I received the brightest news of the year and probably for the covid era. The story came from a teacher of a 4th grade student at a school I have spoken in Murang’a town.
The student( whom I will call Wendo) has a long-term friend whom she cares a lot about. The friend( whom I will call Pendo) happens to be a Swahili girl from a nearby informal neighborhood known as Mjini. Mjini is probably the oldest informal settlement in the area, having been inhabited by a minority of Muslim community before independence. The founders of Mjini informal settlement arrived in the area on September 17 1900 in a group of 600 porters of the first colonial district administrator attched to the East African Protectorate, Francis Hall. Hall and the porters has travelled all the way from Mombasa where the headquarters of British East Africa Protectorate.
The porters stayed in the area and the inhabitants of Mjini are the descendants of the porters for Francis Hall. I have been visiting Mumbi, the estate next to Mjini where my relatives have been living continuously for over 5 decades. Over that time, my impression and knowledge of the inhabitants has changed tremendously. The place had a reputation of a small ghetto with all that shady characteristics that made me weary of settling foot there during my young days. I would later learn about the impact of the colonial reign that Francis Hall started has on my family. The six hundred porters were accomplice to the crime of colonialism. The British were colonialists and the porters were collaborators. It is still amazing to note that the community the descendants has lived relatively unmolested by the larger Gíkuyu community especially when one contrasts their experience with that of African nannies that travel to Arab countries for work under an immigration system known as Karfala. Karfala allows the local Arabs to sponsor a worker or nanny for a visa that is tied to a particular employer only. That limits the options of the employees and unfairly confers great power to the employer. The stories of abuses from emotional to sexual, and even death are unacceptable. That is the backdrop of the relationship between the two communities.
That Wendo,( Not her real name. Wendo is the Gíkùyù word for love),who is from the local Gìkùyù community, comes from a humble background. Her parents are daily laborers and have a total of 6 children. Their circumstances at home are quite tight that they have been forced to send two of the children to the maternal grandmother in order to ease the burden of the household costs. Wendo noticed that her best friend named Pendo(not her real name. Wendo is the Kiswahili word for love) never brought any food for lunch. Pendohails from the community of the former porters . So Wendo decided to do the only thing she knew could help: she told her mother. The wonderful mother decided to pack extra food every single day so that her daughter's friend could have something to eat for lunch.
That went on well and the problem at hand seemed to have been solved. After a while the Wendo returned to her mother again to report that her best friend didn't have the textbooks required in class. The mother requested her daughter to share her textbook while she tried to save enough money to fulfill her daughter's request. Time however wasn't on their side. The year came to an end before the savings were enough to buy the necessary books as promised. However, there was an urgent need. There was a fee for end of year exams of about $.40 per student and Pendo’s family couldn't manage to raise the money. Wendo humbly requested her mother to come to the rescue of Pendo. The mother promised to help but she was not clear on the deadline and neither did she have the money. She was not at all aware that the money had to be cleared before any student could sit for the final exam.
The mother got distracted with the vicissitudes of a peasantry in the rural setting. The exam time came and Wendo asked for the exam fees. Wendo’s mother raised the money and her daughter sat for her 3rd grade exams. The new term started this year and Wendo was promoted to 4th grade.
Wendo’s dutiful mother showed up on the 3rd day of school in order to meet her daughter's new teacher. After the discussion of her daughter's performance, she explained to the teacher about Wendo’s best friend and her concern about her status relative to the challenges that Wendo had shared with her. The mother's only request was simply meet the girl she had been sending food to.
The teacher, who was in the staff room sent for the two girls to come to the meet Wendo’s mother. Unfortunately, only the daughter showed up. The mother was visibly dismayed and partly concerned. The daugher arrived with a regret and explanation regarding the absence of her friend even before the mother could pause the question. Wendo’s best friend had been held back for lack of exam fees, she explained . The mother looked at her daughter in disbelief, unable to hold her tears, she asked Wendo why she didn't ask for assistance on behalf of her friend. Wendo reminded her mother that she asked once but her mother did not have money at the time. The daughter figured that the mother would offer the help once she got some extra money without the need to be reminded. The mother sobbed uncontrollably. The Wendo’s mother begged the teacher to intervene and assist her in getting her daughter's friend to 4th Grade as she was willing to sacrifice anything to keep the Pendo from being held back in 3rd grade.
The teacher could not believe her eyes. How does a mother cry and get so emmotional over someone she hadn’t even seen. The biggest connection between Wendo’s mother and Pendo is that she had fed Pendo on humanitarian grounds as well as on account of the friendship between the two girls. The teacher had to call another teacher to witness the rare incident.
I am not sure what will happen as that is an area I am not privileged to know. What I can say is that that level of utu(African humaneness) consideration was a common practice amongst the Gíkùyù community that the porters and Francis Hall found there back in 1901. Food was a human and was shared in times of need. While the Swahili student was a descendant of the porters , the mother of the student was a descendant of the indigenous Gìkùyù in the area. The coming of the colonial period carted away a great wealth of resources and food knowledge that has seen the local community being food insecure and illiterate. The community is still suffering from the consequences of the injustices that Francis Hall and his porters helped met out on the local indigenous people. That is exactly what I struggle everyday to correct. I know that injustices are loss to everyone involved: the food scarcity if now a national epidemic as well a global crisis. We are all in the same ship and the ship is drowning.
The story made me sobb as I am aware of the above display of our humanity through our aversion to hunger not in our family but our community. The new British colonial and it's attendant religious order too has divided the consciousness of the community, causing an upsurge of individualism to wrecking havoc on our foodways as well as well as our humanity. I am aware of how the American empire is contributing to the misery of these families through the weaponization of the dollar. Yet we in the West and other industrialized countries are contributing to the damage of the environment to the point of making it extremely difficult for families such as these to earn a living.
I was so touched and inspired to support the friendship of the two girls for as long as they are in school. I talked to the mother at length and she is okay with it. I plan to do a fundraising dinner in honor of the three friends: the mother, her daughter and her daughter's friend. We have become so displaced from our center as human beings that it has become rare to witness this level of love, friendship and humanness in our community and elsewhere. That the friendship is for such young people across cultures is commendable in light of the vicious divisions along sectarian and religious lines. The most indigenous thing to even though both the Christian and Muslim community have often discriminated against indigenous people is to start with celebrating the young friendship, after all it is symbolic of what existed before Francis Hall and arrived uninvited.
The old traditions amongst the local Gíkùyù is experiencing a resurgence as indigenous people gain a deeper awareness of the fiat system that is about to drive us to extinction through the senseless divisions amongst ourselves. That's why I give these two lovely young friends the distinction of eating the healthiest food possible on account of their love of food ties that binds. If I you feel drawn to these bonds enough to want to lend a hand, please feel free to reach out. My goal is to raise 3,000 dollars to build a cow shed and buy a milking cow, some fodder and organic seeds for her garden. That way she can have organic milk for an income, organic manure and a vegetable garden. The three of them will manage everything collectively in order to have enough food. Her half acre farm will be a demonstration of farming food, animals but most importantly, love and power of food as practiced by the indigenous community before the colonial era.
Foodie Without Borders has agreed to work with me to set up a Food Library Literacy Love Garden which produces milk, manure and food to support the families of Wendo and Pendo to produce food organically. They will have a heifer, organic seeds, a cow shed and a class on how to cook the healthiest food. Please visit www.foodieswithoutboarders.org to support the effort.