Is it good or is it bad?

Joseph turned to me and smiled. “So life in the US…. is it good or is it bad?” We were moving along the ridge of a mountain from Narok to Nairobi, the view of the Rift valley in all its vastness spilled out before us. This question from our driver friend took me a moment to process. In some ways most of our experiences have been in the pursuit of understanding what life here in Kenya really consists of. It wasn’t until Joseph’s question that I realized that our time in Kenya may turn out to be more of a mirror to our own way of life than it is an investigation of someone else’s.

When we create a video for a non-profit there is always a clear temptation to use binarys… these people suffer, these people triumph…. this is a problem and here is the solution. In Kenya I’ve found myself searching in the same way. Is this a country of farmers, plagued by HIV, poor governance, tribal conflict and broken infrastructure? Or is it a country of people who work from dawn to dusk. Who have learned how to expertly use their fertile soil. Who have put their children’s education above almost all else. Who create instant businesses on blankets by the side of the road. Who love to dance and sing and smile. A people who, even if they are literally destitute, will insist you take tea with them.

I’ve had trouble figuring out whether life here is good or bad and of course that’s because there is no such answer. Kenya is all of these things. As visitors (not to mention storytellers) it has to be our job to consider it all … the good and the bad.

In our American minds there are immediate aspects of life in Kenya that conflict with our sense of “a good life”. The roads here make the potholes of Brooklyn feel like the Autobahn. Female Genital Mutilation is still practiced. Bride Inheritance. Ethnic Violence. Medical care is a luxury item, which puts our entire recent medical debate into perspective. Mostly the opportunity to succeed and improve ones standard of living does not compare. In Kenya with a good mind, a strong immune system and a good education you can still find yourself unable to succeed. I guarantee there are a few Nobel, Pulitzer, Oscar winners hoeing beans right now in the fields of Kenya. This is life without a safety net (you’re lucky if you have a big strong family). This is life without the helping hand of the government. The crippling corruption here is unimaginable to us.

On the other side there are so many aspects of life here which I think any visitor is enchanted by. We have been welcomed here in a way that seems impossible in America. One day a woman (who spoke little English) walked us almost a mile before we realized she was going the other way. She simply wanted to make sure these visitors in her community found their way.

Kenyans use what they have, they conserve, they recycle. They are connected to the land (almost everyone here has picked corn and milked a cow in their life). In my own American life, I’ve only dreamed of being this connected to the natural world. It makes all of the local, organic farming we do seem ridiculously backwards.

Keynan kids are hungry for education in a way that mothers across America would die for. School here can easily last 8 hours a day, 6 days a week.

See… as I think about life in Kenya my thoughts inevitably return to my own country, my own way of life. Have I taken for granted the stability of life that our rich economy and (by comparison) honest government has afforded? (Yes.) In fact, I’d like to invite small government-right wing Americans to take a trip here. This country is begging for more government… more schools, decent roads, clean water, medical care. A safety net. We consider all of these things as constants and we should not.

But don’t I want to actually LIVE on land? To know where my food comes from. To greet every visitor as though they were my long lost best friend. Don’t I want to be hungry for knowledge and treat the opportunity to grow as golden?

Kenya has taught us that engaging in “International Aid” can often turn into an exercise in superiority. “Look at these poor people and all the things we could do for them to fix their mixed up backwards country” But the truth is life here is filled with everything. A Mama dies from AIDS leaving five children orphans. A primary school choir sings a triumphant piece of Beethoven (without reading a note of music). Half of the students eat only once a day… a meal of corn flour. The same kids take turns jumping over a river, laughing the whole time.

Kenya has taught us that the American allergy to walking isn’t just making us fatter, but probably diminishing our inner life by 35%. It has taught us that we are obsessively clean. Obsessively afraid of being late. It has taught us that we have so conquered the quest for food, shelter and fire that we have often become bored (think of dog pedicures, everything in Brookstone, hot dog eating contests)

My answer to Joseph was pretty lame. How can you compare life in our country to life in this one? I had more money in my wallet than he would earn in a month. But the breathtaking view out my window… into the land of the Maasai… well, I’ll never have that. We’ll leave Kenya understanding the reason why half the world is clamoring to know our way of life. And why we, Americans, should be clamoring to know theirs.

HandCrafting Justice

I write to you from the comfort of Jomo Kenyatta International airport. We have about an hour left on Kenyan soil and we are contemplating not only our journey, but return to daily life back in Brooklyn.

