Kenya Action Alerts

(1) Take three simple steps, by sms and email, to end police violence in Kenya.

(2) Read about the terrific results of direct action!

(3) Talk to your Kenyan MP. Create a culture of political accountability.


(4) Join the listserve of Kenyans For Peace, Truth and Justice

The home of my activism as a Kenyan, and my political work for Kenya, is Kenyans for Peace, Truth and Justice (KPTJ).

KPTJ is a coalition of over 30 Kenyan and East African legal, human rights, and governance organizations, together with ordinary Kenyans and friends of Kenya, convened in the immediate aftermath of 2007's civil coup.

KPTJ maintains that there can be no peace without justice - political, economic, and social - for all Kenyans. Justice requires that we face the truth of our history, and of the 2007 election, to address the deep chasms and inequities in Kenyan society.

During the post-election crisis, KPTJ generated vital professional analysis, backed by verified data, of the electoral fraud and ensuing country-wide violence. KPTJ's reasoned position statements were used by the UN, the European Union, the US State Department, Senate, and Congress, and the African Union, to bring Kibaki's Party of National Unity (PNU) to the negotiating table.

KPTJ also mobilised progressives within Kenya, the Kenyan Diaspora, and the Pan-African movement, to actively campaign for a just resolution to the crisis.

KPTJ is currently active in the monitoring, implementation and enforcement of the mediation agreement.

Petina Gappah

If you haven't heard of her yet, you will.

And not just because she's a Shailja Fan :-).

Drumroll, please, for my fabulously talented Zimbabwean sister-wordsmith. Who has just clinched

A Stellar Groundbreaking Book Deal.

For (wait for it):

1) TWO books

2) On TWO continents

3) In no less than FOUR languages.

No further comment.

Githongo. Cut. A. Deal.

There. I've said it. Because I've been waiting seven frigging days for someone else to point out the obvious. Someone better qualified.

Like all the brave anti-corruption crusaders who have worked their guts out for the past 3 years, here on the ground in Kenya, while Githongo was "in exile" in England.

So he got tired of exile. Who can blame him? They offered him a deal he couldn't refuse:

You can come home, John. We'll guarantee safety for you and your family, and here's a nice fat cheque for your moving expenses. All you have to do is say Amnesty every time you open your mouth. Practice for the journalists now: Amnesty. Amnesty. Amnesty.

What's mindblowing is the disingenuity of his proposal:

Amnesty in return for full confession and voluntary surrender of stolen wealth, because the blunt object of prosecution only causes delays.

Voluntary surrender of stolen wealth? Did you say voluntary? Even a 6-year-old in Kenya knows that possession is not just nine-tenths of the law - it IS the law. Githongo of all people absolutely knows the impossibility of securing the return of the billions looted from Kenya. What's he planning to do - send Kenyan bailiffs to repossess 10,000 acre Australian ranches? Impound luxury vehicles in Paris? Get Swiss banks to turn over the contents of secret accounts?

Development With Dignity

In less than two weeks, I'll be in Minneapolis. Home of my dear friends Paul and Andrea, and their daughter, Araminta (who is also my goddess-child).

My purpose there is threefold:

(1)
Observe and applaud Araminta's prowess on the monkey bars

(2)
Perform at the September 12all-star extravaganza fundraiser for Development With Dignity. More below about this incredible social justice project in Peru.

UPDATE: Due to the sudden, tragic death of Andrea's mother, the September 12 Benefit Concert has been postponed. It will now happen in late January / early February 2009. I'll keep you posted. Meanwhile, please send prayers and healing energy to Andrea, her brother Seb, Paul, Araminta, and the whole Galdames family. (Shailja, August 26th, 2008)

(3)
Give Paul (known to me as Pablo) a long-overdue pull-up-your-socks-you-slacker pep talk.

