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Straw Huts and Worker Solidarity – Visiting the Bomas of Kenya
Submitted by Johanna Chao Kr... on Wed, 04/26/2006 - 5:02am.
Johanna Chao Rittenburg, manager of UUSC's Economic Justice Program, traveled to Kenya with Atema Eclai, UUSC's director of programs and a native of Kenya, to meet with our partners promoting the rights of workers in the informal economy.
What do the traditional huts of the Masai, Mijikenda and Luo people have to teach us about how to effectively organize informal workers in modern Kenyan cities?
Today at the “Bomas of Kenya” I walked along red-earthed paths and living fences of lantana, cotton, impatiens, and bougainvillea. Pocketed in the clearings among tall trees were physical reconstructions of Kenyan ethnic villages.
By carefully observing the design and juxtaposition of various elements in these villages – the boy’s hut, the cattle pen, the husband’s granary, or the third wife’s hut – one can see differences and similarities among the diverse ethnic groups that constitute Kenya’s people.
Atema tells me there are 23 different ethnic groups in Kenya who speak a range of 48 different languages!
After walking through the Bomas (villages), we bought tickets to a two-hour show of traditional dances and music, performed in the Auditorium. From the variations in mood, costume, and movements of these dances I understood again how ethnicities communicate very differently their understandings of relationship, pace, and personal engagement.
In our conversation this morning, Winnie Mitullah emphasized that one of the biggest challenges facing KENASVIT (Kenya National Alliance of Street Vendors and Informal Traders) is mediating relationships among the membership, many of whom are coming together on this joint project across very different ethnic and geographic boundaries.
Understanding the nuances of identity and social meaning is vitally important in social and economic justice work, because a core aspect of this work is building relationships and coalitions among difference people. Experiencing the differences among the bomas and the dances drove this point home to me.
