Windows and mirrors



Chang'ombe Primary School, Children's Book Project Burt Award Readings
Christine Earnshaw (courtesy CODE)

In previous posts I’ve referred to the importance of people having and hearing stories that are their own – that reflect their realities and relate their lives – rather than having others tell stories about them.

Mkama Mwijarubi and Asungushe Kayombo are Tanzanian authors who are filling a gap in the availability of such stories. Both have recently written novels for young people, novels written in English that have locally-relevant settings and characters.

The need for English language books for young adults may not seem obvious, but in many Anglophone African countries, students start school using local languages but switch to English in later elementary or early high school. This shift to a new language is made more challenging if interesting reading material isn’t easily available. (Think about what you wanted to read at that age.) Young people need stories that engage them, and characters and settings they can relate to, where they can see themselves and their preoccupations reflected. Non-fiction alone, or fiction set in England or North America, just aren’t sufficient.

Asungushe Kayombo’s book, The Best is Yet to Come, is the story of Daima, a young woman who escapes her strict home in order to achieve her dream of attending secondary school. This isn’t a sugar-coated tale, though. Daima makes her way through complex relationships and sometimes disturbing situations, experiencing the powerlessness of a child in an adult world but also the power of perseverance and of friendship.

Mkama Mwijarubi’s novel, Treeland: the Land of Laughter, creates a fantasy land, Treeland, “where trees grow and people laugh.” Treeland’s King Majabe and his daughter, Princess Zuri, must come to grips with a changing world as well as with each other. Treeland is told simply, but its characters and the challenges they face are intricate. The novel brings insights into what it means to respect tradition yet still find a new path.

Mwijarubi and Kayombo have been able to publish their young adult fiction with the help of some African organizations and a Canadian program that supports local book publishing. Mwijaribui, Kayombo and several other writers in Tanzania, Ghana, Ethiopia and Kenya are recipients of Burt Awards for African Literature. The Burt Award is sponsored by CODE, a Canadian non-profit organisation that promotes children’s learning by supporting book publishing, libraries and teacher training in Africa and the Caribbean. The Award is named for and funded by Bill Burt, a Canadian who noticed a lack of engaging books for young people while travelling with CODE to Africa in 2007. He and CODE created the Burt Award to support local authors and publishers to produce and distribute English-language books that are meaningful to young readers in Africa and that can get them enthusiastic about reading.

Local partners – the Children’s Book Project for Tanzania, the Ghana Book Trust, CODE-Ethiopia and the National Book Development Council of Kenya – manage the Awards. In Tanzania, the Children’s Book Project, which received a UNESCO International Literacy Award in 2007 for its local language publishing work, published Mwijarubi and Kayombo’s books.

To be considered for Burt Awards, authors submit manuscripts that are dramatic, humorous or suspenseful, have strong characters, and deal with the social challenges that young people face. A 6-member jury of experts in literature, linguistics and publishing selects the winning stories. With the Awards, everybody benefits: authors receive cash prizes and a publishing contract, CODE and its partners distribute several thousand copies of each book to schools and libraries, and the publishers sell the books commercially.

The International Board for Books for Youth (IBBY)-Canada, which promotes access to children’s books in Canada and internationally, also supports the Burt Award by contributing jurors and co-facilitating writing workshops for authors. Says Scott Walter, CODE's Executive Director, of the partnership, "Our two organizations share a common belief in the power of reading to transform people's lives. We know that children need windows into other worlds and mirrors that reflect their own experience. We recognize the importance of offering children access to engaging, high quality, locally written books and share an understanding of the continuum of writers and illustrators, publishers, libraries, book distributors and teachers in getting stories told -- and books produced and connected with their readers."

The Best is Yet To Come is the first novel for Asungushe Kayombo, a health professional with degrees in medicine and public health. Treeland: the Land of Laughter is the second children’s book by Mkama Mwijarubi, who has a diploma in journalism and a business degree.

Additional Burt Award winners are listed at http://www.codecan.org/get-involved/burt-award. More information on CODE can be found at http://www.codecan.org/. CODE is looking into making the books available in Canada – which would be welcome for those of us interested in accessing engaging African stories in other parts of the world.

Fountain of knowledge

Fountain of Knowledge, University of Nairobi

One of the people who’s had a big influence on my understanding of Africa is Kabiru Kinyanjui.

