In this interview, Kakenya Ntaiya talks about the freedom she has found in education.  Tracing her path back to childhood, Kakenya remembers her family hardships and the constricting nature of traditional Maasai values on her future.  But Kakenya was not going to accept her family’s selection of a husband-to-be for her at age five; and she was certainly not going to let generations of ritual and multiple father-figures with a limited perception of her potential stand in the way of her own dream.  Instead, Kakenya - with the support of her mother - rallied together the very community that resented her independence and convinced them to send her to college in the US.  Now, less than a year away from finishing her PhD in international education, Kakenya is still dreaming - but this time, for her entire village.

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

Life at Kakenya’s homestead has been as rich and full of learning as our time working on her projects; I feel like I’d only be telling only half the story if I didn’t mention the goats, the kitchen hut, and Kakenya’s family, who are now my own.

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!

Walking into town with Kakenya is an event.  Old women stop her every ten feet, touching her head to remind her that she is still the child and they are her elders.  “She is my mother,” Kakenya whispers – and after she has said this a dozen times, we come to learn that in this village, raising a child is indeed a communal effort.  Older men, carrying their smoothed sticks with metal club-heads (a symbol of power among the Maasai) reach for Kakenya’s braided crown: “taqwenya” they say and she replies, facing the ground, “igo.”  The children stand on the edges of the red path, giggling; some of the brave ones run up to Kakenya and remind her who they were last year, or the one before, when they were even smaller.  “It is you?  No!” Kakenya yells, laughing as soon as she realizes the adolescent is not the five year-old she remembers.

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.