Development with Dignity
Lima, Peru

Paul Dosh and Emily Hedin
Project Directors

Perched precariously atop a sandy hill, the neighborhood of La Encantada looks down over the Pacific Ocean on one side and the sprawling city of Villa El Salvador (southern Lima, Peru) on the other. Most outsiders see only La Encantada’s grinding poverty: its lack of running water, poor sanitation, and shantyhomes. But look closer and you will discover a spirit of camaraderie and a commitment to social justice that battle back poverty with inspiring intensity.

We invite you to explore La Encantada, meet its leader Jesús Valencia, and join in the community's struggle by helping to construct an innovative resource center for the neighborhood.

La Encantada

La Encantada (“The Enchanted Place”) is one of many neighborhoods that constitute Villa El Salvador, a district in southern Lima, Peru. Villa El Salvador was founded on May 10, 1971, when 25,000 poor Peruvians occupied a stretch of vacant desert and set up shantyhomes.

The residents of Villa El Salvador sought to create a model neighborhood for Lima’s poorest. They organized themselves to bring basic services: transportation, electricity, and health centers, to their community. Despite pervasive poverty, terrorist violence in the 1980s and 1990s, and persistent human rights abuses, residents of Villa El Salvador have worked hard to move toward self-management and self-sustainability.

The story of La Encantada begins in 1996, when a group of young men and women in their twenties formed The Sons and Daughters of Villa El Salvador. These young people grew up in Villa El Salvador and many of their parents had participated in its founding. The Sons and Daughters followed the example of Villa’s founders by settling uninhabited land on May 10, 1996, hoping to build secure homes and futures for their families.

The early years of the La Encantada saw many challenges, from the struggle to acquire land titles and recognition from the municipality of Villa El Salvador, to protesting a livestock farm that posed a serious public health risk. In the face of poverty and opposition, the citizens of La Encantada refused to abandon their cause. They sustained their commitment to community-led development that has characterized the growth of Villa El Salvador as a whole.

In 2002, La Encantada had to cope with the surprise arrival of hundreds of additional families of settlers. Despite the stress their arrival created, these newcomers were welcomed.

La Familia Valencia Huamán

At the heart of La Encantada and its struggles stands a remarkable couple: Martha Huamán and Jesús Valencia.

Martha was born in the region of Cuzco, tucked away in Peru’s highlands. Jesús is from the northern coastal province of Piura, where he grew up in the desperately poor village of Tablazo Norte. In 1996, Martha and Jesús were a young couple in Lima, penniless, but eager to build a home and family. They helped create La Encantada, where they eventually won legal title to a 25’x 50’ lot (1,250 square feet) and built a makeshift home with a concrete floor.

Over the past five years Jesús grew to be the voice of La Encantada and a prominent figure throughout Villa El Salvador. Jesús has served in several important leadership positions, including Secretary General of the Encantada neighborhood council and President of the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Villa El Salvador. Jesús has hosted major political figures, including Peruvian President Alan Garcia and Bolivian President Evo Morales, during their visits to Villa El Salvador, introducing their public appearances for audiences in the thousands.

Perhaps most important, Jesús serves as the President of the Multisectoral Commission, a major government-funded infrastructure project to bring water and sewer drainage service to the 54,000 residents of Lomo de Corvina. Yet despite Jesús’s increasing prominence, he and his family live in extreme poverty, with no running water and an unsanitary hole dug in the sand for a toilet.

Paul and Emily’s Work in Villa El Salvador

Jesús found an important partner in Paul Dosh, a political science professor at Macalester College. The pair met in 2001 while Paul was conducting research in Villa El Salvador. Since then, Paul and his wife Andrea Galdames have financially supported Jesús and Martha, from their own earnings, paying expenses such as school tuition for their three children, Karina (10), Jean Pierre (6), and Rolando (2).

Freed of the need to earn an income, Jesús and Martha devote themselves full-time to community activism. The success of the Multisectoral Commission showcases Jesús and Martha’s hard work. In 1998, the government allocated funds for a major water/sewer project, but the money went unspent and the project failed due to lack of leadership. Now, with Jesús at the helm, the Multisectoral Commission has secured water and sewer services, construction of which began in 2007 and continues today.