Kabiru Kinyanjui is a Kenyan education specialist, academic and consultant. He’s written and advised on politics, social policy, conflict and peace, civil society and development – among other things. He’s widely known in the region in these fields, and highly respected.

His bio is impressive: a degree in law, history and sociology from the University of East Africa (Dar es Salaam), and a masters and doctorate from Harvard. He’s authored numerous books and articles, and he taught for many years at the University of Nairobi and was Director of its Institute for Development Studies. He’s been a visiting professor at universities in North America, has served as consultant to several international organisations, and been a commentator on political issues (including for the Voice of America following President Obama’s election).

Book cover, African Perspectives on Development,
edited by Uli Himmelstrand, Kabiru Kinyanjui and Edward Mburugu

Kabiru Kinyanjui has played high-profile roles in education in Kenya, serving as the Chairman of the Public Universities Inspection Board that made recommendations on transforming higher education in Kenya, and as Chairman of the Board of the Kenya National Examinations Council. He’s also been on the boards of for-profit and social enterprises including the K-Rep Group, Juhidi Kilimo and the Family Bank.

He helped establish the Nairobi Peace Initiative-Africa, and serves as Chair of its Board. The Nairobi Peace Initiative is an organisation that seeks to transform conflicts and build peace in Africa, by engaging in discussion and in mediation, reconciliation, training and strategy development in countries affected by conflict.

I worked with Kabiru Kinyanjui for several years in the 1990s, when we were both at the International Development Research Centre. He was based in Nairobi, I in Ottawa, but we collaborated frequently. He was senior to me in education and experience but always treated me like an equal.

Looking back, I see that he probably had infinite patience with me. His knowledge of the region, of the diversity of cultures, the history of countries, and the nuances of national and local politics was astonishing. Mine was, let’s say, emerging. It was a privilege to see him interact with peers, and with younger scholars in the region, who clearly looked up to him. He is one of those people whom you could truly call wise – and kind, and principled.

One day, while on a visit to projects in the region, Prof. Kinyanjui and I stopped to watch the television news between meetings. A report came on about global disease patterns and life expectancy. We watched as the life expectancies for our respective countries of birth flashed on the screen. I don’t recall the exact numbers but it was something like 80 for me and 55 for him. The realisation hit: I had about 45 years to go before I reached mine, and he would have been close to his.

The unfairness of it still gets to me. There’s no justification for such inequity. Injustice is a feature of our world, but when it hits close to home, it’s particularly hard to ignore.

But, here we are. I think about Prof. Kinyanjui’s commitment to education and to peace, and his patience, and I smile.

Stories

Sometimes a human story can tell us more than a whole page of statistics about what’s going on in the world.

Tsitsi Dangarembga / Photo courtesy
http://www.cca.ukzn.ac.za/images/tow/TOW2007/bios/Dangarembga.htm

One storyteller is Tsitsi Dangarembga. A novelist and filmmaker, she portrays the lives of people, family relationships and women’s situations in Zimbabwean society with candour and sharpness. Dangarembga’s novel Nervous Conditions (1988) and her films Neria (1993) and Everyone’s Child (1996) have blazed a trail in Zimbabwean literature and cinema.

I had the opportunity to see Everyone’s Child in Harare shortly after it was released. The film tells the difficult story of four children whose parents have died of AIDS, and underlines the value of community support.



Tsitsi Dangarembga continues to make films and her novel The Book of Not came out in 2006. She founded the International Images Film Festival for Women in Harare in 2002. In early 2010 Dangarembga was appointed portfolio Secretary for Education for the Movement for Democratic Change - Mutambara in Zimbabwe.

Statistics? Stories? I could tell you that the UN’s just-released figures on HIV/AIDS say that 22.5 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa are living with HIV, including 2.3 million children under 15 years old. Or that although new infections are declining in many countries, 1.8 million people were newly infected last year, or that 1.3 million people in Africa died of AIDS in 2009.

Or, I could suggest that you listen to their stories.

The Stephen Lewis Foundation has information about the organisations it supports that are working to strengthen communities dealing with HIV/AIDS. (They can tell you the stories better than I can.)

One more story before I go. This one is a real-life story about how one community in Kenya is supporting its members coping with HIV/AIDS. (The video features Francis Muiruri, the Nyeri District Coordinator of the Kenya Network of Women with AIDS, and was written, filmed and edited by a Canadian, the multi-talented Jasmine Osiowy, and narrated by educator extraordinaire Rod Osiowy, for the College of the Rockies in Cranbrook, Canada.)

