Pictures and Thoughts

This giraffe wants to greet you all. I'm also a fan of the random warthog with the mohawk-mullet hair. This giraffe is actually baby whose home is at the giraffe reserve. It's a hot spot for tourists, along with the animal orphanage where all the baby elephants are. The giraffes are hefty little things because tourists feed them all day long! The giraffes will eat from your hand and wrap its tongue all around your hand. (ick)

There is a new mural in Ngecha! This one is about dairy farming. I think the artists were commissioned to work on this theme.

George is signing his purchased piece for this student while others browse through the pile of artwork that is all set up in the community YMCA.



Happy to reunite with Ken Artifact, one of the artists!

The students enjoyed themselves so much that many of them want to return to visit the gallery and participate in a collaborative workshop. I'll be working to help coordinate that. :)

Upon leaving the art festival, I was gifted a Ngecha Artist Association t-shirt. Pretty sweet. I was also given "cultural beer" which was pretty good! Made from honey, it was slightly sour and fizzy. Apparently all indigenous beer making is illegal in Kenya and so the village chief must have given them permission to brew it for the festival day. The best way I can figure out how to spell it is "Morotina" (said with a spanish accent because that is how my brain works)

One of the students at her internship site, discovered that a community in Western Kenya is burning witches. Understandably so, a lot of the students were pretty horrified. But there are a lot of layers to this. It's not just the human rights violations that seems incredulous but also the fact that people believe in the supernatural here. While I find it refreshing to be in a context in which most people accept the supernatural, it is quite different from our Seattle background. I also accept the supernatural, but I also simply like to be exposed to people who think differently from my "normal" everyday exposure. It's a good reminder that not everyone in the world thinks alike! And I find myself in the majority sometimes (in terms of thought) and the minority at other times.

Please click HERE to read a recent article on witchcraft in Western Kenya.

I think it is interesting the witchcraft is illegal in Kenya. Yet the legal wording and definition is so vague, no one has ever been convicted of it. So community members are taking the law into their own hands when they think their community is being threatened by witchcraft. Rather than handing over suspected witches to law officials, they are simply killing them. Otherwise, it is thought that witches will just "get away with it." Clearly there are huge problems with this, but I do think it important to think beyond the initial shock towards "witch burning" and consider all the other factors that lead to that final result. And whether you accept the supernatural or not, the reality is that other people do and there are social consequences, whether for good or bad.