WE ARE BACK!

We have been away from our blog for too long! We are back and hope to stay connected much more often. This posting tells you what we have been up to and you can see we were pretty busy last year.

The past year has shaped the direction for us in Kenya. As you might know, the year 2008 began in violence and things were tense for almost two months. The violence was in response to the disputed election results that took place on December 27, 2007. I and my sisters, Giang and Sia, were never in any direct danger, as foreigners, because the fighting was between Kenyan factions. We stayed safely out of the way, especially because Sia had a reasonable fear of being mistaken for a member of one of the ethnic groups before people might realize she is Tanzanian. But the situation calmed down with international help by the end of February. Because many people were left traumatized and unsettled by the violence, we were left with lots of work to do.

This year we have done eight workshops, either 2, 3, or 4 days long, on the topics of Conflict Transformation, Trauma Awareness and Healing, Intercultural Living Skills, and Peacebuilding. The participants have been from all walks of life and from many different ethnic groups. We particularly liked working with novices and postulants from four religious congregations in Kisumu, a city in the western part of Kenya. The most challenging group, however, were the community leaders we gathered from five slum areas around Nairobi. These were the communities most affected by the violence in January. We chose 30 people from 7 different ethnic groups, from these five neighborhoods. They hadn’t met each other, but in the course of three workshops, they learned to work together and value each others’ contributions. We look forward to working with them in their communities in the coming year.

Our most exciting project was called Conversations for Social Change. We had planned this project over a year ago, and were scheduled to begin it in January 2008. Believing in the words of Margaret Mead, that “a small group of thoughtful people could change the world,” we gathered 21 people into 3 small groups for conversations about social change. We also believe that social change begins with personal transformation, so the participants were invited to focus on their own feelings, actions, and reflections. Each group had six, seven, or eight participants, with at least four different ethnic groups represented in each group. Again, the post election violence had made the atmosphere very tense, but we began this project in January anyway. The participants not only found it an enriching program, but they said it was a healing process for them as well. We are planning to do another series of conversations this year, inviting old participants to facilitate for new participants.

For most of this year we were a community of four instead of three. Anastasia Lee joined us in April after studying Kiswahili in Tanzania for four months. She was a welcome addition and contributed many good insights and lots or creativity to our team. After some unfortunate incidents on the streets of Nairobi, and personal discernment, Anastasia decided this was not the best mission for her, so she is returning to our center in New York, to continue her mission discernment.

Sia, Giang, and I joined 165 of our Maryknoll sisters in New York this past October for our Congregational General Assembly. This meeting takes place every six years, to set directions for the future and elect our leadership team. On the Feast of Epiphany, January 4th, the new leadership team will be inaugurated, just sixteen days before Barack Obama. The outgoing leadership team has been so supportive of our new project, they will be missed, but we are looking forward to working with the new team as well.

Our Conversations for Social Change II is about to begin this month. We will have four groups facilitated by one Maryknoll Sister and one participant from the first series. We are also looking forward to working with Anup Karia, a process worker from England (originally from Kenya), to create more opportunities for conversations and facilitation trainings.