Technology

This started out as a response to Laura's article and turned into something else.....
->Really interesting Laura! I just got done meeting with the independent study group "Maasai Connection" and so a lot of these similar ideas are on my mind. I'm wondering about the technology aspect of millennium villages and how if we can get these computers they will affect the Maasai. The quote about texting a doctor in a another village about malaria meds is pretty huge. Advances in technology are astounding in general I mean texting is pretty new it's even still coming up as a spelling error when I type it. Anyone who hasn't watched the "Everything is amazing and nobodys happy" youtube video by C.K. Lewis should its hilarious...I think though I can't help but still be skeptical of technology. I know that it is the lens through which I am viewing it but it kills me a little to see people watching tv or playing games all the time especially young kids. I just got my first computer last year and am on it all the time now. It has definitely enhanced my education but I also spend hours on facebook and watching videos each week. I keep thinking about how the computers that we might bring to the Maasai will affect their culture. I do believe that computers offer the ability for people to educate themselves, communicate with others easier and empower them to take charge of their education(like my computer has done for me), but I still wonder what the outcome will be. Any thoughts
here is a link to the computers we may be bringing...
http://laptop.org/en/vision/

Kenya Summer 2010

I liked Laura's idea for starting a Kenya Summer discussion link. We can just comment off of this right?

I'm getting pretty anxious to buy a ticket--I've been looking, and I know others have been too, so I was thinking we could compare what we find on here.


This is the cheapest I've found so far: $1801 including fees and taxes. http://www.expedia.com/pub/agent.dll

Tonight! (Thursday)

Kenya Dig It? Presentation and Slideshow! 6:30 p.m. in the Chapel. The Kenya Dig It Slideshow and Presentation is on the collaborative efforts of the Nabolu Girls’ Centre and The Women’s Empowerment Breakthrough. You are cordially invited to honor the work of Maya Cantlon, Rachael Pace, and the young women of the Nabolu Girls’ Centre. Come and enjoy beautiful Maasai music, food, prizes, and presentation.

the Sauri

If anyone's interested, below is a link to an article about the Sauri in Kenya and their advances out of poverty with the help of....uhhhummm...my Dad's N.P.O., Millennium Promise. The article concludes with arguments for and against his boss' aid development strategy and theories of its success or failure if exponentially enlarged to all the poverty-stricken peoples of Africa as a whole.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/09/world/africa/09kenya.html

The Yaaku's dieing language

This is the link to the article about the Yaaku, their assimilation into the Maasai culture, and their dying language.

http://www.portalangop.co.ao/motix/en_us/noticias/africa/2010/2/9/Only-Seven-Can-Speak-Dying-Language,c85576b7-61f8-4f25-a007-6acabc60ae20.html

Related to our Reading

This article is from Sunday Nation.....I don't know if your legally allowed to copy and past articles on blogs but I couldn't attach a link so I'm going to do it. I just thought this was interesting especially after the reading we had over break regarding conservation of wildlife and how that affects locals and the economy.

Photo (couldn't display)

A Kenya Wildlife Services ranger shows elephant tusks intercepted from poachers. Zambia and Tanzania wanted a one-off sale of 112 tonnes of ivory but the 23-member countries of the African Elephants Coalition, led by Kenya and Mali, opposed the request, saying it would spur poaching. Photo/FILE

By WALTER MENYA
Posted Thursday, March 18 2010 at 22:22

Elephants were thrown a life line on Thursday after it emerged that Tanzania’s proposal to be allowed to sell ivory is likely to be rejected.

The rejection by conservation agency, Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites), would be a major victory for the Kenyan elephant, which is facing increasing danger from poachers. Elephants move freely between the Kenyan and Tanzanian game parks along the common border.

The Cites secretariat recommended that Tanzania’s proposal to sell nearly 90 tonnes of stockpiled ivory be turned down. However, Zambia will be allowed to sell its stocks because it has better methods of control poaching, Cites said at their talks in Doha, Qatar.

The recommendation is not final and a decision will be taken by delegates who are gearing to begin debate on the Tanzanian proposal.
Zambia and Tanzania last November asked the Cites secretariat to remove the African elephant from the list of animals facing extinction.

This would mean that trade in ivory was not banned but controlled. The two countries wanted a one-off sale of 112 tonnes of ivory. But the 23-member countries of the African Elephants Coalition, led by Kenya and Mali, opposed the request, saying it would spur poaching.

