Tigania West Women's Empowerment Program

(6/23-6/25)

Visiting the Women’s Groups was both an empowering and frustrating experience. Several of the groups sang and danced to welcome me when I arrived, which was neat, although a little embarrassing. They were all incredibly welcoming and willing to discuss all aspects of their projects with me. The focuses of the groups ranged from rearing poultry to running cereal stores to stove building, basket weaving, banana leaf mattress making, breeding goats and even renting out plastic chairs for events. Some of them have ambitious visions for their projects, like building a women’s hostel or expanding their businesses to be able to access better markets for their goods across the country.

I had a lot of respect for each group and all of the members, as they have learned, with the help of SOTENI and a Danish organization called DANIDA, how to manage their own businesses, keep records, plan projects and write proposals. Each group hopes to develop profitable projects that will continue to develop and expand with time.

I’ve heard that it’s been raining constantly at home, which is a bit ironic considering here they've been suffering from a drought for the past two years, and so many people are struggling to eat even one meal a day. So many of the corn fields are dried out, and when I visited women's projects, I went to several (about six thousand) cereal grain stores, and every one of them is suffering from the effects of the drought. Aside from crops, people don't even have access to clean drinking water, or they have to walk for great distances to reach it. It's pretty sobering to see. To make things worse, for me, anyway, many of the women's groups insisted on feeding me and giving me gifts. I know most of it was that Kenyans are just so generous and friendly and giving, but that was difficult to swallow when I knew they were also starving. And I also know that many of them hoped that I would be able to bring them money, which was not my purpose at all, so some of them acted as though they could impress me with their gifts. I felt guilty for taking what little they had (even if I refused, there was no way I couldn't take it), and frustrated by their assumption that all white people have money and will give it to them. Even the man we're staying with thinks that; tonight at dinner he asked us to take a letter from him to the US to give to companies if we ever happened to come across one that might help his school. Of course we want to help, but at the same time we are not bathing in resources. But I guess that's just one thing I will have to resolve in myself while I'm here.

I received more gifts than I knew what to do with. Each day I came back to the house with bags of beans, giant avocados, ripe and unripe bananas, handmade baskets, a carving of a giraffe, a necklace, several calabash for drinking porridge, and once macadamia nuts still in their huge shells. My favorite was probably the banana leaf mattress that one group gave me. When we were leaving their project, two of the women got in the car with us and I figured they were taking their mattress and basket to the market and wanted a lift. The next thing I knew the women were gone and the mattress was still in the trunk. Luckily I was able to explain that I really could not take the mattress home, nor could I carry it around Kenya with me. I did somehow end up with their basket, though.

Another funny thing was when they would try to offer me handmade ropes. They would say, “Look, you can use this rope to tie up your cows!” Of course I would then have to explain that I don’t have cows, and that I couldn’t use the rope. They would immediately reply with, “Oh, well your parents can tie up their cows then!” And I even ended up with a little pouch that is used during planting to hold seeds. A lady demonstrated how I must tie it around my waist and then go about planting my seeds. Of course, when they asked me what I grew on my shamba (farm), and I told them that most Americans don’t actually have their own shambas, they would look at me like I was nuts. “Well then what do your parents grow on their shamba? Not even maize?!”

There was also one point during the three days of visits where I was simply tired of meeting women. So, as soon as my interviewing was over, I ran over to a group of kids that had been watching and asked them/mimed to them to see if they wanted to race. Eventually we were hopping/running/skipping/jumping down the dirt road, and we got back to the car far before the women's group and just kept going. As much respect as I had for the women, I think that may have been my favorite visit! So in all, the women's projects ended up being entertaining, frustrating, depressing, inspiring, and exhausting all at once.