Hendrica Okondo: Reflections on history, power and generations of feminist resilience

This week, I had the honour of sitting down with Hendrica Okondo, a natural storyteller who makes the phrase 'living memory' resonate, with profundity and humour!  Hendrica paints a vivid picture of colonial Kenya and independence, with economic, cultural, human rights and scientific insights and learnings that challenge and delight.  Her stories of the women in her family, her studies, and work through the years are not just heartwarming, but lessons in subtle and overt forms of power, and feminism(s) that ripple through generations.  From indomitable familial matriarchs  (and supportive male figures), to the dichotomies of Catholic observance and her mother's brewing business, don't miss this vibrant journey with Hendrica - from the Beijing women's conference to her current work with young feminists! This episode is a tribute to the continuity we gain from Elderwomen in our movements and communities - and the critical importance of women's voices and agency, an intimate narrative highlighting the profound impact of each generation's experience of oppressive systems, and the nurturing of resilience, liberation and equality.  

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

I'm Ilana Landsberg-Lewis, your host of Wisdom at Work older women, elder women and grandmothers on the move, the podcast that kicks old stereotypes to the curb. Come, meet these creative, outrageous, authentic, adventurous, irreverent and powerful disruptors and influencers older women and grandmothers from the living room to the courtroom, making powerful contributions in every walk of life the living room to the courtroom, making powerful contributions in every walk of life. Hello and welcome back to Wisdom at Work. This is Ilana Landsberg-Lewis, your host, and today I have a really special guest, somebody that I have the pleasure and honor of working with and learning from, hendrika Okondo, and.

Speaker 1: 0:43

Hendrika is from Kenya and has over 30 years of working as a women's human rights advocate at global, regional and national levels. She's the global advisor at Women's Rights in Partnership in Africa, an organization based in rural Kenya run by and working with young women, and she was formerly a global program manager at the World YWCA in Geneva for eight years. A global program manager at the World YWCA in Geneva, for eight years, Andrika was also a country program manager for UNIFEM, the United Nations Development Fund for Women, in Somalia, south Sudan and Tanzania. Over nine years, andrika's had many, many positions from UNFPA to working with NORCAP as an advisor and she has 20 years of experience in international humanitarian and development, with expertise, of course, in gender equality, gender mainstreaming, women, peace and security, gender-based violence, protection against sexual exploitation and abuse, and she's worked with governments at the national and global level. And she also has an extraordinary experience and knowledge and interesting insights into working with young women leaders in Africa. Very, very excited and honored to welcome you to the Wisdom at Work podcast.

Speaker 2: 1:58

Thank you, Ilana. That is such a wonderful introduction. I'm honored to be speaking with you. I've always admired all your work. Oh, thank you, and I admire you and you know just your passion, especially for grandmothers, and I'm a new grandmother, so I'm excited.

Speaker 1: 2:21

This conversation is such good timing. Yeah this conversation is such good timing. Yeah, I think we should start with this moment where your first grandchild has recently come into the world and you're able to spend time with him, and I thought I would ask you what is your experience now, hendrika, having been around so many mothers and grandmothers and children all your life and now experiencing it yourself?

Speaker 2: 2:44

Yeah, I think my experience with grandmothers is diverse and multifaceted and for me as a grandmother it's very liberating because if the baby cries in the night I'm like, oh, poor parents. Of course I try, I say, do you need help? And they always say no, no, no, well, okay, but I can see they're not. They get up in the morning and they're so tired, but the baby's so happy. So there's sort of a liberating feeling of saying, you know, I can enjoy the good parts and let the parents handle the difficult parts, which I think is a privilege, because I do work in the village with grandmothers, women that have had to take care of their children's children. So I am blessed and honored and privileged that I can be in Tampa, florida, where my daughter of course she's struggling because she doesn't have the family support that she would have, but she is privileged in that she's an IT expert and so is her husband, and so they send their little baby to daycare and it's a lovely place and the women there are so nice. But then I put on my human rights hat and they're all migrant and of course they're not paid well enough but they do do such a great job. I mean, the little man comes back smiling and able to do so many things. He's only one year and he can feed himself. And this particular one, they said we shall teach you sign language so you know what your baby needs. And at first we thought this is ridiculous, but we understood now. We know when he wants to drink water, we know when he's had enough and, of course, we've been watching Miss Rachel, so I'm singing all the nursery rhymes from Miss Rachel, you know. So there is that privilege of having support and having state resources that provide the daycare facilities and I'm enjoying it.