"thoughts change"

I wanted to feature a poet in today's post – but when it came to choosing someone, well, it wasn’t easy.

I decided to put the spotlight on Njeri Wangari. She’s a Kenyan poet and performer. She’s also a promoter of poetry and other art forms, a blogger and an IT and social media specialist.

Her blog is Kenyanpoet – A Kenyan Artistic Space. She started Kenyanpoet as a place to publish her own poetry, but also offers it as a venue for other Kenyan poets to be published online. As well as poetry, her site features music and musicians, artists, art events, poetry venues, theatre, reviews, guides to spoken word and poetry performing, and more.

Her own poetry covers a wide range of topics, from culture and identity to human rights, gender, poverty, technology and day-to-day life. She regularly performs her poems, but a volume of them has been published as Mines & Mind Fields: My Spoken Words. Her poems are in English, Kiswahili, Sheng and Gĩkũyũ. She's been writing poetry since 2004 and first performed in 2007.

Wangari also writes for Global Voices Online. There she's written about, for example, African poems written for 2009 World AIDS Day, and Nairobi as a hub for technology events. Her articles also appear at Conversations for A Better World.

Here she performs in Nairobi in September:
　

"A literary and social activist"

I set out to write this blog as a fundraiser for the Stephen Lewis Foundation’s A Dare to Remember campaign, thinking that a month would be a long time. Now that I have just over a week left of blogging every day for a month, I’m wondering how I can possibly cover everything I'd like to. There are so many people who are telling us stories of Africa, and suggesting to us the promise of Africa.

So I’ll just start with one person: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o.

Photos courtesy of http://www.ngugiwathiongo.com/

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o is one of Africa’s most well-known writers -- his biography would fill up more than one blog post.



He’s an internationally celebrated Kenyan novelist, essayist, theorist, playwright, journalist, editor, academic and activist. He is currently Distinguished Professor of the Departments of Comparative Literature and English at the University of California, Irvine.

His first three novels, Weep Not Child, The River Between and A Grain of Wheat, are classics. He has published several volumes of literary essays and numerous other novels, short stories and children's books.

wa Thiong'o's books are literary achievements, but they are also challenges. His novel Petals of Blood, according to his website biography, "painted a harsh and unsparing picture of life in neo-colonial Kenya," and his play, Ngaahika Ndeenda (I Will Marry When I Want), written with Ngugi wa Mirii in "the language of people’s daily lives," was "sharply critical of the inequalities and injustices of Kenyan society." After its publication in 1977, wa Thiong’o was arrested by Kenyan authorities and imprisoned without charge until 1978.

While in prison, he made the decision to write only in Kikuyu, his first language, rather than English, even though he was already a well-known and influential writer in English.

From then, his message has consistently been the necessity of writing in African languages. He addressed this in Decolonising the Mind (1984), for example, and in Something Torn and New: An African Renaissance (2009), in which he writes about Africa's "dismemberment" through colonisation during which local languages were suppressed, and the need to reclaim local languages in order to "re-member Africa."

In a speech at the 6th Pan-African Reading For All Conference in 2009, wa Thiong’o remarked that throughout the world, colonisers have replaced local languages with their own. As a result, ..."a handful of western languages…dominate in the production and dissemination of ideas; they dominate in publishing and distribution and consumption of knowledge; they control the flow of ideas. Intellectuals who come from the supposedly lesser languages find that, to be visible globally, they must produce and store ideas in Western European languages, English mostly. In the case of most intellectuals from Africa and Asia, they become visible on the world stage but simultaneously invisible in their own cultures and languages. Global visibility comes at the price of local or regional invisibility."

wa Thiong'o continues: "The death of any language is the loss of knowledge contained in that language. The weakening of any language is the weakening of its knowledge-producing potential. It is a human loss…. Each language, no matter how small, contains the best knowledge of its immediate environment: The plants and their properties, for instance. Language is the primary computer with a natural hard drive."

For wa Thiong'o, "To know one’s language, whatever that language is, and add others to it, is empowerment. But to know all the other languages while ignorant of one’s own is slavery."

wa Thiong'o published Wizard of the Crow in 2006 (a translation of his novel Murogi wa Kagogo), and Dreams in a Time of War in 2010. He also created and edits the Kikuyu language journal Mutiiri, and continues to write and speak internationally. His website is http://www.ngugiwathiongo.com/.