The contrast to the glittering duty free and pricey food court is even sharper after the day, perhaps one of the most eye opening we've had here in Kenya.

Here in Nairobi we are doing work for a fantastic organization called HandCrafting Justice, which empowers women all over the world to earn a living with hand crafts. As host of the most excellent Sisters of the Good Sheperd here in Nairobi, we met the women from the slums of who create everything from baskets, to dresses, to greeting cards. After a long day of shooting hands nimbly moving across fabric, paper and thread, one of the group of mamas (who make beautiful woven baskets) marched up and announced that all would like us to visit there homes in Makuru Slum.

What do you say to that? Yes, mama... How is nine am?

So we spent our day in the slum... A maze of one room shanties that stretches for miles.. Rivers of sewage winding between and garbage covers many of the main paths.

The awful parts of slum life are well known and I won't elaborate on them here. Instead I want to tell you about our Journey. Each home we visited welcomed us. Each mama told us what they did to keep food on the table.. One sold nuts. One sold charcoal... One sold fruits. As we went to the next house the other mamas would follow until we had an entourage of rowdy, colorful older women helping us cut our way across the slum. Each stop involved cramming another person into the small one room homes.

Sitting here in the airport the thing that amazes me the most about the slum is the tremendous volume of hard work and vitality we found there today. Tens of thousands of small business occupy every crevice of the neighborhood. People sell fruit, cut hair, roast meat, grind corn. There was a movie theater (a small tv you pay a few shillings to crowd around and watch the world cup on).

This a place where people, despite popular imagination, are struggling to live... not waiting to die. The women we met feed a family of five for less than three dollars a day and they do it with their hands and backs and minds.

In the same way we found HandCrafting Justice a hugely intelligent idea in this context. They are helping these women do what they want to do. Kazi Kazi (Work work!) We are proud to be bringing home images of these women using their hands to not only make beautiful things, but to improve their businesses.

And guess what they asked us for. Not money. Not food. Not our shoes or camera.

Market. Customers.

I couldn't believe it. But over and over we heard these women praying we help them make their hand crafts a success. Sitting there in the slums (as I sit now in the airport) I'm heartened that suffering's companion seems to be the enduring will, talents and potential of the poor to work. For them to make and do things. For them to still invent (and monetize) everything from water to toilets. I believe we owe it to poor people everywhere to respect and learn from their already vast experiences in survival. Only then can we help them thrive.

Wheels almost up. Thanks Kenya...

Kwaheri Kenya, Habari Tanzania

For our next adventure, we headed out on the open road... to Tanzania!  The Olevolos Project, which is located just outside of Arusha, is a non-profit that supports orphans and families in the Olevolos community of Tanzania.  This may sound like a simple goal, but sleeping, eating and working on their site for 4 days gave us a profound respect for not only the passion and commitment of everyone involved, but the lengths they go to in order to accomplish it.

Throughout our work with non-profits and video, we do a lot of “sizing up”.  What is an organization really about?  What social problems do they solve?  Who is their target audience?  How can we best convey their mission and values through video?    The Olevolos Project is new territory for us, because they are no typical 501(c)3 and consequently, the answers to these questions are multi-faceted.  They have taken a very specific problem (increasing numbers of orphans in the Olevolos village, due to HIV/AIDS) and have investigated the best ways to tackle this problem from many different fronts.  That has led to the creation of a number of different programs to address this issue:

-       A nursery school

-       Adolescent Girl’s initiative

-       Secondary School Tutoring Program

-       Sustainable Livestock and Agriculture Program

-       Widow Micro-Saving Group

-       Sports & Recreation Program

The beauty I’ve found in a program like this is that it approaches a massive problem from such a holistic point of view.  When one or both parents pass away, due to HIV or any number of problems, it affects children, wives, husbands, families, and communities at large.  Dory (the Director) and James (the on-site Director) go to unbelievable lengths to involve the entire community: the village chief, the village elders, children from surrounding areas and parents.  The Widow’s group prepared and served a community meal on the site grounds one day, and one neighbor was kind enough to donate some open space to allow three simultaneous (and unbelievably competitive!) soccer games to take place for the sports & recreation program.  In work like this, the only hope of creating a sustainable environment for kids and their families is to get the community involved, excited and invested in its success.  

