Re-connecting, Serving, Finding a New Calling

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a piece on the African American-Kenyan Women’s Interconnect (AAKEWO) “cultural reconnection mission” and promised I would have an opportunity soon to find out more from my friend, LueRachelle Brim-Atkins, one of the women involved in the mission.  A couple days ago I sat down with LueRachelle and talked with her about how she came to be involved with this project, some of what they do and what it means to her. 

LueRachelle first went on a reconnection trip in 2003, the second time the group of Seattle women had gone to Kenya. 

Initially the trips were about recovering a deep connection with one of the cultures of their ancestral homeland, a culture they were torn from generations ago.  And they were about exploring the great cities and forests and lakes of Africa and building relationships with Kenyan women and relaxing with Kenyan counterparts who were becoming friends

After a while they came to be about serving.  LueRachelle said that she comes from a family where “lives are lived in service to others.”  She feels like it’s just what she is supposed to do.  When she came back from her 2003 trip, her first, she knew she was called to work on projects to help the lives of women and girls in Kenya.  And so she has.  She is in awe of the hold it has on her life and the amount of energy she and so many other women put into this mission.  She says it is like having a full time job, doing whatever she and the other, mostly professional women hold as jobs and then also working full time on this project.  “It literally consumes some portion of my day, everyday.”  And she is deeply committed.  LueRachelle says that there are “very few things I’m as clear about.” 

The first group of seven African-American women from the Seattle area went to Kenya in 2000. I loved hearing about the way this all came about and then reading about it in a great article that the Seattle Times did on this group last spring:

The idea behind AAKEWO can be traced back to the late 1980s and early 1990s, when Marcia Tate-Arunga, a Seattle native, was living in her husband's homeland of Kenya and noticed a growing sense of activism among women.

In 1997, Arunga's sister-in-law, Phelgona Okundi, ran for a seat in Kenya's Parliament, and although her election bid was unsuccessful, it energized her supporters, particularly women, boosting their involvement in social and community projects.

The following year, Arunga, who had moved back to the U.S., invited Okundi to visit her in Seattle and held an afternoon tea in Renton to meet a half-dozen African-American women from various occupations.

As the women listened to Okundi, emotional bonds began to form, and the event stretched into the evening, then the night.

"We didn't go away, so she [Arunga] started feeding us," said Benita R. Horn, 58, a human-resources consultant. "We went past tea time and through dinner. ... We sat in a big circle and each woman shared who she was, where she grew up, her family, her experience, her education, her career — how she got to be who she was that day."

Out of the discussion, an idea was formed: The women would travel as a group to Kenya, Seven women went on the first trip in the spring of 2000. With varying casts of participants, other trips were made in 2003 and last year. The group plans to return to Kenya every year this decade.
Okundi, co-founder of the group with Arunga, died in a car accident in 2003, a month before the American women's second visit. Her spirit, Arunga said, lives on in the group's projects and dedication.

Each of the group's trips has been to Kenya, building on Arunga's ties there. Her husband, David, remains in Kenya as the personal assistant to the Minister of Roads and Public Works.

The group, which has grown since that first trip, has gone back three times and has another three trips planned for next year.  They are deeply immersed in several different villages, institutions and projects, working always with their partners, the Kenyan women who work so hard to make life work for the people around them, particularly for the children.  As a result, they formed a non-profit organization—African American Kenyan Women’s Interconnect (AAKEWO) which is fund-raising arm of their organization.

LueRachelle describes some of the many projects the group either has worked on or would like to work on.  First she clarifies that they only take on projects that Kenyans are already working on; they don’t initiate projects, rather they add onto existing projects and take their direction from people who are already working in the communities. 

There is an orphanage in Kisumu, a city of about 185,000, that the group supports.  The group has helped the orphanage with books and toys, a septic system, water storage, bathrooms, showers solar lighting, two cows, a calf and 200 chicks.

One of the women who volunteers at the orphanage is married to a minister who works with homeless children who live on the streets of Kisumu. LueRachelle iwould eventually like to work on a  project to build a village for those homeless children to provide them a place to live and a place to go to school.  Right now her group is  raising funds to build a dormitory for girls at the village school where they have bought text books and built a kitchen.  The boys at the school have a dormitory but girls must walk to and from school regardless of the weather.

That is how it builds.

AAKEWO has also contributed to scholarships for girls at the Ombogo Girls Academy, an institution striving to educate future leaders of Kenya, most of who have lost either one parent or both to AIDS.   

Another potential project came as a result of a discussion they had when they met with staff and teachers at the University of Masemo.  One of the professors told them that there were girls who miss school during their menstrual periods because they had no sanitary products and the boys laughed at them.  Missing 2-3 days each month makes it much harder for these young women to keep up with their studies. 

This trip, the women in the group will add sanitary products to their luggage to help a little, along with the pencils and paper and other school supplies they typically carry over with them.

Now, LueRachelle wants to provide sanitary supplies as well as biology lessons/HIV/AIDS education to students and their families in selected rural schools and then measure the results over several years to see if this will make a difference in the graduation rates for girls. She is writing a funding proposal for this and hopes to make it a reality.   

Did I mention that this is a calling for LueRachelle and her friends?  If you would like to learn more, check out their website.