Berkley Center

Background: Sister Agnes Lucy Lando (Lando, as she likes to be called), SMK, brings knowledge, insight, and energy to her work on communication. She bridges religious and secular perspectives through her research and teaching and brings a commitment to students and to the formation of the next generation. A Catholic sister as a professor at a non-Catholic Christian university in Kenya (Daystar University), she combines an ecumenical vision with a commitment to advancing the cause of women and girls. This discussion with Katherine Marshall in Washington, DC, in April, 2023, during a fellowship visit explored the different dimensions of her work.

The discussion with Sister Lando 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 Lando is a fellow in the inaugural cohort, and this discussion forms part of a series of exchanges with the sisters in that context.

Please introduce yourself, but also your story. How did you get where you are?

I am Sister Agnes Lucy Lando. Currently, I’m the director of research and graduate studies at Kenya’s Daystar University. I am a fully perpetually professed member in the Missionary Institute of the Sisters of Mary of Kakamega (in Kenya), and I’m a full professor of communication and media studies. I became full professor in March 2022. I was born in Kenya in a place called Kakamega, just by the shores of Lake Victoria.

I’m the second-to-last born in my family. We are five girls. We were actually eight but our second born, third born, and the last born passed on, so currently, we are five living sisters. We are girls only.

We had a background that brought me into contact with different cultures. My dad moved a lot. He used to work for the East African Railways and Harbors, so he moved from place to place. None of my sisters were born at home in the family culture. Some were born in Uganda, some in Tanzania. I was born in Kakamega. My parents had their wedding in St. Joseph’s Cathedral in Dar Es Salaam, away from home. So we started this intercultural business quite early, a long time ago.

In my culture, the girl child may be appreciated, but you’re not entitled to property. My dad had property, but he had only girls. So, the pressure was to marry a second wife to get boys to inherit his property. But my dad was this staunch, spoiled Catholic, and so he said, “I can’t compromise faith and tradition. Children are a blessing from God. I will not marry a second wife because of boys.” But I think maybe what he didn’t say is that it probably was not my mom’s fault that there are no boys, biologically. The fact that they were able to bring forth the girls means that my mom is fine. But I also believe children are from God. So you can decide you want girls or boys, but God decides otherwise. So, Dad decided to move away from home so that he could continue with his professional work, protect his family, and also practice his faith away from the cultural hinderances. However, his work—as an accountant of the East African Railways and Harbors—favored him in this decision because work “moved” him to work in the different East African countries.

When I was born, my dad and my mom were already in the Church. My dad was a choir master, a catechist working in the small Christian communities, member of the Legion of Mary—everything Catholic was in him. So I was born right in that and picked that up. My dad was also a professional tailor, and he sewed clothes for various people.

I was born in that kind of context and found myself praying a lot in the house. My dad and mom—even before I became a sister, even in prayers—would kneel down and pray. I was brought up in that culture. Kneel, pray; kneel, pray; kneel, pray. And if a guest came home, even if they are my sisters or family members who had traveled and were returning home, it was a tradition that we wouldn’t greet until we entered the house and Dad (or Mom in the absence of Dad) prayed. Then we would greet. I was also a member of the Junior Legion of Mary. One of the activities we were told is to help the poor: “You might not give them money, but give them presence, give them prayers, go fetch water for them, go fetch firewood for them, cook for them, bathe the sick, bathe the old.” I did that, and I loved finding time to do things for people in need, as I was brought up by my dad and my mom. My mom, too, was (and still is) a devout member of the Legion of Mary. I learned from her all these things of how, as member of the Junior Legion of Mary, to serve the sick and old in their homes.

When did you think about becoming a sister?

In the parish where I was staying, there were sisters. I would see the sisters. At home, we would kneel five minutes, ten minutes for quick prayers, or longer for the rosary. But in church, I would see the sisters kneeling and praying for a long time. One day we talked and I asked one, “Sister, what are you doing kneeling down for so long?” She said, “We are praying.” I said, “Why for so long?” She said, “We are praying.” I said, “We also pray while kneeling, but not that long.” So she said, “Yes, you just talk to God. Be in the presence of God. It’s nice. Come, if you wish, we can teach you.” These are the sisters of Mary of Kakamega (Kenya).

