From My Mother's Back E-Book

Njoki Wane

• Herausgeber: Wolsak and Wynn
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Seitenzahl: 247

Beschreibung

In From My Mother’s Back: A Journey from Kenya to Canada, Njoki Wane introduces us to her mother, a woman of deep wisdom, and to all the richness of a life lived between two countries. A celebrated professor and award-winning teacher, she shares her journey from a Catholic girls’ boarding school in rural Kenya to standing in front of a lectern at the University of Toronto. Along the way she reflects on the heritage that was taken from her as a child and the strengths and teachings of the family that pulled her through and helped her to not only succeed as a scholar, but to reclaim her culture, her history and even her name.

Leseprobe

About This Book

In From My Mother’s Back: A Journey from Kenya to Canada, Njoki Wane introduces us to her mother, a woman of deep wisdom, and to all the richness of a life lived between two countries. A celebrated professor and award-winning teacher, she shares her journey from a Catholic girls’ boarding school in rural Kenya to standing in front of a lectern at the University of Toronto. Along the way she reflects on the heritage that was taken from her as a child and the strengths and teachings of the family that pulled her through and helped her to not only succeed as a scholar, but to reclaim her culture, her history and even her name.

Other Titles By Njoki Wane

A Handbook on African Traditional Healing Approaches & Research Practices

Indigenous African Knowledge Production

Ruptures: Anti-colonial & Anti-racist Feminist Theorizing

Spiritual Discourse in the Academy

From My Mother's Back tile page.

Dedication

To Mum and Dad; Tony, Francis, Maatha, Mike, Henry and Venancio

May your souls rest in peace.

Contents

Cover

About This Book

Also by Njoki Wane

Title Page

Dedication

Contents

Foreword

Introduction

1: Fulfillment of a Prophecy: A University Professor

2: Enchantment of Enrolling in Primary School

3: Office Hours

4: Reading through a Daughter’s Eyes: In the Fields with My Mother

5: Writing: The Rituals of Academia

6: Father’s Journal

7: Graduation

8: The Long Walk to School

9: My First Bed: A Shifting Bed

10: Strange Rituals

11: A Life-Altering Smile in Class

12: A Moment of Reflection: From My Canadian Kitchen to Kenya

13: My Mother’s Footprints

14: Canada: My New Home

15: Brothers’ and Sisters’ Gifts

16: Gratitude: The Gifts and Giving

17: My Husband, the Maasai Man

18: World Views

19: Conversations with Anthony

20: Promises and Burials

21: To You, Henry, My Brother

22: The Woman of the Two Worlds

23: Reflection: Being Black, a Woman and a Professor in Canada

24: Journeying Back to My First Boarding School

25: From My Mother’s Back

Afterword

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Copyright

Foreword

Many African cultures believe that we cannot know a person unless we know their roots and that no one can achieve anything of significance unless they know where “they are coming from” or “where they belong.”

I know few people who are as conscious and proud of their roots as Njoki. In her memoir, she clearly shows that she’s fully aware of her heritage as she fondly recounts her experiences of growing up in rural Embu. As someone who sees her on a daily basis, I have witnessed how this rootedness manifests in her many actions.

Where many Western-educated Africans (not to say Kenyans) seem to relish their “Westernization” and distance themselves from their culture, Njoki has deliberately celebrated her Kenyan and Embu beginnings. One does not have to look far for evidence of this. The fact that a young girl known “officially” as Catherine has chosen to revert to her Kenyan name of Njoki instead of the European name she had to adopt while attending Catholic school speaks volumes.

Some might misinterpret this as a rejection of European culture or norms. However, anyone who knows Njoki will see this more appropriately as evidence that one can practise what the late Senegalese writer and president Léopold Sédar Senghor advocated: “rootedness and openness.” Njoki shows that one can be at the same time very attached to and respectful of one’s culture while also being open and appreciative of what other cultures offer.

In this memoir Njoki shares with the reader stories about her life in Kenya and Canada. With great humour, she tells of growing up in the countryside, going to boarding school and receiving her first pair of high-heeled shoes. She also shares her life in Canada as a graduate student, then as a university professor at the University of Toronto.

There are many qualities to admire in Njoki. It will be obvious to the reader that she is a person who realizes that she has been blessed with a lot of opportunities in life and who feels it’s important to share with others. Over the years, I have met many of her students who privately have told me of her many acts of kindness that went beyond what they expected of a professor.