Speaker 2: 5:10

From a personal level, I'm excited and the fact that I had four daughters and now my daughters had a son. And then, when I go home because my daughter came to the US when she was 18 and she got married when she was 18 and a half years and I was mad, I was a feminist, I didn't expect that. But my youngest daughter, who was living with me at that time, said but mom, you're a feminist, you have told us that we have voice, that we have choice and we have agency. She has exercise I was like, don't you be quoting that nonsense to me? And then I stepped back and my husband's a very nice.

Speaker 2: 5:58

He's a feminist, he was brought up by eight sisters and then he said look, this is not about you, this is about Gemma, and she's made an informed decision. This is what she wants, you know, and love is a choice. And so I said to her well, don't be having babies unless you can afford them. And she said I know that. And she's 38 now and she's had her first baby. She did everything. She got her degree, she got her certification, she's, you know, and she also is an investment, something very complicated, I don't understand. She and her husband talk to me about it all the time, so you know. So I said that I was excited in the feminist school because I think I've experienced all the different kinds of power. Yes, you know.

Speaker 1: 6:51

So I've had power over my daughters and now I'm power with them so interesting, and it's interesting that you talk about power in relationship to your daughter now, not just as as a grandmother, but as a feminist human rights activist, thinking about power in our own lives and how we experience it and how we exercise it. How do you think about it now, now that your own daughter has a son?

Speaker 2: 7:16

I really started to explore, you know, how power has influenced and impacted my life. You know, and I do a lot of work on ending child marriage and one of the debates in that space is what happens when the child actually makes a choice to get married. You know, do they have enough information to make that decision? Information to make that decision? And then also when I've worked with young girls that have become pregnant, and some of them was because of the factors in the household and of course some of them was abuse and coercion. But you know, working in sexual reproductive health rights with young women, there have been young women that have made a choice to get pregnant. And so that's where we are conflicted as feminists and also conflicted as women who are, you know, committed to women's human rights. And then I go back to my grandmother who, because she was an orphan and is living on this beautiful island in the middle of Lake Victoria, so her parents died when she was young and she was given to her older sister and her older sister was living on the mainland. So she is an outsider in the place that she's being brought up, but she goes frequently back to the island. But as a woman she has no rights, so she's not being given a place for her to cultivate and of course the women aren't allowed to fish. The men go fishing but the women have to wait for the men to come back and they go out for months. So the island is actually managed by women. So she goes back and forth but she has no rights, she has no land on the island and she has no land on the mainland. So when my grandfather shows up in the church you know, having served in the army and looking all very sharp, and this is the mid 1930s she decides that she wants to get married.

Speaker 2: 9:42

1930s. She decides that she wants to get married and she's had her period, which at that time was enough for you to be declared a woman. She was about 12 years old, but she's very strong-minded and because she's a Catholic girl, she actually gets married in church. And then she comes to Nairobi with this man who's on some sort of sabbatical and is going back to the army, and because she had been living with her sister, she had learned to brew traditional beer and she had also learned to cook traditional food, because she comes from the island where they cook fish and they cook it so well without spices, but it tastes very nice in an earthen pot. And so she actually starts a little restaurant with a little place where she's also selling the traditional beer. She's a young woman. She's just had her first two children, who are both daughters that's my mother and her older sister.

Speaker 2: 10:42

And then he comes back when the war is over and they start life in Nairobi. Because he was also very religious, he becomes a catechist at a church in Nairobi that's called St Peter Clevers. It's a very famous church and it's run by Irish priests. Of course, my grandmother went through a lot of difficulties because she ended up having 12 children six girls, who were the older children, and six boys. So my father also comes from a very similar story, but he because he was a man, of course got educated and when he comes to Nairobi he's actually finished high school and he's self-educating. So he's studying accounts, but he's also a journalist. He's very politically aware you know about the liberation movement and he's a trade unionist, and my grandfather is also's a trade unionist and my grandfather is also involved in trade union. So that's like how they meet. So my mother then is convinced by her parents to get married at 17. And she and her mother decide okay, this man is a nice man, he goes to church every day, so why don't you get married and then convince him to help educate your sisters? So that's what my mother did. She got married and she was very influential and my father was very loved her. My father loved her, so he did whatever she told him to do. So for me, I was brought up by a matriarch.