International Fund for Animal Welfare Southern Africa director Jason Bell-Leask said elephant populations had declined in the past 30 years and were still recovering from the poaching of the 1980s. At the last Cites conference in 2007, a nine-year moratorium on trade in ivory was agreed upon.

“Corruption, the loss of more than 30,000 elephants in three years, all justify rejection of the Tanzania proposal,” Ms Shelley Waterland, the chairperson of the Species Survival Network’s Elephant Working Group, said on Thursday.

Technology

At the same time, Cites is urging governments to incorporate the internet and new information and communication technology in protecting fauna and flora. Kenya Wildlife Service runs the Wildlife Anti-Poaching Unit, established by the government with support from the World Bank, the United States, and the European Union. The unit has 19 aircraft, a modern communication system, and 24-hour monitoring teams.

More Cultural Lenses

Have you had an experience when you became aware of a cultural lens you were looking through? What happened when you did? How was your experience changed when you identified that you were looking through a lens?  

Cultural Lenses

Discuss a time or instance when you were looking through a cultural lens. Describe the situation and how the lens you were looking through informed your experience. Discuss what may have shaped the lens and how it may have influenced the experience?

Question about westernization

As we discussed in class the problems created by westernizing, I could not help but think that some of the views of the class felt a little bit unrealistic. The act of going into indigenous cultures without bringing any westernized ideals is impractical. If we do not want to change anything about their culture and way of life then what are we doing going to Kenya to work with the Massai? The reality is that in order to survive in today's world certain parts of westernized culture must be adopted. Any culture must adapt or it will cease to exist, isn't that how survival of the fittest works? The Massai need this class to help with the westernized legal system in order for them get their land back. Westernized technology has the ability to improve the quality of life and health of these indigenous cultures. We can help to build reliable and safe water supplies for the villages or local villagers can go away to learn western medicine and return, which could improve infant mortality rates or other medical issues that plague these villages. These improvements to their way of life can be incorporated without affecting their culture and history. I am not so naive to think that western ideas have not had a drastic and sometimes negative effect on indigenous cultures, but there is never a perfect solution when dealing with people.
 by Nathan Kennedy

Class notes 3/3

Race...

In Mary’s Colorline Through U.S. History class last semester this question of race was discussed at length. It seems to me that the word, if not the idea of race was constructed (at different times around the glob) with a genealogical definition (both socially assumed and- at the time- scientifically proven) in order to separate humans for the personal benefit of those in control. Now, in the US, after recently having proven that humans cannot be divided into groups based on genealogy that resemble what we socially recognize as “races”, the word is being redefined instead of thrown out. This phenomenon is frustrating as discussions pop up about the definition of a word, which should simply have been deemed a fallacy. Where the definition of race was once based in genealogy, now it is being defined as bio-regional (still extremely based in skin-color), and cultural.
Through the introduction to Kenya we have had over the past two weeks, there seems to be a huge diversity of regional and cultural histories there, which inevitably divides people by heritage and identity, but from my understanding of the word “race”, I would not call them different “races”. The social implications of cultural or socially constructed divisions must be extremely real in Kenya as they are anywhere, but genetically, the people in Kenya probably share the same unexpected global similarities and differences as the students in the Ford Foundation film.
As I’m writing this, however, I wonder if that last sentence is true. It would be interesting to do the same test that was performed in the Ford Foundation film with different groups of indigenous people who’s ancestors have been in the same area and community for centuries.

Races in Kenya?

If race is defined as a genetic similarity amongst a group of people, then races are just an excuse to create divisions. Among people in the World there is truly only one race which is the human race. The most argued claim to a race difference is the color of one's skin. Since scientificly it has been proven that there is no biologic coralation between skin tone and genetic difference, the very idea of race is discriminatory. That being said, there are uncountable cultural differences around the world. The distinction between culture and race is the difference between nurture and nature: it is how one is raised that creates a cultural identity instead of the innate classification that is assigned at birth which creates the idea of seperate races.

In Kenya cultural differences are profound to the point that they become tribes. Rich with heritage and tradition each tribe has its own way of life. There are 40 tribes and arguably more within Kenya and they are not bound only within the political borders of the country. It is culture and not race that establishes communities and tribes in East Africa.

Race in Kenya

Blog Post Question: Based on what we have discussed/learned so far, are there 'Races' in Kenya?

Zanzibar