www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8tKJ50pZf0

Video by Kate Cummings. Location: Enoosaen, Kenya. Partner: Vital Voices, 2009.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFSqhkxcb3c

Interview by: Kate Cummings. Location: Enoosaen, Kenya. Partner: Vital Voices, 2009.

School Uniform shop

Don’t be fooled by the manifestation of this baby-step in the revolution.  In fact, be convinced by it: with the simple gift of one plaid jumper, maroon sweater, pair of tan knee-socks, patent-leather shoes, and cream collared shirt, you will see each girl lengthen her spine to hold back her shoulders and smile with the confidence that she is, in fact, a miracle.  And I bet you some exorbitant amount of Kenyan shillings she will also do better in her studies - because it is clear someone is invested in her, and she is worth that investment.

Kakenya shows off her school's very own uniform

Beaming for her girls

Kakenya understood the gravity of this moment, and she was silenced by it (save this little clip just before her descent into disbelieving quiet).  She has completed one large orbit of her goal, one of the first rings of her Saturn.  This ring started with one fundraising event after another, visits to Vital Voices in DC, more and more time away from her son and husband, her dissertation; then it was a long trip last summer, another this February, and now one month back in her Kenyan home to see how the girls of her school - “her children” - are growing.  And during this packed month, Kakenya has taken an eight-hour matatu to the large town of Eldoret (“that’s too busy, like New York City”) and spent the whole day personally seeing to it that each girl has every piece of this elaborate outfit that leaves will eventually, on the dirt roads of Enoosaen town, leave all onlookers without a doubt in their minds: this girl is going somewhere.

Now, maybe,  you can see the multiplier effect behind the demure uniform Kakenya holds up in this short video.  You should have been there: adding rings to a planet is worth witnessing (and worth doing).

www.youtube.com/watch?v=20fYRf-YC7U

Video: Kate Cummings. Location: Eldoret, Kenya. Partner: Vital Voices

Rhodah Chemonget

Rhodah Chemonget is 25 years old with 4 kids (2 of them girls).  Rhodah has one daughter attending Kakenya’s Center.

Q: Have you noticed improvements in your daughter since she started at this school?
Rhodah: She’s doing well. When she was in another school, she wasn’t concentrating on her work.  But now, when she gets home, she is always reading.  My other kids don’t read at home.

Q: How far did you go with your education?
Rhodah: I went to Class 5 [fifth grade].  I wanted to go farther, but my parents refused.  My life would have been better if I’d gotten more education.  But now, my life is hard.  If I’d gone to school, I’d be earning an income – not taking the donkeys to collect maize everyday.

Q: How do you want to raise your daughters differently than your parents raised you?
Rhodah: For a long time, fathers just wanted daughters to be married so they can get cows – but I, I want my daughters to go all the way with education.

Paul Murunka

Paul Murunka is 39 years old with 8 kids (5 of them girls)

Q: What are your expectations for your daughter at this Center of Excellence?
Paul: I am expecting my child to prosper in education.  This school will be different than others.  Judging from the title, “excellence”, and its good foundation, I know it will be an excellent school.

Q: Has your daughter changed since she started school here?
Paul: My daughter is improving.  She’s speaking in English, and also she’s not shy like she was before.  I want to see her being among the first in the class.

Q: Why do you want for your daughter to receive an education?
Paul: Culturally, girls aren’t supposed to inherit anything from the family.  I want, while I am alive, for my daughters to inherit an education from me.

Q: Is there anything else you want to say?
Paul: May God bless Kakenya, because she is not selfish.  She is making more Kakenyas here [gestures to the children playing in front of the school].

Christian Saleh

Christian Saleh is 33 years old with 3 kids (all of them girls – two attending Kakenya’s Center).  Christian was the only other girl in eighth grade w/Kakenya when they were at the end of primary school; all the other girls were dropping out to be circumcised and then married.

Q: Do you have expectations for your daughter at this school?
Christian: The aim I have is for my girls to finish school here and continue other studies.  I finished school up to Class 11 [eleventh grade] – I didn’t finish my schooling because I couldn’t pay the school fees.  I wish I had finished.