Speaker 2: 12:28

You know this is colonial era. I'm 68 now. I was born in 1956. So I'm born just after the crisis, after the Mau Mau rebellion, after the emergency. It's actually an emergency time because the British, they declare emergency and they are very cruel and they, you know, they displace millions of people, they kill millions of people. They kill millions of people, and my grandmother actually was in the first demonstration at the police station when one of the liberation heroes was arrested, and the reason the women were there is because the British decided that traditional alcohol is illegal and then they also decided that there should be a heart tax, so everybody needs to pay tax, like the number of people in the household must pay tax. So my grandmother and my mother are part of this group of women that are fighting against this and they joined Mandelera Wanawake, which is being run by the white women that were the wives of the colonial officials, and they tell them that they should not be political. So they are teaching them all this housewifery craft. But the women are actually having secret meetings where they are becoming mobilized to support the men in the liberation war. So I mean, I'm a young girl but I remember I'm very little. My first memory is being taken to a political meeting by my mother and where we see the great Tom Boyer, who was a young man at that time and a very powerful speaker. So I remember that my mother always was shocked that. I remembered that because I must have been about maybe four years old.

Speaker 2: 14:29

It's 1961 and the British have finally decided they cannot control the Kenyans and decided to release Jomo Kenyatta to give us independence. Of course, after independence there's much more freedom. But my mom and my grandmother, they actually decided to support the first woman political candidate who was called Jael Mboko, political candidate who was called Jayal Mboko. So all the women support her. She wins the election. But the British had divided us into tribal entities and they are in Nairobi, so she's not from the right tribe. So the government refuses to acknowledge that she won the election.

Speaker 2: 15:15

So my grandmother and my mother they're not highly educated, but they are very political, and so they don't define themselves as feminists, but they do talk about the glaring inequalities. They are aware that they don't have rights, they are aware that they don't have the resources and they are aware that, although they are powerful women and their husbands are supporting them. But they realize that at the end of the day my mother used to say, yeah, he can help with diaper change, but the nine months I am the one who has to carry this pregnancy and my body changes and you know I suffer and all that. And so she's talking about sexual reproductive health care without even knowing that she is. And these are deeply Catholic women. So they're also going to church and of course the priest is saying you know, you must feel the earth. So they are feeling the earth, but they are feeling the pain of filling the earth. So eventually my grandmother and my mother realized they're like you know, we can still be Catholic, but we can control ourselves because they're young women.

Speaker 2: 16:34

By the time my mother had 10 children, she was 27.

Speaker 2: 16:38

So you know, when I'm 10, she and I look like sisters.

Speaker 2: 16:44

But so she decides you know what the Pope does not have children, does not carry children, and I'm sure this white Jesus, wherever he is, will understand me.

Speaker 2: 16:55

So she decides to join a group that was managed by Marie Stopes that was giving contraceptives.

Speaker 2: 17:04

I have three brothers and six sisters, and one we had an adopted cousin that came to live with us after my mother lost one of her children, and then it is at that point, actually, that she decides that she's going to go for family planning because there was a lot of maternal mortality.

Speaker 2: 17:26

Her baby died, but she survived, but her best friend, who also had 10 children, she died. So that really like shakes my mother and she decides that she's going to take control of her own reproductive health outcomes. So, you see, they become subversive in terms of they are listening to the church, but they are making their own decision as women according to what has happened to them and their bodies, because even my grandmother is like, hey, if I continue like this, I'm going to have 20 children. So together they start to talk, and they start to talk to the women that come to their restaurant or they meet in the marketplace, and they even start a savings group, and so that's the environment that I grow up in, and I'm getting infused with this feminism without understanding that it's feminism.

Speaker 1: 18:27

It's completely organic.

Speaker 2: 18:29

It's really. Yeah, it's organic, and both my grandfather and my father were functional alcoholics, because my mother and my grandmother were running a brewery.

Speaker 2: 18:45

so they become alcoholics, but very gentle alcoholics and also very organized. Like my father, only drank on Saturday and Sunday because Because on Monday to Friday he had to take care of us and then he gave all his salary to my mom. So my mom is the one that decided what's going to be pay school fees for her own siblings, then pay school fees for us and then buy food, and she was really the decision maker.

