SATURDAY FOCUS: REMARKABLE WOMEN(7) Pamela Ateka Muthiora

Sing Africa SingSelected poems
by Pamela Ateka Published 2004 by Community Focus Group,Nairobi, Kenya

In 2005 I coordinated an International Storytelling Festival in Perth Western Australia: Storytelling on the Edge. Before I knew it the programme had taken on a life of its own. Storytellers from all states/territories of Australia, as well as from Canada, England, Ireland, Israel, Kenya, New Zealand, Scotland, Singapore, Sri Lanka, and the United States of America, made contact, wanting to be part of this event. So many people from so many backgrounds — and that’s how I met twenty-eight year old, Pamela Ateka from Nairobi!
...As I read Pamela Ateka’s letter and proposal, something inside me sang. Here was a performance that promised to be as unique to Australian storytelling as it was ‘on the edge’ All at once I knew we had our Keynote Speaker/Performer.

Dressed in traditional costume, Pamela captivated all with her humour, her dance, her drumming and her ability of involve her audience as she recounted ‘The Parable of Writing’: a story she had developed to teach the principles of HIV/AIDS prevention. It told of a young man who, like the prodigal son, left his village home for the city lights. Here, he contracted HIV/AIDS and returned home, sick and dying, to experience the acceptance of a caring community.

... In the words of one of the participants: At the Perth Storytelling Festival in 2005, many of us were lucky enough to meet and hear Pamela Ateka from Kenya tell her amazingly vibrant and inspiring stories. We became aware of the great work she is involved with in Nairobi caring for AIDS orphans and using story as an educational tool in schools to inform students about the threat of AIDS and the ways in which the transmission of the disease can be avoided
... It was only in the breaks at meal times and between events that I began to appreciate the passion and dedication with which this young artist and peer educationalist committed her life.

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‘Pamela,’ I asked, ‘where did the idea of this work come from?’
She looked at me and smiled a gentle smile. ‘My sister,’ she whispered, ‘my sister died from AIDS in 2000. I couldn’t understand. She left a small son and I took him to my heart and my home.’
How hard was that?
It just seemed right … I was suddenly aware of the growing number of orphans and I knew I had to do something about it.
But you did have other personal and family commitments?
Yes, apart from my nephew, I had a young daughter of my own, Joy Pendo … but I couldn't stop thinking how I’ve always loved poetry and acting, and I should use these skills to good purpose. So I talked with my friends and came up with a plan to use poetry and storytelling to raise money for the care of children orphaned by AIDS, and to create awareness in society at large.
Your poetry and acting took on a particular flavour - focus. Tell me about that.
I developed what I call ‘edutainment’. I wanted to increase HIV/AIDS awareness through theatre and poetry, and using story, as an educational tool in schools to inform students about the threat of AIDS and the ways in which the transmission of the disease can be avoided.
But why performance?
Performance is the language that everyone understands. Families won't come to a lecture; but they will come to see me perform. And off of that experience, they find it easier to talk about sex and AIDS with their children.
Apart from your artistic skills, did you need other training?
I’ve always been a bit of a social activist – concerned about injustice and human rights – especially for women and children in my country. I had a wonderful opportunity to join a community-based training programme for community groups and their organizers run by the East Side Institute (http://www.eastsideinstitute.org/) — part of a growing international movement of healthcare professionals, scholars, youth educators, and artists seeking to use performance to reinitiate and advance human development.
So your work didn’t stop with writing and performance to highlight community needs?
Oh no! Just looking around Nairobi and seeing hungry and orphaned children on the streets, pushed me into taking more hands on action. With the help of friends and volunteers, I founded a Community Focus Group. We set up a feeding programme. Initially, the feeding centre catered for 26 children orphaned by AIDS, who came daily at lunch times and received a meal and moral support from the helpers. Over time the children were found host families who were, in turn, assisted with food packages, and money for school fees and uniforms.Today the centre provides for almost one hundred orphans.
Who funded this programme? Government? Corporate sponsors?
Oh no! I was very inexperienced about fund raising. The Government wasn’t interested and corporate sponsors were wary of an unknown group with no track record.
So what did you do?
I turned to my local community for support -- organizing fundraising events, where I would perform my poetry and tell stories. The costs of the feeding centre were met by fees for performances and by the income-generating activities such as jewellry and craft making of volunteers, most of whom were young, unemployed college-leavers living in the slum area. Then there were the royalties from my book of poetry and from poems published in various newspapers. Many local businesses also offered support. I was able to organise clothing drives and find partners willing to offer the older children job training.
Where are you at now with all this?
The programme currently has three staff and three volunteers who help young people, ages 7-14. Another 200 children are on the waiting list. Most of them, like my nephew, are orphans and living with relatives.
And your performances?
That’s expanded enormously. Coming to your Festival in Perth was a wonderful experience. I made many new contacts. Some of the storytellers there helped me market jewellery; and, one man from the group set up a donation scheme from which I receive regular contributions.
But Perth wasn’t your only international venture, was it? You have taken your performance to quite a number of countries outside Kenya.
Yes, I have been fortunate to have had the opportunity to present and perform in many countries, including South Africa, Egypt, UK, Spain, Mexico, Ethiopia and Uganda
I understand that you returned to Nairobi from the festival in Australia and were on a plane to America before you hard scarcely time to catch your breath. I hope your performances there went as well as the ones you did here.
I had a wonderful time there too. But I was very tired
Not much wonder. In the midst of all this were planning your wedding and preparing for the birth of a new baby.
...Pamela, it has been refreshing to talk with you again and recall our first meeting. Your Perth festival performance of the "Parable of Writing" will long be remembered across Australia (and to other parts of the world where festival folk carried it). And here in Perth, the folk at the Aids Support Centre were greatly uplifted by your visit. I've also had good feedback from the Church groups you visited as well.
I want to thank you and the Storytelling Guilds around Australia so much for your continuing support. Poetry and storytelling are part of the program’s staples, helping to “soothe the children’s souls.”


