KENYA: Westgate Mall Shooting: finding words

KENYA: Westgate Mall Shooting: finding words

This post is a reflection by our editor, MamaMzungu, in Kenya on the September 21, 2013 shooting in Nairobi, when 10-15 unidentified gunmen opened fire in an upscale, downtown shopping mall, killing 62 and wounding more than 175 people.

Kenya militaryI’ve spent the last few days fighting back (often unsuccessfully) tears. When I communicate about this tragedy to friends and family, I find myself most often saying, “there are no words.”

Sixty dead souls, children among them, nearly 200 injured and the senseless death toll keeps mounting. Ravi Ramrattan, among them, is a friend who was kind-hearted, whip-smart and had a manner that immediately put everyone at ease. They identified him by his shoes.

Unthinkably, when I describe him, I have to use the verb “was” not “is;” his bright future snatched from him, leaving a crater-sized hole in the hearts of people who loved him. Those are words. And as I type them, here I go again fighting that tightening in my throat and welling in my eyes.

Still, I need to find words. I need to find some sense or meaning out of this tragedy.

When we first heard about the shooting, we were camping in a forest with some friends. We were walking amid astounding beauty with our children, 3 four-year-olds and 3 babies. We received information in fits and starts when cell phone reception worked.

First it was 15-20 dead. Shit. That’s gotta be a terrorist attack.

Then it was 29. Holy crap. Pit in the belly. Do we know anyone?

Then it was 39. But these numbers could keep going up. Where will it stop?.

Then, 59 dead. Silence.

But it was one small detail, not the numbers, that finally made that scene at the luxury mall real: It was a children’s day at the mall. Something I might have taken my own babies to. Some of these children were now dead.

I was going to write something about numbers, how we interpret tragedy and risk through a narrow and almost tribal lens. How I’ve seen a lot of equally senseless and avoidable death from terror of poverty. And those numbers are higher than 60.

How disappointing the truth is that it pains me to my core, when the victims look like me – when I can picture myself and my children in that circumstance.

How, as much as I think of myself as part of a truly global community, the world spins off its axis more for me when my bubble of safety and comfort is exploded.

But forget all that. I’m not in the mood to be philosophical yet. I just want to be sad. I want to mourn.

All life is precious. And fleeting. And nothing is sure. I just want to hug my family extra tight. And I want to pray to a god which I have to cling to, even though such senselessness make me doubt his existence, to bring comfort to the people who are unexpectedly burying loved ones too soon.

Mama Mzungu is a World Moms Blog editor and contributor living in Kenya with her husband and two young children. You can read more about their life and recent events on her  blog: Mama Mzungu This article was reposted on World Moms Blog with permission.

The image used in this post is credited to US Army Africa and holds a Flickr Creative Commons attribution license.

Mama Mzungu (Kenya)

Originally from Chicago, Kim has dabbled in world travel through her 20s and is finally realizing her dream of living and working in Western Kenya with her husband and two small boys, Caleb and Emmet. She writes about tension of looking at what the family left in the US and feeling like they live a relatively simple life, and then looking at their neighbors and feeling embarrassed by their riches. She writes about clumsily navigating the inevitable cultural differences and learning every day that we share more than we don’t. Come visit her at Mama Mzungu.

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KENYA: Disability Is Not Inability

KENYA: Disability Is Not Inability

for wmbIn the US, people with physical disabilities focus on fighting stigma, on being viewed as people who can do almost anything despite of their physical limitations,  and on fighting for the world to make appropriate accommodations in order to even the playing field.

In Kenya, like so many low-income countries, people with physical disabilities, children in particular, are fighting for their very survival.

A friend, who runs a school for the disabled here, recently told me an illustrative story.   The man who founded the school was visiting a friend in a rural area and came across a disabled child who was tied to a tree while his parents went to work in the field.  The boy was left with a bowl of food and forced to defecate in the radius rope permitted.  The school founder, touched by this scene, made it his life’s work to make lives better and futures brighter for these children. (more…)

Mama Mzungu (Kenya)

Originally from Chicago, Kim has dabbled in world travel through her 20s and is finally realizing her dream of living and working in Western Kenya with her husband and two small boys, Caleb and Emmet. She writes about tension of looking at what the family left in the US and feeling like they live a relatively simple life, and then looking at their neighbors and feeling embarrassed by their riches. She writes about clumsily navigating the inevitable cultural differences and learning every day that we share more than we don’t. Come visit her at Mama Mzungu.

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SOCIAL GOOD: Simply Saying You Empower Women Is Fashionable But Vague

A Self-Help Group from Limuru fighting food insecurityWe meet interesting people on all platforms!  Twitter led us to Evans Wadango, the founder of Sustainable Development For All, an organization in Kenya.  At only 19 years old he came up with a revolutionary idea, the “Use Solar, Save Lives” program to enable families to receive a regular source of income after getting solar lamps. Interested in the type of self-starter that he is from his home country of Kenya, we invited him to write us a guest post: 

On my recent visit to Western Kenya, I met so many people living in dynamic villages, with different economic conditions. Some of the villages have electricity cables passing along the main road, but the families living just fifty meters from the electricity cable cannot afford the cost of tapping to it. Although I saw the worrying trend of a rapid decrease in the size of land owned by each family, some families grew sugarcane while others grew maize.

