What Am I Actually Doing Here?
Sunday: I sit at the airport in Zürich. There is still one hour until our flight departs to Nairobi. Next to me is a group of young women, perhaps 18 to 20 years old. Americans. I quickly realize that they will be taking the same flight, but will continue on to Dar es-Salaam. Before I can ask myself what they expect to do there, one of them digs into her purse and holds out her hand, full of small cards. They look almost like little trading cards: photographs of children’s faces and the names below. “I already know the names of all my girls. They are sooo cute,” exclaims one of the women.
Then on the plane, in addition this group, there many people belonging to some Christian group who are on their way to Africa to “help.” Some are only teenagers. In the middle of all of it, I sit with my tightly scheduled program that, among other things, includes a visit to Kibera, one of the largest slums in Africa, and to a maternity clinic. I look into the excited faces around me and listen as they rave about their future good deeds. I bite my tongue in order not to blurt out something cynical. Why, of all things, untrained teenagers should be saviors in regions with high unemployment is something I will never get.
But what exactly makes them any different from me? At first, not much. I also stand in the slum and make use of the time and information from people. The one positive aspect: I am not taking a potential job away from anyone. Instead, providing new opportunities.
On Monday, we visit Kibera and look at the vast, almost unending area. As one of my fellow travellers says to me: “It would be so easy to write a typical 'Africa piece' after such a visit." The awareness of this possibility and the implicit refusal to do so force us to search for different stories, to gather more information, to hold deeper conversations in order supplement the existing coverage of Africa, which Binyavanga Wainaina has rightly criticized.
To fulfill this ambition, I will show in my next piece how the fight for reproductive rights in the USA and Kenya are related.
Charlott Schönwetter, a feminist blogger for Afrika Wissen Schaft and Mädchenmannschaft, is writing from the International Reporting Project's reproductive health-themed trip to Kenya. This article was translated from German by Erica Cameron.
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