Praying for Kenya

"No one can tell whether Kenya is on the mend or on the decline or just STUCK." Nora Harrison

Nora is my friend in Kenya, a woman ten years my senior who spends six months of every year in Canada raising money for Kenyan kids and six months in Kenya spending it. She seems indefatigable. She finds bright boys who have no chance of attending high school, puts shoes on their feet, uniforms on their backs, books in their hands, and sometimes even roofs over their heads, and then oversees their education at Shikunga Secondary School. Sometimes she tutors them in French or English. Sometimes she tutors their teachers. Always, she cares what happens to them. Her success rate is excellent. She seems to have a clear eye for picking the boys who will make the most of the opportunities she provides.

In the photo she is with some kids at Shikunga for whom I arranged funding: Richard, Fred, Bainito, Joyce, Geoffrey and George.

This year Nora is teaching an extracurricular course at Shikunga — The Merchant of Venice. When I heard, I thought Romeo and Juliet might have been a more appropriate choice in light of the situation since the election. The tribalism of the Montagues and Capulets might have been easier to understand than the prejudice against the Jews which forced them into usury and destroyed their ability to empathise with their tormenters. But maybe not.

The anger over this election has ignited long smouldering resentments based on favours given to the Kikuyus when Kenya first won its independence from Britain. That might be simply tribalism, but I think it goes much deeper than that. The divide between the rich and poor is Kenya is huge, and continues to grow.

I saw it most clearly in Nairobi where the Kibera and other overcrowded slums are erupting in violence now. People living in the slums are packed in like rats forced to live cheek by jowl using the Nairobi River for bathing and drinking, their waste products going directly into their water supply. Meanwhile, across the city a single family lives on acres of land. You may remember recently that the Masai herdsmen created a real stink during a period of extreme drought by bringing their cattle to graze on the lawns of the rich.

The favoured few who inhabit the largest portion of Nairobi's land are very rich. They include Kenyans in high positions in government and business, but they also include foreigners who choose safe locations in which to live. Our Canadian High Commission is located among these estates.

The average wage in Kenya is $500 a year. The really poor are lucky to earn a dollar a day.

It costs $500 to send a child to high school for a year. Without education, the poor have no way out of the pit of poverty.

I spoke to a man from Rwanda the last time I was in Kenya. He was talking about the interdependence of Africans, and said that if you give a helping hand to an African trying to clamber out of the pit, a hundred others clinging to him will follow; if on the other hand you kick aside that hand begging you to help, a hundred others will fall backwards with him.

What Nora and others like her are doing in Kenya is giving that one child the means to pull himself out of the pit of poverty. Invariably he will help a hundred more to get the education they need to live decent lives.

The uneducated poor young men who are killing hundreds and hundreds of people are acting out their resentments. Like Shylock they have forgotten how to feel empathy for the "others" who have what is denied to them. Every Kikuyu becomes a "have" when you are a "have not" ... and when you think you have finally managed to elect a government that you believe will make a difference to your life, and that victory is snatched away from you, you may very well ask for your pound of flesh.

The Merchant of Venice may be exactly right for Kenya right now.