21.8.13
Letter to the Council Part I
(I have rewritten this as "Letter to the Council - Part I" I am having trouble with how to link my pages because page on is always the homepage and so when I post a new page something goes awry because the new page becomes the homepage - aaargh) Part I rewrite is now the homepage! Part II was the homepage and I am about to discover its new location (address).
(I have rewritten this as "Letter to the Council - Part I" I am having trouble with how to link my pages because page on is always the homepage and so when I post a new page something goes awry because the new page becomes the homepage - aaargh) Part I rewrite is now the homepage! Part II was the homepage and I am about to discover its new location (address).
How a Brown woman can be cut off from her own rights
by her own people in a Black Country
By Mohamed Jiwa
(Copyright (c) 2013 by Mohamed Jiwa, All Rights Reserved)
It can happen to someone in most of any of the brown (Indian) communities
in Kenya but I wonder whether it can happen to a woman in an African
community?
Readers comments to this article are welcome.
20 August 2013
Anonymous Community Council for Kenya,
Education Department,
Nairobi
FAO: President and Members
Dear Fellow Citizens (brothers and sisters):
I am a divorcée with two daughters who has applied for a position at one of our
Kenyan schools in Nairobi. I have attempted to live my life by the ethics of my
traditional background as taught to me in my culture - to be an integral part of
my community. By the same token, conversely, I have also turned to my
community for assistance in my life, on personal levels, in my career. My
experience in this situation has been such that I have found those whom I
have turned to for advice and assistance unforthcoming and, sometimes,
inconsiderate and cruel in that they have not been able to justify their actions in
or against my interest.
These actions have not only discombobulated me and my children from living
minimally decent lives but, in repudiating me as a working and productive
member of that community and as a human being, given the circumstances
that currently affect my life your council of administrators at AEO have
perilously affected my
human right by denying me clear and honest explanations.
This is exemplified in the recent denial of my application for a position in the Anonymous Community Academy, where you recently employed someone from a big influential family in our community instead of me. I can prove if you so desire and are willing to open your records to me that her qualifications and experience are inferior to my own.
I hereby demand you provide such justifications or correct yourselves, and make
reparations for any wrongdoing done against me.
In asking myself why this could be I not only gave considerable thought to it;
I sought the counsel of successful and reasonable people whom I respect in this
regard. Now, we have collectively concluded that, indeed, I am not being
recognised and assisted simply because I must be a threat to some of the
weaknesses in system (in terms of human elements): I am capable of challenging
the status quo, which I now do herein, and rising to the challenge of the questions
your treatment of me raise, questions that affect the area of my passion which is
education. And it has become evident that you in leadership positions have failed
to find resources to understand or position yourselves to rising to the challenge.
In denial of this state of affairs you find it easier to reject me and treat me like a non-person.
If you turned to the BBC World Service yesterday in their program on nepotism in
China, you will have learned that J P Morgan is being called to account for
employing only members of ruling families into their company, and you may wish
to consider that this is the pattern affairs in our country and by natural
consequence, its communities.
This is exemplified in the recent denial of my application for a position in the
Anonymous Community Academy, where you recently employed someone from a
big influential family in our community instead of me. I can prove if you so desire
and are willing to open your records to me that her qualifications and experience
are inferior to my own.
What you are doing here is deliberately oppressing members of our community,
whom you have classed as inferior in value, in accordance with your own
inexcusable desire to hold on to power to further your own agendas. I am not
saying this out of anger but asserting it in order to get a fair shake in my bid for
a career in the Anonymous Education Outreach (AEO) system to which I have
every right. I assert this because it is common in all parts of the world for the
powerful class of human beings to have chosen to assign values to other
human beings in accordance with amenability to their own levels of corruption
and manipulability. You cannot deny without being challenged that generally
we browns are known as a corrupt and extremely devious, divisive and self-interested community (not that other communities in E Africa are much different
as is evident in the pathetic social state of the region, if some are more subtle
than others about how to hold on to power and abuse it with impunity).
Secondly, I notice you have employed a foreign person - not a subscribing or
stake-holding member of our community - to a similar position for which I was
available - someone who applied after me and who will cost you about four times
more than I. It is my right to ask you to justify this or make amends and ensure -
as it is incumbent upon you to do - that I, since I am a stakeholder and member
and comparatively very well qualified and experienced, am conferred with a
respectable position by you, together with the necessary support for professional
development that is commensurate with my standards, accomplishments and
academic philosophy, all clearly outlined in my resumé.
Nothing less would constitute an execution of your mandate par excellence in
line with the constitutional expectations of the community, the traditions and
sacred books which, I trust, you do not expect me to spell out here. To employ
a foreigner in such circumstances, where qualified local members (or other
Africans who are familiar with our philosophy) are available and willing, is a
copout. It is a way to avoid being challenged and a reflection of being
threatened by me.
In such regard I should also be most interested in discussing with you how our Guru and his representatives have expressed reservations about how and why 'lesser' members of the community are being defined by those in positions of authority and then being controlled, which is what you are doing to me.
Therefore would you kindly apprise me with the criteria by which you have
judged this foreign applicant to have greater merit for this position than I,
keeping in mind that I am an educator with a philosophy that is likely to be -
by any standard - highly compassionate, one who demands the highest
standards for students whose cultures I probably understand better than
foreigners.
I have to ask myself why you could be denying me the opportunity to develop
my keen interest that I am bound to have, as a local brown member of our
community, in ensuring that the standards of pedagogy are kept conditioned at
the right levels? Obviously I want to contribute to the raising of standards!
Before you respond to this letter ask yourselves honestly whether you are taking
such questions seriously:
Only a member of our community with antecedants here in Kenya, if s/he is also
passionate about certain critical questions about education that are generally
neglected, is likely to have developed the standards that our direction for progress
require, in order to push forward the qualities we are encouraged to take forward
rapidly in our institutions. Denying me a position reflects that this is not happening
here. This is quite obvious. That you may not be willing to take this particular
question on board reflects that you may be serving our institutions from a
defensive or worse, self-centred position as opposed to one that raises confidence.
This state of affairs is not inspiring. You should have enough confidence in your
own ethics and ability to develop resources before you can have confidence in
me.