Ingenuity

Photo courtesy Maker Faire Africa
http://www.flickr.com/photos/53374366@N07/4941118497/in/pool-1205703@N23/

Technological innovation is a tricky thing. Often a technology seems great at first, but then when it’s used it has unintended consequences, or doesn't work well in a particular setting. (Like PlayPumps – merry-go-rounds that pump clean water when kids turn them – seemed like a great idea but many that were installed in Sub-Saharan Africa ended up not being used or maintained.)

It’s also easy to put hope in technology rather than address the root cause of problems like inequity or lack of access to resources.

Still, technological innovation can be a good thing. (Aren’t I sitting here with my laptop creating a blog that you’re reading online?)

So in today’s post I thought I’d feature a few of the many people in Sub-Saharan Africa who are innovating and creating. Rather than selecting one or two, I’m going to point to some links and you can go from there. (Today I’ve decided to talk less and let others do the explaining.) So here’s a start – consider this the tip of a very big iceberg:

Afrigadget

Afrigadget is a website and blog dedicated to showcasing technologies developed in Africa. Half a dozen editors and contributors from several countries post stories about innovations like biogas systems, or working radios built from scrap parts. Here’s another example, of products made from used flipflops (sandals):

Photo courtesy Afrigadget
http://twitpic.com/2ixo47

Maker Faire Africa

This event features "innovations, inventions and initiatives [that] can be brought to life, supported, amplified, propagated etc." Check out the numerous photos and videos, like these ones:

Photo courtesy Maker Faire Africa
http://www.flickr.com/photos/53374366@N07/4941854212/in/pool-1205703@N23/



Photo courtesy Maker Faire Africa
 http://www.flickr.com/photos/53374366@N07/4941192601/in/pool-1205703@N23/



There are many more blogs and sites with links to innovators but I thought I’d leave you with just one more for now. This is William Kamkwamba, who at 14 developed a windmill from scrap parts for his family’s farm in Malawi (there's lots more about him on the web or in this article from Africa News):

"Bonga story yako"

Thanks to Ory Okolloh’s blog Kenyan Pundit, which I referred to in yesterday’s post, I found out about Voice of Kibera.

Kibera is an informal settlement within Nairobi, Kenya. Kibera is often billed as "Africa’s largest slum." Several hundred thousand people are estimated to reside there. Kibera is frequently associated with poverty, overcrowding and violence. We tend to see images like this:


Kibera, Kenya / Photo by Valter Campanato/ABr [CC-BY-2.5-br (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/br/deed.en)],
via Wikimedia Commons

and this: 

Children and open sewer in Kibera / Photo by hris1johnson (Kibera)
[CC-BY-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)],
via Wikimedia Commons


Voice of Kibera presents an alternative perspective. On the Voice of Kibera site, ordinary citizens collect and post news and information about their community. People can add events, information about local businesses and organisations, problems they’re having, and where to find health and other services. They can do so using SMS or text messaging, or on the web. Voice of Kibera includes media reports from community sources such as Kibera Journal and Pamoja FM community radio. People can also add photos and video. They contribute information that is relevant to them, and what is posted is public, open and shared.

Voice of Kibera uses the Ushahidi platform that Ory Okolloh and others developed and that has been used around the world (in the wake of the Haiti earthquake and Pakistan flooding, for example) to aggregrate and map crucial information for residents.

Voice of Kibera is run by an editorial board with representatives from several community organisations along with technical advisors. Members include Douglas Namale, a journalist and editor at the Kibera Journal and a mapper with Map Kibera; Sande Wycliffe, a community leader; Fredrick Bary, member of a community youth group; Josphat Keya, program coordinator at the Hot Sun Foundation, a charitable trust based in Kibera; and Gerry Omondi, deputy administrator with a women's organisation called Mchanganyiko.

Voice of Kibera is an initiative of Map Kibera, a project begun by Erica Hagen and Mikel Maron of GroundTruth Initiative in 2009. Their rationale was that although Kibera has been frequently studied and many development projects have been undertaken there, the information collected by outside organisations rarely makes it back to the community. Kibera, moreover, appeared on government maps as a forest, or as empty space on other public maps.