Speaker 1: 19:25

And the financial manager. She's clearly the financial manager.

Speaker 2: 19:27

Yeah, she was definitely the finance manager. As my sisters and I become very successful in school, my mother is getting angry and bitter because she had sacrificed her education. She could have been as successful as we were, and so she's really now realizes the sacrifices that she had to make for her family. It's very complex because there's the church that's, you know, controlled by men yes, men who are not married, and in the 60s these are white men.

Speaker 1: 20:05

Yes.

Speaker 2: 20:06

And then there is the government. So the women are involved in the liberation, but they become invisible when independence comes. You know, the president nominates his daughter and then also, like, when they lobby and they vote for Jayal Mbogo, the government refuses to acknowledge that she won yes. So there's that frustration and that translates into the brutal authoritarian power that they impose on us.

Speaker 1: 20:41

Well, it kind of makes sense because there's a systemic power and oppression. That is just. It must have been so suffocating.

Speaker 2: 20:49

Yeah, and also they are dislocated from their village. They are considered rebels, and I come to know that later, but at that point I'm admiring them because they're very powerful.

Speaker 1: 21:04

Well, and that's such an interesting reflection for me.

Speaker 2: 21:08

Yeah, because for me, I'm like my grandmother and my mother. They're powerful. I mean, they will whip you if you don't do what you're supposed to do, you will be whipped. And remember, they are going to the YWCA and they are being trained to be English women, so we are being forced to bake scones and muffins and during the meetings of the women have high tea and scones and cream.

Speaker 1: 21:37

It's ridiculous, it's hard to imagine how ludicrous that is.

Speaker 2: 21:44

It is completely ludicrous. And I mean, I look at the pictures of my grandmother and my mother going to church and and this is now princess margaret is the fashion role model for my mother and my grandmother, and one of my aunts is called margaret and another is called princess.

Speaker 1: 22:05

So many things that colonial has to atone for.

Speaker 2: 22:09

Yeah, I mean, colonial power was oppressing.

Speaker 1: 22:13

You've already talked about just the influence of growing up with these powerful female figures, sort of the authority, in your life, and then how does that manifest in you? How do you, how did you become you, hendrika?

Speaker 2: 22:27

When I'm young. I don't understand. I'm still questioning why they are bitter, but I'm not understanding that this is their struggle with their power within and their understanding of the oppression, and they also are not able to articulate it. But then I get sent to a school that's run by Irish nuns the Loreto nuns and my aunt also went to the same school. So as women in our family we were very strong because we are Loreto girls and these are Irish nuns and of course the Irish have their issues with the British. And then I start to understand the dynamics and our headmistress is called Sister Paula and she's into liberation theology. So she's actually telling us to interrogate the faith, you know, and to understand the role of women in the church. And we do Bible studies and we do the strong women in the Bible, you know, and how they fought against oppressive power and you know I become conscious of the whole power relation, but I still don't understand that this is feminism.

Speaker 2: 23:49

The education I had was surreal. You know. We were little Irish girls. We used to sing. You know when Irish eyes are smiling.

Speaker 1: 23:59

That's serious. That is so bizarre, I know.

Speaker 2: 24:04

And you know I look back at some of the books that Sister Paula gave me because I was a reader and it's because my father liked to make us read and my father was also becoming very conscious about the negative abuse of power by the new leaders and the impact of capitalism. Because Kenya, within the region, decides to be completely the bastion of capitalism and because my father had gone to school in Tanzania, he's obsessed with Nyerere and African socialism.

Speaker 1: 24:38

Of course.

Speaker 2: 24:39

So we had this surreal upbringing where in the morning you go for mass, clean the church, come home, clean the house and then sit down and listen to Julius Nyerere.

Speaker 1: 24:52

That's fantastic. I hope everyone who listens to this goes and looks up Julius Nyerere. They should they should? I grew up on it too. My family were democratic socialists. My father read him when he was young, and so I also grew up on those readings.

Speaker 2: 25:18

Yeah, and then my father decides to join the Communist Party. This is an incredible story, and so we are now not only listening to Julia Nyerere.

Speaker 1: 25:25

we are also reading Mausa too.

