"Not up to Par"

I remember being in high school in Kenya and, on two separate occasions, having a male schoolmate walk up to me and either tell me he didn't like my hairstyle or it was not up too par. The key word in that sentence: male. Did I mention that the schoolmates in question were both black?

My sin: my hair was unrelaxed. Whether it was neat and tied back or in neat braids/lines, it was apparently a problem. Hair was not hair unless chemicals or extreme heat had been used to straighten it. There were "approved hairstyles" for the middle class. And they were so well-known that even the boys knew what was acceptable and what wasn't. I remember some others asking me if I was saved because, apparently, that was the only rational explanation for not relaxing one's hair: a religious injunction.

Imagine I was just okay with my hair as it was. In the same way that I was okay with my skin as it was. There was no compelling reason to change them radically, no conviction on my part that if I used relaxer (or bleach), a new Jerusalem would descend to earth. I also wondered why people felt that girls and women had to straighten their hair (or lighten their skin) when boys and men of the same species, with the same genetic heritage, didn't seem to have the same rule hanging over their heads.

Questions Folks are Asking in the Wake of Obama's Recent Trip to Sub-Saharan Africa

A blog post with the title, "3 Ways In Which Homosexuality Is Kind Of Creepy," pretty much summarizes some of the arguments that many have made against homosexuality in the wake of Barrack Obama's recent trip to sub-Saharan Africa and his statement on the need to uphold the human rights of gays and lesbians. Below are my responses to a few of these arguments:

“But what I don’t get is how a man could possibly find another man sexually attractive. Honestly, that’s like the Six Million Dollar question I’ve had to grapple with all my life, and by that I mean since I discovered that girls were kind of nice to look at and to touch and to kiss and to…”

• I’m not sure why you’re grappling with this particular question. It is a fact of life that some people feel same-sex attraction. I imagine it has always been that way. You may disagree with it, but I’m sure nobody’s expecting you to take responsibility for other people’s sexuality. You don’t have to agree with it or understand it to recognize that others will enjoy consensual sex with other adults as they choose. It seems to me that the issue here is failure to recognize your own individuality and others’ individuality. We are not all one person. Live and let live.

“This formed the background on the call by Hussein to African nations to decriminalize homosexuality, and grant gay people the same basic human rights accorded to non-gays. This has predictably opened a whole new can of worms, with many Africans telling him to restrict his gay loving agenda within the United States, of which he is the president.”

• I think there’s a huge difference between asking people to decriminalize homosexuality between consenting adults and asking them to recognize gay marriage. The U.S. is not about to pressure anybody into recognizing gay marriage. If they tried to do that, they would open themselves up to outside pressure to recognize polygamy. I’m also willing to bet that, right now, most LGBT people on the African continent place a greater priority on assuring their physical safety than on walking down the aisle to exchange vows. Now, I am curious about where you stand on the fact that gays and lesbians are subjected to unprovoked violence and discrimination in our nation and other African nations on a daily basis. Because that is the real issue that Obama was addressing. Many African politicians and religious leaders conveniently avoid addressing the violence. And too many ordinary citizens allow them to do that.

“For example, I have no qualms about mob justice. In my book, if a thief is caught in the act, kill him dead. No apologies.”

• So let me get this straight, you’re basically saying that if a poor, four-year-old kid who has not had anything to eat for days steals a tomato from a greengrocer’s, he should be stoned or burned to death? Also, what if somebody lied about catching somebody else in the act of stealing (something that happens pretty frequently in Nairobi)? How would you know who was lying? Do you honestly believe this is a progressive position?

“Now, when you have two men doing it with each other (please note that I shall not be referring to lesbian sex for aforementioned reasons), no little babies are expected due to the serious lack of a womb, ovaries and other baby making equipment necessary for a successful conception.”

• Even if you acknowledge unfertile couples, you’re still arguing that they should not have sex because “it takes procreation out of the equation.” You’re also arguing against family planning, the use of condoms, and the very conservative idea that sex strengthens the emotional bond between a loving, married couple. The argument that all sexual behavior must have procreation as its ultimate goal is not reflective of reality.

• Mind you, it is not desirable for every human to have children. We have limited resources in our respective communities and have already damaged the natural environment to accommodate the burgeoning human population (case in point, Mau Forest). There may, theoretically, still be room for more people on earth, but it won’t last forever. Very highly populated nations like China and Egypt are already grappling with that.