Q: Was it difficult to be the only other girl w/Kakenya in Class 8?  How do you want your daughter’s education to be different from your experience?
Christian: Sometimes the boys would beat us and we ran away from them.  Sometimes I had to stay at home to take care of the younger kids, the farm – I had to miss school sometimes to do work for my family.  I want my daughters to do well in exams and go farther than I did.  I don’t want my daughters to have to stay home and take care of the animals.

Over the next several hours, parents arrived at the casual pace that Kenyans attend scheduled events.  In the meantime, Luna and I played with the girls; we taught them one song after another and after they aptly learned the words they would scream, “another!” and so we rummaged with haste through our forgotten days of summer camp assemblies and campfire games.  I taught an unusually vocal session of yoga, giving each of the movements an animal sound to help the girls understand the positions (“downward dog – bark like a puppy!” “Woof woof woof” went the chorus; “now cat tuck pose, roar like a lion” – “ROAR!” went the fierce pride).  Luna has been teaching the girls Taekwondo whenever we have free time with them; by now, the girls have shirked their timid gestures and meek yells for the sharp “yah!” they throw with their nimble kicks.  There’s also the favorite pastime of touching my hair and face; there seems to be no end to the surprise of my uncurled hair and light skin – the girls have to touch my head and arms to believe it.  “Our Mom is so preeeetty!” They yelp with excitement, small fingers tracing my neck and eyelids.  And as sweet and touching as the love-session is, it can be overwhelming (see the picture below):

Taekwondo with the girls

Daily loving from the girls

When more than half of the parents had arrived, we all migrated to the unfinished classroom in the official Center for Excellence.  The school building is more than halfway finished, and will be the first two-story building in town when it is completed.  This is, already, a source of pride for everyone involved in the school.  The parents squeezed their knees under the small desks, sitting with bodies craned forward in anticipation – women in the center rows, men entirely separate in the row by the windows.  The girls came in and, with the signal from their teachers, formed lines in front of us.  Kakenya’s youngest sister, Nashipay, led the girls in a traditional Maasai song – all of them jumping down to the floor and springing up to the rhythm of the song.  After their performance, the girls listened along with their parents as the teachers talk of overall performance in the three months since school opened.  “Overall,” Madam Lydia said, “the girls are getting higher marks than they were in their initial exams.  They are also speaking only English in the classroom – if any student is overheard talking in her mother-tongue, she has to wear a necklace made of cow bones!” The girls laughed from their seats, hiding their heads in each others’ sweaters.  When they first started at this school, almost all of the students spoke no English; only a few months in, they understand all that Luna and I say to them, and can reply quickly with annunciation better than most Americans.

Proud mothers

Students watching the assembly

Parents and children - all are students

Some parents stood up and spoke passionately about the importance of their daughters’ education – the fathers taking the lead.  They emphasized cleanliness and the need for new uniforms so the girls could have more confidence in themselves.  Good grades were acknowledged and higher marks were expected – said fathers and mothers, directing their eyes at the girls.  In my nearly ten weeks in Kenya, I’ve noticed that Kenyans are talented orators and talented promisers: they vow to make certain changes, and the passion of their promise sometimes outweighs the action taken.  At the end of this meeting, what I’d come to expect was not what in fact happened.

Father gives a speech at Parents Day

Kakenya stood in front of the parents, expressing her gratitude for everyone’s support and for the girls’ hard work.  At the end of her talk, she mentioned that the school would be open for the holiday, unlike neighboring primary schools, and they would need donations for food during these two weeks.  And within ten minutes (okay, maybe 20), the parents had completely taken care of it.  “I can bring 5 kilos of sugar!” shouts the mother with the polka-dot cape; “I have 10 kilos of maize”, yells the father in the tan suit.  And like this, every child’s snack and lunch were accounted for.  Kakenya was impressed, and so was I.  “Wow, these parents!” She said afterwards, as we all sat on the lawn with our lunch of beans and rice. “They are really committed.  I guess I can call on them more often.”  And in just one day, she did – one of the fathers (one that I interview in the next blog, Paul Murunka) offered to travel to Kisii with us the next day (a town about 2 hours away) to handle the negotiations of ordering construction materials.  And only a few days later, one of the mothers – who has traveled very little outside of Enoosaen – volunteered to join us on the long seven-hour journey to Eldoret to collect the girls’ new uniforms.  Where there is support from parents – we all know because of lack or abundance in our own lives – a child’s chances for happiness and success increase exponentially.  It seems that Kakenya has, in her unfinished classroom of parents and children, what it takes to have a true Center for Excellence.

