Home is where the hope is. Jami Bora, microcredit and the people and communities creating the extraordinary.
Ah, a fresh new baby year…may we meet it as such, with tenderness, love, and no small amount of wonder. I wanted to share a few final reflections on our trip to Kenya and some of my favorite pictures as a way of tipping my hat to this adventure. Thank you for your...
Named after one of the Masaii tribes in the area, Kaputiei was conceived from Ingrid’s belief that “you can’t move out of poverty if you are living in hell.” The land for Kaputiei was acquired through great travail (and that is a story all on its own) in 2002 and is...
Ingrid often expresses her gratitude that Jamii Bora was created in her later years rather than when she was a young woman. If it had, she asserts, she would have made the mistake that so many organizations with a mission to help end up making. The gist of which is,...
Tom Thiong’o Tom is the head of Jamii Bora’a Levuka Center, a residential treatment program for alcoholics and addicts. Levuka means to become sober. That is what Tom has been for 18 years and what he is teaching people who come to Levuka to become. Tom was a teacher...
Our world is changing. Our thinking patterns are shifting. To answer our pressing emergencies and, fortuitously, engaging in this brings an aliveness like nothing else.
We’re a worldwide civilisation now and can consciously engage in creating thriving, just, sustainable futures for everyone. Yet, sometimes, this seems like a very lonely path…
We hope this site helps us all accelerate positive shifts. Amplification, re-storying and sharing awe…
Our future, ourselves, our planet and our stories, it’s all entangled ― Festina LentÍvaldi*
Andrew Otieno Andrew grew up in the Kibera slum with a single mom struggling to care for numerous children yet was able to provide him with a loving role model of strength and perseverance. It is the place he has chosen to remain and run a clinic in order to meet some...
In our time with Jamii Bora, I have gotten a sense of the difference between pretense and pride. Not a single one of the people I have met has a shred of pretense that I have detected yet each one of them embodies and expresses their pride; in the work they are doing,...
Editorial note: Each of the people we met amazed me and the reason that I have written more about some than others is simply due to the fact that we were able to spend significantly larger chunks of time with some people. Janet Bett Janet is one of the original “famed...
Jamii is the plural of family in Swahili Bora is good, but not just good, better than good Like many beautiful unfoldings, the initial seeds of Jamii Bora were sewn with no idea about what yield would eventually follow. Ingrid Munro grew up in Sweden and had a rather...
Editorial note: In a previous blog I stated that the population in Kibera slum is close to 2 million. There appears to be quite a bit of disagreement and uncertainty on this figure. A 2009 census put the number much lower: around 171,000. That may reflect the many...
Swahili language and greetings lesson of the day: Mzungu-a European, but really any white person Mutatu-Mini-van straight out of Mad Max, people packed in like sardines, a “solicitor” hanging out of the open door shrieking for potential customers, drives on sidewalks...
Giraffe trivia, match the following: Maasai Giraffe, Reticulated Giraffe, Rothschild Giraffe The most endangered subspecies, Can interbreed with other giraffe subspecies, The largest subspecies (answers at the end of the blog) The sadness of leaving our new friends...
Swahili lesson of the day: Manyatta-House Boma-Family compound Ngombe-Cow Mbuzi-Goat The Maasai people living in the Maasai Mara region today hail from a very old ethnic group of semi-nomadic people located in Kenya and northern Tanzania who...
Where is her mother, her father? Does she even have a mother, a father? When was the last time she ate? Was that the last time she ever would? These questions, accompanied by so many emotions, continue to race through my mind. They keep me awake at night. Such a...
“Hasten slowly” said Augustus. Oh, this is hard. To imagine what can be created, to hold back, to act; to engage means delving into both despair and hope. That’s where we’re challenged to see the powerful in what we do which is always minimal and micro. Feeling adequate in the face of manifest inadequacy. Weaving together the pieces that hasten, slowly and steadily, benevolution.
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Feature by Julianna Gwiszcz, Creative Commons BY-NC-ND; see individual posts for other picture credits.