“Now, picture this: if everyone were to suddenly find their inner gay, how long do you think it would take for the human race to be extinct?”

• I don’t think this is an effective argument against homosexuality. It’s parallel to arguing that some kids should not be allowed to have white collar aspirations because, if we were all white collar workers, nobody would be a farmer and we would all starve to death. Now please be honest, is Barrack Obama or anybody else really arguing that heterosexuality should completely be replaced by homosexuality?

“Please excuse my ignorance, but how exactly does this work? Doesn’t this make for some pretty messed up kids who have no concept of the distinction between male and female?”

• The only way to find the answer is to look for it. Look for articles and videos about the subject. There are plenty online, some narrated by people who were raised by gay couples. And don’t just limit yourself to reading or watching people who share perspectives similar to yours.

• By the way, you come across as very sheltered if you honestly believe the only legitimately recognized form of marriage globally is one woman + one man. There is such a thing as polygamy, which can take the form of one man and several women. And, in some parts of Asia, there are communities that encourage women to marry more than one man (all of them brothers to each other). According to your argument, all kids from such families are totally messed up and there's little hope for them.

 
This work is licensed to Rose Kahendi under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.  

On Partington's "War on Kwani?"

Yesterday’s Nation features an article by Stephen Derwent Partington, “War on Kwani? marks the death of literary engagement and rise of spite.” The article spotlights Kenya’s ‘literary wars,’ and highlights the regular cycle of criticism that some Kenyan academics direct against the journal Kwani? and those associated with it. However, the article does more than that: It can also be read as commentary on inter-generational conflict in contemporary Kenya.

Like many, I have read a good amount of the literary criticism in Kenyan newspapers over the past few years. And, like them, I have noticed that a disproportionate number of the articles consist primarily of academics taking pot shots at people who dare to create, particularly those in the Kwani? camp. Little is constructive about much of this criticism. In fact, as far as I can tell, most of it goes along the lines of: "Unlike us, the younger generation has failed to create anything worth acknowledging."

This is noteworthy in a nation that has preserved political power in the hands of one generation in its 50 years of independence. In every walk of life, older Kenyans cast doubt on the ability of those younger than them to carry on old traditions or build functional new ones. Interestingly, they never seem to realize that, if the younger ones are really as mediocre as they claim, then that reflects on them as mentors: They can't have done a good job teaching and mentoring if, as they claim, there is no talent in the younger generation.

I think it is definitely worth our while to ask ourselves why our elites (cultural, political and otherwise) have such a hard time handing over the baton to those who come after them. Why are they reluctant to nurture and support budding talent? Fortunately for us, Stephen D. Partington has taken it upon himself to attempt to broach this subject.

My favorite excerpts from the article follow:

“How quickly we forget? How quickly we return to valorise the theories of the very colonisers whose culture worked to oppress us many decades ago? And how spitefully we do it, relishing our role as the New Imperialists? The lazy complaints are all the same: our Kwani?-types are ‘young’, they don’t consider literature’s ‘grand themes’, they are ‘urban-not-rural’ — yes, the right-winger, Leavis, loved his organicism — they do not write according to the classic Aristotelian structure of ‘beginning, middle and end’, they are ‘popular’, they fail to submit to the censoriousness of gate-keeping ‘university experts’, they care about ‘minorities’, they are ‘vulgar’, they don’t use ‘pure linguistic forms’, they do not promote ‘traditional morality’.”

“In short, our ‘new moral formalism’ is a new conservative cowardice, an anti-reform return to the snobberies of the past when and where we could as a middle-aged middle-class mix with our own and choose not to see the slums, the young, the poor, women, and all those others whose vulgarity offends us. And while we might, in the best of worlds, hope that our academics might rise above the simplistic, petty awfulness of elitism and go ‘public’ as intellectuals, it is clear that we cannot rely upon them — or, at least, we can no longer rely upon many of our so-called ‘literary intellectuals’ to show the solidarity with us that their forebears did. Instead, we can expect the silence, in effect a turning away, that we saw from them in 2007-2008. They have not only thrown us to the wolves; to them, we are the wolves, the disgusting young who would bite and rip at the mythical glory of the world they believe we should inhabit. But we do not inhabit that world. Yet. And the Kwani?-ites know it.”