Kakenya addresses the parents

The small town of Enoosaen consists of one main road of single-level buildings and shacks – most of them a mix of phone charge shops and convenience stores carrying the essentials.  On Wednesdays and Saturdays the town is bustling with the local market, drawing people from neighboring villages.  On a regular day, though, the earthen streets are dotted with children playing and idle donkeys.  On the sides of the road you can often see large tarps laden with corn – the cobs litter the road, becoming part of the uneven pavement during the rains – and sometimes millet, all drying in the sun after a harvest.  The road leading to Kakenya’s house is lined with sugarcane fields, the tall lush grasses on the cane waving their soft swish swish.  There are plenty of cornfields, too, and small mud huts with thatched roofs (some with aluminum sheeting) and children sitting in the shifting shade.

The youngsters

Old women sell tomatoes and sacks of corn along the road leading home, their earlobes stretched long and adorned with beaded bands, their shoulders covered by a colorful shawl patterned according to their age (red polka dots or bright pink for younger women, checkered design for elders).  And finally, after a winding walk of about 45 minutes around the mountain on the right, we arrive at the next, smaller dirt road that skirts the edges of rocky fields, trees dangling yellow orchid-like flowers, to the wooden gate of Kakenya’s house.  If you’re feeling tired, ask any motorbike in town to take you to Kakenya’s, and they’ll know.

View over the grain houses

The family compound’s size seems small at first.  Upon entering, you first see the main house with a tin roof, a smaller house with a thatched roof, and some rotund huts made of wicker down the hill.  But as you wind down the footpaths, you find there are other homes and smaller huts – the homes for sisters and brothers, the huts for grain.  The chicken hutch is just behind the kitchen – conveniently placed near our bedroom window where the roosters are in clear earshot.  The goats’ pen sits on the slope of the hill, past the homes, and just above it is a wooden fence that encompasses the cows – a few dozen of them.  And I haven’t even mentioned the shampa (farm): it covers a long stretch of land opposite the main house, where Kakenya’s mother grows all the corn, collards, pumpkin, potatoes and tomatoes that we eat.  The people who live on this sprawling property, are: Anne (Kakenya’s mom, or “yeiyo”), Nasiegu (Kakenya’s younger sister, about 26), Kishoyian (younger brother, about 22), Toto (the youngest sister – about 14), and Nasiegu’s children (Chesang – maybe 2, Manu – around 8, Michelle – a few months)…I think that’s everyone.  If you have trouble keeping everyone straight, you are not alone.  Nasiegu sleeps in a house near the cows, her son Manu sleeps in the kitchen hut (there’s a cozy bed by the fire), and Kishoyian has his own house (being a warrior and all) closer to the river.  Kakenya has more siblings, but they live in other parts of Kenya and one in the US.

Sheep in front of the kitchen

Home in the evening

Morning with the cows

Kakenya and her clan

Every morning, Yeiyo (that’s Mom) and Kakenya get up before the sun and milk the cows.  I’ve tried this; it is not easy.  All the teets are different, some are dang hard to get a grip on, and good luck getting the steady stream of warm milk to hit your jug with a satisfying fizz they way Yeiyo can.  After milking, there’s plenty more: washing dishes outside of the kitchen (there’s no running water, so fetch a bucket from the main house and fill it with one of the barrels that has river-water), cooking pumpkin and some millet porridge fresh from the farm, pick around 70-100 lbs of tomatoes before the sun comes up so they can be sold in the market – and if you want a shower, make sure you boil water over the fire and mix it with the river-water for the right temperature (take it to the cement room next to the latrines and use the bucket to pour the water over your head – it takes coordination, so don’t be discouraged on your first try if you find you still have soapy toes afterwards).   There’s always washing the floors of the main house, but that’s usually Toto’s task: she is an expert at flicking water onto the mud floor and sweeping the moisture over the cracked surface so that it dries unbroken and firm.

The regular guests

Laden clothesline

Inside the main house

There’s no electricity in our mud houses – or in any of the houses surrounding town, but a small solar panel on the main house roof provides us with a bright light for night’s first couple hours.  There’s usually milking again in the evening (5 liters sells for a good $2 every morning, and you need more at night for plenty of chai), and there’s always the skillful rounding up of cows by the men that Yeiyo has hired.  Manu is an apt cowboy himself – running with a light switch in hand in between the lumbering cows, his galoshes slapping his shins.  The goats are his specialty, and he manages to corral them into their wooden hut with ease.

