Zanzibar pictures up...finally!!!

I know you guys will be proud of me [i certainly hope you will be] for getting my act together and setting up a website for the Zanzibar pictures [yay!!!!]. The plan is to set up webpages for all my pictures as i go along. Unfortunately, i managed to mess up the videos i took in Zanzibar so there are none but i've learnt my lesson and promise to have the videos for Kenya and Uganda (including one of my bungee jumping!) up when i get those two sites up and running

Click here to get to the pictures and feel free to leave comments as well!

ps. I'll leave the site open for public view for a short space of time so if you want to maintain access to the site, please drop me an email at: obnahil@gmail.com and i will add you as a member

Spare the rod and spoil the child?

“Spare the rod and spoil the child”, I’ve heard it said many times, usually as ample justification for disciplining [read: hitting, slapping, flogging, etc] a child or teaching them the straight ways of the world. I never adhered to this school of thought, at least not in the literal sense, and being back on the continent, where the idea seems to be fairly pervasive, I find myself asking, yet again, if it really is a good justification. Now I’ve had a fair share of floggings in my time and I’m sure many an African [black person, I dare say] of my age group would confess to suffering the same woe at some stage in their upbringing. I never did accept it and being one of those people who passionately abhor violence, never understood any of the justifications put forward by its proponents. I wanted to share my thoughts on the reasons why I hold steadfastly to this view and perhaps those who think otherwise can take a shot at convincing me

First and foremost, in my experience and as far as I’ve witnessed, adults who hit children tend to do so in a state of anger or frustration [plus, surely it takes that to raise your hand at someone]. Children will always be children, up to some trick or the other and will even sometimes be found doing things they have been categorically warned against. And while I understand the frustration and/or anger that this may sometimes inspire, I’m not so understanding of how that translates into whipping out the old belt or stick to “teach them a lesson”. Hitting someone when you are angry is wrong, period. It doesn’t matter if they are an adult or a child. It’s also ironically, incredibly childish and just the sort of behaviour that mature people do not display. The idea of resorting to violence [cause lets face it, that is really what it is] as a deterrent or solution to any problem is to my mind counter-productive. It also sends children very wrong signals: that it’s okay to hit someone to prove a point…and we don’t understand why people pick up machetes and slaughter each other when there is a disagreement of sorts. We are breeding a society of vigilantes without even seeing the wrong in it. I say this particularly in reference to the post elections violence here in Kenya (Liberia, Sierra Leone and Rwanda popped to mind as well, incidentally) and people expressing surprise at how easy it was for a seemingly peaceful country to break into complete and utter mayhem!

I had an experience with one of the teachers at the school the other day, where one of the kids, after being repeatedly scolded for distracting her classmates and just being annoyingly disruptive, she (the teacher) proceeded to scream at the child, dragged her to the back of the class, instructed her to kneel down and was about to do God-knows-what to the poor kid, when she saw my have-you-lost-your-mind? look. Her question to me then was “what do you do with a child like this?”. “You say you don’t hit children Nana, but how do you deal with this child? Tell me!” she beseeched. The reality was that singling out the child in front of her friends had embarrassed her so much that she had already burst out crying and sobbing uncontrollably. I ignored the teacher, calmed the child down and soon got her to get on with her work. It took a lot of composure to explain to this lady, a while later, that embarrassing the child in front of her friends was more than enough punishment and that hitting her would not have proved her point any more or less. This situation highlights my second issue with hitting children: that people refuse to think of alternative ways of disciplining children and it’s just unforgivable. How about we adopt an approach where hitting the child is not an option? Think, pursue all other avenues of discipline and tell me if you find absolutely nothing that works. Another incident that springs to mind is one that a housemate of mine witnessed at the orphanage/school that she works at. She happened upon one of the teachers mercilessly slapping and pulling the ears of a five year old. She actually walked out of the room because it was getting to ridiculous proportions. She later found out that the child in question was HIV positive, something he was fully aware of, and had bitten one of the other children in a fight. Somehow kicking (apparently another male teacher joined in with that act) and slapping the living daylights out of the child would deter him from ever doing that again. Did they ever consider that this was just an angry child who needed psychological help perhaps? Or even start by understanding what motivated him to do that…no, none of that, lets beat him silly and he’ll know better next time! A blatant display of intolerance for using brain cells and adults just being very lazy at dealing with the challenges that working with or raising kids present. I could give more examples but I think I’ve made my point here

There also seems to be an obsession with “putting the fear of God” in children. Smacking them silly will make them know what is acceptable and what is not. They will know not to repeat their heinous crimes if they get a good beating. While this is true, it also comes with various psychoses; I’ve seen a few of the children flinch when you come close to them and make a gesture any where near raising your hands at them. You instill fear all right, but in some cases these children become scared of their own shadows. They become timid and develop all kinds of complexes. Surely there are better ways to teach a child not to do something. Heck, sometimes they just have to learn from experience!