Postscript:
On 25 Match, 2006 Pamela married Charles Muthiora. They have a baby daughter Shantel Neema Kagwiria (meaning ‘song of Grace’ in Swahili).
...On a sadder note, Pamela’s mother died in a supermarket fire earlier in 2010.
Yet Pamela continues her work.


To support Pamela’s work go to: http://www.creativexchange.org/hivaids/CFG


A copy of Sing Africa Sing may be purchased from
Community Focus Group
PO Box 447-00518
Nairobi
Kenya

SATURDAY FOCUS: REMARKABLE WOMEN (3) Book Review

The Woman Who Saved the Children: a biography of Eglantine Jebb, founder of Save the Children
by Clare Mulley
First published by Oneworld Publications, Oxford, England 2009.
Released in Australia as a Paperback in 2010

A slab of marble in St Georges Cemetery two miles south of the city of Geneva in full view of Mount Salève, and on the end of a sparsely populated row by a gravel path, marks the last resting place of the body of Eglantine Jebb. A simple brass cross is inset into the marble slab. Underneath are the dates and locations of her birth and death; an acknowledgement in French of her role in the foundation of the International Save the Children Union; and a quote in English from Matthew 25:40

Eglantyne's grave Geneva Switzerland December 1928

As for Eglantyne, I imagine her today back on her mountain from where she looked down over the city and scribbled the notes that were to become the basis for ‘Declaration for the Rights of the Child’, still agonising over the plight of children across the globe … still dreaming,

Who is this woman?
I had not heard of Eglantyne Jebb, before author Clare Mulley introduced her and led me back in time to late nineteenth century rural England and Eglantyne’s family — part of the Shropshire gentry.

Eglantyne Jebb c1920

... In the 1990s, when working as a fundraiser for the Save the Children UK, Clare Mulley came upon Eglantyne in a photo — a woman sitting poised at her desk looking down at her work —hung over her supervisor’s desk. Intrigued, Clare set about uncovering the person behind the ‘woman who saved the children’. Her research revealed a close-knit family, instilled with their parents’ social conscience and keen love of literature, and who, throughout their lives, supported each other’s work.

... Named after her mother, Tye, Eglantyne quickly established her special place among her five siblings as the family storyteller and scribbler. Her imagination and daydreams often found substance in stories and poems. … characteristics she never lost. Home schooled and strongly influenced by her Aunt Bun who lived with the family, Eglantyne went on to make a series of decisions that broke social convention. With the encouragement and financial backing of Bun following the death of her father in December 1894,
Eglantyne became the first daughter to undertake a degree course — almost unheard of in that time.

... Each of Eglantyne’s life experiences contributed toward and prepared her for what was to be her greatest challenge —to make the international community respond to the needs of children irrespective of race or creed.
... Her writing begun in childhood, her University education and teaching in working-class schools proved an invaluable apprenticeship for things to come. Through her frequent travels abroad with family and friends she became familiar with cultures outside her own. Fundraising for the Cambridge Women’s Memorial for Queen Victoria and her direct involvement in relief work in the Balkans in 1913 sowed the seeds of her vision for countries around the world to acknowledge the place children’s welfare and human rights.
... At the age of forty-four she found the task for which her life to date had prepared her. The year was 1919. Eglantyne, outraged that despite the armistice following the World War of 1914-18, the British government of the period continued the economic blockade of Europe in order to push through harsh peace terms with the defeated countries, embarked on the fight of her life. Children and the elderly, particularly in Austria and Germany, were starving to death in huge numbers. She could not stand idly by and watch while this humanitarian crisis unfold. Against all odds she secured the active support of the churches and through them the sympathy of many of the British people formerly sceptical of aiding the children of their enemies. The Save the Children Foundation UK was born.
... Eglantyne became the soul of a movement that transformed a one-off British ‘relief’ fund to a permanent international organization prepared to focus not just on emergencies but on economic reconstruction, education, health and nutrition, and housing.
... Legend has it, writes Clare Mulley, that one cloudless summer Sunday in 1922, Eglantyne Jebb climbed to the summit of Mount Salève, the great rocky plateau on the edge of Geneva. From the top she had a fine view of the city sprawling out from around the curve of the lake, and, on the far bank, the League of Nations’ offices. Here she settled down on the crisp turf, her hair flying in the breeze and, in the silence and calm above it all, she took out pencil and paper and drafted a five-point ‘Charter for Children’. It was the first major statement of children’s universal human rights — the precursor to one of the world’s most influential pieces of international legislation: the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. After some modification 17 May 1923 ‘The Declaration of the Rights of the Child’ was adopted by the International Union.

