Berkley Center

Background: Sister Hedwig Muse, LSMIG, works, as a barrister and a sister, on peacebuilding and human rights activities, in Kenya. Her background as a teacher supports her focus on civic education and community outreach. This discussion with Katherine Marshall in Washington, DC, on April 22, 2023, during a fellowship visit explored the different dimensions of her work, notably the opportunities and challenges of working through religious sisters to prevent and address conflicts. She commented on both Church and interfaith work during the recent elections and more broadly on the power of women. Working with Pax Christi, she has focused intensively on conflict resolution, bringing women’s voices into the processes.

The discussion with Sister Hedwig forms part of a series of exchanges with the sisters participating in the Women in Faith Leadership Fellowship. The fellowship works to amplify the visibility, vitality, and voice of Catholic sisters in responding to the complex challenges and opportunities faced by women religious leaders within their organizations and communities. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, Joint Learning Initiative on Faith & Local Communities, the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University, and the Center for Public and Nonprofit Leadership at Georgetown University have collaborated in the design and delivery of the Women in Faith Leadership Fellowship. Funding was provided by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation. Sister Hedwig is a fellow in the inaugural cohort, and this discussion forms part of a series of exchanges with the sisters in that context.

Let’s start with where you were born! And where does the name Hedwig come from?

I am Hedwig Muse. My family name is Nafula. I am the firstborn in the family, and I was born and raised in western Kenya in a town or county called Bungoma. Hedwig is actually a German name. My father got it from a nun who was a missionary and he liked it, so when I was born they gave me the name Hedwig. Whenever I introduce myself, everyone’s like, “What? That name is new.”

Were your parents Catholic?

Interestingly, my father is a staunch Catholic, and he worked with the Ministry of Agriculture as a statistician, while my mom is a retired teacher from a Protestant family. When I had decided on the convent, my mom didn’t know a lot about the Catholic Church. Remember, I’m the firstborn. And when she understood that I was being called to serve as a religious Catholic nun, then having married into a strong Catholic family, she accepted it. My father had no issue with that. She started learning the catechism and being taught Catholic teachings and doctrines when I was already in the convent studying to become a nun. That’s when she took the step of being catechized and undergoing the basic teachings.

When did you want to become a sister? How old were you, and what made you decide to do that?

It was when I was in primary school, I think, when I was around eight or nine. That’s because I was brought up in a Catholic school and my own uncle was a priest, though he passed in a tragic accident. I could see a lot of nuns in our home, in the school, and I admired the way they were. First of all, the way they dressed. I did not want to go to a convent, a congregation that does not have a habit. That’s when and where God attracted me to join the sisters. As a child, I saw that they were very active. They set out the altars and they taught; they were nurses. They did a lot and they were smart. I felt that I should do this, too. I took particularly to their way of life and dressing. That’s why, unlike other sisters [colleagues in the cohort] I chose a congregation that has uniforms or habits, because that’s what attracted me.

I grew up with a dream. Even after high school, and when they used to teach me in class in high school, they used to call me “sister” before I even joined because they knew I had that passion. Every Sunday I would go to the parish to do a postage or do work and free service with the parish: cleaning around, washing, doing that with vocation groups. That was me already cultivating my vocation to become a sister.

And what happened then? How did you continue your education after you joined?

I finished high school and joined the convent after that. I made the application to the congregation, joined the convent, and followed the training, which took four years, in Uganda. After becoming a sister, I first worked in a parish doing pastoral work, waiting to go to school. Then I joined the law school. I went to university because I had passed the exams and I wanted to be a lawyer. People around me had said, “She can do this, she can do this.” I had good papers. I did law, but my congregation surprisingly told me, “You have to do another course.” So I said, “The only course I’ll think of is teaching, education.” So, I became a high school teacher and a barrister.

Where were you studying?

In Nairobi, at the Catholic University of Africa. But I was in Uganda also. The mother house of my congregation is in Uganda (that’s why you hear me speak to Rosemary [another cohort sister] in her local language from Uganda). I learned it when I was in Uganda, though I was born and raised in Kenya. When it came time to go to university, I had the chance to come back to Kenya, to Nairobi.