Young people residing in Kibera initially mapped the area, then entered the information into open-source software called OpenStreetMap, a global map to which anyone can contribute geographic data. Map Kibera mapped locations of roads, health clinics, schools, latrines, water sources, shops, and then began to include other data such as locations of flooding, or information about the quality of health services.

Voice of Kibera acknowledges the challenges of reaching and meeting the needs of the community through its initiative. But it’s already replacing images of poverty and helplessness with alternatives such as these:

Photo courtesy mapkibera
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mapkibera/4763273154/in/photostream/



Photo courtesy mapkibera
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mapkibera/4762640019/ mapkibera photostream



Shimalasha Self-help Group
Photo courtesy mapkibera
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mapkibera/4760112768/in/photostream/

Voice of Kibera is one example of people taking control of how they are portrayed, and defining their own identities. In other informal settlements in sub-Saharan Africa, people are organising themselves to create and tell their own stories.

Nairobi_Kibera / Photo by Schreibkraft (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0
(www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

"Taking an interest in the individual"

Ory Okolloh
By http://www.flickr.com/photos/dci/ (http://www.flickr.com/photos/dci/243722739/) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Ory Okolloh might surprise you. She’s a Kenyan activist, and a Harvard-trained corporate lawyer. She’s a blogger and a connector. She’s known for her innovative approaches to crowdsourcing information – but also has words of wisdom about making the world a better place by "taking an interest in the individual."

Okolloh, along with a fellow Kenyan, runs a website called Mzalendo: Eye on Kenyan Parliament. What Mzalendo ("patriot" in Swahili) does is monitor Kenya’s Members of Parliament. It posts information about MPs including their comments in Parliament, the questions they ask, and which Ministries are asked questions. Citizens can submit information on their constituencies. Mzalendo aims to hold Kenyan MPs accountable, and to engage citizens, especially young people, in politics. According to the site creators, "We feel that Kenyans not only have ‘a right to know’ but also need to take a more active role in determining their country’s role – this is our effort to do more than just complain about how things are not working in Kenya."

Okolloh also co-founded Ushahidi ("testimony" in Swahili) with four other Kenyan bloggers. Ushahidi mapped post-election violence in Kenya in 2008-2009, using information coming from people by text message, e-mail and the web. Ushahidi became an important information source particularly when local media reports were unavailable.

The founders of Ushahidi soon realised that the platform would be useful elsewhere. Ushahidi became an open source platform for collecting and mapping information. The software has been used to help earthquake victims in Haiti; to monitor violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Africa and Gaza; to track the availability of pharmaceuticals in Kenya, Uganda, Malawi and Zambia; to map flooding in Pakistan; to monitor elections in Mexico and India; and to organise snow removal in Washington, DC.

Ory Okolloh also blogs at Kenyan Pundit. Check out, for example, her post on Mapping Kibera (and also the list of Kenyan and other African blogs).

I'll leave you with Okolloh's presentation at TEDAfrica in 2007 about herself and her perspective:

"Pan-African voices"

Satellite photo of Africa: NASA

Here in North America, it’s not always easy to get news about Africa. There’s the occasional article in the local paper, on TV or radio. Then there’s the internet, which gives us a little more: BBC News Africa, allAfrica.com, and even a wide range of African newspapers. But how to get a sense, from a critical perspective, of what’s happening on the continent?

One option is Pambazuka News. Pambazuka News is a website and weekly newsletter that presents news perspectives from across Africa. It provides analyses of current events by academics, social activists, writers, bloggers and other commentators. But Pambazuka News is also much more. It’s a network with a couple of thousand members, and an advocacy organisation for social justice and human rights.

Every week, Pambazuka News publishes something like 20-30 articles and dozens of links to other sites. On the Pambazuka website, as well as news you’ll find political cartoons, poetry, radio dramas, action alerts, e-newsletters, podcasts, videocasts, job announcements, training materials, distance learning courses, resources for African podcasters and filmmakers – and more.

Over 2,500 authors contribute to Pambazuka News, and half a million unique visitors have been to the open-access site, with over 25,000 subscribers to the newsletter. Pambazuka News is published in English, French and Portuguese. It also actively uses social media.

Pambazuka Press publishes books on social justice, human rights and politics. Recent titles include African Women Writing Resistance: An Anthology of Contemporary Voices; Global History: A View From the South (by Samir Amin); SMS Uprising: Mobile Activism in Africa; and Chinese and African Perspectives on China in Africa.