Paul and Andrea’s actions show how carefully targeted support of one family can have amazing ripple effects that benefit, in this case, over 50,000 people living without running water and plumbing.

Emily Hedin, a Fulbright scholar and a former student of Paul, joined the team during the summer of 2007 when she worked with Jesús and the Multisectoral Commission as an Upper Midwest Human Rights fellow (a program of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Human Rights). Emily participated in Paul and Andrea’s annual fundraising effort to support “Chocolatadas,” holiday celebrations with free hot chocolate and goodies for Villa’s children.

With the installation of water and sewer infrastructure underway, Paul and Emily then turned their attention toward creating a permanent home for Jesús and his family with space that would benefit all of La Encantada and its movement for community development.

Project Details

In partnership with Jesús and Martha and the people of La Encantada, Paul and Emily have crafted a two-dimensional project:

(1) the construction of a permanent, stable home for the Valencia Huamán family, and

(2) an innovative community space, where La Encantada residents can meet, organize, and plan.

We are guided by a vision of a safe home for the family and a useful, non-partisan, and not-for-profit space for all residents.

The ground floor (the public space) will contain:

- large entry room for daily activities
- library and resource center.
- kitchen
- public bathroom
- conference room
- computer room with two DSL-connected computers.

This space will further serve as a museum, archiving the history of La Encantada and visually displaying its inspiring struggles and successes.

The family space located on the second floor will be securely locked off from the public space below. It will include:

- three family bedrooms
- family kitchen
- family bathroom
- small office
- living room
- dining room,

- and, importantly, a guest room. For several years, Jesús and Martha have loved to host foreign daytime visitors to Villa El Salvador. Now they will finally be able to host guests overnight. Jesús and Martha hope you will include Villa El Salvador on your next travel itinerary!

We seek funds for the project through private contributions. On September 12, 2008, we will officially inaugurate the fundraising campaign with a major benefit concert at Macalester College. We will also involve the community of La Encantada in the fundraising, by soliciting donations of their time, labor, and token financial pledges. We have calculated $20,000 as a ballpark cost of the project, with groundbreaking in January 2009.

Throughout the fundraising campaign and construction process, we seek to connect all participants — students and professionals in the United States, the Valencia Huamán family, and the people of Villa El Salvador. We invite everyone to participate in the growth and development of La Encantada and strengthen the spirit of social justice activism.

To donate and get involved, contact:
Paul: dosh@macalester.edu
Emily: emilychedin@yahoo.com

Tax-deductible checks can be made out to Center for Changing Systems (fiscal sponsor), and mailed to:

Paul Dosh
1622 Hague Ave,
St. Paul MN 55104.

Amsterdam photos

See photos of me in performance at the 40th Anniversary Party of HIVOS, in Amsterdam on June 19th this year.

It was an amazing event, held in a converted factory, with guests from around the world. To spot me among the thumbnails, look for the red top and flowing grey trousers (Drum Rider and Ambi-Paisley), and the white boubou ( Dreaming In Gujurati and Ode To Durga).

Also look out for fabulous images of my friends Chiwoniso and Chirikure, brilliant Zimbabwean musician and poet, respectively, vamping it up against the afternoon Amsterdam sky. We've shared the stage four times in the past 18 months - World Social Forum in Nairobi, Poetry Africa in Durban, HIFA in Harare, HIVOS in Amsterdam. Seeing them was reconnecting with family. Especially rich because of the ongoing horror in Zimbabwe, where they both live and raise families, in the face of surreal challenges. I'm so grateful they remain safe, brave, burning bright.

the tenderness of leaving

It's that time again. Seven days before I leave for the US. My parents begin to say, abruptly, as I climb the stairs, or get up from the dining table:

You know, you don't have to go back to America. This is your home.

and

What are you going back there to do? Do you have jobs lined up?