Two things stand out to me here. First is the fact that our contemporary elites have adopted the language of our one-time colonial elites. Second is their silence when faced with harsh Kenyan realities that they have surely had a hand in creating or perpetuating. You know what all of this tells me? It tells me that our cultural, political and other elites have two favorite pastimes: criticizing those who came before them, and criticizing those who follow in their footsteps. But they will not even acknowledge their own part in creating the status quo; and it doesn’t seem to occur to them that they should put themselves under the microscope.

If somebody were to ask me what our biggest challenge as Kenyans was, I would say that this was it: the inability of those at the helm to subject themselves to the same level of scrutiny they subject others to. Predictably, most of us follow suit. It is no wonder that we continue to perpetuate the injustices and inequalities that were set in place during the colonial era.

This work is licensed to Rose Kahendi under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.

The little things do matter.

Every time I hear the words “Kenya Vision 2030”, the cynic in me bursts into life. Kenya Vision 2030 is a development program envisioned to take the country to middle-income status by the year 2030. The details of the blueprint are lovely to read. Who wouldn’t want to see all the great projects come to fruition? But, the voice in the back of my mind keeps telling me to set the grand images aside and look at the little things.

THE LITTLE THINGS

I think it’s great to dream of being bigger and better, but to turn the dream into reality, one must address the little details. For instance, industrialization and an improved transportation sector (presumably including commuter trains) are highly dependent on a reliable electrical supply. But what reliable electrical supply is there to speak of if, every time it drizzles, neighborhoods experience power blackouts for hours? How can one even start to make improved overall health and healthcare a realistic goal when safe drinking water is not available in our taps? Mind you, many do not even have access to tap water. Instead, they are reliant on boreholes, springs, rivers, and other water sources which may very well be contaminated.

While we’re on the subject, what hope is there for a nation whose various branches of government are not able to coordinate with each other to make a decision as simple as choosing an election date that won’t set students, their parents, and teachers back in significant ways? It is this last point that I want to focus on in today’s blog entry.

An article in today’s edition of the Standard online makes the alarming announcement that the national elections, which are due to take place during the first term of the school year, will cost the Kenyan taxpayer at least KSh15 billion. Rather than holding the elections during the school holidays as has been the norm, the decision makers decided to hold them at the beginning of March. Because schools will be used as polling centers, students will have to pack their bags and return home before the term is through. They will miss hours of coursework, and may not be able to make up for this lost time over the subsequent years. Furthermore, according to Juma Kwayera, the author of the article, “the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) is expected to hire teachers, who will have to withdraw services to be trained in time to handle the polls as returning officers, presiding officers or clerks.”

Now, heed these words carefully: “whenever there is disruption in the education calendar, the country never appreciates the hidden costs that are never receipted such as bus-fare, pocket money and service delivery. According to the Ministry of Education, enrolment in secondary schools stands at 3.6 million students, out of which more than three-quarters are in boarding schools, hence will need contingency money, besides bus-fare to travel back to their homes during elections. Parents with children in primary boarding schools will have to cough up more funds as a result of the interruption by elections.”

The article goes into further detail: “A conservative estimate puts the minimum average each student in secondary school will require at Sh500 for a round-trip ticket. This translates to more than 2.7 million students in secondary school alone incurring over Sh1.5 billion in total while primary school pupils Sh2 billion, which cost is passed to parents.”

We are not a nation of tycoons. We’re talking about out-of-pocket expenses that are not going to be compensated for by any government program. Those most likely to be affected are students who attend public schools and their parents. In other words, Kenyans from most walks of life and at almost all income levels will be affected. Keep in mind that the cost to the nation quoted above does not take into account the loss of productivity/ man hours for parents, students, and teachers alike.

The same article points out that the teachers’ strike late last year, which disrupted the academic calendar, had a noticeable effect on student performance in the national KCPE performance. Primary school students at public schools did not perform as well as they should have in the national exam.  An expert cited in the article, Kenya Institute of Public Policy and Research Analysis CEO, Eric Aligula, asserts optimistically that the effect of the election dates on education is not likely to be major unless it “becomes persistent.” In my opinion, he is a tad too optimistic. Any disruption of this nature is bound to have unforeseen effects, and many of them will only become apparent in the long-term. A ‘little’ problem, such as two weeks of absence due to illness when foundational coursework is being covered, can change a child’s academic trajectory dramatically. How much more damage are the larger-scale disruptions due to the elections likely to cause?

