Yesterday was a pretty event filled day. We were all pretty excited about the day as soon as we woke up, because it was our first official work day and there was a lot of work to be done on our project. Our project has changed pretty drastically from what we originally planned. We are not teaching human rights law at the Destiny Garden School and at the women’s rights organization everyday that we are here. Instead we are having a huge community forum on Wednesday for the women’s rights organization and teaching at the school on the remaining days.
Kenya recently passed a new constitution in August of last year and for the first time in the country’s history the idea of gender equality is explicitly incorporated into the supreme law of the land. Since the constitution is so new, many women are not aware of the rights that are espoused by the document. As a result, the women’s rights organization felt that it would be most helpful, if we worked with a substantial number of women leaders in the community and informed them of the rights afforded them by the new constitution.
Although we have been studying the Kenyan bill of rights and human rights law in general over the past months in preparation for this trip, there were still some provisions of the constitution that we were unclear on. Yesterday, we meet with legal counsel from the federation of women lawyers in Kenya (FIDA), to have any ambiguities about the constitution cleared up and to coordinate for Wednesday. FIDA is very well respected in the community and has agreed to work in conjunction with our project on Wednesday to make sure that the women get the most valuable information possible. We went to FIDA’s office first thing in the morning and didn’t leave until about noon. It was a lot of time, but I think its going to make for a great program on Wednesday.
The local court is right next to FIDA, so we stopped by and watched a proceeding about how the Kenyan electrical company was trying to get a business owner to pay an outstanding bill. We also set up a meeting for later in the day with the Chief Magistrate.
After leaving the courthouse, we had lunch at a local restaurant.
We didn’t have time to go to the school between our meeting with FIDA and our meeting with the Chief Magistrate, so we went souvenir shopping and bought some authentic Kenyan art pieces. Upon meeting with the Chief Magistrate, she provided us with some very informative information about the new constitution. Although the document is very progressive, the Magistrate questioned how practical it would be to implement with the limited resources that the country has. We also learned that according to the constitution, claims made based on the bill of rights do not incur any court fees. The Magistrate felt that the only way for the true meaning of the constitution to be brought to the forefront, was for individuals to start bringing “test cases” to see how far certain rights extend. She also recommended some materials in their archives to consider, but it was too late to acquire them, so we had to come back today to get them.
We left the courthouse and met with some individuals to put a deposit on a Safari that we are going to go on this Saturday. The meeting was at some hotel, so we had a couple of drinks while we waited for a counselor who sought to be involved in our teaching at the school and utilizing our program to assess the talents of the children. After a couple of hours of discussion with her, we finally left for home. We bought some playing cards on the way back and ended up playing Chinese Poker until about 2:30am.
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