Maria's Letter

Maria Laetitia Hawi, 

November 2024. 

To Isiolo- County 011, 

Ejok-a? Yeyo? Akam? It has been two weeks and counting since I left you. I hope you are well. While I reached Nairobi safely, I cannot help but miss your scorching heat as I brave the capital city’s sempiternal cold. Visiting you and getting to know you was an indescribable experience. We grew accustomed to one another, and even now I struggle to sleep without the familiar drone of an electric fan.  

I write to you with sorrow for all the help we could not offer, with gratitude for everything I learnt and experienced, and most importantly with an unshakable resolve to actively pursue my purpose in the community. My penning is unfortunately not bound to hazy reminiscing and romantic memories of our time together. Anger and vitriol consume me, so sulphuric that I fear you may receive ashes in an envelope. My caustic sentiments are directed to all those who have failed you, and to those who have had and continue to have a hand in your suffering. There is something so sharply glacial about wiping the tears of mothers crying for their children, the sight of tears filling eyes that have gone cloudy with age and witnessing how communities are scrapping to survive their systemic sabotage and erasure. 

My sensitization to your issues was quick, as I heard and saw first-hand all that makes daily survival supremely difficult within your communities. Problems surrounding community land, which is much of your land ownership system, are featured repeatedly. There is a name given by the Maori of Aotearoa for such an inextricable connection between people and their land, tangata whenua, which translates to “people of the land.” For indigenous communities, their land holds lifetimes in its strata, anchoring the cycle of life over countless generations. Vicious land grabbing and unlawful eviction issues are rarely just that, they cause families, long-standing traditions, and intangible generational links. Colonialism replaced indigenous land ownership systems with limited Western conceptualizations of land ownership. This transplanted system has led to widespread frustration due to the absence of cadastral maps and created confusion over ownership and boundary lines. This deliberately manufactured confusion shelters unscrupulous opportunists who sweep in like vultures, picking at the ruins of communities ravaged by the system.  

“Community-based conservation is an approach to preserving biodiversity that involves close collaboration with the communities residing in the vicinity of a protected wildlife area.” A statement, while disappointing, was expectedly untrue. The disparity between this aspirational narrative and the lived experiences recorded is palpable. An illustrious portrait is painted, presenting a model of conservation and education, while the grievances voiced by community members underscore unresolved conflicts in access to resources and the protection of public rights. To offer false hope is to prolong misery, and your suffering much like my faith in the powers that be, has been stretched beyond its limit. 

My recollection of the injustices we encountered, is tinged with bitterness and disappointment. The duty you are owed is unashamedly violated, the enjoyment of rights an unfulfilled promise. Countless stories depict situations that would have bent even the strongest of wills. The risk of abject poverty that was reckoned with daily often cascaded into crime, starvation, malnutrition, and premature death. Foreigners at every corner dubiously buy up land, reducing accessibility in the region with their encroaching fences while their “development” companies collect farm soil by the truckload for construction, pending any consent from the landowners. This year shall come to pass, our liberation shall be commemorated jubilantly while many suffer the deathly hallows of the ghosts of colonialism. 

Amid all this strife, there is certainty that your people will not go gently into the good night. The adversities they face pale in comparison to their rich culture and heritage and the vim with which they protect it. Women wore their beaded necklaces proudly, every single beaded row intact and pristinely maintained. Men wore their shukas tightly knotted around their waists as they supported their weight on gleaming hardwood staffs. The weathered hands that readily guided us through the intricacies of their traditions granted us a glimpse of the reality embodied in the words “na tukae na undugu, amani na uhuru.” 

It is my hope that neither of us will readily forget the electric buzz that charged the air post the informative sessions we facilitated. Let it rekindle the dwindling flames of hope for a change in the status quo. May the women who passionately defended the complete education of girls and vehemently advocated against early (child) marriage be granted the strength of the formidable matriarchs who came before them. I hope the lessons taught and learnt echo and linger in all the places we stood between the law and the people, and where they reached out to meet us. It is my sincere wish that everything we took part in contributes to the pursuit of changing existing conditions for the better. 

Thank you for a truly memorable time. You reassured me that trying to speak my mother tongue is important enough to connect me to my culture. English often failed in conversations, Swahili could only go so far, and translation proved inadequate. Your women wielded their sisterhood viciously, with fierce promises to protect each other by any means necessary. As the sun begins to set on the current stewards of our country, do not be set in stone. Embrace the necessary changes and persist for generations to come. 

Until then,  

Yours sincerely, 

Maria Laetitia Hawi.