tracks.

My first full day in Kenya, I was largely left to myself so that I might recover a bit from jet lag and recover a delayed backpack that decided to enjoy an extended stay in Amsterdam.  I have consequently bumbled around this new city like a bemused toddler.

Employee at Nakumatt

The western concept of education is much more static than in many other places in the world. Sit in your desk, in your assigned row, in your assigned classroom, for 180 days, pass your exams, and you level up.  Thos this is changing to some extent in the west, No Child Left Behind is an example of the extension of this codified system. During Kenya’s colonial period, the British did a thorough job of transplanting this particular breed of education to their occupied territories and it remains largely unchanged in Kenya to this day. But there are many here that wonder whether this very formal style of learning is the most effective or authentic for the Kenyan student or whether a more indigenous form of learning wouldn’t better prepare Kenyan youth to participate effectively in their society.

On the 12 hour flight from Amsterdam to Nairobi, I had ample opportunity to chat with a man named Gerald Yonga, a doctor and professor at Aga Khan University Hospital. Although we had varied backgrounds, we had a shared belief in increasing the accessibility and quality of eduction for the young people of his country. We talked about the endless rounds of exams that mark a students progress through the education system and determine whether they can advance; he told me of schools like the Starehe Boys Centre which offers such quality education to the poorest youth in Nairobi, that even very rich families want to send their children there; and we acknowledged the unintended effects the the Millennium Development Goals, particularly universal primary education, on his country. These include overcrowded classrooms, teacher shortages, and an allocation of close to 30% of Kenya’s latest federal budget towards staving this growing crisis. As Kenya and much of the rest of the developing world rush to comply with international conventions on education, the definition of what education ought to look like shouldn’t be taken for granted.

Measuring formal learning is easy. Define your objective. Create indicators which will prove that the objective has been met. Create assessments to measure these indicators. While this equation has its uses, it presumes that 1) we are aiming at a non-moving target and 2) that we already know what the ultimate lesson will be because we have the answer key in our desk. The first assumption is problematic because it frequently cannot keep pace with the realities of our globalized world. The second assumption neglects the reality that it is the questions with multiple or ambiguous answers that are the most likely to truly educate us anyway.

My formal objective today was to buy a phone, find a Barclay’s ATM, and recover a prodigal backpack.   At the end of the day I was 66.6% proficient in living in Kenya. But using informal indicators, I have learned the following.  

Prolific Purple

This constitutes only one day of informal learning. How much does a Kenyan child learn in a day? From where and from whom? And which of these teachers will most shape the course of their life? As I attempt to support The Undugu Society’s Youth and Education program, I will strive to keep these questions at the front of my mind.

 The first period of class at Arundel High School starts at 7:17am. Trying to get adolescents to wake up this early in the morning, let alone care about SAT prep class, is a tall order. One morning, I was trying to wake them up by listing all of the things I could die from in Sub-Saharan Africa. This was on my mind because the previous day I’d been getting inoculations in preparation for my work as an Advocacy Peace Fellow working with young people in Nairobi, Kenya; these blights included typhoid, yellow fever, polio, and a slew of other diseases my students had only ever read about in history books.

After the laundry list of viruses and bacterium, we played, “Guess how much my immunizations cost?” And I felt like an auctioneer as they yelled out.

“$200?”

Nope, more.

“$400?”

Higher!

“$600?!”

Try a grand total of $650!!

My students, on cue, let out various exclamations (most of them classroom appropriate) in disbelief on how much staying alive can cost. And then Kayla, a junior, piped in. “But Mrs. Dziedzic, I just spent $600 on prom and that’s only one night. Think about how much more meaningful what you’re going to do is.”

These kind of moments always blow me away not because they are unique, but because no matter how often that they happen, I still find myself frequently forgetting just how potentially marvelous and mindful youth can be. Youth have a reputation for being emotionally volatile, deceptive, ornery, reckless, and unpredictable. And they frequently are. But, as you can see from Kayla’s remark, they are also compassionate, brutally honest, tender, passionate, and wear their hearts so close to the surface you can see every beat. They are also inherently interested in youth beyond the borders of their literal community.

On the first day of school this year, I told my classes that I would be both a full time teacher and a full time student working on a degree in International Peace and Conflict Resolution. I told them I was doing this because I believed in the power of education and every human being’s right to tap that power. When I say things like this, when I stray from the curriculum to talk about why there are pirates in Somalia, when I tell them what the “youth bulge” is and why it is, when I tell them why I’m spending my summer teaching youth in Nairobi Kenya, I watch as they wake up, lean forward in their desks, and wipe the boredom out of their eyes. It’s not that young people today aren’t interested in learning, it’s that the learning they’re interested in doesn’t fit well inside the four walls of a classroom and neither do they.

They are divergent thinkers trying to live outside the box. This is in part because the rules of the box weren’t made to favor them. The rules of the box were made by and for their elders. To be a youth, is to be constantly pushing and prodding, erasing and redrawing the lines they’re stepping on and over. This is true of suburban youth in Gambrills, MD. It is probably even more true of urban youth who have grown up in the slums of Nairobi where many of the rules and regulations in place are part of a system of inequalities that have kept them on the street, out of school, and in the margins. So much of the tensions that run just below the surface in Kenya are not ethnic divides, but generational divides. The question becomes, how do you give young people a platform to be heard and validate that creative spark in a way that won’t threaten the elders that are the gatekeepers of this place called adulthood?

I have learned-my students have taught me-if you point to a path that will meet their needs, fan the flames of their loves, and make their community proud, you better get out of their way because they will knock you over to get started. Getting young people in Kenya to use blogging as a constructive outlet for their hopes and fears, getting students at my high school to connect with youth from a diverse background, and getting adults to look at youth more closely and remember their power and potentials, this is what I hope to support with the project at the Undugu Society of Kenya.