Despite all her achievements, Njoki is a humble person who relates equally well to the very highly educated and to the rural folks she celebrates in a lot of her professional writing. I have seen her equally at ease entertaining ministers or socializing with African women farmers.

This ability to navigate between many worlds is part of what makes Njoki’s memoir very entertaining and educational. Readers, irrespective of their backgrounds, will find some stories that bring a smile to their face or make them think of their own histories. Even though Njoki writes as a Kenyan, her stories will resonate with non-Kenyans and non-Africans as the themes she discusses are universal: family, school, culture. Just as she does in everyday life, Njoki makes space for everyone in her memoirs.

Amadou Wane

Introduction

It feels like just yesterday that I was a little girl hopping my way to the river to fetch water only to rush back home with an almost empty container because half the water had spilled on me. I can still remember trying to balance a small steel sufuria that my mother or my elder sisters had designated as my container for fetching water from the Ena River.

The container felt special because it was small, just like me, and my mother never used it for cooking. It was always left in the kitchen, on the wooden drying platform made of twigs, ready for me to pick it up and run to the river to fetch water. Everyone in the family knew how fast I could run (unless I was instructed otherwise) and because of that I was always the one sent for errands: buying salt or sugar from the village shops, delivering a pint of milk to my grandmother’s house, being sent to the bush to look for firewood. I took great pride in my tasks even when the results weren’t quite what had been expected. The only firewood small enough for me to collect was supposed to be used to make tea for my brothers’ visitors. They could only laugh when I regularly returned home with a load of twigs that were not nearly dry enough to burn and could not be used for weeks, if not months!

Who cares? I thought. As long as I brought home a load of firewood, even if it could not make anybody’s fire, I had fulfilled my purpose. I was imaginative and ambitious, always looking to the future and painting my world with images of wonder yet to come. I was quick to point out to my brothers or sisters that it would only be a matter of time before the world changed. That I would just press a button to prepare a cup of tea for them or turn a knob and water would flow – my imagination always carried me away. I always thought of the day when I would never have to go to the river to bring water home or go to the bushes in search of firewood.

Many times I would arrive from the river, soaking wet, and would turn to Mother and say, “Mami! When I am done with school, I will make sure you have piped water right there.” I pointed to the centre of the compound. “No more calabashes or big containers on your head or back.”

My mother would laugh and say, “You know, Njoki, I believe you. One day you will have water in your own home, not here: far, far from here.”

All members of my family knew me as a happy little girl, very playful, full of life and nothing bothered me. I was a joyful child.

Not all my imaginings came to fruition before my mother passed on, but she was able to enjoy cooking with a gas stove and having water piped up to her compound – but not inside her house – before she died. However, she did not live to enjoy a cup of tea produced by a microwave. Who would have thought that the small girl who used to run to Ena River to fetch water, or go to the bushes to look for firewood, would one day stand in her kitchen far from her kijiji – which means village in Kiswahili – and be pressing buttons for cooking. That she’d press a knob and water would flow, press a button and dishes would be washed.

Probably for many Canadians, my childhood seems far-fetched. It is not for someone who grew up in a small kijiji in rural Kenya. Kijiji for me was that place where everyone knew one another. Where the women assisted each other during childbirth. Where neighbours ploughed and harvested for you when you were not well. Kijiji had a sense of belonging. There was one primary school, one Protestant church, one chief. Later in the book, I talk about our evacuation during the fight for independence. People from the kijiji were forced to leave our homes; however, when independence was declared in 1963, everyone returned.

My own children did not experience my life and nor will their children. The village experience is something you might see in a movie – but that was my reality and I loved it. Today, when I look back, I experience some turmoil. There are some things I would have liked to keep from my rural life in the village, such as organic food, kinship, relationships and the spirit of the kijiji where children grew without fear. I know things like the microwave make life easier for us. However, the health impact is something I think about on a daily basis. I guess those like me who have embraced many aspects of modernity, whether in the West or in other parts of the world experience dissonance as they make sense of the complexity in their life caused by what surrounds them.

Not all lessons happen in order. Most come in fits and starts over the course of our lifetime and it is the gift of memory and our willingness to reflect that gives life and value to lessons decades in the making. How often, as an adult, have you looked back to an event in your life and thought, I see. I see now why my elders constantly repeated the same thing over and over again.

