It is mid-February of 2016. Time. flies. I’m looking forward to coming home relatively soon, seeing people, and enjoying several comforts of my norm (wifi, electricity on a grid, trains, punctuality, regular and real communication with people, the occasional cappuccino, sushi, fresh juices… I actually think I’m a pretty low maintenance girl).
I look around lately and think that much of what could have been enjoyable in this neck of Africa has been just out of my reach. Maybe that's because to enjoy this place (beyond sightseeing) is to succumb to its pace. A slow one. A pace where when people say “come at two” they mean “start walking at two and get to my place around three or four.” Real conversations come slowly, real relationships even more slowly, and if you’re trying to get more than one thing done in a day, opportunities for conversation are lost. I know this happens in any place - no one gets to smell the roses if they don’t stop to smell them. Unfortunately, I haven’t had the luxury (or the will?) to stop for so long as many roses here need time to bloom (for me).
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| Tea plantation at the edge of the forest and village. |
Of course, it’s not just the difference of pace that sets me akilter from the people I meet here. A teacher once told me that you can only understand life in a place if you recognize it as a “palimpsest.” Literally, a palimpsest is a piece of writing where the original text is visible but has been altered to make room for new text (to clarify, this was a cultural anthropology prof., i.e. mostly well-meaning but bonkers). A palimpsest is a metaphor for life in any place: there are layers of experience of different generations and backgrounds, layers of use of the land and spaces. Depending on the place I’m in and the experiences of the people I meet, what I represent can change. I would be naive (or naiver than I am) to walk anywhere here and think “I’m just Nicole Thompson, a 30 year-old woman with no nation, no culture, no ancestors, no physical appearance, and no particular advantages in life.” I have all of those things and I am, whether I like it or not (usually not), an ambassador of them all.
I live in a western pocket of Kenya, in a rural area outside of Kakamega town where it’s particularly poor, populated, and perhaps counterintuitively, particularly secluded (there are real statistics on this - e.g. Nick Mitchell 2009). There’s little investment in infrastructure and few attractions to give people the means and cause to come in or the means and finances to go out. People don’t busy themselves with much around here except living, and they don’t see many white people. When they were kids, locals my age probably saw white people that took their picture, gave them candy, or 10 shillings (10 US cents). As adults their impression of the picture-taking-candy-and-shilling-giving mzungu (foreigner) sticks. Their kids want those things too and more of them. Older locals probably experienced the colonial powers and seem to eye and greet white people with stoicity or rigid respect. In my humble opinion, the interactions between locals and foreigners reflect a deep dynamic - colored with colonialism, white guilt, the exploitation thereof, anti-colonial backlash… and simple, well-meant candy. A motorbike driver shouting ridicule at a white tourist could be genuinely amused with the stranger’s clothing and appearance, or he could be cutting someone down to size that his society and history have wrongly exalted.
But enough about the touchy stuff…
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| Teaching with SAVE: Evans presents to the large group of students. |
For the past two months I’ve been involving myself more in community outreach. We’ve given S.A.V.E. Kakamega Forest (Swift Advocacy for Viable Environments… had no part in the name) a facelift and instead of a single visit to a different school each month, we’ve expanded and developed a three-lesson series:
1) Intro to Kakamega Forest’s Flora and Fauna
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| Ernest and Evans mark students' essays. |
2) Ecosystem Dynamics and Conservation
3) Sustainable Alternatives
We’re piloting the series now at St. Gerald’s Secondary School in Shinyalu. We’re also working towards assessing students learning from the course. For now, we’ve implemented a type of reward system based on the interest and aptitude that students show in a short essay on "why is a healthy forest important?". From these essays and participation, we’ll choose 7-10 outstanding students to join our research team in the forest for 1 or 2 Saturdays in March.
Our team of presenters is growing in organization and style. We’ve found naturalists to bring their expertise on birds, trees, insects, reptiles, mammals (when logistics/planets align and allow them to come). The group has come a long way actually since its beginning, and I’m hoping to see it continue strong in my absence.
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| Strong showing at the proposal writing workshop. |
I’ve also been helping with a local women’s group - name withheld because I think it’s awful - that’s at the seed stage and, to be honest, will probably not advance beyond that. Their goal is to re-popularize traditional food practices to enhance health and food security in the area. I’ve tried to hold some proposal writing workshops for them, but corporate organizing hasn’t been there strong suit. For me, the small experience has been eye-opening about why home-grown change here is rare and what obstacles hold people back from self-organizing.
Love to all,
Nicole
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