Weaving Kenya 2012: an introduction

I believe in the power and richness of community. But I haven't experienced it as much as since joining a writing project dubbed Weaving Kenya 2012. This is a writing experiment in which a group of women artists express their vision for Kenya during what is bound to be a pivotal year in the history of our country. Some of the key developments in our public life will include:

• General election in late 2012 or early 2013
• Possible start of ICC trials
• Enactment of key public functions such as County Governments
• Possible revamp of the education system
• ...

Weaving Kenya is an exploration of what Kenya means to us in its broadest conceptualisation: colour, experience, riches, aspirations, dreams, poverty, pain, and hope. In the words of Dr. Wambui Mwangi, this exploration expressed by and through women's voices is necessary because...'it will surprise no-one if the voices that are loudest, most consistently heard and accorded the most space are repeatedly and insistently male.  Many of these voices will also be emanating from the self-same machinery of representation that predictably focuses on starving, screaming, fighting, tribal, atavistic, primitive Africa, with the equally predictable stereotypes unleashed and magnified.'

Weaving Kenya 2012 is a process of aspiring and expressing our aspirations as a community of Kenyan women enmeshed in various ways with one another and with the space known as Kenya. 

 

How does the ‘Weaving’ work? Again, Dr. Wambui Mwangi is the 'go-to' person when you want things explained.

You notice, read, look at, pay attention to, hold in your mind, incorporate, or otherwise integrate into your mind the available-on-the-internet thoughts of two women from this collective... 

You make/stage your own intervention on the internet: on your blog, your website, your facebook page, etc: wherever you usually appear. 

 

Finally, forward (in facebook lingo, 'share') the hyperlink to any two interventions (not your own) from this collective to a new space of the internet 'public'.


I start off showing my sisters' work on my new blog with Jean Thevenet's Hearth Mother. I hope to see this piece of writing grow into a novel.