I see why they employed proverbs and riddles almost on a daily basis – particularly when there were challenges to be overcome, and especially when certain struggles did not make sense at all. Now, as I look back, I understand how these events have shaped me, made me who I am today, have made me the professor I am at the University of Toronto. When I teach, I usually challenge the students to find something from their far memory. I challenge them to recall stories they were told by their parents or their grandparents or their neighbours.

The essence of these stories is to compare our contemporary times with times from the past. My emphasis here is about one’s culture or ethnicity. I find this is a good way to ground students who think they have no culture or that they are just Canadians and have no ethnic background. We are all Indigenous to a place. I say this constantly because we are all from a place; we do not have to have visited that place, but that place is carved in us. To some extent, we do connect with some of those stories from our past – and some stories are very traumatizing, while others, students remember them only as they were narrated or passed down in their family line, generation after generation. I believe sharing these stories (even if they are being told by a fifth generation) is important. They create a connective tissue, something tangible that keeps families, communities and sometimes societies together.

I believe that our most important lessons are the ones we have to wait for. Each of us has struggled, fought and despaired at some point in our lives. We may have faced down a terrifying foe or sat down at the end of the day, utterly defeated and asked ourselves, “Why me? Why do I have to fight this hard? What can I possibly learn from this much pain other than to avoid it at all costs?” Other times, we have looked back and appreciated the many blessings, the abundance in our life – and many times, we do not even think of why we have been so blessed with so much. It does not make sense.

Let me give you an example: Even when I was eight years old, I wanted to be a professor. Do you know how long I waited for that to happen? It was not a straight path. For instance, I waited for almost seven years to join university. Why? Why could I not go from high school to university like all my classmates? Why did my mother die before I graduated? Or, why did I have so much material wealth in my early twenties when I could not make sense of it, while some girls of my age had little to nothing, and then have next to nothing in my thirties? Life is extremely complex and many of us go through it not noticing what is happening. There is too much of the unevenness of abundance.

But for me, as I sit to reflect on my journey, I believe my experiences have been so beautiful, so rich that I would not have wanted my life to have unfolded differently. I have enjoyed the simple things in life. I have enjoyed grand aspects of life. I also have enjoyed counting pennies because I did not have enough money to feed my Canadian family, and later in life, when I finally got my teaching job, I enjoyed treating them to good dinners and outings. These are the moments that shape us; these are the memories that carve our future from the woodwork of possibility. Struggle and challenge, appreciation and gratitude narrow our focus, define our values and provide us with stillness necessary for grounding. From My Mother’s Back is a story told through lessons and connections, pairing the present with the past to allow the reader to experience the complete phenomenon of what it means to have a meaningful life full of abundance. I believe the present is a mirror of my past. The struggles made me strong, made me appreciate my parents’ teachings. The constant use of proverbs would be a reminder that even the difficult moments will soon pass: no matter how long the night, dawn will come. Looking back, I have been blessed with great family members; the good in my life outweighs the challenges.

This story is about real-life events and will explore many issues, including culture, spirituality, education and status, as well as personal drive, family values and the fickle nature of destiny.

Gratitude shapes a person as often as grief and this story is filled with all the necessary ingredients to grow a strong, independent and thoughtful woman or man. You will see mistakes, judgment and selfish pride as often as you see strength, integrity and humility. I encourage you to react to each story as it comes rather than wait to see what happens next.

So often in life, we are offered only a brief snapshot of an individual’s character and we must make decisions based on that single interaction, observation or event. Only with the people we spend most of our time with do we have the luxury of watching an individual grow, struggle and adapt.

And even then, we miss most of what truly makes them who they are: reflection, self-evaluation – a resolution to change when necessary. More often than not, such a process happens in the privacy and sanctity of our own minds, rarely shared and even more rarely dissected in depth.

Each of these chapters has a story to tell. Each one of them narrates a memorable moment or event. Respond to each chapter; judge each person as if you will never meet them again. Only then will you be able to truly connect with the emotional, spiritual and mental minefield that makes a person who they are; what makes me the person I am today.

Remember, it is often a twist of fate whether or not we meet a person on their best day, their worst or in the midst of growth. Some say that people never really change. This could not be more false. People change all the time, on a minute-by-minute or even second-by-second basis, sometimes in such extreme ways that they appear to be completely different people. These changes are not discarded; rather they are experienced, evaluated and adjusted faster than most people can imagine.

