About frogs, beavers, and eagles (Part 1)
Imagine there is a problem, and nobody can really describe it. Why not? Because we are all located in the very middle of it. In kanthari jargon this means we are all ‘frogs’ and we only see a problem from a limited perspective, the frog’s perspective.
Normally, however, a problem can better be analyzed looking at it from the (out)side. Journalists, critical thinkers or social workers are the ones who try to get to the bottom of issues. In kanthari jargon, we call them “beavers”. A beaver observes a situation from the side, from a safe position. Being too emotionally attached like the frogs, could color your view and this again might endanger objectivity.
And then there are eagles, the scientists, historians, who look at situations from a macro perspective. They draw their circles far above the problem and make their analyses from the impressions they have gathered. In doing so, they rely more on secondary information, only rarely are they in direct contact with a frog.
In the next three blog posts, I will describe each of these kanthari types and their approach to challenges. Today, the focus is on the frog.
Most of our kanthari participants are affected by social ill(s), and often they are also survivors.
Many of them are frogs. They were/are positioned in the middle of the mess. An advantage is that they experienced the problems firsthand. However, it is rather difficult for a frog to keep a clear overview during a crisis. Frogs are often driven by emotions: Sadness, at worst, self-pity, but often also outrage and anger about injustice. Some frogs are so overwhelmed by the problem that they do not see a way out and/or perhaps do not want to see… after all, having a justification for being allowed to suffer is quite convenient. But there are also frogs who want change and fight to move on.
Let’s take Gikufu, a 2018 kanthari graduate. Gikufu grew up in Mukuru, the third largest slum in Nairobi.
Until he was five years old, he lived with his family in a village in the countryside.
In this area, the Mungiki sect was raging, attacking villages, killing people and abducting countless people. Even after the sect was banned, the members continued to operate. They were especially interested kidnapping children. This forced many families to flee, looking for a more peaceful life in the cities. This however, in most cases meant living in slums, in confined spaces and in humiliating poverty.
Gikufu described how his family of seven siblings lived in a ten square-meter hut. Mats formed walls and a piece of corrugated iron protected more or less against rain. Most of daily life took place outside. There were no Mungiki here, but drug dealers who had no scruples about recruiting young children for their business. By the time he was eight years old, Gikufu was already ‘hired’. There was hardly any drug he hadn’t tried. The money he brought home was used by his family for food, and to send Gikufu’s siblings to school. He himself only had a few shillings left… “We children of the Mukuru slum had only one real passion. It was certainly not school, but… movies. To be able to see a movie in a cramped room, we invested everything even when it meant going to bed hungry.”
As he grew older, he often wondered why his parents never sent him to school. Maybe he was not smart enough? The only one in his family who seemed to believe in him was his older sister. But she had taken her own life at a young age after she had given birth to a son.
Eventually, a missionary became aware of Gikufu’s situation. She first brought him to a kitchen where, as he remembers today, there were ‘mountains of food’ piled up. The deal: he would only be given food if he showed in class regularly.
At first this seemed to be an advantageous offer for him. But he had not expected that school would mean sitting still and concentrating for many hours. His brain was not ‘calibrated’ for this. The constant learning without doing anything was too much for Gikufu. He stayed away from school and it was only thanks to the persistence of the missionaries that he was always found and brought back to class. In the end, Gikufu managed to get a degree. All this time though, movies remained a main focus.
And since there was no chance for him, the child from Mukuru Slums, to ever be admitted to a film academy, he decided to study media communication.
In spring of 2018, he applied for the kanthari program with the idea to set up an alternative school for slum children. After he had mastered the five stages of the selection process and received an invitation from us to participate, not much happened. It remained suspiciously quiet on his side. Henry, a former kanthari graduate from Kenya, did some research and found out that Gikufu seemed to have some issues related to his birth certificate. Well, actually, he didn’t have one, but it was a requirement for him to apply for a passport. Later, Gikufu said, “All my brothers and sisters were registered. Only I was nobody.” Only when he investigated did he find out that he was not the son of his parents, but of his older, already deceased sister and that her son, was actually his little brother.
While in kanthari he developed ‘Mukuru Angaza’, a film academy for children from the Mukuru slum. Through project work they are to acquire all the skills they would theoretically learn in a school. They learn writing through working on their own life stories, technical thinking through the construction of movie sets, the English language through acting and dialogue. And they learn to value themselves, because now they are the stars among the slum children.
Even during the Corona crisis, there is no break. The films now have a theme, “how do we fight the virus.” Additionally, Gikufu and his team are working on slowing the spread of the virus..
http://www.facebook.com/mukuruangaza/posts/525442511493137
http://www.facebook.com/mukuruangaza