"Pambazuka" is a Kiswahili word meaning the dawn or to arise. Pambazuka News is an alternative to conventional news sources, describing itself as "a platform for voices that challenge mainstream perceptions and biases….It fosters a community of African citizens who hold their governments to account, supports pan-African campaigns for human rights and social justice, and enables African women and marginalised groups to develop their own blogs, podcasts and mobile phone campaigns."

Pambazuka News has won numerous awards: it was voted several times as one of PoliticsOnline/World e-Democracy Forum’s "Top 10 sites that are changing the world of internet and politics." It also won a Highway Africa award for the innovative use of new media by a non-profit, as well as several other awards for using technology for advocacy and human benefit.

Pambazuka News is produced by Fahamu - Networks For Social Justice -- Fahamu meaning 'understanding' or 'consciousness' in Kiswahili. Fahamu strengthens human rights and social justice movements through use of information and communications technologies, stimulating discussion and debate, publishing news and information, and developing and delivering education courses. Fahamu and Pambazuka News are based in Oxford, Cape Town, Nairobi and Dakar.

Pambazuka News and Fahamu were created by Firoze Manji, a Kenyan who has worked in development, social justice, human rights and health. Manji is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Pambazuka News. He was the Founding Executive Director of Fahamu, where he was succeeded this year by Hakim Abbas. Before Fahamu, Manji worked as Africa program director for Amnesty International, CEO for the Aga Khan Foundation (UK), and regional representative for health sciences in Eastern and Southern Africa for the International Development Research Centre (IDRC). He has served on various international advisory and steering boards, is a Visiting Fellow in International Human Rights at Kellogg College, University of Oxford, and has published several books. In addition to his PhD and MSc from the University of London, he has a degree in dentistry from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

I had the privilege of working with Firoze Manji quite a few years ago, when we were both at IDRC. I saw Pambazuka grow from an idea to the pan-African movement it is now, and can attest to Firoze Manji’s remarkable ability to make things happen. He first saw a need for an information and training service for human rights and social justice organisations. Pambazuka began as an email newsletter, then became both a disseminator and a creator of content through its website and other materials. Now, it's a force that is enabling "Pan-African voices for freedom and justice" to be heard around the world.

Planting Ideas

Wangari Maathai, Kenya, October 2004
Photo by Mia MacDonald

It’s 10:30 at night and I have until midnight to write today’s post. That’s the deal I made with myself – to write one blog post every day to raise funds for the Stephen Lewis Foundation.

Well, the day is almost over and all I can think of is the immensity of the task I set for myself. What was I thinking, that I could even scratch the surface of African insight? Every topic I’ve thought of today is complex, every person on my list of people to write about has such significant contributions that I don’t see how I can do them justice.

But, that’s the reason for doing A Dare To Remember, I guess. Pushing oneself, doing what seems "impossible".

So, I thought I’d go back to the source. Back to my first encounters with the work of people that led me to new ways of seeing, to new possibilities.

Back to Wangari Maathai.

Wangari Maathai, environmental and political activist, and winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize. The first African woman recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, in fact. And the first woman to earn a PhD in East and Central Africa (in 1971) and to head a university department in Kenya (the Department of Veterinary Anatomy at the University of Nairobi, in 1976). And founder of the Green Belt Movement.

I first learned about Wangari Maathai when I was doing graduate studies on social aspects of agriculture and forestry in Sub-Saharan Africa. I learned about the Green Belt Movement, a non-profit organisation which Maathai started in Kenya in 1997. Then, it was a grassroots organisation that promoted tree planting. It became a pan-African movement, and then a global one.

The Green Belt Movement continues to promote environmental protection but in doing so also advocates for human rights, democracy and peace. By planting trees -- over 40 million across Africa so far – the Movement has restored forests and reduced erosion. Moreover, according to the Green Belt Movement, "hundreds of thousands of women and their families are standing up for their rights and those of their communities and so are living healthier, more productive lives."



Wangari Maathai’s accomplishments are astounding. She has won a long list of international awards, and sits on numerous international committees and boards. She served in Kenya’s parliament and as Assistant Minister for Environment and Natural Resources from 2003-2007. In 2005, Time Magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world. In 2006, she founded the Nobel Women’s Initiative with several other Nobel Peace Laureates.

