Nairobi, Kenya

Why I chose to go to Nairobi: I wanted the challenge of learning about and adapting to a completely different environment. I wanted to understand what it means to live in a so-called Third World country, to see how it feels to be a white American female in a culture of Black Africans, to learn what stereotypes are a part of my own personal baggage, and to study women’s issues in the context of a developing country.

What I identified as the greatest challenges facing me as I began my study abroad program: I want to be able to fit in and feel as though I belong. I want to speak Kiswahili well enough to demonstrate to Kenyans that I’m not just an American tourist passing through on vacation. I want to be able to go beyond stereotypes (both those I might hold and those Kenyans might have about me).

My ICRP: Violence Against Women in Kenya
I am currently working for the Coalition on Violence Against Women (COVAW) in Nairobi. COVAW is a human rights organization that has dedicated itself to raising awareness about violence against women in Kenya and attempting to eradicate it from Kenyan society. The organization has several branches for different purposes. Within the Couseling branch, there is a full-time psychologist on staff who works with women victims of abuse both individually and in a group therapy setting. In the Public Interest Litigation branch, there is a lawyer who advises women on their legal rights and represents victims in court. In the Advocacy branch, directors and staff arrange programs aimed at sensitizing women and men to the problems of domestic and sexual violence, empowering victims to come forward with their experiences, and educating the youth in an effort to curb this phenomenon before it begins. Since beginning my internship with the COVAW, I have spent many hours reading materials from their resource center about domestic and sexual violence, women in politics and COVAW's activities. I also observed the planning efforts for COVAW's annual initiative for 16 days of activism against gender violence, and I attended the road rally for this campaign, a group therapy session and a public tribunal for rape victims. I am currently working on a publication that analyzes the Kenyan media's representation of violence against women in four different daily newspapers. I am not only learning a great deal about the nature and prevalence of violence against women in Kenyan society and also about the way it is presented in the media, I am also learning a lot about the internal functioning of NGO's in Kenya. I also am gaining a very interesting perspective on how Kenyan women who believe strongly in women's empowerment and who have broken out of the traditional roles prescribed by Kenyan society are regarded by the community.

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Read excerpts from my letters home.