Mechanics

Nairobi, Kenya August 2005
I am interested in mechanics because every time I leave town there is sure to be a car story involving a breakdown. An ingenious mechanic somewhere always finds a way to get the car back on the road. When I made this photograph I saw something poetic about the scene, the camaraderie of the men working, a pride in a job well done, a challenge met. The greys and browns present an excellent palette and good tonal quality, and the interaction of man and machine gives a sculpted look to the image.

UZIMA Foundation

UZIMA Foundation was registered in Kenya in 1995 as a charitable trust and is now also a registered NGO to work in Kenya, Africa and beyond. UZIMA Foundation recognizes and appreciates the potential and assets inherent in young people; among them innovative spirit, enthusiasm, energy, openness, fair play, courage and optimism.

UZIMA Foundation’s mission is to create social space and promote an enabling environment for Youth Empowerment that facilitates access to decision-making opportunities for young women and men, for holistic improvement of the quality of their lives and that of their communities. The modality through which UZIMA Foundation addresses this mission is the UZIMA Youth group. By December 2005, there were over 100 UZIMA youth groups with over 20,000 members.

UZIMA Foundation envisions informed, skilled and healthy young women and men in Africa proactively working with experienced people to improve the quality of their lives in ways that contribute to creating an environment for sustainable development in their communities and the nation in the context of gender equity.

UZIMA Foundation is playing an active role in the efforts to restore peace in Kenyan communities following the violence that rocked all corners of the country following the announcement of the 2007 presidential election results which were released after a flawed vote tallying processes.. UZIMA Foundation is uniquely placed for this work for a variety of reasons.

1. UZIMA Foundation is a youth based youth-serving organisation focusing on youth empowerment that stimulates young men and women to define, plan for and act to experience improved quality life for themselves and their communities. As most of the violence is being perpetrated by young men, albeit on the instructions of older men, UZIMA youth can relate directly to the concerns and attitudes of those perpetrating the violence and thus can help identify approaches which have a higher chance of succeeding.
2. UZIMA Foundation, in its more than 10 years of existence, has always highlighted the importance of having positive relationships between UZIMA youth and their families and communities. UZIMA Foundation has always worked with the youth in their communities. This means that UZIMA Foundation is deeply embedded in many of the communities which have been affected by the violence. Rather than having to start form scratch to build up effective relationships through which to work, UZIMA is already in a position of trust in many of the affected communities because of the work it has been carrying out for over 10 years.
3. UZIMA Foundation has been running a very successful Alternative to Violence Programme (AVP) for the last 8 years. UZIMA Foundation members have travelled as far as Rwanda and the Middle East to assist in peace efforts in communities rocked with violence. This training and international exposure means that UZIMA Foundation as an organisation has the skills, expertise and experience to carry out effective peace and reconciliation work in communities shaken by violence.
4. UZIMA Foundation, as a national home grown Kenyan foundation active in many parts of the country and with a leadership drawn from all over Kenya, understands the concerns, fears and angers of local communities while retaining a national “big picture” outlook on the crisis.

Contact details

Executive Director: Mrs. Malesi Kinaro

Telephone: +254.20.2726911
Physical + mailing address:
32/203 Mbaruk Road, Golf Course
P.O. Box 4356 – 00200
Nairobi, Kenya

Email: info [@] uzimafoundation.org
Website: http://uzimafoundation.org/

Mildred Awiti

Super Model. Role Model. Businesswoman. Civic Leader. Corporate Executive. Mother. Daughter. Friend. Mildred Awiti is, there is no other way to put it, Kenya-Fabulous. She is just as beautiful, now, as she was when she appeared on a 1983 VIVA magazine cover, sensuously proclaiming African Heritage’s Kenya-fusion hip appeal. Yet, many years later, Mildred Awiti, Kenya’s first and still-favourite super-model is much more than just a very pretty face connected to very long legs by a sylph-like torso. She is, in short, a woman of much substance.

In 1981 she told Nairobi’s Sunday Standard that fashion was a form of artistic self-expression and creativity to which all Kenyan women had a right; and that women, no matter how beautiful and model-worthy, needed to pursue their educational goals as far as they could. It is now 2008, and her core belief in this imperative for Kenyan women’s self-sufficiency, creativity, self-determination and dignity has not changed.

In fact she has expanded this creed into her work life. Mildred Awiti now trains Kenyans who, in a variety of capacities, represent Kenya in the international arena. Her job is to make sure that they know how to present themselves as appropriate emissaries of the Kenyan people.

