Chicago Kenyan finds ties to home with local organization, the Internet

By Kate Shellnutt,
Special Contributor to Mashariki Leo

Chicago, IL -- As the quartet began singing, accompanied only by the shh-shh rhythm of a wooden shaker called a kayamba, Veronica Kariuki’s face eased into a smile at the familiar tune, and she sang along in Swahili.

Kariuki, who serves as the office and program manager for the United Kenyans of Chicago, is in charge of arranging events such as this international music concert for the area’s Kenyan population.

On Friday, the four-person singing group Singers of United Lands performed at the organization’s headquarters in River North. Their set included songs from each of its members’ homelands: Chile, Latvia, Korea and Kenya.

And because Friday’s audience was mostly Kenyan, the set skewed towards the country’s native songs, including upbeat working songs and the Kenyan national anthem, “Oh God of All Creation” or in Swahili, “Ee Mungu Nguvu Yetu”.

“It makes me want to go back home,” said Kariuki, completely sincere. “It was nice.”

She hasn’t been able to return to her hometown, Kiamu Tugu, in central Kenya, since she moved from the country two and a half years ago to attend college in the U.S.

Kariuki started taking classes at Roosevelt University in Chicago during the summer of 2006. The school, a mix of about 6,500 part-time and full-time students, has about 300 international students—about 4 percent of its total student body.

“I just wanted to learn more, and coming to school here is a bit different,” said Kariuki, adding that it’s a popular choice for Kenyans to supplement their schooling with an education in the U.S.

Kariuki, now 40, made the decision to move to Chicago after years of being a chemistry teacher and a high school principal in Kenya.
About half of all of the country’s immigrants come to the U.S., according to the Migration Information Source in Washington, and “a majority come for school,” Kariuki said.

Kenya has the fifth-largest immigrant population in the U.S., with about 80,000 total immigrants, the Washington-based research group reported, but organizations specifically for Kenyan immigrants aren’t widespread across the U.S. The Kenyan Embassy to the United States lists about 15 Kenyan Diaspora groups, including the United Kenyans of Chicago.

An estimated 5,000 Kenyans live in the Chicago area, and the United Kenyans group has helped Kariuki meet fellow Kenyans and find a job working for the organization following her graduation from Roosevelt last year.

“My family is back home, but I’ve found people here who are more like my family here,” said Kariuki, the only one of seven children to move from the country.

She still laments the change in lifestyle the U.S. brings.
“The way people interact is different. Here, you might not even know who your next-door neighbor is,” said Kariuki, who lives in Logan Square. “In Kenya, we have time to say hello to one another. We are less individual and more community-like.”

Once she moved to Chicago, she tried to reconnect with the slower-paced life she left behind by getting to know the local Kenyan community, which meant attending functions sponsored by the United Kenyans of Chicago. A couple of years later, in late 2008, the organization was looking for someone to run their new office space.

“We acquired the office last year. That is when we hired her,” said Mukila Maitha, one of the organization’s founders. The group began five years ago, but just recently expanded to its office at the Cornerstone Center, home to dozens of other local nonprofits.
“It gives us the capacity to do more,” said Maitha, who has lived in the U.S. for 17 years.

And as the organization pushes itself to do more for the local Kenyan community, Karuika finds herself more and more busy, in a position very different than the career in education that took up the past couple of decades of her life.

Now she’s making phone calls, planning events and coordinating with the organization’s members.

“It’s a challenging job with all we’re trying to do,” she said.
One of United Kenyans of Chicago’s continued efforts is its campaign against the widespread killings in Kenya following their presidential elections last year.

The campaign is called “Pamoja Tuishi,” Swahili for “Together We Live.” The group holds meetings in Chicago and area suburbs such as Naperville and Schaumburg to bring Kenyan immigrants together to talk about the political and tribal violence in their homeland. The end goal is overcome the differences between the country’s ethnic groups.

“We are here; we are Kenyans, so let us live together,” despite our differences, Karuika said. Immediately following the post-election violence that left 1,500 dead, local Kenyans rallied together to hold a prayer vigil for the victims.

A year later, the organization keeps holding its Pamoja Tuishi meetings because this killing spree continues to dominate the Kenyan political sphere.

“It started a year ago. We’ve been holding these community meetings where people can discuss what impedes them from having peace,” said Maitha, United Kenyan’s director. “We talk about the different aspects… everybody has got a piece of reality.”
The government has yet to make any arrests, which has drawn the attention of the United Nations Human Rights Council. A UN representative is currently surveying the country and looking for what has kept the government from prosecuting those responsible for the violence.

Given the political situation, it becomes especially important for Kenyan immigrants to keep up-to-date on political and cultural news from East Africa.

Maitha said he reads the Kenyan newspapers every day from their Web sites and sets up Google alerts to find Kenyan news from other sources.

The Internet helps to bridge the 8,000 mile gap between Chicago and Nairobi, Kenya’s capital city.

Kariuki says she often visits YouTube to listen to her favorite local musicians.

But, on this night, she’s lucky enough to hear Kenyans songs live, to sing and clap along with Maitha and other members of the organization as the members of Singers of United Lands sing one last song in Swahili.