I discovered that these sisters in my parish were not from there. They were from other places but were working in this parish, working in the hospital, and also doing social work. I was just awed that these sisters had left their homes, their people, to come and serve people whom they don’t know, who were not their relatives. So that was my “aha” moment. I said, “I would also want to go out and serve people whom I don’t know, who are not my friends, who are not my relatives, and also to kneel long hours praying for all.” That “aha” moment became the genesis of my desire to become a religious like the sisters I had seen in my parish; and so here I am.

You went to school where? And then at what age did you become a sister? You’ve had two lives: your academic life and your sister life. How did they come together?

My dad believed in education. Every child in his family went to school, and if you disappeared from school, you were thoroughly caned and taken back. And if my dad was to choose between education and food, he’d rather take you to school. And if any kid, be it a neighbor’s child or later one of my sisters’ kids, were sent away from school because of school fees and my dad knew you were able to support, he would pressure you, “Pay school fees for so and so to continue with school.”

Why did he come to that?

Because he realized that education is power. Knowledge is power. It liberated his mind. He did not succumb to traditional pressures of marrying a second wife to bring forth boys. And the Catholic faith also liberated him. From his deep Catholic faith, he came to acknowledge that children are from God and that all children—a boy or a girl—are a gift from God and neither is superior or inferior. So, education and faith liberated my dad and mom. They remained in love and faith and supported each other during turbulent times in their marriage (and culture). I believe by going to school, you’ll be exposed to religion in the right manner, and you’ll be exposed to education. And then he always told us that once you are educated and you are a God-loving and -fearing person, you are liberated. So that was his mantra.

He believed it. So you went to school; where were you?

All my sisters went to boarding schools except me. I went to day school from kindergarten to high school. That’s the reason I love my dad and my mom so much. I am named after my dad’s mom (Lucy) and aunty (Agnes). And Lando is the pet name that they gave me. In my culture, lando means brown. I’m the brownest child in my family. So when I was born they were like, “This baby is so brown (lando).” My dad adored me and so did my mom. I was afraid and they were afraid if ever I went away from them, something horrible would happen to me—their beloved brownest child named after two adored people. So I was always on their radar. That’s why I was in day school throughout. In the morning, my dad would go for Mass every single day. Even if the church was miles away, he always woke me up to accompany him to church. He walked fast to church so that we didn’t find the priest at the altar. So, I grew up going to church every morning; and while going to church, that’s where I encountered the sisters. These were the Sisters of Mary of Kakamega. And, to this day, I still walk very fast!

Even in high school, there were the School Sisters of Notre Dame who were also in my parish, running the school where I was. They, too, came for Mass every morning. And after Mass they gave me a free ride to school. The fact that I would get a ride in the sisters’ car to school was an encouragement for me to brace my dad’s early morning fast walks to church. In this way, the School Sisters of Notre Dame also nurtured my religious vocation. When I finished high school, there was a correspondence between me and the Sisters of Mary. And after my high school, I went to become a sister. My parents said, “Let her go. She will not survive a day,” because I had never spent a night out, neither to any of my relatives. I always came home in the evening: “I need to go back home. My dad and mom are waiting for me.” Even me, I thought I would not survive in the convent a single day because I would not spend a night out. So, when the priest and sisters from the convent came to pick me up and took me to the convent (Mukumu) that received young girls to begin the training to become sisters, my dad said, “We’ll watch.” The first night came and I was not home. The second night, they said, “She’s gone.” I also said, “Oh, so I’m gone.” So I joined after high school. I was about 18 years old. So by the time I did my first vows, I was 22.

When did you go to university? At the same time?

No. When I completed my religious training, I was posted to a community in Kenya. I worked in the hospital as a hospital administrator. When we were in formation house, normally they asked, “In line with our charism, what would you like to be? So that your professional training is on that line.” I always wanted to be someone in communication and that’s what I told my superiors. One day, I’m at my place of work and I get a phone call: “You are needed in the generalate; you’re going to school.” I was super excited.