Manu

Goat house

Manu the shepherd

I mentioned one day that I really wanted to hold one of the kids (baby goats) and he spent the next several minutes chasing the youngest ones, finally catching a brown-spotted hind leg.  We are developing a habit now – when it is evening, and the goats are being shepherded to their house, Manu runs to me, “hold goat?” And I invariably drop what I’m doing to follow him, his form dim in the fading light, as he leads me to the shuffling pack.  I’ve learned how to catch the kids off-guard and grab the hind leg – with audible protest – and cradle the soft body in my arms.  Manu stays with me, laughing at my affection and himself coming closer over time to pet the small head and rub the long ears.  Some nights when I am talking on my phone outside, under the bright night sky, Manu runs up to me and, finding himself without much to say, stands by my side; after a few moments, he rests his head on my waist, and I put my hands on his head like he is my child.  Inside the house, the evenings are lively, everyone talking about the day’s excitement, Kakenya’s two year-old running under legs and demanding that everyone participate in another recitation of “Twinkle twinkle little star.”

Nathan's nightly bath

The food arrives around nine, and everyone is quiet with eating.  Kakenya is usually up late with her mom, and sometimes her brother, laughing with each other and gesturing wildly at the day’s drama – how could that guy have said such a thing?  Did you hear her when she spoke to me that way?  What am I going to do about this girl’s parents?  There is no end to the engrossing conversation topics.  From the comfort of my mosquito-netted bed, I listen to the energetic rise and fall of their voices against the steady hum of the crickets outside.  After some time, Kakenya goes to sleep in the room next to Luna and I, Kishoyian to his house, and Yeiyo takes turns at the main house and her daughter’s.  The cool night air only barely reaches us through the wooden windows, but it is enough to make the covers more inviting and my sleep uninterrupted until pinholes of light stream down from the tin roof, and the roosters have decided it is time to get up.

Morning alarm clock

P.S. Check out my Flickr pictures for much more, from the farm and everywhere else I’ve been.  I’m always updating it with new images!

Kakenya and elders of Enoosaen

And there are some people she has to pass by, just to make it to the town center before the day is through.  “You see that man?  He was my fifth grade teacher.  And him?  Oooh, I dated him for awhile.  Yes!  I know, he looks older; the alcohol they drink here, it turns your skin so quickly.”  And so we move down the impromptu line of greeters, each one shouting a hello to the American woman who was once just another child in this town.  Lately we have been catching motorbikes from the farm instead of walking the 45 minutes to town, giving Kakenya a moment’s peace.  Nearly everyone Kakenya has ever sat next to in class, gone on a date with, sold milk alongside, greets her from the earthen curbs of Enoosaen – and not all of them want to welcome her home.

Meetings in town start late and run even later, and as the hours wear on Kakenya slumps further down in her chair.  There are board meetings for her school; gatherings with mentors and mentees of the youth mentoring program she is managing; hours spent with village elders who offer to quell tensions between Kakenya and members of the community who take advantage of her projects funds when she is away.  After meetings, some people lag behind, looking for a moment with Kakenya.  She sighs as she makes her way out of the room, always the last to leave – “did you see that man talking to me?  He wants me to send his girl to the US.  What does he think I can do?  I’m just a student, too.”  These interactions are the most exhausting for Kakenya – and they happen at the tailor’s, outside the store, while we are waiting for a car to go home.  Unlike appeals from strangers in Nairobi, these requests cannot simply be ignored; Kakenya is the child of a village that is collectively responsible for her education in the US.

Kakenya is determined to return to Kenya with her husband and son as soon as possible, and this means she will be visiting her hometown more regularly.  In short, her family is still here, her projects are here – she cannot push aside the requests of her extended Enoosaen family.  And when difficulties arise with board members and other participants in her projects, Kakenya cannot simply replace these challenging people;  they are her relatives, her neighbors – and, as they remind her, they are the ones who enabled her to start her life in the West.  With the groundbreaking of her school behind her and the students now sitting in classrooms, Kakenya is faced with the complications of a dream coming true, in a town that both hungers for opportunity and starves its own chances for a different future.  There is a saying in Asian cultures – “the finger pointing at the moon is not the moon.”  Kakenya, despite her talents and profound generosity, is not the moon – nor is she supposed to be.  She is doing her best to point out the true source of this community’s wealth (for one, it’s girls), and one too many minds clouded by desire and acquisition see Kakenya, fresh off the plane, as their single portal to a different life.