Speaker 2: 25:29

This is beginning to explain a lot to me about you, henrika. Yeah, so you can imagine, I'm now in high school and I'm reading Julius Nyerere, I'm reading a Tomboyer's paper on African socialism and I'm going to a purely capitalist school where I'm dancing ballet.

Speaker 1: 25:45

You were dancing ballet.

Speaker 2: 25:46

And playing tennis.

Speaker 1: 25:49

Okay, this is really fun. So on the one hand you've got liberation, theology, socialism and Numerian Mao Zedong, and on the other hand you're still engaging in sort of the colonial.

Speaker 2: 25:59

Completely colonial, and my mother and grandmother on Sunday are Princess Margaret and Princess.

Speaker 1: 26:06

Elizabeth, that's a good thing that you can laugh about it.

Speaker 2: 26:10

It's ridiculous.

Speaker 1: 26:12

So where does the moment come where you put it all together? Because you know, when I look at what you've done, all of the different works that you've done, yeah, so the moment comes.

Speaker 2: 26:23

Remember, I'm a scientist, so I'm actually, you know, very intelligent and I'm doing chemistry, biology, physics, but I'm also doing French and I'm doing literature.

Speaker 1: 26:35

Right.

Speaker 2: 26:35

And so I'm reading Gugi Watiyongo, I'm reading Misere Mugo, I'm reading all the authors that have been banned by the government, but my father, because he's a member of the Communist Party, is able to access these books. That's fantastic. You know, I'm becoming conscious that this perfect world of mine is not perfect. I've begun to interrogate that this whole faith of our father nonsense is not really who I am.

Speaker 1: 27:07

You mean you weren't meant to play tennis and do ballet?

Speaker 2: 27:10

No. And then at one point my father decides it's a waste of money. Anyway, he has six daughters. He can't afford it. Yes. So he decides that my sisters are not going to do this tennis and ballet nonsense. He refuses to pay for it and says you better learn some African traditional songs.

Speaker 2: 27:31

So when I leave high school, I go to university and I'm doing agriculture, and one of our teachers is Professor Wangare Matai, and she's very radical. She's beginning to mobilize the rural women in the Green Belt movement and we actually do a lot of work with her. And so she then decides to run for the National Council of Women and the government decides to vilify her because she's a divorcee. That is when I become quite conscious of okay, there's something wrong here, you know, because this is a very intelligent woman, she has a PhD, she's teaching us and she's very aware that the rural women need to be organized to plant trees, and then the government is vilifying her. And then the government is vilifying her, and so I become very conscious of that. But I'm still the perfect scientist. I'm like, okay, all these women issues is for literature students. So, anyway, I go to university, I leave university, I do agriculture, which, of course my father's annoyed, because all my life I wanted to be an accountant, but then I decided I think I better do agriculture. So I find out where this land that my grandmother was denied is. So then I go to do my attachment in Meru and I'm living with a polygamist family where they're growing tea. And because the land is registered in the husband's name, it is the husband that gets paid, but it's the women that do all the work and every time he gets paid he disappears. So you can imagine how angry these women are. And because, culturally also, he's not allowed to control the milk, same for the poultry, so they are able to do that and educate their children.

Speaker 2: 29:29

So you know, after I left university and I was working for Ministry of Agriculture, I decided to look at, you know, how the extension services address the needs of women and women farmers, and I realized that, you know, the farmer training centers were training men and then the men were supposed to take whatever they learned back to the women, and of course they did not. And that's how I end up doing my postgraduate studies around gender and agriculture. And also what we realized in the Ministry of Agriculture is that, so the women, and also what we realized in the Ministry of Agriculture is that so the women and also with the work that I did with Professor Wangari is women are not allowed to plant trees, especially in western Kenya, because then that gives them ownership of land. So we then decided that we should help them to do beekeeping, because the men were actually not interested in beekeeping. And also we looked at the impact of pesticides on women farmers and there was a lot of negative reproductive health outcomes.

Speaker 2: 30:37

But I went to University of London, at Imperial College, and that's where I do my master's degree on integrated pest management and economic entomology. So in the course we were getting women to breed butterflies. In central Kenya they were doing beekeeping and in western Kenya they were doing silkworm.

Speaker 1: 31:04

So this brings together your scientific background.

