January 1, 2015 11:14 am
IN 1958 racial tensions were running high in Kenya, a black African nation ruled by whites.
The powder-keg atmosphere was made even more explosive because Africans
were split into 40 separate tribes; some, long-standing enemies. A
state of emergency was in force, the legacy of the Mau Mau rebellion
which began in the early 1950s and took more than 10,000 lives, most of
them black Africans; thousands more went to detention camps. In Nairobi
most native Africans were servants; few were seen
On the streets; none drove cars. In the classrooms of upper Secondary
schools there were no native Africans. But what the British Prime
Minister, Harold Macmillan, would describe “the winds of change” were
already blowing fiercely in Africa.
“We came to Kenya with our project, the first multi-racial college in
East Africa, something for all the races and for all religions,”
recalled Father Joseph Gabiola, Opus Del’s first priest in the country.
“We feared the authorities would say:
‘What do you mean? This cannot be. Are you mad?”
The main obstacle was racism. Blocks of land in Nairobi, were generally
for Europeans, Africans or Asians. Few could be used for the new
college. The land, members of Opus Dei found, was in a European
residential area and the neighbours objected. “Officially they objected
because they did not want a school in the neighbourhood,” Father Gabiola
said. “But everybody knew the real reason was that the school would
have black Africans. There was a meeting in one of the rooms of the
local council and we had to go along to answer some questions. There was
a huge crowd of whites outside and the thing became quite hot. I don’t
know why, but the whites were all abusing us. It was in all the
newspapers, front page. And in the end they won. We lost the land.”
As it turned out losing the first battle was providential. Another block
of land was found in Strathmore Road (now Mzima Springs Rd). This time
there was no room for complaint—it was adjacent to three European
schools.
The goal was to build a boarding school which would bridge the gap
between secondary and university. Previously native Kenyans had to leave
the country to get a higher education. ‘There was a big gap there,”
Father Gabiola explained. “The aim was to create something to train the
students in many areas: academic, human and, for those who wanted it,
religious.”
After the land problem came financial problems. The first principal,
David Sperling, and teacher, Kevin O’Byrne, took the brave step of
starting the main building before all the money was raised. The students
were all poor so it was useless looking there for help. The colonial
government gave some money, some was raised through mortgages but it
was not enough; so David Sperling set off for Europe and America in
search of benefactors.
When the money problem was under control critics predicted the project
would be a disaster anyway. A friend of Father Gabiola, a religious,
warned him: “Its going to be a failure because you will not get the
students.”
“But,” Father Gabiola said, “we were determined that, with the grace of
God, it would work”. David sperling and Kevin O’Byrne travelled the
country looking for students to put their faith in an institution that
did not yet exist, and they were successful.
“When he heard of it, my friend said: ‘Of course you will have Africans,
but you will not have Europeans. And Asians, you will not have Asians.’
Later I was able to tell him: ‘We have found an Asian student.’ His
reaction was: ‘Very good, very good, you will have one.’ And then the
Europeans wanted to come, through friendship because by this time we had
many friends, and so it continued on.”
In the early days conditions at Strathmore were primitive. The college
was surrounded by bush which ran down into the Nairobi River valley. As
students arrived all that could be seen over the maize in front of the
new school was the boxes they carried on their heads. The land was
infested with cobras. One day a leopard paid a visit, followed by a
hyena which chased a student up one of the pillars at the entrance to
the main building.
More formidable than the physical environment were the racial barriers.
These were not restricted to differences between black and white: some
tribes had less in common with each other than with the Europeans.
Father Gabiola remembered the scene on the first night:
“They had told us the African students would be jumping through the
windows, all kinds of things. We were full of wonder at what was going
to happen. The first night I was out in the garden he opened his eyes
wide in imitation of someone watching in anticipation and then broke
into laughter: “But everything was silent. Everybody was studying.”
