KARIBU KENYA!

KARIBU KENYA!

I. Love. It. Here. ☺

We arrived late last night after a full 24 hours of flying. We were met at the airport by our smiling Program Assistant, Erin, and wondering in-country Program Director John as well as the 2 van drivers, Patrick and Mwake.

Arriving in the University District, where we will be staying while we are here, we were met by our star Professor, Joel Ngugi. Professor Ngugi is a Professor Law at the University of Washington, Director of the UW African Studies Program, and is the brilliance behind this wonderful program. As I have said before, I am deeply humbled, and feel so fortunate to have the opportunity to learn more him and the other students and teachers shaping this program.

After settling in, we enjoyed a Kenyan meal prepared by Professor Ngugi’s sister, Lucy. I like the Kenyan food so far – lovely, flat chapatti bread and “ugali” – cornmeal porridge style dishes with mashed pumpkin leaves and corn and a mixed spinach and greens dish.

I woke up this morning underneath our mosquito net. We are all taking Malarone to ward off Malaria and Norfolk is quite protected, so the bed net seems a perhaps superfluous measure. However, I find it romantic to wake up beneath the soft light of the net. It reminds me of the dream catchers used by the Ojibwe Indians which I grew up with in Minnesota. The dream catchers are pretty, web-like ornaments that you display over your bed, in the hopes that they will “catch” any bad dreams that might attempt to visit you during the night. I hope that the bed net will act the same way for me.

Already I am so excited, anxious and curious about our time here, about how the next two months will unfold. Already the students who arrived before us have been engaging in deep discussions about judgment and predetermination. Thus far, that has been my favorite part of this course, the depth and authenticity of our classroom discussions, the level of challenge and expectation set out for us, how the status quo is often shattered, our comfort zones disassembled, our previously held misconceptions forced into realignment. What once perhaps made our reality more comfortable, simpler, now becomes unacceptable.

I feel this is often the case with human rights work: we may wish in some way that we didn’t know about various injustices, various wrongs, but once we know, once our eyes our opened, we have no choice but to learn more, to educate ourselves, to evaluate, discover how we might educate ourselves and others to in some small way be a part of the solution. Such is the case with the constructs we build, the stories we tell ourselves, the assumptions we have, the lens through which we build the world: what if these have all in some ways been wrong? What can be done to correct, to reevaluate, to be a part of the solution rather than a part of the problem?

We have a great group of students. 13 are undergrads, 2 are grad students, and we study disciplines as diverse as Comparative History of Ideas, Law, Societies and Justice, Global Health, business, public policy and more. I feel that already we have adopted a sense of Harambe, of unity, shared community and vision. I wish we had more of this in the US. My master’s capstone project examined social capital, and the decline of social capital in the US community. Such an increased sense of Harambe, community, teamwork, and shared vision would be powerful in working to revitalize our own communities.

On a more practical note . . . today will be spent exploring our neighborhood here in Nairobi. We will visit the pharmacy, grocery store, etc to run various errands, get our cell phones and SIM cards, and generally settle in. Later today we have our first class. Tomorrow, we have a symposium and more coursework. This weekend is mostly free time, but with a “contrast tour” of Nairobi provided on Sunday.

Thanks so much for following. Sending love and light to you!