It gets harder each time, to leave. Although my other world calls, and I know it is not separate from this one. Although the wrench of departure is a precondition for the joy of arrival. Although I know my work is to move between these worlds. To use my extraordinary privilege of global mobility, international platforms, to keep expanding the space for the real work of globalization - the globalization of justice. Of human rights channelled into outcomes (Amartya Sen).

The poem that always comes up for me in connection with goodbyes is e.e. cummings' i carry your heart. I transpose it in my head to Migritude key. Play it to myself, with all the complexity, tension, amplitude, Migritude carries:

i carry your migritudes (i carry them in my migritude)

nothing quite prepared me

for what it felt like to walk into my favourite Nairobi bookshop, Bookstop, Yaya Centre, 2nd Floor, and see my book.

Occupying the Coveted Front Counter Display Spot.

I've lived and breathed Migritude I: When Saris Speak for the past 3 years. The front cover is the D. Ross Cameron photo we used for all the marketing. The back cover is the photo of a mehndi ambi on my back, done at Artwallah in LA, 2005. I know every word in the book (the English text, that is!) back to front, sideways, upside down, in my sleep.

Yet, the physical tangible book still fills me with wonder. I touch its pages gently, trace the beautiful clear font, the rich paper, as you'd trace the face of a lover, learning it with your fingertips. My book brings up the sun in my solar plexus, spreads warmth and light through my body, makes me smile wide, wide, wider than I thought my mouth could stretch.

Photo: D. Ross Cameron
Marketing Card Design: Sterling Larrimore
Design and Photo Shoot Director: Kim Cook

Vote Pambazuka

Pambazuka News is the weekly social justice forum (circulation: 500,000) I recommend to everyone for news and analysis on key issues in Africa. I served as Pambazuka's Books and Arts Editor in 2006, and continue as an occasional contributor. You can read my pieces here.

During the post-elections crisis in Kenya, Pambazuka created the Action Alert Page for Kenya. This was a vital real-time global-access resource for latest reports and statements from the struggle. Pambazuka also set up and moderates the general and strategy group listserves for Kenyans for Peace with Truth and Justice (KPTJ).

For three years running, Pambazuka News was voted one of the top 10 sites that are changing the world of Internet and politics, by PoliticsOnline and the World eDemocracy Forum. This year, Pambazuka is once again in the top 25 picks, the only Africa-related website to have been shortlisted.

The judges write:
This prestigious award seeks to recognize the innovators and pioneers, the dreamers and doers who bring democracy online. This year marked the toughest year ever in choosing the top 25 finalists.

The deadline for voting is September 8, 2008. Please cast your vote for Pambazuka News TODAY.

Bwagamoyo

The most telling - and compelling - line of a man's body is that place where his neck joins his shoulder. From which the head extends, retracts, responds. It can be beautiful in its cleanness and purpose. Its strength and flexibility, its balance and alignment. It can disturb in its distortion and strain, its rigidity or collapse.

I like to think that if I could see that line in its entirety, if I could enter the living braid of muscles beneath - trapezius, levator scapulae, sterno-cleido-mastoid - it would tell me everything about a man. Where he intersects with his reality. How he meets, receives, and inserts himself into the world.

Opening lines of Bwagamoyo (The Father): Part II of Migritude, An Epic Journey In Four Movements

I coined the word Migritude as a play on Negritude and Migrant Attitude. It asserts the dignity of outsider status. Migritude celebrates and revalorizes immigrant/diasporic culture. It captures the unique political and cultural space occupied by migrants who refuse to choose between identities of origin and identities of assimilation, who channel difference as a source of power rather than conceal or erase it.

The four works that make up the Migritude Cycle draw on my spiritual and cultural heritage, as a 3rd-generation East African of Indian Gujurati descent. Conceived as an Epic Journey In Four Movements, Migritude references the earliest religious teaching imparted to Hindu children: that of the First Four Gods. The Hindu child is taught that her first god is her Mother. The second god is her Father. The third god is her Teacher. The fourth god is The Guest.