Change is part of human instinct. We adapt to every situation as best we can, learning what works, throwing away what doesn’t. As a resident of Canada and a citizen, I have adapted to many things that I would never have imagined. For instance, I do appreciate the four seasons of the year, though I grew up in a climate that was constant and was marked by rainy or dry seasons, or by ploughing, planting, weeding and harvesting seasons. There is beauty when you take in every breath in the surroundings that you consider home even in its impermanence. I talk about this temporary feeling because once a person lives in different continents, it is difficult to completely consider one place more permanent than the other one. When I am in Kenya, I constantly talk about my home in Canada. And, when I am in Canada, I always talk about my home in Kenya. So, where is home for me?

Of course I have also had many encounters in both countries when people would ask me, “When will you go back?” Perhaps think of me as if I was suspended in the air, casting my gaze in both directions, northwest to Canada and southeast to Kenya. Or those times when someone would ask me, “Where are you really from?” This is a very common question in the West especially when you are not of Caucasian background. When I respond with “Pickering,” they insist on their interpretation and say, “No – you cannot be. You speak with an accent.” If I have some time to engage in a dialogue, I often ask my questioner, “Where are you from yourself?” They answer, of course, Canada. I then respond, “That is good – it’s always great to meet an Indigenous person from Turtle Island.” And the conversation would shift somehow and my questioner would say – “Oh, oh – I am not an Aboriginal person. My ancestors came from . . .” and they would name the country.

These conversations are always a reminder to me that I am in transit; I really do not have a permanent home. These are the moments that I feel homesick, that I experience a sense of alienation and dislocation, and feel a lack of belonging. And, at the same time, a sense of gratitude. Gratitude for the opportunity to have my spirit floating in different continents in search of home, in search of beauty, in search of something that has no name, yes something – though I’m not sure what.

Consider, therefore, the lessons in this book and decide for yourself what should be remembered, what should be changed and what should be forgotten.

Fulfillment of a Prophecy: A University Professor

My mother can see this; I am certain of it.

This is what she always wanted for me: a life of academics rather than field work. I can feel her eyes upon me, full of love and pride: a pride that once embarrassed me, a pride I once rejected. This rejection was the mistake of a young and selfish child: one that I will never make again. It has been a long journey from the Ena River in rural Kenya where, at the tender age of eight years, I insisted to my dearest friend Patricia that someday I was going to be a professor speaking to an auditorium full of students in a university. Were my words to Patricia a fantasy? A prophecy? A dream – the product of some wild imagination evoked in children’s play? It seemed so at the time. Yet, today, I am not only a professor, but one who has received a number of teaching awards, the most recent one being the President’s Teaching Award from the University of Toronto.

I will not lie to you; as I write these lines, I am blinking away tears. It is extremely emotional for me to consider the long road that I have travelled – physically, emotionally, spiritually and professionally – to be where I am today. What makes me shed tears when I look back is how supportive many people have been. Believe you me, I have met strangers who have assisted in more ways than one can imagine.

I still remember one such incident when a stranger gave me forms to apply for a scholarship to Canadian universities. This is how I found myself at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton to pursue a master’s degree in education. Another time, a mentor whom I had not seen for about five years rang the gate bell of my Nairobi home because she was lost. When I opened the gate, she said, “Oh my, you were the last person I expected to see in this neighbourhood” (this will make sense to you later). Not making sense of what she meant, I invited her in, but she declined as she was looking for a friend’s house, who happened to be my next-door neighbour. However, before she left, she asked me casually whether I would be interested in teaching for her – she was a deputy principal of Kianda College – for one semester as their regular teacher was on maternity leave. Without hesitation, I said yes. I did not have a college diploma, nor a teaching certificate. All I had were a few secretarial certificates that I had acquired from that college a few years back. That was the beginning of my teaching career. One semester became one year. In the space of that year, my life changed completely.

I still remember Mrs. Wamokoya, a colleague at Kianda College, who approached me a few days before the end of the academic year and gave me a newspaper cutting advertising a one-year teacher training program for business education teachers. I looked at her, not sure why she gave it to me, and I said, “I am not interested in joining anybody’s teachers’ college. I am satisfied teaching a few hours a day and going home to rest. I actually don’t need the money as a full-time employee. My life is okay.”

I will never forget the look this woman gave me. Then she proceeded to say, “You are a real fool. What’s wrong with you? Open your eyes to reality and get something for yourself. Do not depend on other people’s money.” I felt insulted and left the staff room. When I came back, she handed me a handwritten note. It was an application letter responding to the advertisement for the one-year teacher training program with my name on it. Without waiting for me to say a word she said, “Sign here.” I signed the letter without even reading it, and left the room again.