All I can see is the tremendous amount of waste that is sure to result from some terrible decision making at the level of government. And I can’t help thinking that the same kinds of bad decisions are being replicated in different sectors nationwide. Surely, as long as such factors are in play, how likely are we to reach our long-term goals for development? We must first learn to crawl, walk, then run, before we can think of signing up for a marathon.

This work is licensed to Rose Kahendi under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.

On HIV/AIDS, religion, and public health

http://nutritionafrica.blogspot.com/2012/08/on-hivaids-religion-and-public-health.html

Over the years I have lost many to HIV/AIDS: family and friends. I can’t tell you how many, though. I stopped counting a while back. However, I can tell you that, because of the impact of HIV/AIDS on my life, I know what stigma is. I know what it is like to watch people sink into depression, lose hope and die because those who matter most to them have rejected them. 

HIV/AIDS as we have experienced it in the East African context has struck the family as a whole: men and women in their prime and young children have been the typical victims. Our AIDS story has had much to do with heterosexuality. So one can’t simply label HIV/ AIDS a “gay disease” as has tended to happen in the US. Our governments have had to address AIDS as a national crisis because it has stricken the mainstream.

In nations such as the US, where the tendency has been to associate the disease with sexual and ethnic minorities, I get the distinct sense that little mainstream urgency has been attached to the fight against AIDS. There are certainly men, women, and youth who have devoted their lives to fighting this apathy. But, unfortunately, there are also others who tend to view HIV/AIDS as a form of punishment for “breaking God’s laws” on sex and sexuality. Of course, this is not a uniquely American view. I have also encountered it among some people of faith in the East African context.

My interactions with those who have expressed these troubling views have led me to think about just how limited this particular religious approach to human problems is. I’m talking about a specific interpretation of the Christian teachings on sex and sexuality. The idea is that, if everybody limits themselves to following these teachings and only engages in sex within the context of heterosexual marriage then sexually transmitted infections (STIs) such as HIV/AIDS will cease to be a problem. In other words, the only way to curb the spread of HIV/AIDS is to be a “true” Christian.

That is all well and good, except that never in the history of humankind have all members of a given community adhered strictly to its religious teachings: A “true” Christian can get infected with HIV/AIDS even if he or she is firmly heterosexual, married, and faithful. For one, there is such a thing as a cheating spouse. Secondly, infection can be transmitted through rape. Yet another situation that facilitates the spread of infection is transfusion with infected blood and blood products. Yet another is the use of unsterilized medical equipment. The list goes on and on.

Those who persist in seeing HIV/AIDS as a form of divine punishment conveniently forget how closely interconnected we all are. As a result of these interconnections, HIV/AIDS does not discriminate. When you are exposed to the HIV virus, it does not ask whether you are “saved,” pray regularly, give alms to the poor, fast, or obey God’s law. If your defenses are weak, it penetrates them and infects your body whether you are rich or poor, young or old, “innocent” or not, devout or otherwise.

Keeping all of this in mind, how useful is it that a significant number of religious leaders have a simplistic approach to dealing with HIV/AIDS? How useful is it that they condemn it as a sinners’ disease, oppose the use of condoms under all circumstances, and oppose most forms of sex education? Simply put, their actions are not useful. In fact, to the extent that they influence public policy, they end up endangering everybody in the community.

Knowing this, I think that those of us living and working in communities stricken by HIV/AIDS should persist in emphasizing that it is treated by government and health organizations as a public health issue, not a moral issue. From a public health standpoint, we can speak about HIV/AIDS in its complexity. We can also talk about risks, prevention, and treatment. Importantly, we can make an effort to protect everybody.

What is the place of religion in all of this? Well, I honestly think people are entitled to believe whatever their religions teach them. However, I also think their beliefs should be directed towards governing their personal lives and setting moral standards for their religious communities. They should not be imposed on the broader national population as public health policy.