Part I of the Migritude Cycle, When Saris Speak (The Mother), is a 90-minute spoken word theatre show. And now, a bilingual (Italian - English) book. It uses my trousseau of saris, passed down by my mother, to reveal how imperialism and colonialism, in India and Kenya, were - and continue to be - enacted on the bodies of women. It explores what diasporic daughters receive and reject from their mothers; delves into the relationship of migrants to the motherland, the mother tongue, the severing of those relationships and the forging of new transnational identities. Letters from my mother form an important part of the script, bridging the spaces between generations and continents.

Part II of the Migritude Cycle addresses the second archetype in the Four Gods theme: The Father.

This work will explore constructions of masculinity and race under colonialism. It will examine how the architecture of Empire is codified on the bodies of men: brown, black, and white. The context is the history of the Swahili coast, and the life of my father, who was born and raised under British colonial rule, on the island of Pemba, in the archipelago of Zanzibar.

The working title of the show is Bwagamoyo – drawn from two Swahili words: Bwaga – to dump, and Moyo – heart. Bwagamoyo was the original name given to two specific locations on the Swahili Coast: the town in Tanzania where slaves were brought from the inland and held for shipping, and a small island in the Zanzibar archipelago that was a holding prison for slaves. Both are now known as Bagamoyo. The original Bwagamoyo was a chilling admonition to the kidnapped human beings to literally dump their hearts, meaning their humanity, at these spots, since they would no longer use or need them once they left as slave cargo. Bwagamoyo is an equally apt metaphor for the socialization of boys into the kinds of manhood shaped by colonial power.

In this second 'movement' in the four-part journey of Migritude, I'm exploring new territories of form and language. It's being conceptualized and written as:

- a stage production,
- a text for publication, and
- a production for broadcast,

in order to have it reach larger audiences, and audiences underserved by live theatre and performing arts.

So, to return where I began, I check out men's necks these days. And I follow the small boy who skips through my brain, as he runs down a dirt road in Zanzibar at dawn, carrying empty milk cans. Stops to stuff himself on fallen mangoes - you've never tasted mangoes that juicy, and sweet. Each day, I try to carve out hours to drop down into the delicious, terrifying dance of fitting idea to image to word. The belly-fluttering pleasure of unrolling story, history, imagination, into something that lives and pulses.

Copyright Shailja Patel, 2008. All rights reserved. No part of this posting may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

My 888th birthday

was last Friday. Eighth day of eighth month of eighth year of the century. Just to ramp up the 8-power, I was born at 8am in the morning, and weighed eight pounds and eight ounces.

So 8 has always been my special number. Clearly the world agrees. Didja see the amazing fireworks Beijing laid on for me?

Thank you for all the lovely birthday wishes I received. And the poems! Poems written just for me put a smile of delight and wonderment on my face.

Yes, I had an utterly blissful 3-day birthday weekend. Filled with large and small pleasures.

I hiked a trail fragrant with jasmine and red earth. Played with monkeys and butterflies: powder-blue, saffron, crimson, pistachio. Startled a young antelope in the bushes. Sat beneath beautiful trees and made birdsong-infused images in my sketch pad of all I want to create in the year to come.

I walked under the root-doorway of a giant sacred Mugumo (fig, Ficus Thoningii) tree, behind a waterfall, down into prehistoric caves that sheltered the first humans in Kenya, and centuries later, the Mau Mau freedom fighters. Rowed my biceps and triceps to exhaustion, under a soft blue sky, to a soundtrack I never tire of - water lapping the sides of the boat.

I savoured Nairobi's most delectable cappuccinos and chocolate cake (thank you, K.Z).

The weekend wrapped up with the best kind of birthday gift: a writing date(1) that got me starry-eyed about Bwagamoyo again (thank you, A.P.!). It's been on the back burner for a while, during the urgency of campaign work.

(1) Writing Date - when two people get together to fool around with their manuscripts, instead of each other. Best, fastest, easiest genius idea ever evolved to dissolve creative resistance.