“It’s the little things,” Mildred says of her training sessions, “that can make the difference. Anybody representing Kenya on the global stage, from boardrooms to classrooms to the performance stage and the track and field event, must know that for many people, he or she is their first encounter with Kenya. It is important how we behave in these contexts—the national reputation rests on it.” Ms. Awiti’s challenge is to ensure that this Kenyan reputation is protected and preserved. She trains executives, civil servants, athletes, journalists, models, diplomats, and any others likely to be seen by global eyes as “the image of Kenya.” She shows them how to carry and conduct themselves in ways consistent with global standards of courtesy, etiquette and interaction, and Kenyan inflections of hospitality, multiculturalism and our hard-working ethos. In one way or another, Mildred Awiti is still making Kenyans look good. The only difference is that now she has moved, from looking good by herself, to helping all the rest of us look good as well.

Even though her own talent as a model was discovered young, and she was already working as a professional model while still a teenager in the 1970s, Mildred Awiti not only completed her course of study at the Kenya High School, but also went on to study at Nairobi University, emerging with a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and Literature. She has further credentials from Cornell University, LINTAS International, Tack International and Development Dimensions International. In the years since her modelling days, she has worked as an executive in diverse corporate fields, from Human Resources to Marketing and Communications.

The moral authority she has acquired over her years as an unofficial global good-will ambassador for Kenya sits lightly on her shoulders, especially when she is at ease in the Nairobi home she shares with her two adopted children and one natural son, an exuberantly friendly dog, and the continuously shifting assortments of friends, neighbour’s children, relatives and acquaintances milling amongst the colourful flowers of her garden. She is so eager to promote others that she forgets to talk about herself, instead speaking excitedly of a woman who has started an HIV-orphans home, another who has emerged as a grassroots leader in an impoverished urban area, yet another who has started her own modelling agency, another who has devised Kenya’s most innovative software technology services, and most compellingly, of her own mother. The sentiment is clearly returned: Mildred Awiti’s mother has saved every photograph, every cover, every publicity shot that her beautiful daughter has ever been in, and yet Mildred’s looks were never the most important thing about her to her mother, and therefore were never the most important thing to Mildred herself.

On her appointment as a GenerationKenya Juror, Ms. Awiti is characteristically self-effacing. “It is a great honour to be associated with an initiative that promotes positive Kenyan values,” she says. “I look forward to participating in this process, and to learning from my fellow jurors. But they are all very distinguished and famous Kenyans—it is very intimidating!” She does not look in the least intimidated as she maps out her strategy to move Kenya to greater tolerance, understanding, mutual respect and civility—at home as well as abroad. Kenya-Fabulous.

Mildred Awiti: GenerationKenya Juror.

Kibera Women for Peace and Fairness

Contact: Ms. Jane Anyango
Tel: +(254) 722 437 620
Email: nyakodong@yahoo.com

Kibera Women for Peace and Fairness was formed in response to the outbreak of post-election violence in Kenya in January 2008, and the wide-spread destruction of homes and businesses in the Kibera neighbourhoods. Kibera was one of the hardest-hit areas by the violence in Kenya, and women in Kibera are also threatened by the gender-based violence (intimidation, gang-rapes) which has escalated during the recent crisis. The Kibera Women for Peace and Fairness is a platform for the women of Kibera to express their needs and priorities and to work out collective solutions for the reconstruction of their homes and lives.

They have applied for official registration as an organisation from the government, and they meet next to the D.O.’s office every Saturday afternoon to make collective decisions about the way forward in Kibera.

Nourishing hope in Kibera

When I met her, nothing in the lovely smile that never seems to leave her face betrayed the things that she has experienced. Yet something, maybe her dry wit, gives her the ability to let go of wounds and wake up each day with fresh enthusiasm.

I stumbled into Uzima Foundation in Kibera by coincidence and listened with mounting curiosity as the charismatic team took me through the ways they encourage youthful minds to build their self esteem and hone their skills and talent. I was very keen on meeting a product of this labor of love.

Enter Maureen, a girl born and brought up in a Kibera “village” called Kisumu Ndogo twenty-six years ago.

Maureen’s brief stint in Kisumu in a school called Pand Pieri (Hide Your Behind—a warning against hungry hyenas on the prowl) was followed by high school in Nairobi. Maureen was involved in drama, dancing, and sports and during Sunday mass was one of the graceful dancer-singers. Her free-time visits to the sick and the old drew her to join Uzima Foundation while still in school.

Maureen is the chairperson of Kibera Uzima Youth Group, plays football for the Kibera Uzima girls’ team (as striker, doubling up as goalie), weaves hats and baskets to make money, still dances, acts and sings to send out positive messages. She is a peer educator, a friend, a daughter, a lady, she is just . . . Maureen.