I just want to quickly share the story and photograph of one family we met.  Kadada (with the tie-dyed shirt), her younger sister Abigaeli and her older brothers Bakari and Kababu are kids who, on paper, would have every excuse to frown... and yet quite literally light up the room with their smiles.  We don't need to look any farther to find an amazing reason to support and chamption The Olevolos Project in all of its efforts.  Thanks to Dory and James for letting us share a few days with these wonderful families!

How do you take your tea?

As a tea lover in a country ruled by coffee lovers, it was a fun and refreshing visit to Kericho, the jewel city of Kenya's tea growing region. Our project was creating a video about sustainable tea growing as promoted and certified by the Rainforest Alliance.

In Africa if you don't have oil, diamonds or giraffes, the word "exports" doesn't inspire bragging. No wonder the Kenyan tea factory managers we met with were unusually proud of their thriving tea industry, the country's leading export and third largest source of revenue.

The Rainforest Alliance works with Kenyan Tea factories and farmers (as it does elsewhere around the world) to make sure the production of tea is done in an environmentally and socially responsible manner. And I think it's working.

In Kenya, small scale tea farms provide a livelihood for thousands of people. Many of the farmers have formed successful co-operatives to process and sell their green-leaf (freshly picked tea). We got to visit a tea factory where the leaf is transformed into some of the best tea in the world.

Factories are cool to shoot. Ask anyone. It was extra cool to see a factory entirely owned by a collective of small farmers. But it was the trip into the hills to meet these farmers that was really special. We approached one woman of seventy as she nimbly moved through leaves of gorgeous green tea bush. During our interview she told us about her life as a tea farmer, her pride in being a shareholder in the factory and her innate desire to sustain the environment.

As we thanked her, she held onto my hand and blessed me. After all the cups of tea consumed from this woman's blood and sweat, no one had hiked up to ask her a few basic questions about how the tea is actually made. It affirmed our belief that there is no one better to tell the story than those being served. Despite the language barrier, we hope this video can be focused on the image of this woman, the spirit of her words and the knowledge that someone like her picks many leaves for every sip we take.

Today these small farmers comprise most of the tea activity in Kenya. The multi-nationals are quickly challenging that (and a way of life). We hope that the Rainforest Alliance certification these small farmers get will help them stay competitive and most importantly sustain their land and ecosystem for the next generation. As we watched Rainforest Alliance work in the field, it was amazing to realize that they are actually making environmental change possible, not through lobbying or advocacy, but through grass-roots, farmer by farmer training. They plug into the community and seem to create a real common sense, bottom up program for creating a better place for cows, trees and tea bushes. Certifications can often be lip service, but as far as we're concerned the next box of tea we drink will be RA certified.

Kenyan kids get behind the camera

We've found Kenya to be a hard working place and in that spirit have been shooting like crazy! As we move on to new cities and projects we'll be working to write a bit more about our experiences. Till then "haraka haraka hiena baraka", "hurry hurry has no blessing."

When we made a plan to teach Kenyan kids to create videos it was a pretty simple idea: bring the cameras, show the kids how to use them... And see what happens. Of course, in teaching (and in Africa!) you never know what the days have in store for you.

What we didn't expect was the way the school seemed to overnight be filled with students with cameras.... pointing them at friends, cows, us... documenting life around them. The idea of capturing the images that travel through your eyes seems to be a natural impulse, especially for kids.

Our teaching began with the fundamentals of the camera, the principles of taking a good shot and the basics of film/video as a vocation. We even had time to delve into the basics of plot and creating story. As we met in the library each day I noticed a few students who seemed to be captivated by the process... One day after class three boys came up to me and presented ideas for short films they'd spent the previous night working on. I can remember that moment of discovery myself... When I realized I could create something out of nothing. I'm confident that if we can provide that opportunity to just a few of these students that the important images and stories will not be far behind.

As we left the school on the last day I saw Job, the amazing school librarian and computer teacher (and soon to be video teacher!), talking with the kids about creating their first short film. It made me realize that with a little equipment, some basic knowledge and a great teacher like Job, we can help kids tell their own stories. That is a beautiful thing and also a viable pathway for non profit video to become a sustainable part of communications strategy.

The more we can help people tell their own stories the better. So we are excited to continue developing this idea of video training. Until then look out for what I can assure you will be some awesome Sundance film festival entries from Mbaka Oromo primary school.