Wed, 30 Jan 2008 22:39:31 -0800 (PST)


Greetings Friends--

The following article will appear in the Virginia editions of the Washington Post tomorrow (Thursday January 31st), including a picture taken at Potomac earlier this month and some pictures from our Kenya trip last summer.

The article is also available online on the Washington Post website. Thanks for all your support in these tought times for Kenya. Enjoy and pass along to all your contacts! - Ken Okoth



Kenneth O. Okoth worried all through December about the close presidential election in his homeland of Kenya. Things could get tense, the high school history teacher told friends and neighbors. Pray for our country.

But the violence that erupted in Kenya after the contested presidential election Dec. 27 was worse than Okoth had imagined. The streets teemed with thugs. Members of ethnic groups that had lived together in relative peace for decades turned against each other, looting and burning homes and stores. Then Okoth heard that members of a gang called Mungiki were roving the streets, raping, mutilating and killing men and women. He knew he had to get his family out.

Okoth, 30, who teaches at the Potomac School in McLean, left his home in the slums on the outskirts of Nairobi in 1997 for a scholarship to St. Lawrence University in Upstate New York.

He went on to get a master's degree, marry a fellow teacher and settle in Southeast Washington.

But strong ties to his home remain. Not only does Okoth support his mother and several family members, but for the past several months, he has been the de facto head of a school in his old neighborhood that serves orphans and other impoverished children of the slums that ring Nairobi.

Okoth worked feverishly by telephone and e-mail to arrange transport to safety in Tanzania for six female family members and one of his brothers; his 58-year-old mother later returned to the Nairobi hospital for treatment of a kidney ailment.

In the days that followed, the violence raged on. Close to 800 have been killed and 200,000 displaced. Okoth said that he has a measure of peace knowing that his family is safe for now.

The school is another story. The modest building was shuttered because of the violence, and only half of the 90 children have trickled back since it reopened this month. Dozens remain in hiding or in refugee camps, or else their fate is unknown.

Voiceless Victims

Since the violence began, Okoth has been running in high gear, giving end-of-semester exams, fielding late-night calls from his family in Tanzania and making fundraising trips throughout the mid-Atlantic region to garner support for the school in Kenya.

He has also become somewhat of a spokesman on Kenyan conflict, speaking on National Public Radio and appearing in other media outlets. Over and over, he explains his position: The politicians and their entrenched special interests are what is truly hurting the country, and the real victims of the conflict are the poor residents of the slums, no matter what their ethnic affiliation. Members of opposition leader Raila Odinga's Luo tribe rioted and burned stores after their candidate narrowly lost the presidential election last month, an election they say was rigged in favor of Kenya's president, Mwai Kibaki, a member of the prominent Kikuyu tribe.

Members of the two tribes and Kenya's other ethnic communities clashed repeatedly in Nairobi and in the countryside, as the election crisis ground on.

"I'm not convinced that either side is interested in genuinely helping the people," Okoth, a Luo, said recently. He was waiting in the green room for an appearance on NPR's "Talk of the Nation."

He said, "I'd rather spend time talking about the kids whose lives have been affected and whose stories you might never have heard about."

'An Extraordinary Story'

Okoth was once one of those children.

He grew up in a one-room dwelling in Nairobi's Kibera slum, one of six children of a single mother who worked as a school typist. Food was often scarce. The family survived on the cornmeal mash called ugali. Half the time, Okoth went without lunch or got by on a tin of UNICEF glucose powder. A Christmas present might be a school uniform for the next year. His mother nevertheless instilled a love of learning in her fifth son. He strained his eyes reading by kerosene lamp and candlelight and often studied late into the night at the home of a neighbor, Gertrude Wafula, a schoolteacher who had electricity.

"I was fascinated by the world of ideas," Okoth said, recalling how long it used to take him to replace the discarded newspaper the family used to line a shelf that held pots and pans in their home: He would read every article. "I let my mind fly to anyplace in the world in the newspaper." He eventually won a scholarship to an exclusive boys' boarding school -- he likens it to a kid from Southeast Washington going to St. Albans School for Boys -- but despite graduating at the top of his class, he was forced to return to Kibera and his mat on the floor for two years, working as a security guard and delivering newspapers.

He said he never felt discouraged.

"I felt I had to be patient," he said. "If I learned that a door is not going to open, I just had to catch my breath, never give up and find something else." One of the places where he delivered the East African newspaper every day was the Nairobi campus for the exchange program for St. Lawrence University. He asked several times if they had a scholarship program -- they did -- and persuaded them to allow him to apply. He ended up graduating magna cum laude from St. Lawrence in 2001 and earned a master's degree from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service in 2005. It was "an extraordinary story," said Dan Sullivan, St. Lawrence's president. "Right from the get-go, he involved himself in literally everything at St. Lawrence. He came to my attention right away as a very visible leader." Okoth is one of the school's trustees.

In 2001, Wafula, the teacher and former neighbor, founded a small community school in Okoth's old neighborhood, Red Rose Nursery and Children's Centre. Okoth began traveling to Kenya regularly to help her. Last year, he founded a nonprofit organization, the Children of Kibera Foundation, to raise money for the school.

In the summer, he took several Potomac School students and a few parents and colleagues with him to Kibera to fix up the school and deliver boxes of books and laptops.

Okoth, described by fellow instructor Michelle O'Hara as "humble and funny and brave and persistent," seems to move with ease through the differing spheres, from the poverty, to the Red Rose in Kenya, to the halls of one of the Washington area's exclusive private schools. He has taught African history and global studies at the Potomac School since 2005 and is known for his high expectations: He requires students to wear suits and business attire before all class presentations.

"He has a really wonderful way of connecting with kids and a real sense of mission from where he has come from, and an ongoing commitment to those who don't have the privilege our students do," said Daniel Paradis, the head of Potomac's Upper School. "He shares that commitment . . . with his students."

'It Is Really Bad'

In recent days, the violence quieted, after former U.N.secretary general Kofi Annan arrived in Nairobi for peace talks, and then erupted again.

Even from 7,500 miles away, the crisis has taken a toll.

"Trying to manage it by phone, trying to show up for my classes and be there for them 100 percent, it's been very, very stressful," Okoth said. "I've lost my appetite. It's very hard to sleep, and I feel anxious about things I can't control."

Many of the Red Rose students remain in hiding or in displacement camps run by the Red Cross.

"Some of the children [have] not come back yet because their houses were looted or burnt," one of the school's teachers, Emily Mudavadi, wrote in a letter posted on the Red Rose blog.

"Anyway, we are happy because we are all alive and nobody was shot by the police or died in the fighting. . . . I am really doing a lot of counseling for the children. . . . Because their minds are not settled they are remembering what happened and how their houses were burnt. It is really bad."

Okoth said he is hopeful that there will be a resolution to the election crisis, but the renewed violence makes him worry that the country is in "rudderless free-fall." His family returned home from Tanzania to Nairobi on Jan. 22.

"It's very volatile," Okoth said. "I will feel better when we have a completed solution on the political front, but the politicians haven't reached that point. We're basing it all on prayer."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/30/
AR2008013001444.html

Ken Okoth
Upper School History Teacher
The Potomac School
Voicemail: 703-873-6161