Potential racial tensions were neutralised by Strathmore’s family
atmosphere, an approach inspired by the words of Opus Dei’s founder: “We
are brothers, children of the same Father, God. So there is only one
colour, the colour of the children of God. And there is only one
language, the language which speaks to the heart and to the mind,
without the noise of words, making us know God and love one another.”
The college shield carried three hearts and the motto was ‘ut omnes unum
sint”, may they all be one. In a homily at the first Mass at Strathmore
on a temporary altar, Fr. Gabiola first spoke of Strathmore as a family
home. He remembered the surprise on the faces of students: “It was, I
believe, a very bold thing to aim at, especially considering the large
variety of races, tribes, nationalities and even religions, both among
the students and the teachers. It could have been taken as a beautiful
thought, as a figure of sj or. as an empty dream, but it was taken in
earnest, and all responded.”
The response was seen in practical things. When one of the first
students, Gabriel Mukele, arrived with only one set of clothes, the
other students fitted him out with ties, socks and shirts and David
Sperling donated his old school suit. Despite .these gifts Gabriel felt
he was too poor to continue.
He decided to drop out and take a job; but David Sperling talked him out
of it; he arranged holiday jobs so Gabriel could earn enough to get by.
Integration influenced all aspects of college life. No room was occupied
by students of a single race or region. The teachers’ rooms were
alongside students’ rooms. Meals were served at tables of six: a
teacher, a European and African students and so on.
One of the early residents, Jacob Kimengich, remembered:
“At meal time I found myself sitting at the same table with the
principal and, of course, the other teaching staff were also there; and
we were eating the same food. This was drastically different from my
boarding school days where the food and accommodation was not shared at
all. In those days who could think of eating the same food with a
Mzungu, leave alone sitting at the same table and sharing the same
residential building. It was totally unexpected.”
Another early student, Wilfred Kiboro, reflected: “A tradition started
in Strathmore from the very beginning that everyone’s opinion, belief,
custom, colour, creed was respected. We were taught to be mindful of one
another and considerate. Students were encouraged to assist each other
whenever possible. Hard work was a way of life.
.“Another tradition I recall was respect for individual freedom. We had
no written rules, no prefects or class monitors, no general supervised
study. One was given the responsibility to exercise his individual
freedom: to study in his own time, and to manage his life generally. I
think this is one of the traditions that truly distinguishes Strathmore
from similar institutions. It was in my two years there that I came to
feel that I was really accountable for my actions, not because there
were rules, but because a certain standard of excellence was expected of
me. If I failed to achieve it, I could only blame myself.”
Even today Strathmore is believed to be the only institution in Kenya
without prefects or written rules. The philosophy was spelt out to
teachers at the school thus:
“Show a man you trust him and sooner or later he will respond to that
trust, Leave a person free to act and he will usually act in a
responsible manner; if he does not act responsibly, then patiently show
him how he was wrong and leave him free to act again.”
Strathmore continued to break social conventions with Kenya’s first
interracial rugby team. The Africans had never played before because
rugby was a white man’s game; the new team did not go up noticed. The
first match was recorded in The East African Standard on June 8 under
the headline: First Multi-racial Rugby Team Makes Debut; and in the
Sunday Nation on June 11, 1961, under the headline:. An Experiment on
the Rugby Field. The news reached as far south as Johannesburg, with the
Johannesburg Stars carrying an action photograph of the Strathmore team
entitled: Study in Black and White Rugby.
The experiment forced students at Strathmore to confront hidden
prejudices. “The hooker in our team was white and the props were both
big African fellows,” Father Gabiola explained. “After the first
training session, the hooker came and said: ‘I don’t want to play.’ ‘Why
not?’ I asked. He did not want to say, but eventually he whispered: ‘I
don’t want to be with the Africans so close together.’ Father Gabiola
burst into laughter: ‘Well, it was there, the mentality was there. And
it was something we had to overcome. And we did overcome it.” . .
