Grappling with the cliché of mzungu and African child

We started our community service projects this week here in Kisumu, Kenya with our partners, the Young County Change Makers, a community-based organization empowering youth in the area. As expected, it has been a struggle, mentally and emotionally.

We were at the Nyalenda informal settlement when we were surrounded by little school children. The scene was all too cliché. Hurray! Mzungus (Swahili word for Westerners) surrounded by happy African children! I found myself outside of myself and outside of the moment, just watching my friends hug and play with the kids. A part of me wanted to take pictures to capture the moment, but the other part of me couldn't help but feel uncomfortable and disdain for the whole situation. So what did I do? I became cold and distant to these children, vacantly giving polite high fives, but really wanting no part of this all too typical scene.

And I went home with all of these questions about the stories we tell of Africa and felt overwhelmed and actually paralyzed by my thinking. And I really hated myself because instead of enjoying these children's presence and playing with them as all children love to do, I spent the afternoon inside my own head. Instead of seeing and treating them as human beings, they became just abstractions in my academic lens. And in the end, isn't that worse? Isn't that more dehumanizing?

But today at Joyland, a school specifically for kids with physical disabilities, I put my thinking cap off and just allowed myself to be in the moment. I played soccer with one of the classes, exasperated by the heat but enlivened by how my ass was getting seriously kicked by these kids. We took photos of each other and many were fascinated by my Asian heritage. "Are you Chinese?", they'd ask. "I'm from the Philippines". Many Jackie Chan moves were exchanged nonetheless. I also got to spend time with my new friend Tabitha, this sassy little 12 year old, who told me about her everyday experiences at the school and even showed me how to do a proper catwalk. At the end of the day, she gave me her bracelet saying, "I want you to keep this so you don't forget me". I gave her my hair tie to remember me by. Cheesy and cliché, but her gesture really touched me and it was all real.

As my good friend, Saleema, wrote to me today, "it's not a cliché to bond with another human being, and it will never be a cliché to laugh with a child".

Our New Normal

We're biking along the savannah at Hell's Gate National Park. To our left are warthogs, to our right are a herd of zebras. We cruise along the dusty, rocky path with the sun beating down on our mzungu skins, but with the breeze whipping through our hair and cooling off our sweaty backs. It's a glorious moment, one of those "holy-shit-my-life-is-basically-a-movie-right-now-possibly-even-better" moments. I can't help but yell out a reminder, "guys, we're in Africa...this is your life right now!!!". A resounding "WOOHOOO!!!" with arms up in the air from the rest of the crew. This is real life, this is our normal.

I grab an orange Fanta after the long hike through the gorge. As I reach for the bottle, the man in military garb touches my arm with a quizzical look on his face. "Tattoo?", he asks me. l smile and reply. "It's a tree from my favorite book called The Giving Tree". I explain the story as briefly and simply as I can and its underlying message of unconditional love. I show him the initials of my parents that are engraved on the tree. He smiles and just nods his head. "Kwaheri", I wave goodbye. Did I ever think I'd be chatting with a Kenyan army man about The Giving Tree? Can't say I ever did. But I walked away and continued on sipping my Fanta like that interaction was the most normal encounter...

Yesterday morning, I was sitting on a stump in front of Lake Naivasha enjoying a moment's respite as I read The Dharma Bums. A baboon casually scampers on in front of me. I'm distracted for a second as my eyes follow to see where it runs off to. I snicker at myself and whisper under my breath with a combination of both amusement and annoyance, "pfffttt, baboons". So brief a moment and I'm back enveloped in my book.

All these crazy things that just a week ago I would never have imagined my life to be. And yet, here I am. And there it all is in front of me, around me. And it all just feels like the most normal, natural thing on Earth.

But then again...what is normal? Who defines "normal"? We all do. And today, sitting in the hot, humid air of Kisumu City in a cyber cafe is my normal.

Be here, be present: thoughts from Nairobi

Kewa hapo, kewa sasa, popote ulipo, kewa hapo

Be here, be present. wherever you are, be there.

Those are the words etched in the travel journals given to us by our trip leaders, Meg and Josh. And those are the words that opened up OG's first ever Gender and Human Rights program.

I've been with OG now for almost a year and as one of the very few staff who has never actually been on any of our programs, I'm filled with a sense of great anticipation, nervousness, and excitement. My journey with OG has been a constant unfolding throughout the year and I find myself with a number of questions: Will I be impacted in the same way our participants have been? What new things will I learn about development, travel and tourism, and ultimately, myself? How will this change my perspective of an organization I've come to love and admire so much? It's an odd position to be in: to know the inner workings of OG so well and to know what to expect from these programs and yet, to know nothing at all. You can't ever really predict what happens on the road anyway.

Three days in and I find myself viewing this experience from the point of view of a participant, a trip leader (from the bits of training I picked up during our trip leader retreat), and of course, as my usual OG role of Communications Coordinator. My mind is always on the go and it's going to be quite the ride to have all these perspectives floating around somewhere in the back on my head.

But as the lovely and always wise Jo Sorrentino emailed me this morning, "there are a million perspectives, but Justine is #1. Don't get caught in analysis paralysis".

After all...kewa hapo, kewa sasa, right? Be here, be present!