The personal cost
From an early age, Eglantyne was driven by powerful imagination and bursts of boundless energy often followed by severe bouts of exhaustion. Her almost fanatical sense of personal social responsibility and keen sense of justice brought with them lengthy periods of ill-health. She was torn between her need for society and solitude; work and withdrawal; her private life conflicted with unrequited, impossible love affairs and personal tragedy. Within a sixteen month period, as Eglantyne was planning and embarking on her university studies, both her father and younger brother, Gamul, died. Grief left its indelible mark upon her as she struggled to find a new way to express her Christian faith and became attracted to mysticism.
... In keeping with her sense of mission, and upon completion of her studies, Eglantyne taught in two under-funded schools for working class girls. At times she doubted her ability to teach or even like children. Despite her own assessment of her abilities in this role, she proved more adept and creative than she recognised. However, the personal cost was great. Worn out by class sizes that no teacher of today would be expected to manage, and with the meagre resources available, Eglantyne’s health failed. Despite these setbacks, part of her legacy lies in her enduring interest in education.

A brief comment
The Express.co.uk 19 March, 2010 somewhat harshly headlines an article by author, Clare Mulley: THE WOMAN WHO HATED CHILDREN...AND SAVED THEM. It seems a little unfortunate that publicists and promoters felt justified in latching onto the author’s discussion of Eglantyne’s maternal instincts (a small part of her overall story) and use it as a headline-grabbing selling point.There are two sides to every story. Did Eglantyne, who once called children 'the little wretches', really dislike children? Or could these words be cast in a more sympathetic context? Some historical evidence provided in this book hints at an alternative view. In the end it is left up to the reader to decide.
....That aside, meticulous research is the real hallmark of Clare Mulley’s book. Not only is each chapter convincingly written and compelling reading, but the supporting information provided by (1) the foreward by Anne, Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal; (2) the Family Trees; (3) the Cast of Characters; and, (4) the detailed Endnotes, add an impressive dimension to the book. The fourteen pages holding twenty-nine black and white photo plates provide a poignantly visual timeline of the life and work of Eglantyne Jebb.■




All author royalties are being donated to Save the Children. http://www.claremulley.com/

Schedule

Saturday 28 August, 2010: Clare Mulley introduces Eglantyne Jebb
Saturday 4 September, 2010: Book Review by Mabel Kaplan
Saturday 11 September, 2010: The Research Process – An Interview with Clare Mulley

This book is available through all good bookstores and online at http://www.boomerangbooks.com.au/

SATURDAY FOCUS: REMARKABLE WOMEN (1) Introduction

Mabel Kaplan

When Clare Mulley and I were introduced over cyberspace by Catriona Hoy recently, little did I realise how that the meeting would take me on a new kind of blog journey - a journey into the worlds of three remarkable women whose lives and accomplishments are relatively unknown. Yet each of these lives touch on children caught up in the horror of civil conflict and war, poverty and disease.

Who are these women?

Eglantine Jebb (1876-1928),

Joice Nankivell Loch (1887-1982)

Pamela Ateka (1976-)

Clare Mulley

Over the next three Saturdays I will be exploring with author Clare Mulley, the life and times of Eglantyne Jebb. I have chosen Saturday because Eglantyne, born on Saturday, 26 August 1876 and (in accord with the old rhyme) true to the day her birth day, she 'worked hard for a living'.

Schedule
Saturday 28 August, 2010: Clare Mulley introduces Eglantyne Jebb
Saturday 4 September, 2010: Book Review by Mabel Kaplan
Saturday 11 September, 2010: The Research Process – An Interview with Clare Mulley

Monday's child is fair of face,

Tuesday's child is full of grace,

Wednesday's child is full of woe,

Thursday's child has far to go,

Friday's child is loving and giving,

Saturday's child works hard for a living,

But the child who is born on the Sabbath Day

Is bonny and blithe and good and gay