It was not long before 80 per cent of Strathmore’s students were being
accepted at university. The college gained an international reputation,
attracting students from all over English speaking Africa as well as
from Rwanda and Zaire. It branched out, opening a school of accountancy
in 1966, a lower secondary school in 1978 and a primary school in 1987.
Some current residents of Strathmore spoke about their experience.
Matthew Ndegwa, who came to Strathmore in 1979, now works for the
government as a civil engineer and is a co-operator of Opus Dei.
“Opus Dei taught me how to get my priorities right, to do first things
first and to persevere with something to the very end, to carry out my
duties,” he said. “I am the first born son of a family of 12. In my
country a first born son must give a good example for the others. He
should also use his money to help the others, to help pay for the
education of the younger ones which takes more than a third of my
salary. The spiritual life Opus Dei introduced me to makes it easier to
cope with the 24 hours of the day. It opens up my mind to my
responsibilities and helps me not to ignore them.”
Boniface Ngarachu, a teacher of accountancy at Strathmore, came there as
a student in 1977. Already a Catholic when he arrived, he said he had
learnt at Strathmore about the value of work, something he wanted to
pass on to other people: “the idea that through work you can do
something for your country, for your family, and your soul and that you
can turn it into a prayer”.
“There is also something else that has struck me,” Boniface said.
“Perhaps something that was very personal. I had many friends when I
went to Strathmore, including girl friends, and .when I talked to the
priest I talked about them. Normally one shys away, but I felt 1 could
tell him everything and I realised there was more in friendship. I
realised there was something noble in it.”
More than half the population of Kenya is Christian; about one third of
them, Catholic. The population has been growing faster than any other
country in the world, though only about 18 per cent of land is arable.
Most native Kenyans still live on small farm settlements struggling to
raise livestock and crops or working part time on the properties of
wealthy landowners.
As you drive out of Nairobi you quickly come to tea and coffee
plantations where native Africans labour all day under the sun to earn a
modest wage. The women in particular have a hard lot. You see them
struggling along the side of the road under huge loads. Further inland
where the countryside is dryer, hotter, dustier, where the earth has to
be worked hard before it will give even the most meager returns, life is
harder still. Many black Africans there live in thatched huts on bare
earth floors as their people done for centuries. They are nomads,
continually migrating with their livestock and their few worldly
possessions in search of grazing land and water.
For those who move to the city, it is a difficult transition. Regular
work schedules, the faster pace and the impersonal way of life are
difficult to adjust to. And there is the problem of the unequal sharing
of wealth. The extent of this problem was brought home to me while
traveling on a ratty old bus from the airport into Nairobi. It was’ not a
bus that whites normally used. All the passengers were blacks.
From the bus you could see the shanty houses and claustrophobic housing
developments where poor blacks lived. The little free land in these
areas, including traffic islands, was used for sambas (the traditional
Kenyan vegetable patch). The sea of faces waiting at each bus stop grew
as you approached the city centre until there seemed to be hundreds of
men, women and children trying to get on. It was a Saturday morning and
on the footpaths you saw row after row of wretched stalls, sometimes
consisting of as little as a few used vinyl belts on a piece of old
cloth.
On the other side of town where the whites and wealthy blacks lived,
things were different. The houses were impressive, even by the standards
of developed countries. They were large and airy, the gardens
pleasant, the driveways long and the hedges high. It is this contrast
between rich and poor which Kenya must fight to overcome.
So far the country has managed to avoid the major political or social
upheavals of other African nations; but there are no guarantees about
the future. Security can only come with social justice and a national
spirit which avoids large class distinctions. An essential part of
social justice as it is promoted by Catholic moral teaching—and
therefore by Opus Dei—is the free action of individuals. The Church’s
teaching recognises that good structures can never be enough to ensure
social harmony and justice. No matter how good structures are, corrupt
and selfish individuals can defeat them. On the other hand good citizens
can succeed in making even a society with faulty structures work, the
injustice of the system being counteracted by the spirit of individuals.