On reflection, I am not sure why I signed that letter. One thing, however, is clear: that signature put me back on track on my educational journey. Maybe I signed the letter out of respect for her, as I had been taught to be respectful. I did not care whether I got admitted to the college or not. I was more concerned with what the principal of the Kianda College would say if she knew I was planning to leave for a teacher training program. However, on reflection, it was the unconscious dream in me to be a professor that guided me. Mrs. Wamokoya was my angel. She was one of the many guides that I have met throughout my life. Call it fate. But someone had to intervene to save me from my folly. Mrs. Wamokoya was a trained teacher, she was mature, and she could read my naïveté from a mile away. I was in my early twenties, and I never thought that one day, I would wake up from my dream (honestly, I was living a good life: fantasy cars, big homes, vacationing in Europe, flying first class) with no money or cars, nothing except my diplomas. My life was extremely good – or so I thought.

A month later, I received an invitation for an interview for the training program. I was scared. I did not know how to excuse myself for the day. I turned to Mrs. Wamokoya and asked her what I should say to the principal. I still remember her words: “Oh my goodness, what’s wrong with you? This is your life. Tell the principal you have business to take care of.” This time, she walked out of the staff room and left me there gazing into nothingness. I cannot remember what excuse I gave the principal for being absent; what I remember is how scared I was to walk to the principal’s office to ask for a day off work.

What I remember vividly is driving to Kenya Technical Teachers College for my interview. I walked into the interview room with pride and confidence. I had already made up my mind that this interview was a waste of my time and I couldn’t wait to be done with it. I still remember telling the panellist that my dream was to attend a university and become a professor and that what the college offered me would not be enough to equip me with the education I was searching for. Interestingly, one of the panellists was a Canadian professor. Nevertheless, despite my attitude, I passed the interview and within a month, I was sitting in a classroom as a trainee at the Kenya Technical Teachers College in Nairobi. My long road to the acquisition of many degrees had just begun. Mrs. Wamokoya was my angel. She snapped me from sleep and put me back on my path to becoming a university professor. The ground had shifted beneath me. My view of the material world completely changed. All that I longed for now was to achieve my mother’s dream for me – to acquire a university degree. I have had many such incidences, especially in Canada.

My one-year diploma training at the Kenya Technical Teachers College was one of my best times in life. I excelled in all my subjects. I met women who became my lifelong family friends. Through my honours diploma, I was admitted to Nairobi University, Kenyatta College Campus to pursue my bachelor of education in business studies.

I have met many such angels as Mrs. Wamokoya both in Canada and Kenya, people who have directed me in one way or another. My mum who was already in the spirit world kept me company all the time. And now, as I write this memoir, I have many members of my family who walk with me as they also have transitioned to the spirit world: people whom I cannot touch, or hear their voice or have them hear mine as I narrate my stories – I do miss them, my parents, my brothers and Mike, the father of some of my children.

Mum, you started this journey with me, I know you can see me. Please come, as I want us to remember my first experience as a professor in a Canadian university. I had taught previously in a Kenyan university, but without a master’s degree – again one of those occurrences in my life where strangers guided me as I tried to move away from my path. Mum – walk beside me – here I am, walking into the auditorium for my first class of the fall semester.

The walk from my car to the classroom is filled with an unfamiliar excitement. I’ve walked, driven, flown and sailed to many new places. I’ve been full of wonder seeing Niagara Falls in Canada, the foothills of Mount Kenya, the Taj Mahal on the south bank of the Yamuna River in the Indian city of Agra, the slave castles in Senegal and many others, but this is the first time I am going somewhere where I am both extremely nervous and excited all at once.

“Mama, we have taken this path together many times when I was a child. It never matters whether it’s concrete or loose soil. I walk beside you, Mother. I learn from you and I teach from you.”

I whisper these words to myself as I pull my carrying case behind me, knowing that my ancestors are listening. Conversations with spirits are something I learned from my father. He received much guidance from them and today, I do as well.

The University of Toronto campus is beautiful, full of life and bursting with potential. I look around and pause a moment to take in the beauty of these magnificent-looking buildings built in the eighteenth century, and I sigh. The concrete walkways, grassy quads and towering buildings remind me of how far I am from my village (fourteen thousand kilometres), and yet, how close to home. Seasons are still something at which I marvel. The golden leaves of fall, crisp winter snow and fresh winds of spring are all gifts of this new country. But then, momentarily, I am taken back to Kenya.