When I finished law studies I went back to Uganda to university, at Uganda Martyrs University, to do a bachelor’s of education degree as a high school teacher. That’s where I passed my bachelor’s of education with English language and literature. When I finished that, I taught for four years. Then I went for a master’s in law at the University of Nairobi, back to Kenya. I finished and I started working with the Association of Sisters of Kenya. But before that I had to do a B.A. course that entitled me to practice law. I finished and became a barrister. I ended up focusing on the role of advocacy.

I am now a fully practicing advocate with the Association of Sisters of Kenya, and because of my background as a teacher, I work with a number of schools in the diocese with teachers, as I also handle the legal issues. And God gave us sisters' activities in Kenya in different dioceses. I have a project where I work with Pax Christi International, coordinating from the national conference as an assistant coordinator to Pax Christi, on active nonviolence and peacebuilding. Specifically, we run four programs at the national conference. That’s what I’m doing.

How did you get into the Pax Christi work?

While I was at the association (we call it ASK, Association of Sisters of Kenya), there was a call for Pax Christi to partner with the sisters in Kenya to implement a project funded by Hilton [the Conrad R. Hilton Foundation]. The request came to the national conference and the secretary general looked around, saying that it was a good call to help sisters be trained on active nonviolence and peacebuilding. The request was to have the association provide an assistant coordinator to implement the project. I was told, “Can you do this?” I answered, “I’ll try. I’ll do it.” We entered into an understanding, and Pax Christi came and trained the sisters, including me. I was given my tasks as assistant coordinator to Pax Christi, to oversee the activities of the sisters in Kenya. And that’s how I became part of the Pax Christi program.

The co-president of Pax Christi now is a bishop, Bishop Mark [Stenger], and then Sister Wamuyu [Wachira, IBVM] in Kenya. She’s a Kenyan. The regional coordinator for Africa is Mr. Dieudonné [Serukabuza] and I work with him, and in August we are having the regional evaluation of the program in Kenya, so we’ll have Congo, Burundi, South Sudan, and Kenya.

A lot of work to do, but I’m happy that the impact of that project has been good.

You’re now based in Nairobi, is that right?

Yes, I am. My family is in Bungoma, and I am based in Nairobi because of the work I do. The national conference is based in Nairobi, so that’s where I’m posted and that’s where I work. My congregation as of now does not have our own house, so I am posted on the premises of the conference. They have places for accommodation, so that’s where I stay. I’m looking forward to having a house of our own as the Sisters of Mary Immaculate.

You are a barrister, a lawyer, and have that skill that you use. What projects are you working on in Kenya? There are so many conflicts and so many areas of tension, so much history. How do you work about how the projects work, and what do you see as the most important areas?

There are many conflicts in Kenya. The government and the opposition are trying to dialogue and break a deadlock. As a national conference and a community, we are trying to do our best with interventions in all these areas. The Pax Christi project, for example, was very instrumental because it was being implemented at the time of the election campaigns.

The recent elections?

Yes. The sisters made efforts through the youth to help them understand the importance of keeping peace with their neighbors and the community and the country. However, this project targets particular regions, so the impact was at the coast region and Nairobi. I would say that three quarters of the country didn’t have the hand of Pax Christi, though other programs were ongoing outside our own initiative. But I must say that the national conference, or myself through the national conference, have done our best.

The National Conference of the Religious? Is it all of the congregations? How many are there?

Yes. Now we have 168 congregations. Not all are involved in the project. That’s why I say there is limited scope because the target of Pax Christi was first Nairobi, that people were most concerned about, and then the coast region. These are the two places that we have had the impact as Pax Christi and then through the support of other organizations like CRS [Catholic Relief Services]. We have had a number of programs with CRS. I organized the group within Nairobi, still in civic education, to prepare people to take part in elections and then keep peace at the same time. The target was slum areas of Nairobi where there are always problems, as in Kibera. That was our main focus, in those slums, with civic education.

What form did that take? How did you do civic education? Did you go to the schools or community groups?