She’s written several books, including Replenishing the Earth: Spiritual Values for Healing Ourselves and the World (2010), The Challenge for Africa (2009), Unbowed: A Memoir (2006), and The Green Belt Movement: Sharing the Approach and the Experience (2003). She continues to publish articles and to speak on environmental issues.

See what I mean by not being able to do justice to a person's contributions?

"The planting of trees is the planting of ideas. By starting with the simple act of planting a tree, we give hope to ourselves and to future generations." – Wangari Maathai


Wangari Maathai planting a tree at
the Outspan Hotel, Nyeri, Kenya to mark
the launch of her autobiography,Unbowed
Photo by Wanjira Mathai, 2006
  

Reversals

Photo: Tidal Basin, Washington, DC  Credit: Destination DC

When I think about the world and how we view and deal with its problems, I often think about two people I got to know through my work a few years ago.

One is Mohamed Halfani. He’s a Tanzanian who was at the University of Dar es Salaam before moving to leadership roles with global organisations, most recently the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (UN-HABITAT) in Nairobi. The other is Joyce Malombe. She’s a Kenyan formerly at the University of Nairobi who's worked at the World Bank and other international, academic and philanthropic organisations.

I admire these two for several reasons, but I want to mention in particular their contributions as visiting scholars at the Washington, DC-based Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars. They were part of an International Working Group at the Centre’s Comparative Urban Studies Project in the late 1990s. Their innovative task was to examine and help local leaders solve the serious urban problems facing Washington, DC.

So often the way the world works is that experts from northern, developed countries arrive to analyse and solve the issues facing developing countries. It doesn’t usually work the other way around – but it could. You see, both Joyce Malombe and Mohamed Halfani are internationally-recognised experts on urban development, each with many years of experience analysing cities, identifying solutions, and advising national governments and international organisations.

In Washington, DC, Mohamed Halfani looked at an aspect of urban governance which had been neglected: the role of civic organisations and their relationship to the elected city government and federal administration. Halfani found that vibrant community and neighbourhood associations had achieved a great deal, especially compared to inefficient and mismanaged local governments. But he also found their potential was constrained by prohibitions on political advocacy, financial dependency on governments, and other factors.

Joyce Malombe examined poverty in Washington, DC and the federal, local government and non-profit programs to address it. She found that these programs were insufficient and mainly designed to deal with short-term problems rather than the complex causes that kept people in poverty. She also noted a lack of community involvement in policies and programs, and a history of power struggles between levels of government, exacerbated by a context of racial and social tensions, that inhibited addressing poverty.

Malombe's and Halfani's analyses gave a fresh perspective on Washington's persistent problems, perhaps one that could only have come from their experience with developing country cities. (Halfani’s paper, "Local Dynamism and the Governance of Washington, D.C.: A Study on the Scope of Civil Society-State Engagement" and Malombe’s paper, "State and Local Approaches to Poverty in Washington, D.C." are available at www.wilsoncenter.org.)

"How to Write About Africa"

Binyavanga Wainaina is a Kenyan writer. I first came across his work in Granta magazine’s issue on "The View from Africa" (92), in an article titled "How to Write About Africa."

"How to Write About Africa" is a satirical piece written as if providing advice to writers on everything from what words to use in titles (‘Africa,’ ‘Darkness’ or ‘Safari’) to what types of characters to depict (no well-adjusted Africans, always one Starving African), to how to present Africa (always as a country, not a continent).

I can’t do the article justice without quoting extensively from it but fortunately you can check it out at http://www.granta.com/Magazine/92/How-to-Write-about-Africa/Page-1.

Wainaina’s article speaks to the stereotypes about Africa and Africans that persist in North American and European media. (If you don’t think this is so, just scan a daily newspaper or news website and see what you find.)

I happily discovered that Wainaina’s writing has appeared elsewhere. His piece "Nairobi: Inventing a City" was published in National Geographic in September 2005. It’s a complex portrayal of a dynamic city and its people. He’s also had articles in the South African Mail and Guardian, The East African, the Sunday Times (South Africa), The Guardian (UK), and The New York Times, among others.

Wainaina is a founding editor of Kwani?, a Kenyan literary magazine. He won the 2002 Caine Prize for African Writing for his story "Discovering Home," and eloquently declined a 2007 "Young Global Leader" award from the World Economic Forum. He has had several blog sites and also writes on African cuisines.