I went there, looked at my school agenda, and said, “No. I think there’s a mistake, because I’m supposed to go for communication.” The mother superior said to me, “No, my council and I have decided you’re going for finance and administration.” I was like, “What?” I had just made my first vows and we had been trained to obey our superiors because God speaks to us through them. That was my first test of the vow of obedience. So I went, begrudgingly, to Tanzania. I was sent to stay out in a foreign country. I worked hard; I completed it. In my heart I said, “Let me study finance and administration for my superiors. One day, God will give me a chance to study communication.” So I went; I studied; I did well. I came back after two years. I was hoping after that I’d be told to proceed. But lo and behold, I was told, “We do not have a financial administrator for the institute, so we want you to help.” I was like, “Is there a confusion?” “No, you are only acting as we look for someone else to take over. So you stay here and work.” So I worked every single day and I just said, “Okay, let me do it out of obedience.” I was working with one of my classmates. So one year, two years, then I renewed my vows for three years.

Then one day, from nowhere, my superior general calls me to her office and says, “Oh, you always wanted to study communication? Here is a letter from Daystar.” I was enjoying accounts; I was in charge of the finances of the congregation. She’s like, “No, you can go to study communication.” So I went. I studied communication in Daystar for my undergraduate and master’s degrees.

In life, God uses things and people and circumstances to prepare us for an unknown mission or destination. In 2005, I had the singular honor to go to Rome to study for my Ph.D. We do not have a house in Rome; I was the only sister there. I had to handle donor money funding my education: paying my hostels, taking care of myself, writing financial reports to the congregation and to the donors, and all that. And I was like, “How could I have managed this if I didn’t have a financial and administration background?” So I remembered what happened 15 years ago. God was using that painful moment of studying finance and administration to prepare me for an unknown future. 

So in Rome, when sisters were struggling, I was able to say: “Come, come, come. Let’s write it this way.” I was doing my own, I was helping them as well. The funders were very happy with me. They thought, “Oh, she’s a genius.” But in my heart I was like, “No, I have a background in a little bit of finance and a little bit of administration. At least I can write income and expenditure.”

That Rome experience of God’s plans, many times not so obvious to us, reminded me of how God had prepared and strengthened different biblical figures: how I looked at the story of Moses and the story of David. God uses opportunities and people, sometimes unpleasant ones, so that we might be able to grow closer to him. If Moses was not thrown into the river, he wouldn’t have been picked by the pharaoh’s daughter and he wouldn’t have ended up in the pharaoh’s palace and wouldn’t have learned leadership styles and skills from none other than pharaoh himself. So sometimes, you look in retrospection and say, “God had this in mind. God prepared me for it.” So normally when I meet unpleasant situations, difficult challenges, I say, “God could be preparing me for a more difficult task ahead.”

You said you always wanted to do communication. How did that come about?

My dad was a storyteller. He loved two things: Reading the daily newspaper (in Kiswahili) and listening to soccer on radio. Actually, today, I love reading the newspaper and listening and watching soccer, courtesy of my dad. The radio would be here, he would be listening, he would even be asleep. But the radio is on, on soccer. In the morning, we were never woken up by an alarm. We were woken up by a radio, and I still remember the song that used to play: “Wake up, my children. Go to school because school is the key to life.” That is the literal translation from Kiswahili. So I grew up with communication in my ears, so much so that when I was an aspirant and would go to the congregation, I would do all sorts of communication things. I would be hiding behind the box reading news or doing comedy. The sisters would be laughing then, and sometimes I would appear on television, imaginary television, and I’d be giving them news. So communication is just inbuilt, but from my dad. Other than education, my dad would spend money on buying the daily newspaper and batteries for the radio.

One of my nephews has also taken up communication and broadcasts football live. He’s been working for SuperSport in Nairobi. He analyzes the World Cup, Premier Leagues, and all that—communication influence from my dad.

You went to Rome, got your Ph.D. in Rome. How many years were you there?

I was in Rome for three years. When I went to Rome, I wanted to prove a point because we had heard of sisters and priests who go to Rome or go to the United States or go to wherever for studies then don’t come back. They study forever. So initially, it was smooth entry for religious people and the clergy, into the Vatican and out. Anybody could pack a bag anytime and go to Rome. Now, it’s very difficult to go to Rome. Why? Because some clergy and religious people went to Rome for studies and did everything else other than studies and never came back. Those few gave a bad name to others. So I said, “I’m focused. I’ve had this chance. I’m going to do exactly that and come back.” I studied in the prestigious Jesuit university: the Pontifical Gregorian University.