What happened was first we called on leaders from those subcounties—in the target areas, slum areas— and we trained opinion leaders and appointed leaders. We called them, trained them, and sent them to the communities, because we couldn’t reach all. The target was the community, men and women, youth and all. The community of Kibera, in this subcounty, is an example. We were looking at the community and some areas where we could meet. Most of the leaders are youth, some men and women of whatever age. They get to know their rights in democracy to take back and how to keep peace and promote peace in the whole process. That’s what we did. We got support from Hilton for the sisters. It was a very short program focused on civic education, and we were able to sample the work of our sisters from, I think, 25 dioceses of Kenya. We have to involve their dioceses.

I was one of the facilitators on civic education, taking them through what the constitution of Kenya says on elections, leadership, democracy, their rights, and their responsibilities. Then after that, sisters were sent back to have impact in their communities. The challenge is that we didn’t have time to follow up to evaluate and see what is happening in each diocese. 

There are vast, big dioceses and we were calling one or two persons, so they couldn’t reach out to all. But the reports I was receiving indicate that they were able to make an impact. They were spotting out the volatile areas and the places they know they should reach because we told them to focus on the youth and boda boda [motorcycle taxi] riders who escalate violence. And political leaders—people who vie for political positions—tend to use them to spark violence or to be prophets of doom, for lack of a better word. 

Most of the sisters targeted them. I couldn’t do the analysis of the last elections, but it was fairly peaceful, save for the outcome that brought a lot of tension up to now.

That’s what I’ve done so far for the project of peace.

My office coordinates work of the sisters. As an achievement, I have been able to map out the needs of the sisters in the dioceses. Prominent among them are insecurity, more insecurity, and lack of facilities. 

Families may not see lack of access to education specifically as their problem, but it is the problem of the community that is voiced through the sisters.

What do you mean by that?

An example is the last diocese I visited, Marsabit, in the extreme north. When I met the sisters, they told me a lot of fears, insecurity and access to education for the girls, especially because of the culture. The culture there is that when girls grow up, they’re already prepared to be married off so the parents can get wealth and animals and all that. You find that the sisters feel sad because they’re struggling to support these girls. But if you do not have the resources, you are limited. In Marsabit, the sisters work a hundred percent on diocesan programs; they do not have their own so they cannot say, “Okay, this is my school. I can have slots for 50 girls to access free education based on the needs.” Usually, our schools can do that. They say, “Okay, let me give 10 slots to the needy girls.” But there they cannot because schools and health centers are linked to the diocese. So those are challenges they’re raising.

The high rate of abandoning children is another challenge. Someone has a child and can’t take care of them. They abandon them at the doorsteps of the sisters’ houses. These sisters dress like Mother Teresa sisters. They have so many children abandoned and they can’t leave them, so they bring them in and that falls to the diocese. They try to help them, but they’re wondering how to instill the sense of responsibility in the community or the family, because the level of child neglect is high and the level of school dropouts is also high. Distance to schools is another challenge. Marsabit is a lonely place, and there you see a lonely community where you move and don’t see any shops or anything. That saddens me for the girl child in terms of studies.

These are the issues the sisters share with me. But taking it back to the association, we don’t have a budget to support sisters. But there is need. The sisters are telling us, “The national conference should support us on this. We need to support these communities.” They raise the issue of insecurity, as the communities fight a lot: the Boran, the Ormans, and so on. There’s shooting. If a Moran meets with a Boran, they’re enemies. The sisters told me that in class if they ask a child, “Who is your enemy?” if it is an Orman they say, “Boran.” The sisters have to instill peace there, as they grow up with conflict.

I have experience working countrywide at the national conference. I hear, “If you want to handle the problem in pastoral communities, first of all start with the clan leaders because they’re very much trusted, more than any government leader there, more than any political leader, more than any leaders. The communities trust the traditional clan leaders. If they tell the people, ‘Tomorrow early in the morning, go and attack this community,’ they will do that. First, dialogue with the clan leaders. Without that you’re not going to make impact in Marsabit.” Even the chiefs, the governors, the police, the politicians fear them. They have their voice.