Over lunch in Nairobi I spoke with Wilson Kalunge, an assistant manager
with an oil company and a member of Opus Dei. “One of the things which
attracted me to Opus Dei was that here were people from other countries,
but people who had a lot more• concern for the development of this
country than many of us. It was clear these people were the way they
were because of the formation they had received. In Opus Dei I have
learned that unless Kenyans become more concerned about the development
of others some will end up wealthy while others among their countrymen
are left far behind, struggling to survive. Either we accept our duties
or we will end up with a classed society.”
Patrick Mwaniki, a maths and physics teacher at Strathmore College, told
me before he met Opus Dei his goals were a high salary, a big house, a
good car and a comfortable lifestyle. “Now for me these are not the
important things,” he said. “They are only means and not ends in
themselves. In Opus Dei I have found your ambitions change to what
– you can do for people and society, not what you can do for yourself.”
Patrick said at school he had been involved in the Young Christian
Association, debating and wild life societies and had ambitions of
getting into politics. He said he found those ambitions fulfilled in the
work he was now doing with youth. “I feel I am having a real impact on
society this way. Through the tutorial system at Strathmore you really
get to know the students as individuals. I have had cases of boys
labelled write-off and in the space of two years I have seen at least
three of these ‘write offs’ completely reformed. That is satisfying. ‘e
of two years I have seen at least three of these ‘write offs’ completely
reformed. That is satisfying.’’
Kianda Secretarial College, the first multi-racial educational centre
for women in East Africa, is another project of members of Opus Dei in
Nairobi. In the beginning there were only 17 students and they were all
European. When the first application came from an Asian girl, the
neighbours refused to consent. Again there was the problem of finding
non segregated land. A site was eventually found on Waiyaki Way, 10
kilometres outside the centre of Nairobi, and Kianda became the first
integrated secretarial college for women in the country. The fact was
heavily publicised. One newspaper article said if anyone saw girls of
different colours walking on the streets together they could be sure
they were from Kianda College.
The often hostile reaction made life difficult; but racial
discrimination was not the only pressure Kianda had to deal with; there
was the question of sexual discrimination. In the early 1960s most
African women, if they had jobs at all, had the worst; they were poorly
paid; their living conditions and clothes were poor; the fees for a
secretarial course were more than they could afford. Kianda was able to
talk large firms into establishing a system of sponsorships. The new
opportunity enabled the girls to find a career for themselves and to
help support their often poverty-stricken families and clans. When
independence came in 1963 Kianda was the only college training Africans.
Kianda has similar aims to Strathmore and has faced similar challenges.
In 1966 it started a residential college for students who were new to
Nairobi and had nowhere to stay. The more than 5000 students who have
passed through came frclm all over East Africa, Ethiopia, Zambia, Sudan,
Nigeria, Lesotho and Rwanda. Up to 17 nations have been represented at
any one time, moving Kenya’s Sunday Nation newspaper to comment in 1980:
“Today the pan-African status of Kianda is a model for other African
countries.” In 1977 Kianda opened a high school. The Daily Nation noted
in 1984 that the school took only seven years to become one of the
nation’s top 10 schools.
One goal of Kianda, as with Strathmore, has been to help students
overcome racial and tribal differences and to build strong characters.
Students are encouraged to read widely and to improve their cultural
background. Kianda’s philosophy is that Kenya needs not only secretaries
with fast shorthand and typing, but mature individuals with initiative,
personality and responsibility. As a principal of the college, Miss
Olga Marlin, described it: “people who can run an office, not just type
letters.” Some of the students have become teachers at the college.
Others run businesses, such as data processing firms, shops and
commercial farms.