Further reading
"Education, honest dialogue key to halting spread of AIDS," by Chris Carlin and Debra Stanley, 1/17/07, http://articles.southbendtribune.com/2007-01-17/news/26826941_1_hiv-prevention-hiv-testing-new-aids-cases
"HIV and AIDS stigma and discrimination," http://www.avert.org/hiv-aids-stigma.htm 
"Public health approach to combating HIV/AIDS," http://www.searo.who.int/LinkFiles/RC61_12-pa_Item-14.pdf
"HIV/AIDS stigma: an impediment to public health," by Ronald O. Valdiserri, MD, MPH, March 2002, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1447072/pdf/0920341.pdf


This work is licensed to Rose Kahendi under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.

On popular perceptions of adoption in Kenya

http://nutritionafrica.blogspot.com/2012/05/on-popular-perceptions-of-adoption.html 

In August last year, a Kenyan media personality, Caroline Mutoko, announced on her Facebook page that she had just become a mother. At first glance, it may seem like there was nothing unusual about this. After all, motherhood is part of the natural order of things. This, however, was a special situation. The radio show host had just successfully adopted a baby girl and was happy to share her joy with her fans.

UGLY PERSPECTIVES

Predictably, the responses to her announcement ran the full gamut. They ranged from those which lauded her actions to those which cast aspersions on her motives for adoption. Of those who wrote negative comments, some were sure that she had adopted because she did not want to 'ruin her figure' with pregnancy and childbirth. Others were certain that she had adopted in order to prove she was a 'self-sufficient woman', with no need for a man. Yet others claimed that she was infertile and poked fun at her for this perceived shortcoming.

These negative comments were pretty ugly, and they also said a lot about the insecurities of the people who expressed them. Many of them suggested an underlying belief that one's social worth primarily came down to his or her capacity to perpetuate the family line: Only a 'true man' could impregnate a woman, and only a 'true woman' could give birth. Anybody who 'failed' this basic test was not quite 'man enough' or 'woman enough.' It seemed that these people imagined that a child could only bond with those to whom it was related by blood and that adults could only feel maternally or paternally protective towards their biological offspring. Hence, a woman who had not given birth to the child she was raising was a 'fake mother;' she was simply masquerading as a mom until the 'real mother' came along. To me, the very idea that a woman or man who took on full responsibility for another human being could be labeled a 'fake parent' was absurd. What was so fake about the affection, time, and resources they had chosen to give to these children? What was so fake about the fact that the children now had a place and family to call their own?


PARENTING IS . . .


It is true that giving birth to a child is in and of itself important. If women were to stop giving birth, the human race would not last long. However, we all know that a newborn cannot mold itself into an emotionally-stable, productive, adult member of society. It takes a parent or parents to do that. It so happens that the biological parents of children are sometimes unable to play that role. People pass away, leaving their children orphaned, others are incapacitated by illness, others are overcome by addiction, while others don't have the desire or capacity to nurture their children. This is why we make it possible for others to step in and play the parenting role: to protect those children, to feed, clothe, and shelter them, and to teach them morals and values. When they succeed in raising happy, well-adjusted, young men and women, who are we to take that achievement away from them by calling them 'fake parents'?


OUR HOMEGROWN ADOPTION-LIKE PRACTICES


Those who are dismissive of adoption seem to forget one crucial thing. Our societies have structures in place for the protection of many children whose parents are, for one reason or another, unable to parent them. These structures are called extended families. Think about it: How often does the average African nuclear family welcome a young brother, sister, niece, nephew, or cousin into the home, and support them through primary and secondary school, or even college? Do these relatives not become part and parcel of the home? Do we not consider them our brothers and sisters and share our resources, however limited, with them? For all practical purposes, this system is pretty similar to adoption. Perhaps the only difference between the two comes down to the legal formalities that define them. Legal adoption bestows upon the adopters the legally-recognized role of parents while fostering within the extended family proceeds even without legal recognition. Both situations are defined by a shared ideal. They seek to provide a child with a loving family and a safe place to call home.


Fortunately, Kenyan society has matured to the degree that legal adoption is steadily gaining legitimacy in the public's eyes. More people recognize everyday that there is more to parenting than conception, pregnancy, and childbirth. In addition, more people are willing to accept the idea that we are all stakeholders in our society. When children in our communities suffer from neglect or abuse, their pain and suffering reflect on us as a whole, not just on their biological parents or relatives. We have something to offer to our communities, something that goes beyond our capacity to bring vulnerable, little babies into the world. Hopefully, as time goes by, we will develop an expanded sense of the roles we can play as socially-responsible, adult members of our communities.

