Just returned from the dusty wilds of northern Kenya, I’m now back to electricity, palatable water, and you. I was not absent, I promise. Before I get into it (and there’s plenty to get into), here’s a video I was supposed to publish last month. It’s an interview about my expectations for the summer. Already, it feels like watching home videos of your childhood — what you were like before — but it’s a part of this storyline and so deserves a place. Click on the link below and it will take you to me, pre-Kenya. And you need hardly wait for more about my trip to Samburu-land –that’s just around the corner.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Np4kVOBwSaE
Video by Kate Cummings, 2009 AP Fellow. Location: Washington, DC. Partner: Vital Voices.
Posted By Kate Cummings
Posted Jun 22nd, 2009
244 Comments
mangoland
June 22, 2009
kate
the video makes it so real, your distance and your closeness, the image and the reality. please share more with the background of the milk and blood and samburu: i’m excited what we can learn from the contrast.
how is the resilience? how is their spirit? what is their attitude toward their future?
Kate Cummings
July 8, 2009
Mangoland, we have mangoes here, too. I do not know if they are as luscious as where you hail from, but they are a soothing nectar for me when I return from longs days out in the field. The milk and blood of the Samburu diet comes from their nomadic history. Their possessions are few, but certainly include many cattle, and some goats, sheep. Since this is normally all they have for food in the extremely arid climate of Northern Kenya, what comes from the animals determines breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Their resilience? Remarkable. The Samburu women I lived with made their strength and recovery from difficulty seem natural – almost without effort (although we know it takes so much of their energy). Their spirits are burdened by external circumstances and abuses suffered from their former partners, and these weights are evident in their company – but this is not the dominant characteristic of their spirit – their warmth, their commitment to their community, their forgiving nature that makes you feel like a friend and never a stranger: these are the strongest qualities of Umoja spirit. The future is determined by this even more, I would say, than their external circumstances.