Sometimes the sisters themselves are scared, in the arid area and elsewhere, including Nairobi. There are many casualties in the health centers that they run. People kill and shoot each other, then bring them to the sisters, saying “You must treat them.” Sometimes the sisters have no jurisdiction, but they are forced to treat them because they are threatened. The sisters tell the association about the support they need for security, supplies, and so on. There are also attacks from the wild animals. I thought that was just in primary school history books, but it is coming to life. Even snakes, because they’re in the desert. Many children die because they come with snake bites and there are no medicines to treat them. We can’t rescue them. So sisters ask, “What’s the national conference doing for us? We need you to support us.” When I shared my report, they said, “Okay. We’ll look for a way out.”

The communities where the sisters work are very diverse in terms of the religion and, especially the ones in the north, are Islamic-dominated. The sisters say that religious dialogue can help, and they have a knowledge about the causes of conflicts in Marsabit, Garissa, Isiolo, and so on: “It’s pasture, water, land, and, above all, animals.” Communities are raided for animals, and they fight over grazing land. There are resource-based conflicts. I would like to answer the question of how we can help support this kind of conflict.

Clearly that’s a central issue, with many parallels to what’s happening in the Sahel: a combination of the droughts, population increase, and mobility. Coming back to Nairobi and the coast, where do you see the most serious causes of conflict? Do you see ethnic, religious, class divides? What is your diagnosis?

My diagnosis focuses on the resource conflicts, especially in the dry areas. In Nairobi, and taking a national perspective, it is basically ethnic and political. Different political opinions lead to clashes. And then power. The grid of power and politics in Kenya is very ethnic. We have a tribe in power. Ruto, the sitting president, used power tactics as a strategy. Kenya’s largest community is Kikuyu. He played that game and made sure that three quarters of them supported him. He himself comes from a minority tribe; Kalenjins are not the majority, they’re not even number two. He won groups of the Kikuyus who voted for him because they’re businesspeople. They knew with him in power they could smuggle things in and do business. Remember that he’s from the Rift Valley and the Kikuyus—from Gyambo, Nyahururu, and Ranga—are invested heavily in the Rift Valley. They feel their property is safe. They’re looking in the direction of Kisumu (where I’m from), asking what protection is there with Raila? Nothing. There are no serious ties with the local community. Instead of supporting Raila, apparently the history says there’s enmity in tribal laws and Kikuyus. They have their own motives, not that they’d love the country to have a good president. They chose for their own interest.

Ethnic inclinations have seen Kenya torn apart. This is happening with the Luhyas, my tribe, on one side and Kalenjins and Kikuyus on the other. But slowly the Kikuyus are trying to pull away, especially after the attacks on the farm of the former president. They start saying, “Okay, we have somebody who is trying to fight us, the deputy president now who is making us fight our own.” The whole situation is mixed, but ethnicity plays a role in that. Who is it that I’m supporting and what is my benefit? There is also regionalism, that we should support our person. Central is the determining factor. Who is here that can meet our interest and will support us? The person they support wins. Why? Because they have the advantage of numbers. This is what happens in Kenya. It’s to a large extent very tribal and ethnic.

Where does the religion come into it? There’s analysis that the churches basically failed in 2007, 2008. Your project is evidence of trying to recapture the right role. I’m curious about your diagnosis and perspective.

Religion has a hand in this. In Kenya there is good ecumenism: the Muslim brothers, Protestants, Catholics together.

I was not in Kenya during the 2007 to 2008 crisis; I was in Uganda becoming a sister. It was the recent one where I really participated and was an observer. I felt that the Church was trained to be in its role, to be visible. The country, the world, or the citizens can see that the Church is being vocal and being seen and intervening.

Religions’ roles in Kenyan politics? They have tried to rise, but in my opinion, they need to choose their battles well and strategize well so they have the confidence of the masses and the public.

What about women? How do you see women playing roles in the peace process? Much is focused, you say, on the elections because that’s where a lot of the violence comes, but women have broader roles.