This work is licensed to Rose Kahendi under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.

The myth of linguistic purity

Professor Farooq A. Kperogi's piece on "The Arabic Origins of Common Yoruba Words" is an interesting read. While I do not speak a word of Yoruba, I can see parallels between the context he describes (in response to the Italian Professor Sergio Baldi's "On Arabic Loans in Yoruba") and the Kenyan one. I am a speaker of Swahili, a Bantu language whose lexicon has also been expanded over the centuries with vocabulary from Arabic, among other languages. Hence, I know for a fact that most, if not all, of Kenya's languages have in turn benefited from this expanded Swahili lexicon by themselves absorbing words from Swahili that are originally of Arabic origin. 

WHAT LANGUAGES REVEAL

There's nothing unusual about this. I think that every spoken language bears testimony to the interaction of two or more groups of people, and, over time, comes to include vocabulary from myriad other languages. Languages are, in this way, records of the history of human interaction. They are simultaneously records of the spread of ideas over land and sea. Because languages reveal the degree to which different groups interact, intermarry and influence each other, it is remarkable to me that ethnic nationalists  are able to base their claims for ethnic supremacy on the perceived purity of their languages. Does the irony of the situation escape them?

THE KENYAN CONTEXT


I remember reading an opinion piece written in that very mold a few years ago. An individual was making the case for abandoning Swahili as the national language of Kenya, pointing to its Arabic-sourced vocabulary as proof of its 'impurity,' and unsuitability for consideration as an authentic African language. The individual then declared that one of the other indigenous languages of Kenya would make a more suitable national language. I pondered on his words awhile, wondering which of these indigenous Kenyan languages would qualify as 'pure.' 

MAKING THE CASE FOR GIKUYU

Might it be Gikuyu? Consider the following words:
TABLE: Metha (Gikuyu) <- Meza (Swahili) <- Mesa (Portuguese)
BOOK: Ibuku (Gikuyu) <- Book (English)
PAINT: Rangi (Gikuyu) <- Rangi (Swahili) <- Rangi (Persian)
TIME/ HOUR: Ithaa (Gikuyu) <- Saa (Swahili) <- Sa'a (Arabic)

MAKING THE CASE FOR DHOLUO

What about Dholuo? Sure enough,Dholuo had its fare share of vocabulary borrowed from other languages, including the following:
TABLE: Mesa (Dholuo) <- Meza (Swahili) <- Mesa (Portuguese)
BOOK: Buk (Dholuo) <- Book (English)
TIME/ HOUR: Saa (Dholuo) <- Saa (Swahili) <- Sa'a (Arabic)
PLATE: San (Dholuo) <- Sahani (Swahili) <- Sahn (Arabic)
MINUTE: Dakika (Dholuo) <- Dakika (Swahili) <- Daqiqa (Arabic)

An analysis of the tens of other Indigenous Kenyan languages would have revealed similar issues. So where exactly would one draw the line, determining which language was African enough to displace Swahili? Linguistic purity is a myth. By extension, so is cultural purity. So when do we plan on revising our understandings of what it means to be Kenyan, Nigerian, or African to reflect this?


This work is licensed to Rose Kahendi under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.

In America, everything is politicized

When I read this article, I had to laugh. It brought to mind a conversation I once had with my friend, Maina, a Kenyan living in the US. We were both attending an event organized by an African American student group. Some of the African American women attending the event were dressed in the best of African couture, but there was a distinct difference between the way they carried themselves and the way a Kenyan or Tanzanian woman dressed in a similar outfit would have carried herself. I put it down to the fact that the American women probably felt self-conscious in their dresses. Maina, who had lived in the country longer, had another theory. He figured that Americans didn’t know how to simply be. Everything they took up, every cultural practice or idea they picked up from another nation, they had to repackage, politicize and turn into a movement.