My friend and I visited one of the villages Sustainable Development For All-Kenya has been working in for several years where we met women of Mumashi group holding their usual meeting. I saw children going to school, healthy women and children, and more importantly, happy faces. The women were learning how to bake cakes. My friend asked the women how the baking of cakes was going to change their lives. The women were so eager to answer- but the group leader, mama Ruth explained: (more…)

World Moms Blog

World Moms Blog is an award winning website which writes from over 30 countries on the topics of motherhood, culture, human rights and social good. Over 70 international contributors share their stories from around the globe, bonded by the common thread of motherhood and wanting a better world for their children. World Moms Blog was listed by Forbes Woman as one of the "Best 100 Websites for Women 2012 & 2013" and also called a "must read" by the NY Times Motherlode in 2013. Our Senior Editor in India, Purnima Ramakrishnan, was awarded the BlogHer International Activist Award in 2013.

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CASTING A WIDER NET: Meet our First Mom in Kenya

CASTING A WIDER NET: Meet our First Mom in Kenya

Our “Casting a Wider Net” series features mothers around the world who’s voices have typically been excluded from the blogosphere, due to lack of access to computers or the internet, low literacy or poverty. This feature aims to include their important and distinct perspectives with interviews and occasional video clips.

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Meet Wilkister.  She’s a mother of seven children, including a remarkable two sets of twins, ranging from 7 to 18 years old.  She lives in Western Kenya and tends a shamba (farm) of maize, cassava, millet and vegetables.  She met her husband, a primary school teacher, when she traveled to his village to visit her sister who had married a relative of his.  The marriage was sealed with a pride price, she moved in to his homestead and has become an important member of his extended family.  Her relatives describe her as responsible, strong and hardworking.

Unlike many other women in her village, she graduated secondary school.  She speaks four languages fluently and worked as a translator for me on a recent trip to her village.  The following are some of Wilkister’s thoughts on marriage, family and life… (more…)

Mama Mzungu (Kenya)

Originally from Chicago, Kim has dabbled in world travel through her 20s and is finally realizing her dream of living and working in Western Kenya with her husband and two small boys, Caleb and Emmet. She writes about tension of looking at what the family left in the US and feeling like they live a relatively simple life, and then looking at their neighbors and feeling embarrassed by their riches. She writes about clumsily navigating the inevitable cultural differences and learning every day that we share more than we don’t. Come visit her at Mama Mzungu.

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CANADA:  The Road to Global Awareness

CANADA: The Road to Global Awareness

Teddy Bear Picnic Fundraiser

Global awareness has been identified, by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, as key to the success of today’s young people. I have always prided myself on my commitment to raising my three young daughters to understand the challenges that people all over the world face on a daily basis. Despite my best efforts, I felt like I was failing. Of no fault of their own, given their young ages, I felt that they were slowly being swallowed up by a world driven, at times, by materialism and egocentrism. As their mom, I knew it was my responsibility to raise them as globally aware citizens. But how?

The major stumbling block at the time was their young age. How would I ever manage to teach my daughters to be empathetic when they were all under the age of 6! After much thought, I realized that the only way to accomplish this was to truly involve them in the process right from the start. So, no fancy and sophisticated fundraisers, no black tie events, no galas…but a teddy bear picnic: absolutely! (more…)

Alison Fraser

Alison Fraser is the mother of three young girls ranging in age from 5 to 9 years old. She lives with her family in Cambridge, Ontario, Canada. Alison works as an Environmental Toxicologist with a human environment consulting company and is an active member of the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC). She is also the founder and director of the Canadian Not for Profit Organization, Mom2Mom Africa, which serves to fund the school fees of children and young women in rural Tanzania. Recently recognized and awarded a "Women of Waterloo Region" award, Alison is very involved in charitable events within her community including Christmas Toy and School Backpack Drives for the local foodbank.

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SOCIAL GOOD: Unsexy But Completely Worthy Cause

SOCIAL GOOD: Unsexy But Completely Worthy Cause

 

Children wait for their names to be recorded and then given their deworming tablets in Nyanza, Kenya.

There’s a minuscule pot of money globally to solve those intractable problems of poverty around the world. Sure, there are a lot of sources: foreign aid, UN agencies, global and local charities. But they are dwarfed by the size and scope of human need, which governments in low-income countries cannot, for a variety of reasons, completely address. The international development world is in constant battle for this pot. “

Look at me!” says HIV/AIDS.  “Over here!”, says malnutrition.  “We’d like something, too!”, says access to credit for small business.  “Don’t forget about us!”, say malaria and tuberculosis.  These are all worthy causes, so it’s a struggle.

And the global community does not necessarily prioritize or coordinate our global giving on the basis of need of recipient or effectiveness of the solution. Generally, it appears based largely and unscientifically on “what’s sexy” at the time. (more…)

Mama Mzungu (Kenya)

Originally from Chicago, Kim has dabbled in world travel through her 20s and is finally realizing her dream of living and working in Western Kenya with her husband and two small boys, Caleb and Emmet. She writes about tension of looking at what the family left in the US and feeling like they live a relatively simple life, and then looking at their neighbors and feeling embarrassed by their riches. She writes about clumsily navigating the inevitable cultural differences and learning every day that we share more than we don’t. Come visit her at Mama Mzungu.

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