Speaker 2: 31:07

Yeah, and my gender awareness, Because now we are looking for something that women can control, that men will not control and that will give them an income, because they don't have access to cash crop income Because that's tied to land ownership, and they are the ones who are doing most of the work. By the way, you know, use of pesticides, it's the women, but they are not being trained and they are not being given the protective wear. So I go to the University of Edgerton to expand on my master's and I actually registered for a PhD and I leave my husband whom I met in London, by the way, but who actually comes from my grandmother's village, Wow. We come home and I proceed to have four children, daughters and I leave my husband with my children and I go to Egypt, which is in Nakuru, and I have a scholarship to do a PhD, and this is 1992. And so there's a clash in where I'm supposed to do my research, but it's also the beginning of the process for the journey to Beijing.

Speaker 2: 32:24

So I then do a paper on women in agriculture and I articulate what these challenges are, and when I present it, there is a woman from the British Council and she's intrigued because she had not thought about some of the issues that I raised the fact that 80% of smallholder farmers are women in Kenya and 65% of the agricultural workers are women and only 1% of Kenyan women own farmlands. And so she comes up to me after I present that and she says would you like to come and work with me at the British Council? And I jump at it because I'm in Nakuru and my husband has been left with these four little girls and he's getting told off because he's married the granddaughter of the rebellious woman. So anyway, so that's how I end up at the British Council.

Speaker 2: 33:23

You know that was the most fun job I ever had, because I get a blank check of the process to Beijing find the groups you need to fund, so we fund the women. We come up with what we call the gender learning networks, and so we have women in politics, in the judiciary we have, of course, I'm still obsessed with accounting, so, and I've married an accountant, so I'm also going to accounting school, I'm doing CPA. I still want to be an accountant. My father on his dying bed is like you always wanted to be an accountant. Why can't you just be an accountant, since you can't do your PhD now. So I decided to go to accounting school.

Speaker 1: 34:13

Oh, for goodness sake.

Speaker 2: 34:14

Can you imagine? So? You know? So, between 1993, and 1997, I have a whale of a time, wow yeah, and then I, of course agriculture.

Speaker 1: 34:25

I have a whale of a time Wow yeah.

Speaker 2: 34:27

And then, of course, agriculture. I don't live, and we work together with Windrock to establish the African Women Leaders in Environment and Agriculture. And then we are also working with ActionAid on market women and entrepreneurship. Okay, so I mean, those years were just powerful. I really enjoyed them. I was able to travel the whole of Kenya, were able to start gender dialogues at the universities, and we were able to convince the Chevening scholarships to provide specific funding for women no-transcript.

Speaker 1: 35:37

You may have retired from the UN system, but you certainly haven't.

Speaker 1: 35:40

Yeah, I'm not retired, I still am engaged Exactly and and you seem to be working a lot. My question is this I'd love to hear from you your reflections on what it means to be doing this work as someone who's in your late 60s. What has changed when you think about it? Is there a different feeling that you have about it? Are there different insights that you have now than you would have, let's say, 20 years ago, 25 years ago? Is there something that changes? What do you think now?

Speaker 2: 36:12

Yeah. So as an older woman, I am liberated, but also frustrated. So we like it's like two steps forward and then we go backwards. Yes, like now we are having the discussions that we thought we had overcome, that women should be in politics as a right, women should be on corporate boards as a right, but now we are getting a backlash. So that frustrates me, but I'm also very liberated in that I'm not constrained by institutions, because before you are constrained by institutions and you need to follow the protocol of the institution, but now I can say what I want.

Speaker 1: 36:58

Thank goodness, that's a wonderful thing.

Speaker 2: 37:00

There's a liberation that you get, but also it's frustrating. Now my daughter started this organization and I do a lot of work in the fishing villages, but fundraising is hell. Yes, it's very hard. Yeah, because donors, I mean I don't have access, because I no longer have institutional power so I cannot access some of those offices.

Speaker 2: 37:28

Right some of those offices, right, you know. And then also the young women are like I was telling you. My daughter is now following in my footsteps, but she doesn't believe it, right? So she just wrote a paper on young feminists and I was like but but you have forgotten all the work that the old feminists did? And she was you guys are old fashioned. And I was like gosh, my mother must be laughing in her grave, because I used to say that to my mother a lot.