I shook my head in doubt, but Maina smiled. “Believe me,” he said, “this lady in the Kitenge is probably wearing it to express political solidarity with pan-Africanism. She’s not wearing it for the reasons our moms or aunties would- because they liked the color or because the pattern flattered their figures.” I never did ask the lady in the Kitenge why she was wearing the dress. That would have been rude. But today, as I read this article on Digital Journal, I have to admit to myself that there may have been something to Maina’s words.The title of the piece is “Time magazine cover features boy,3, sucking on mother's nipple.”  And here is an excerpt from the article:

The cover of this week's Time truly shows a boy being breastfed by his mother, exposing some side-boob. Aram Grumet, 3, was asked to stand on a chair and place his mouth over his mother's breast, a practise familiar to mom Jamie Lynne Grumet. The Grumets employ attachment parenting in their household, described by Time as "extended breast-feeding, co-sleeping and 'baby wearing,' in which infants are physically attached to their parents by slings.

I come from a part of the world where women routinely breastfeed their children. It is simply what they do. Most Kenyans, female and male alike, don’t give a second thought to a breastfeeding mother in the room. I can't imagine a Kenyan photographer conceiving of breastfeeding as a controversial subject, and going out of his way to have the mother and child pose in a manner designed to provoke readers. It is true that, in Kenya, some kids still breastfeed occasionally beyond the age of 3. This is normal. They ultimately outgrow it. It's not an issue that has to be politicized.

Apparently, a different order prevails some hours West of the Greenwich Meridian. Not only is the decision to breastfeed or not to breastfeed a political stance backed by ideology, but basic childrearing practices are also labeled with special terminology. America has already given us “helicopter parenting.” Make way for “attachment parenting,” “extended breast-feeding,” “co-sleeping,” and “baby wearing.”

Seriously, it would never have occurred to women of my grandmother’s generation to come up with fancy names for these basic practices. Nor would it have occurred to them that, one day, parents would engage in battles over the legitimacy of their child-rearing ideologies in the comments sections of magazine articles and blogs on the Internet. I think Maina was right. Americans can be a tad bit too ideological about everyday matters.

This work is licensed to Rose Kahendi under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.

It's time we addressed the ethnic elephant in the room

It often seems to me that the specter of race is omnipresent in America. One cannot go anywhere or do anything without encountering some passionate debate about race or racism or being thrown into some limiting category (i.e. "You can't do xyz because black/ white folk don't do that."). As a foreign black woman living in the United States, it exhausts me. But I have to be honest with myself. It's not a uniquely American thing. In my own nation, we are obsessed with ethnicity.

I do not see any difference between racism and ethnic hatred. They are one and the same thing. Race is first-and-foremost an invention of overzealous scientists of past centuries. So when the pseudoscience is swept aside, all that actually remains to distinguish people of different 'races' is their culture. That thing we call 'race' in America should really be called 'ethnicity,' because most of the time when people talk about race, that is what they are referring to. When there is friction between people of different races living together, the roots of their hostility can often be traced to cultural misunderstandings and to competition for the same resources. Surely, the same could be said about the so-called tribal hostilities that break out between communities in myriad nations every single year.

The thing I find most interesting is the priority we tend to give to racism as the greatest evil in the world, and the comparatively underwhelming criticism we have for ethnic hatred between people of the same skin tone. If you really think about it, you will notice that the most highly popularized conflicts in the media are those that can be dressed up as racial conflicts. American conflicts that live up to the black vs white dichotomy are highly popular, as are South African ones. When we talk about Sudan, we are most interested in talking about 'Black vs Arab' than in talking about the other violent conflicts between 'Black and Black' and 'Arab and Arab.' The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has probably garnered as much media attention as it has because Israel is often imagined to be a cultural extension of Europe (notwithstanding the fact that a large proportion of Israelis are actually Jews from Arab lands) and the distinction between Israelis and Palestinians is often figured into the language of race.

Now think long and hard about this: When are Nobel Peace Prizes typically awarded to those individuals who have tried to broker peace and mutual understanding between communities at war? I am willing to bet that the most celebrated cases have involved those who have fought for peace between distinct 'racial' groups.

The reason why I am thinking about all of this is because it strikes me that we have gotten complacent about the perpetuation of inequality and discrimination of most kinds in our societies. Most of us speak passionately about the evils of racism and talk of our solidarity with the global fight against racism when living in the diaspora, but back home we are comfortable using offensive terms to objectify those who don't belong to our own ethnic groups. We don't question power structures that favor our ethnic groups or families, but are critical of those that exclude our ethnic groups and families. Furthermore, we speak passionately about our right to live anywhere in the world and to contribute to society as equals, but back home we run those who speak different languages out of our communities.