I’ve been told, in relation to this topic, that someday if I have kids, I’ll spoil them rotten. Well if choosing to not hit them equates to that, then so be it. Working with the children I’ve encountered so far on this trip, just strengthened my resolve to not resort to disciplining children in the “traditional” African way. So “Spare the rod and spoil the child?”, “Yup, guilty as charged!”

Unsung heroes

Morbid circumstances can be found aplenty, working in and around Kibera such that you almost get used to it, almost. But nothing quite prepared me for what I was exposed to during a visit to campsites for internally displaced people (IDPs), with some fellow volunteers last Friday.

By way of background, for those of you that can remember, in December 2007, elections held in Kenya were contested along tribal lines and soon broke down into violence with people being slaughtered with machetes, homes and property being burned down and people being forced to run away to seek refuge in other parts of the country. International bodies like the UN and Red Cross came to the rescue providing temporary camps, food and medical supplies for the refugees and displaced persons. Of course, they did not come to stay forever, so when the mayhem ended, tempers were cooled down and a new government was in place, these organisations left. Promises were made regarding these IDPs; a measly circa USD400 was given to each family as compensation from the Kenyan government for the woes that the elections brought and to this day most of these people still live in UN donated tents and in the case of the really lucky ones, partially completed houses that were first put up by the government as part of said promises. These people were mostly uneducated farmers that had their land stolen, properties burned down and were chased away from their homes without a cent to their name. The IDP camps are mostly located in remote areas where there is hardly any electricity; one has to walk at least 2km or so to BUY water from boreholes; children have to walk for hours to get to and from school, in most cases barefooted as their parents really don’t rate shoes high enough on the priority list; they are essentially a luxury and these areas are so, so dusty that you only have to walk a foot or so to get covered in dust; a gust of wind just spoils the matter completely; needless to say majority of the children have blocked noses and nasty coughs. There are so many children under the age of 4 in these camps. As one can imagine, uneducated farmers left in the middle of nowhere to fend for themselves soon run out of recreational activities so procreation becomes the new form of recreation. The average family has four to five kids. They cannot afford contraception even if it were accessible, which is really sad for how much more expensive is it to raise a child? It doesn’t exactly help that it’s the dry season so everything they plant just withers; as previously mentioned, water is another luxury so God-given rain is all they can rely on to cultivate their crops. With no education and limited skills, no one is rooting to give them jobs, which then gives them more time and energy to procreate. I was mortified as I listened to one story after another whilst we visited a few homes in the two camps we donated food to. They rely on donations from organisations like the one I work with for livelihood. The government shows up once a quarter with bags of maize and yet another litany of promises; promises that they are so tired of hearing that they are just grateful for the food they receive. The UN donated tents are falling apart in some cases so it’s not rare to see parts of the tents being held precariously together with maize sacks and such. You can only imagine how they cope when it rains and gets cold. Even in the cases where the families have brick houses provided by the government, furnishings are limited to a bed; yes, a family of as many as seven share a bed; there is a kitchen with a few utensils and they’ve been kindly provided with water cans that once-upon-a-time stored sulphuric acid, as indicated by the bold writing on said cans

Now, being an overt worrier, I’m prone to classify circumstances in my life as problems with the least provocation. My so-called problems however, usually have solutions; real ones that stare me in the face. Some of these solutions are a decision, phone call, email, text or conversation away. These “problems” I speak of are borne of inaction more than anything else. Then I hear the stories some of these families have to tell and I’m even ashamed to think I have any problems at all. I mean what do you do, when you are chased away from your farmland and home with machetes; you, your husband and your six children; you find one of these IDP camps and call it home; you soon find out you have HIV and so does your second to last born; your husband leaves on account of that saying he wants nothing to do with you; you have no education and no one will employ you; you have all of 3 sets of clothes, its none the better for each of your children who have to walk barefooted to and from school and to fetch water each day? How do you find the courage to wake up each day and face this life? How do you comfort your children and tell them all will be well? You pray that you have at least one more day to live just so they have someone with them. You wake up with a smile on your face cause you know you have to be strong for them regardless of the despair you face. You cook whatever food you have, make sure they are as full as can be before you tend to yourself. You kiss their tears away and try to indulge them with a few jokes and hugs for really what else can you do? That is just one story. There are so many others; there are presently thousands of IDPs all over Kenya who literally have no hope. Where is the government whose election brought them to this place in the first instance? Now that they have what they want, these people have been forgotten, their interests relegated very far to the background. “Where is the justice in that?”, I ask.

So tonight, before I allow another hot tear to stain my pillow as I muse about my “problems”, I will remember these IDPs, these unsung heroes who dare to live under circumstances that I know would leave me suicidal