Miss Marlin, who came to Nairobi to help establish Kianda in 1960, said
Kianda did not stop at giving students a sound professional formation,
but helped those who were practising Christians to improve their
Christian life so that it permeated everything they did. “Monsignor
Escriva often warned against the danger of separating these two
aspects,” she said, “living a kind of double life, with God for Sundays
and special occasions, on the one hand, one’s professional and social
life, on the other.” Miss Marlin’s successor, Miss Constance Gillian,
outlined some of the qualities Kianda encouraged in its students as
generosity, inner strength and calmness, tenacity and positive thinking.
Given the professional training that centres of Opus Dei like Kianda
provide, it is clear that Opus Dei does not seek to restrict women to
the home. Asked to comment on what a woman’s mission should be Monsignor
Escrivá. once said he believed there need not be any conflict between
family life and social life.
“I think if we systematically contrast work in the home with outside
work,” the founder of Opus Dei said, ‘retaining the old dichotomy which
was formerly used to maintain that a woman’s place was in the home but
switching the stress, it could easily lead, from the social point of
view, to a greater mistake than that which we are trying to correct
because it would be more serious if it led women to give up their work
in the home.
“Even on the personal level one cannot flatly affirm that a woman has to
achieve her perfection only outside the home, as if time spent on her
family were time stolen from the development of her personality. The
home—whatever its characteristics, because a single woman should also
have a home—is a particularly suitable place for the growth of her
personality. The attention she gives to her family will always be a
woman’s greatest dignity. In the care she takes of her husband and
children or, to put it in mote general terms, in her work of creating a
warm and formative atmosphere around her, a woman fulfills the most
indispensable part of her mission. And so it follows that she can
achieve her personal perfection there.
“What I have just said does not go against her participating in other
aspects of social life including politics. In these spheres, too, women
can offer a valuable personal contribution, without neglecting their
special feminine qualities. They will do this to the extent in which
they are humanly and professionally equipped. Both family and society
clearly need this special contribution, which is in no way secondary to
that of men.”
I asked several women in Kenya how Opus Dei had influenced their lives.
One, Mrs. Zipporah Wandera, had been an advocate of the High court of
Kenya. Her appointment as the first female Assistant Town Clerk of
Nairobi created attention in the local press: in Africa women have
generally been restricted in public life. Mrs. Wandera, a convert to
Catholicism and a member of Opus Dei, spoke in her office surrounded by
books, papers and the offices of her male counterparts.
“In my job I have to deal with departmental heads and there are often
difficulties,” she said. “There are always politicians who are
disgruntled because of the way you do things or because you do not want
to do what they ask. African men tend to think very little of a woman’s
opinion. It is the way they are brought up. But the spiritual direction I
have received gives me courage to stand up to people, even my bosses
and if I think they are wrong I tell them.
“That is not to say that Opus Dei gets involved in my professional life.
Opus Dci gives me spiritual formation and helps me to broaden my
knowledge of Christian teaching but never tells me how I should solve
any problem I have come across in my job. In fact, interference is
something I have never heard of in Opus Dei and that is why I feel at
home with it.
Mrs. Irene Njai grew up in a rural area, but won a scholarship to study
social work in Italy. She became a social worker, but when we met she
was working as an airline ticketing officer because she said she could
not bring herself to accept government policy promoting contraception.
“When I met up with Opus Dei I learnt about turning your work into
prayer. I had been a Catholic so long, nobody had ever told me about
this. I was told you should pray, but never that work could be turned
into prayer; that you could say, I offer this work from eight to 10
o’clock to God for such and such a thing. I felt I was being guided in a
special way. It was really very beautiful.
“It isn’t only the big things you can offer to God. When someone comes
through the door at the office I think well here is a Son of God, there
is a soul in this person and I try to help that person as best I can.
Sometimes you will see a customer who looks very much irritated and
tired and maybe frightened and you smile and you can change entirely the
whole attitude of that person.