I am afraid that we have a lot of soul-searching to do. It is very easy to point to American society and its failings as far as race is concerned. However, Americans are far ahead of most of us in that they have a visible tradition of self-criticism and self-betterment. If it wasn't for that, the trans-Atlantic slave trade and plantation slavery would still be with us. I am not claiming that America is a utopia. Institutional racism continues to take a violent toll on American society. But I do want to emphasize that there are those who push back against racism and ethnic hatred in its different forms, and their voices are audible. How many of us can say the same about our nations? How many of us know a sizable number  of people in our own nations who will stand up for justice, even when it reveals inconvenient truths about their own ethnic communities? I think it is important for those of us from other nations to be more honest about acknowledging just how virulent our own homegrown hatreds are and to critique our roles in sustaining them.

This work is licensed to Rose Kahendi under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.

The delicate balance of our ecological systems

 http://nutritionafrica.blogspot.com/2012/04/delicate-balance-of-our-ecological.html

When I was in school, we were taught that the cause of malnutrition in our communities was the lack of sufficient protein in the diet. Today, I am much older, and have observed that there is a malnutrition epidemic in the Lake Victoria region in Kenya where fish, a rich source of protein, is supposed to be a staple. At first, I thought this was a uniquely Kenyan problem. Then I saw Hubert Sauper's documentary, Darwin's Nightmare. Apparently, a similar problem exists in the Lake Victoria region of Tanzania.

The film demonstrates how commercial fish harvesting over the years has exhausted the fishing stock in Lake Victoria, creating an ecological crisis. The Nile Perch fillets harvested from the Lake are processed then transported by commercial aircraft to Europe. The same aircraft rarely arrive in Tanzania empty. In fact, they usually bear arms that are then off-loaded under the cover of darkness. So we have a situation whereby Europe is enjoying fish fillets from Lake Victoria while the locals feed on the remains of the processed fish: skeletons from which the fish fillets have been removed. In the meantime, other locals are killed by the buyers of the illicit firearms when violence erupts in the region.

After watching Sawyer's documentary, I looked into the history of the ecological crisis in the lake region. According to available information the Nile Perch are an alien species of fish, which was introduced into the lake in the 1960s, just before Kenya became independent. Over the years, this alien species had decimated local fish stocks by predating on indigenous fish species. Thus, an ecological imbalance has resulted in the lake.

The locals used to subsist on the lake's indigenous food species. However, these have been depleted by the Nile Perch. In the meantime, the most substantial protein source in their diet is the waste from the Nile Perch processing factory:  Nile Perch remains. Thus, they live on a diet deficient in the nutrients that they need. The people in the region have no means to secure separate sources of vitamin A and omega 3 fatty acids. They  do not thrive. Hence poverty, malnutrition and disease are common in the region. As if this is not enough, Lake Victoria is considered to be one of the large fresh water lakes whose future survival is threatened.

For long, residents of the Lake Victoria region have complained about the exhausted fish stock in the lake. There has been little if any response from the sitting governments. A few years ago, I remember reading newspaper reports that indicated that Monsanto was already in the region, and that the introduction of other genetically modified species in the region was a possibility. In some areas, the locals were uprooted from their ancestral land to facilitate these 'innovative projects'. Their only compensation was a promise of maize supplies to subsist on every harvest season.  Maize based diets are apparently at the root of chronic malnutrition in the region. So that news did not bode well for Lake Victoria region's people, whose nutritional status is already declining .

When I read reports of this kind about environmental degradation and the development of supposedly superior species for human consumption anywhere in the world, I often wonder how local leadership fits into the picture. How do governments decide that the efforts of scientists and multinational corporations are for the good of their people? Is there a rigorous effort to look into the pros and cons of the proposed projects? Does money change hands? Are the locals informed about the details of the deals? How about the rights of other nations? In the case of Lake Victoria, which is a resource shared by 3 countries, how do the decisions made by one nation impact the other 2? Most importantly, what is the long-term impact of foreign species and GMOs (genetically modified organisms) on the environment and on the people?

Concerned people need to start taking these questions more seriously and thinking about the legacy are we leaving our children.