I will speak from two perspectives: the national conference (women working to promote peace and women generally), and the national association of sisters.

In all the dioceses we have a group we call peacemakers that we work with. For example, they sent me a case just yesterday where the group of women peacemakers in Bomas rescued a girl who was assaulted. They were writing to me for advice. We have women peacemakers in all these dioceses, and we have trained women in peace processes. We have manuals for them to train others. When it comes to peace, especially during this election time, we empowered them to empower the communities and support them in enhancing and promoting peace.

When you say empowered them, you gave them an authority?

Empowering women? I like the power idea, but we just give them skills, training, information, and support them. We give them roles to reach out through their prayer groups. 

They’re not all Catholic. We work with everyone in the community—in their religions, in their churches, in their mosques, in their schools, in their prayer groups, in their communities—to be able to promote peace. We give them leaflets, brochures, and all that to help spread ideas. Then we ran messages of peace on radios, on televisions, and also physically reached out to the communities. And the women took a lead in this for whatever reasons. Even now, it was mostly women who do the initiatives of civic education. Then at the national level, women, especially through the Church, were seen doing the same.

However, in terms of taking political leadership, it has been a challenge for women in Kenya. They try, but sometimes their male counterparts scare them away. They may just scare them with the resources they have and sometimes their own husbands stop them: “If I let my woman be an MP, she will dominate me and then I lose my authority.” In terms of leadership, women are coming up slowly, but in peace they have taken up important roles.

Do you perceive a divide in Kenya between the feminist women and the religious women?

Yes, in Kenya we have feminist women and religious women. We have women who are vocal and some of those vocal women are motivated through organizations like FIDA, which is the Federation of Women Lawyers where I belong. Women organizations have come out very vocally to support women’s rights, women’s empowerment, and girls so that when there are abuses, justice is carried by women and many others. Equality Now is a women’s organization. So those organizations support women and motivate them to speak up, to be vocal, to be heard, and champion the rights of women. But coming up as feminists per se, I have not seen it. Identifying someone like, “Katherine is a feminist?” No, but I hear women just speaking up for girls, for women’s empowerment, for their rights, for support. Even for victims. But that aspect of feminism we read about in books, American feminisms, raises hackles. I think they are feminists through their voices or their works.

Definitions can get people into trouble. But it’s more a challenge in Europe and the United States. Some people are uneasy about the religious traditions that support patriarchy in one way or another. That leads sometimes to clash or simply to a divide.

That’s true. I see that. In the parishes, for example, a diocese called our office asking about women calling themselves peacemakers, trained by the national conference for the sisters. We replied by telling them about the program and justifying the title “peacemakers.” But some boys and bishops feel like women are getting a step ahead. Is what we are doing okay? When they call us, we clarify that these are the groups that champion for a peaceful community, peaceful society, women’s rights, and justice.

All good things.

All good things. Nothing wrong. If they want to have an activity in the diocese, we give them activities to talk about violence, human trafficking, and child protection. We train them to help their communities, so if they’re working in a parish setting, they should be able to perform the priest’s share of their programs and get the support they need. We always clarify that. We need and promote dialogue within the parishes.
Sometimes women face serious roadblocks. and we have to fight our way through and remove them.

Where do you see the kind of work that you are doing with peace going?

Peace is just one element. I champion for human rights for women and girls more, because that’s my profession. In the stories I shared with you, the underlying issue is peace linked to the rights of women and girls. Kenya is a big country, but my focus with my teams is first of all on a diocese or these communities of women where pastoral families have yet to understand the needs of women and girls. The boys are okay because families would rather take the boys to school. They have focused on the boys because they still enjoy privileges. I attend to human rights, legal issues. I handle counseling myself, but I always tell the community I prefer to have fewer cases because we should be ambassadors and advocates out there to help the community stand up and be able to read the red flags of any abuse, any trafficking, any gender abuse, any gender-based anything.

We work to prevent more than cure. That’s what I do. In Kenya I feel we still have strides to take, a long road ahead, more effort. I’m glad I’m part of this fellowship because it will give me the best chance and the support to make more impact.