In Kibera, gang wars, landlord-tenant standoffs, and more everyday madness periodically break the peace, but the post-electoral violence that rocked the nation at the end of 2007 ushered in the 3rd World War. Maureen was at a friend’s place watching TV. As the election result was announced, Kibera cried out. People left their houses crying and wailing like they had lost a relative.

Kibera began to burn that night.

Maureen watched as smoke and screams rose in the diminishing light of dusk. Her phone rang: her worried father wondering if she were safe. The killing had started, and no one sane left any kind of a safe haven that night. Maureen stayed up mulling over the violence outside and wondering whether her friends and family were going to live through it.

Before long, Kibera had no food. With the violence escalating, the settlement was cut off from the rest of the world, save for a few courageous humanitarian organizations. Bitter fights broke out as nerves grew raw with pain, frustration, and hunger. Long queues for rations wrapped the fields surrounding the District Officer’s headquarters. Maureen could not stop thinking about those who had neither youth nor energy to fight.

Uzima Foundation called up their youth leaders to assist, and Maureen made a case for the bedridden and weak. She walked door to door for two days through Soweto West and East, Raila, Mashimoni, and most of the twelve villages of Kibera. She identified households in distress, and Uzima put in place a voucher system to enable relatives or friends to collect food supplies for 120 homes.

Many were bedridden due to HIV and had missed doses of life-saving antiretroviral medication. On visits with Uzima field officers, Maureen tried to leave each household with a handful of hope—for a solution, a miracle, or even just the realization that they were not alone. The task was physically and emotionally draining, yet Maureen’s steps did not falter.

One sick lady hadn’t eaten for days, and her five children watched their mother disintegrate as she tried to wash a pile of raggedy teddy bears outside their house. One of the children told her mother that the rice a neighbor had donated was cooked. The child was too young or perhaps too scared to turn off the stove, and the mother was too weak to get up. A kind neighbor quietly came to help, a role Maureen suspected she may have been playing for some time.

Maureen’s lowest point came when she met a young man walking ever so slowly, obviously in a lot of pain. Initially, as the bullets rained and everyone took cover, he didn’t even realize he had been shot. Then he saw the blood, a lot of it, and mercifully lost consciousness. Good Samaritans rushed him to hospital and paid for his emergency treatment—he still did not know who. His leg now seemed infected and had lost most of its functionality. As he balanced on one leg, tears filled his eyes. He had just returned from the hospital, he told her, but could not afford the medication prescribed. He was just glad to be alive, if barely.

Maureen was key to a forum Uzima set up to provide counseling and enable people to express their fears, hopes, pains, and sorrows without fear of retribution or rejection. One man felt that he had seen enough policemen for a lifetime. He broke down as he shared how his son had been shot dead, and how he had now lost his son’s soul by burying him in Langata Public Cemetery instead of in his ancestral home—impossible to reach due to the volatile situation.

A younger man impishly suggested that mass-action marches in Kenya ought to be staged with children at the front, followed by naked women with babies on their backs and men at the back. This way, there would be no bullets, no violence—or so he hoped.

One lady did her best to exorcize the past for all who had suffered in Kibera and around Kenya, sinking to her knees and crying out,

“For those who stole votes,
Kneel and repent!
For those who killed and chased their neighbours,
Kneel and repent!
For those who burnt people, homes and shambas,
For those who did shopping [looting], vandalized and broke the law,
All tribes of Kenya get down on your knees and pray. . . .
Shame the Devil. . . .
Ishindwe [He will not win]!”

As people began to pick up their lives, their painful burdens lightened once they shared them. They returned to Kibera with a new resolve to find peace amongst each other. After all, we have to start somewhere.

And so Maureen, one of Uzima Foundation’s buzzy bees, helped set an inspiring precedent, endlessly trying, endlessly vying for sustained peace in Kenya. Forgetting her own fears and her own tears, she stayed steadfast and true to the words of our Kenyan anthem: “Natukae na udugu,/Amani na uhuru./Raha tupate na ustawi—May we dwell in unity,/Peace and liberty./Plenty be found within our borders . . . ”.

Maureen, a true shujaa [heroine], is a brilliant flicker of hope for this wonderful nation.

Sikiliza is a Nakuru-based Writer & Photographer who has a passion for Africa and writes in her blog http://msikiliza.blogspot.com/

Nyaminwa

No one would ever call her pretty. She is too strong, too urgent, too passionate for that. No one would ever deny, however, that she is exceedingly, even disturbingly, beautiful.

Sitting under a maroon Java House umbrella, I watch as she talks. She listens as if attempting to mine a hidden heart of meaning, her eyes searching, probing, glued on your face. She does not look away from problems, and she does not back down, either.