Kakenya's welcome

It takes actually very little information to know someone.   It takes only, for example, the abandon in the girls’ sprint to know them.  It takes just the size and grip of the embrace that surrounded Kakenya to know Kakenya’s Center for Excellence.  And it took only one moment of looking at Kakenya, surrounded by the uncontained love of her students, to know that Kakenya is exactly the person you have always hoped for.

Kakenya's School of Excellence students

The Center was officially begun the groundbreaking ceremony last summer, and thirty-one girls started filling the classroom a year later in May, 2009.  The school is unique in many ways – offering the first primary boarding school in the district, leadership training that empowers the girls to speak and present themselves with confidence, and Kakenya hopes that soon there will be summer leadership camps that open up the opportunities of the school’s leadership training to other girls in the region who are not boarders.  Kakenya also wants to plant corn and other vegetables on school property so the students can have their own supply of food (and training in agricultural practices).

The girls at the Center are between eight and fourteen, and many of them are among the most underprivileged girls in Transmara district.  Many of them are at risk of early marriage, female genital mutilation, and a life governed by poverty (like many of their parents).  Presently, the school is still under construction, and the girls are going to class in a nearby building made of aluminum sheeting.  The dormitories have not yet been built, but the district’s Member of Parliament has contributed the funds for its construction.  Many of the girls walk over two hours to school each day, alone, on isolated roads in the hills.  It goes without saying that the completion of the dormitories will make the lives of the girls immeasurably more safe and stable.

Impromptu assembly

The girls seem unaffected by their temporary learning center, but Kakenya is pained to see the two-story school incomplete and her students without the amenities she anticipated.  “You see their outfits?  All of the holes in the dresses and the sweaters?  We have got to get their uniforms before I leave!”  We are at an assembly in the open field with the scaffolded school building.  The girls are singing songs of welcome, answering Kakenya’s questions in unison “Are you studying hard?”  “Yes!” “Are you treating each other like sisters?”  “Yes!” The two teachers, Madame Lydia and Madame Margaret, stand proudly behind their pupils, encouraging some girls to speak up and others to straighten their bodies instead of slumping away in shyness.  There is nothing sleepy or sedentary about these children, which is more than I can say from my days working in America’s public school system.  They are poised for instruction, eager to be – of all things – polite; for this American, the brightness of these attentive faces is the most miraculous outcome of Kakenya’s Center.

Kakenya's children

And, unlike Kakenya, these girls have a role model for another kind of future – Kakenya herself.  “If I had a woman to look up to when I was a girl,” Kakenya says, “I wouldn’t have had to struggle so much by myself.”  Kakenya is an ideal model: tall and graceful, respectful of her community elders and boldly insistent on adjusting cultural norms that subjugate girls and women.  The students affectionately address Kakenya as their mother, and all of them are clearly her children.  “Look at my girls,” Kakenya leans over and whispers.  “Aren’t they perfect?” And if only you were here to see, you would agree: they are, unequivocally, perfect.

A different future

Postscript: I am writing to you from the nurses station at Enoosaen’s maternity ward.  This is one of the only places in town where electricity, when you’re lucky, is available.  When I come out of the room periodically and look across the hall, there is often a woman who is just about to, is in the process of, or has just gone through having a baby.  Today when I come out, I see a young girl on the table.  There is only a thin sheet for a doorway, and I catch a glimpse of her face laying sideways on the torn mat of the table.  My friend Lillian, the attending clinician, comes out from behind the curtain.  “She is just about to give birth.”  I nod, still craning my neck around to the open door.  “Do you know?  She is fourteen and she has already been cut (had female genital mutilation).  She is unmarried, so any man that marries her from here will treat her like” and Lillian flicks her hand to the ground, “nothing.  Now,” she looks hard at me, and I bring my eyes back from the doorway to meet hers.  “her education is over.”  She invites me to watch the birth, and I quickly refuse.  As I am typing this to you, the cries of the newborn are audible through the door.  Another girl’s future has been decided.