There is something about the end of a trip that can make you feel empty. You sit in the airport about to take off, to return to your “home”, savor the final smell, the final words, the final tastes of a place that you borrowed for a while. I am cross-legged on the floor with my souvenirs in tow; a Maasi bracelet, a painting by Solo 7, pants from Lamu and shoes that remind me of the dirt and colors of Kibera. But it is not these things that make me feel different.
What is it about experiencing new places that changes us?
In my case I feel older, (32 days to be exact) but not wiser. More questions remain asked than answered. What can we do to help the helpless? How can you design a place like Kibera to be more sanitary and safer? How can we learn from Africans while sharing some of our very few valuable western ideals?
But these people aren’t helpless, they merely need the opportunity to help themselves. They have potentials that we could only dream of having precisely because of the same circumstances that stifle them. Take, for example, the kids in my photography workshop. Who ever would have thought that kids ages 11-13 from the world’s largest slum would be able to create world class images with machines they had previously not been able to touch, let alone experiment with. How many other kids, and for that matter, adults, are never given the opportunity to find their passions? Most of them will end up recapitulating the lifestyles of their parents if they are not given a leg up, or the opportunity to give themselves a leg up. But then who should be responsible/hold the power/be responsible for creating these opportunities? I just read an article about Kenya adopting a more western educational system, one that will not promote a binary curriculum. But who is to say that that is the best system for them to adopt? I was not better off for the American psyche in some ways…it took me many years to accept the fact that I am a designer—not a lawyer, not a doctor, not a political scientist, not a military officer. At some point it was ingrained in me that being a designer was a less legitimate way to make a living. I assumed designing would be a hobby, left for my free time after I was done with more important things. But then I realized that following your passion is more important than ANYTHING ELSE. It is so cliché, but the most important thing to realize, and one of the hardest conclusions for me to come to.
Back to talking about Kibera. Kennedy Odede, founder of SHOFCO, recent author of a great op-ed in the NYTimes and my friend from Kibera recently asked me how I would redesign Kibera, and how I would do it logistically. After stumbling over my words, thinking quickly (and wrongly), and making assumptions, I realized something that my photography workshops are supposed to have been teaching us all. Kibera is beautiful. The spaces are designed, just in a more organic, temporally stretched way than Westerners are used to. I recently had a conversation with someone who told me that Africans are alive and Westerners are just slowly dying. This particular version of African architecture is also living, constantly changing, morphing as boards crack, aluminum rusts and families grow.
So. My conclusion is that I have no conclusions. Pole sana rafiki. All that I about this places is that it is beautiful, its people are bright but oppressed by circumstance, and that it will have a lasting impression on my life. I will miss the many friends I made, from the workshop kids who expanded their minds (and mine) as we walked down the paths of Kibera, to the bag salesman on the side of our road who bought me an orange he couldn’t afford as a going away present. I have met so many people and done so many things over this very short period of time. Now, I start my journey “home”. But isn’t that a journey that all of us are always on?
I am starting graduate architecture school at Yale on Monday, I will continue my work for Sisi ni Amani stateside, I am still heading design for Fragile Oasis, and I will be arranging photography gallery openings and hopefully a book deal for the kids photos. There will be much to write about even though I am not in Kenya, and I hope that you will join me for that as well.