Her name is Jane Anyango, and she is the eloquent leader of Kibera Women for Peace and Fairness. This means that she thought up and organized this growing and increasingly vocal collective—spoke it into being, fought it into shape, coddled it into cooperation, still inhales and exhales its breaths. Jane Anyango is a fighter, which is why she is a peace-builder in Kibera.

The women meet under a tree in a field to discuss issues of relevance to themselves and other Kibera women, like burned-down homes and missing husbands, gang rapes and hungry children. They also meet to laugh, and sing, and exchange news and gossip and strength. Jane Anyango speaks of them with affectionate respect: her heroes, her neighbours, her friends.

We are sitting in Adams Arcade, a no-man’s-land shopping strip claimed by both impoverished Kibera and comfortable Woodley, and sometimes even upper-caste Karengata. I look around and remember when a bakery here sold the world’s best queen cakes. Now the arcade is pulling the shreds of its dignity around it, bedraggled as they are, pretending not to notice the upstart glitter and flash of Nairobi’s contentiously jump-started economy all around.

Adams Arcade will always be circa 1976 and fading. But Jane Anyango is glowing with the pressing urgency of now. The problems women in Kibera have, now. The distribution of relief resources, now. The cessation of violence and destruction, now. The empowerment of women, now.

We had planned to meet in Kibera near Jane’s small secretarial bureau and her two-room home, shared with two of her children and her husband, Barnaba. Her two eldest, Bob and Anne Clair, are away at boarding school. She is an exacting mother, Jane says, because she wants her children to profit from her mistakes, build upon her experiences. She has packed a lot of the latter into her 37 years—but, as she reminds us, her 18th birthday was spent in her matrimonial home.

She had not planned on getting married so young. When she interrupted a trip from Nyanza to visit her sister in Embu, Nairobi relatives influenced her to spend time with a man who later became her husband. Back then, she had found herself pregnant, with a field of narrowing options and a suitcase, standing in the dark outside the home of the man whose child she carried while his girlfriend cooked and cleaned inside.

Jane had changed our meeting place, and sitting now at Adams, I ask why she is herself, what accounts for her existence in the world as she is now. Her answer is full of girlhood and growing up and the pain of women’s shared knowing. Jane had a sister, nyaminwa,* Anne, who died in 1999. Fully preventable human error and a drug overdose in hospital left a family in mourning and dazed improvization. Anne’s husband, wrecked by his loss, had a stroke and soon followed her into that not-so-good night. Later, Anne’s daughter Juliet, short-changed at birth by more medical malpractice, died aged 14, even though Jane tried every means in her power to get help for her physical challenges.

As a bright Form Two student, Jane had been attacked by a man on the long walk home. She left school after fourth form with a fourth-division hardly-pass. Not long ago in Jane’s neighborhood, a 39-year-old man had been caught defiling an 11-year-old. Amidst police wisecracks, the little girl’s wide-eyed incomprehension, the paedophile’s unrepentant boastfulness, his wife’s resignation, and the Kenyan legal system’s ponderous callousness, the case had come to nought.

And then, in January 2008, during Kenya’s post-election orgy of violence, the police shot dead a 15-year-old girl as they hunted door to door for the young men who tore up the railway tracks through Kibera—and Jane Anyango had had enough. At their first press conference shortly thereafter, Kibera Women for Peace and Fairness had pointedly appealed, woman-to-woman, to Lucy (Kibaki) and Ida (Odinga) to please make their men see some sense. They also suggested that the Kibaki and Raila offspring consider the fates of youths their own age in the slums and talk to their fathers about it.

It should have been enough to make any woman bitter, but Jane had a father who loved her. Her eyes lose focus as she recalls him. “I was Daddy’s girl, even though I was the fourth-born girl. He was so proud of me! Because I did well in school,” she explains, insistent that I understand. It was Jane’s father who made sure she attended a computer-training course, even though she had protested leaving her growing family. In the years since, she has had cause to be grateful for his insistence on his girls’ self-sufficiency. Jane has worked in factories, as an office clerk and secretary, and now as bureau owner, in between her growing duties as the reasonable but firebrand feminist from Kibera. Women from Karen seek her support now, and she has been on radio shows and in the news, but Jane Anyango has her priorities straight. “The women in Kibera know what we want,” she explains calmly. “It would be good if someone listened to us for once. We want peace and fairness, and a chance to show what we can do.”

Much of Kibera is in ruins now, blackened and charred and ash-blown. Toi market is a keening wall of tattered stalls, and Olympic surely has seen better days. Jane Anyango strides through it all like a phoenix, and the universe suspends judgment on Kenya, for a while.

*sister, Dholuo (c. 2008)

Wambui Mwangi is a writer and a scholar and lives in Nairobi and Toronto and is a member of Concerned Kenyan Writers

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