“Of course, we will never reach perfection, but little things pieced
together produce something very nice. And I think this concept turns the
day into something one looks forward to. To someone who has no concept
of this, the day does not have this meaning. The day can be something
that one dreads, as I used to dread it before. When one discovers that
work is not a tragedy, it is a joy, it changes your life.
“Another thing I am grateful to Monsignor Escriva for is this idea of
marriage as a vocation. For example, his praise for human love. I have
never heard it from anybody else.
I had read quite a lot of books before I came to Opus Dei, but I never
came across anybody who asserted marriage was a vocation as Monsignor
Escrivá did. Nobody else has ever talked to me about this in the same
way, showing me how to use the married life as the means for my
salvation and my husband’s salvation. And also there is the idea that we
are the heart of the family and we need to be at the service of other
people. As Monsignor Escrivá used to say: ‘To put our hearts on the
floor for the others to walk a bit more comfortably.”
The house was tiny, made from bare boards, with a tin roof and a
kerosene lamp for light. Mr. Martin Ngigi and his wife, Jacinta, had
invited me to dinner. Mr. Ngigi is a traditional Kenyan farmer with a
two-acre shamba. He had grown most of what we ate: chicken with a maize
cake called ugali and a spinach-like vegetable called sukumawiki. Mrs.
Ngigi, a mother of six and a bank clerk, is a cooperator of Opus Dei.
“When I came across Opus Dei I had only two children and I had decided
not to have anymore,” she told me. “But when I came into contact with
Opus Dei I saw how good a Christian heart was in a big family. And I now
have the four you see and I feel much happier since, so happy.”
One of the younger boys, Josemaria, 9, took this opportunity to whisper
to a friend who was with me that this was how he “came to be”. “I was
born in 1976,” Josemaria confided. “That was the year after Monsignor
Josemaria died.”
Mrs. Ngigi continued: “I used to think working at the bank was a
terrible burden and the same with housework; but it is lighter now.
These days I find it, well, a lot of fun.”
Esther Lanoi Kuronoi, a member of Kenya’s Masai tribe, famous for
keeping old traditions, grazing cattle and living mainly on a diet of
milk mixed c blood taken from cows. As a child she had wandered the
dusty plains with the people of her tribe. Nevertheless she had enough
schooling to become a student at the Kibondeni School of Institutional
Management, a corporate work of Opus Dei which gives girls forced by
poverty to drop out of school a chance to make a career for themselves;
for some it is their only chance to break away from an environment where
men have six to
12 wives and where women do most of the work.
At Kibondeni, Esther had been doing the two-year course leading to the
National Certificate of Institutional Management which includes
nutrition, dietetics, administration and accounts, nursing, languages
and sociology. She had also taken classes in religious formation
provided by Opus Dei: ‘1 came to Kibondeni School two years ago,” she
said. “I had always been a Catholic, but here I learnt about how to keep
to a spiritual plan of life and to sanctify my work: that is offering
all of your work to God.
Esther said there was no tribalism at Kibondeni. The teachers emphasised
that everyone was a child of God, no matter the colour of their skin or
the tribe they came from.
All the girls sat together with those of different tribes. One was from
the Turkana tribe, a rival of the Masai. The two tribes had been fighting
each other for a long time. At home, Esther said, she would never have
been able even to talk to the other girl. “Here we tell jokes at get
togethers about each other’s tribes and everyone laughs,” she said. “But
we are good friends; when we leave the room, we leave holding hands…”
The experience in Kenya highlights something important about Opus Dei:
why it can be controversial in some countries, but not in others. It is
not because Opus Dei differs from country to country—it is always the
same. The real reason is that standards of morality vary, supporting
equal rights for women in the 20th Century is bound to get you into
trouble in countries where women are kept out of the workplace. But it
will also attract opposition in those countries; some of them developed
countries, in which women are denied the choice of being full time
mothers and homemakers.
See the original article here: http://www.nigerianobservernews.com/2015/01/01/kenya-fighting-discrimination/
