by Jeanne Dubino, Associate Professor of English
Esther Keino (left) and Jeanne Dubino (right) at a harambee.
“Safari, madam?”
“No, thank you,” I said, and often, as I walked through the streets of Nairobi. I thought proudly, “Safari? I’m not here to go on a safari; I’m here to work!”
But that afternoon in September 2002, as I traipsed about the streets of the capital of the country where I was about to work for the next year, I got to thinking. True, I was here as a Fulbright Scholar from the United States, about to spend the next 10 months at Egerton University to teach and pursue my research interests. If I liked to teach and research—indeed, if I was passionate about both—wasn’t that a form of play?
I did play, a little. Egerton University, in the panoramic Rift Valley toward the west of Kenya, is a half hour’s drive from a game park, and I went there on several occasions, as well as the Maasai Mara. But most of my time was spent teaching, working on committees and at the Centre for Women’s Studies and Gender Research, attending presentations and events, preparing for talks, traveling around Kenya and to several other countries in sub-Saharan Africa to deliver my presentations, and above all, talking and socializing with Africans at the market, in the street, in homes and villages, and on Egerton’s main campus in Njoro.
With its 8,100 students and five campuses, Egerton is easily over twice the size of Plymouth State. The oldest university in sub-Saharan Africa, it is still primarily known for agricultural studies. Literature is relatively new. I was fortunate enough to be of assistance at a time when Egerton was developing a master’s degree program in literary studies, as well as teaching six courses: Introduction to Literary Criticism, Indian Literature, Gender and Literature, Literary Theory and two sections of Women, Poverty and Development.
I had been warned that the students were shy and would not understand my American accent. In fact, I found class discussions lively and exciting; my students loved to talk, and I could easily make myself understood by speaking slowly, enunciating clearly, eschewing American slang and idiomatic phrases, and adding a few Swahili words here and there. The students were eager to hear about the U.S., and loved to talk with me after class about American and Kenyan politics and culture. They made me feel very welcome.
Assisting in the organization of Gender Awareness Day, the International Reading Festival and Black History Month, and working at the Center for Women’s Studies, made me feel very much a part of the campus community. I held meetings for women students in my apartment—a safe environment for women to talk openly about pressing issues on campus, such as violence and gender inequality (75 percent of university students in Kenya are men). Sometimes these meetings included other women faculty—one of whom, Esther Keino, became a member of parliament while I was in Kenya.
Through my friendship with Esther, I was invited to a number of political meetings. I met members of parliament and ministers, and attended harambees, or fundraisers, supporting such efforts as providing primary schools with desks, sending students to school abroad (Kenya sends more students abroad than any other African country), paying for the costs of operations and so on. I was also welcomed at school openings, orphanages and tree-planting ceremonies (like many African countries, Kenya is becoming rapidly deforested).
I traveled to Uganda, and to the southern part of Africa, to South Africa, Swaziland, Mozambique and Botswana. I rode in crowded, decrepit minivans (often the only means of transportation) with the locals and learned a lot more about the countries I visited. I stayed in remote Kenyan villages and drank beer in a South African township. I saw much poverty and evidence of violence and disease.
However, what is uppermost in my memory now is the liveliness of life there: how one sees people in the streets; how important politics and religion are, and how both play an immediate role in people’s lives; how much more interacting and talking with others occupies one’s day than is true for most middle-class Americans. When people ask me, “what was living in Africa like?” I want to somehow convey my love of the vitality I saw and the people I met.
On the other hand …
In Kenya, seeing women carrying water and wood has deepened my understanding of the hardships of their lives. I am even more aware of my privilege; my work is indeed play when I think about women bent over double, hauling 60, 70, 80 pounds. My longing to increase my American students’ and friends’ awareness of this back-breaking labor, among the many harsh realities of women’s lives, has intensified. No doubt, teaching and studying in Africa for nearly a year enlarged my perspective in a way that my earlier travels as a tourist never could.
Associate Professor of English Jeanne Dubino was the 2003-2004 diversity scholar at Plymouth State University.