Speaker 1: 38:01

Now you're experiencing what she did.

Speaker 2: 38:03

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 38:04

Well, there's so much to learn from your life story, and what I love so much about how you talk about this is that it's not just a story and it's not just yours. It's the lived realities in the political context of the time, in the struggles of the time, how that informed, how you forged your own path, the amazing women that you worked with and came in touch with, and now, of course, there's a whole generation, because I know you work with young women, a lot with, and now, of course, there's a whole generation because I know you work with young women a lot, yeah, and I'm really impressed by the young women.

Speaker 2: 38:35

I mean, they are much more courageous than we were. I mean the young women that did the femicide march in Kenya yes, they're just two young women and they were able to mobilize like the whole movement, so they're much braver than we were. We were braver than our mothers, but're much braver than we were. We were braver than our mothers, but they are braver than we were.

Speaker 1: 38:56

There's a continuity there, right.

Speaker 2: 38:58

Yeah, and also they are more inclusive.

Speaker 1: 39:00

Yes.

Speaker 2: 39:01

Because I think at our time we struggled with our various identities and for me it was easier because I didn't have the cultural identity, so I didn't negotiate the cultural taboos that the older women that I worked with did.

Speaker 1: 39:20

But each generation so clearly lays the groundwork for the next one.

Speaker 2: 39:24

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 39:25

Each generation of women that you've talked about. Some of it was personality and personal courage, and whether you call it feminist or whether they would have called themselves feminist if the term existed back then, but they had an organic and an inherent sense of rights and justice and the bitterness of inequality, and that made the groundwork for the next generation to make their different decisions. Like you can see how this builds on it.

Speaker 2: 39:51

Yeah, and I think also they understood that underlying it was the power relations and you know there was the hierarchical power. But then you can't stop the intrinsic power. You cannot stop it.

Speaker 1: 40:05

It's there, it's bubbling, and you know I think there's a piece that I've really been thinking about how do we articulate this? That in so many spaces I see older women who are really promoting the agency and the voices of younger women to pass the torch, place in the movements, not just sharing from the past passing the torch, but also an active role, because I think at each stage of our lives we have something else that we can contribute. That's of that moment, and to me there's a real gap. You know, part of the inclusion that for me is so urgent is to ensure that older women are not just here to teach us the history, tell us the stories, pass the torch, but are active and vigorous in this moment in whatever way makes sense.

Speaker 2: 41:01

Absolutely. I agree with you. I mean, there's a woman that I work with in Nairobi and she works with elderly women and she's been an activist. She's been there from the beginning and I've done a lot of work with her and she's also in her late 60s and we were actually talking about that and saying you know, increasingly the donors only want young women and you need an intergenerational leadership, because what these women have are resources. People say to me why are you still working? My daughters say that all the time, but I'm like, I don't want to be dependent on your father you know, and I don't want to be dependent on you.

Speaker 2: 41:44

I need to have my own resources so that I can continue doing my work. That's what keeps me alive.

Speaker 1: 41:52

And you're not finished right.

Speaker 2: 41:53

Yeah, so we need to talk a lot about that, ilan. Yes, but I'm so happy that you gave me the chance to ramble on.

Speaker 1: 42:04

No, it's not rambling. I really love to hear about this and I think it's enmeshed with such a powerful and challenging history.

Speaker 2: 42:12

Yeah, and you must come to Nairobi and come to our village.

Speaker 1: 42:16

Absolutely. I would love that.

Speaker 2: 42:17

Yeah, and take that boat ride to the island.

Speaker 1: 42:21

We must do that Now. I feel like I've been there in my mind.

Speaker 2: 42:25

I've painted the picture for you.

Speaker 1: 42:28

I would really love that. Thank you so much for spending this time with me. I really appreciate it. I feel like we just scratched the surface, but such such richness. Thank you so much.

Speaker 2: 42:39

Thank you, Ilana.

Speaker 1: 42:41

Thanks for listening. I'm Ilana Lansford-Lewis, your host of Wisdom at Work. Older women, elder women and grandmothers on the move To find out more about me or the podcast women and grandmothers on the move. To find out more about me or the podcast, you can go to wisdomatworkpodcastcom, formerly grandmothers on the move, and you can find the podcast at all your favorite places to listen to them. Tune in next week. Thanks and bye-bye for now.