My study was supposed to take three years. I did it in two and a half. The remaining three months I did my publication. Because the Gregorian Pontifical University required that you publish and submit 50 copies of your publication to the university before you use the title “Doctor.” The other three months I used to tour Europe, because now I was done, but I had the last three months to conclude before going back to Nairobi. They needed someone to teach communication at Daystar. So, Daystar approached me and asked me if I could take the offer.

Being a religious, I wouldn’t go on my own accord. So first I stopped by my superior general who said, “You did your undergraduate and master’s there. You have struggled to support the Catholic faith in Daystar, which is not a Catholic university. To support the Catholic faith in Daystar, maybe it would be good that you go back and encourage the few Catholics who are there.” She said, “Fine.” But then she said we still need to go to the bishops because they need to know. So we told the bishops and I was called for an interview and they said, “Why must you go to Daystar?” When I was getting the sponsorship for my doctoral studies in Rome, the Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops (KCCB) recommended me. I had been working for the bishops’ conference at the national level and the regional level.

So I told them, “Daystar is not a Catholic university, but the few Catholics there need a role model. They need someone to look up to, they need encouragement.” So the bishop said, “Yes, in that case we shall call you a silent witness. We will allow you to go to work at Daystar. Remember, you are there representing all of us. Be a true silent witness of the Catholic faith.” So that’s how I ended up in Daystar in 2008.

How did the Catholic faith grow in Daystar University?

When I joined Daystar in 1995, the nearest parish was 45 kilometers away. Since it was six kilometers from the campus to the main road, I had to walk six kilometers, then wait for a long time to get a public transport to the church. You got to church late, of course. Then, from church I waited for transport and walked to come back to campus. So I would literally do a whole day going and coming back to church. Since lunch was over when I returned, it was a literally a fasting day. And the walk was perilous, with a national park with wild animals roaming around. And it could be hot.

Laypeople can be very powerful. A woman called Mama Mary Mullan walked up to me one day and said, “You are dressed as a Catholic sister. I am Catholic.” “Okay, nice to know,” I answered. But then she asked me where I went for Mass. I was like, “Nowhere.” She said, “You mean you are a sister; you don’t pray?” I said, “No, I pray, but I don’t go to church.” She said, “No, you cannot pray alone in the room. You need to go to church. The nearest church is this place and I always go there. So I can pick you up every Sunday.” I was like, “Okay. Let’s go.” So she would take me with her to church and bring me back: a laywoman who protected my faith in a strange environment.

Later, a few Catholics at Daystar said they wanted to go to church, and they asked me how I got there. The lay woman offered to take us all in her Peugeot. Eventually, the Peugeot became too small, so she would do two trips: go to church, send her driver to pick us up, take us to church, bring us back. The numbers grew. Then she gave us a pickup as well. So a pickup and the Peugeot took us to church and brought us back, all at her own cost. And then, as the numbers grew, she said: “It is becoming very expensive for me to maintain this. Why don’t I give you a piece of land here and we put up a semi-structured place for prayers? And then you and the Catholics can come and pray here, and I’ll be happy to join you.” I said, "Fine," and she did that. The parish priest gave us permission, but he said, “I do not have the capacity to have several Masses.” He said, “If you find another Catholic priest who’s willing to come and celebrate Mass, that’s fine.” So, I used my networks at the Catholic university. I knew the director and a few other priests there, and he agreed to send a priest. Mama was happy; I was happy; and the Catholic community was happy.

But the priest, 50 kilometers away, did not have transport to come, so I went back to Mama and I said, “Mama, the priests are willing but they don’t have transport.” So she gave us her car and driver. So on Sunday morning, I would wake up, go to Mama’s place, pick the driver and the car, go to Nairobi, pick the priest, come back, celebrate Mass. After Mass, we had a meal at Mama’s place, then accompanied the priest back to Nairobi, and returned. Four trips every single Sunday for four years. This lady did that.

And finally, the bishop supported a Catholic chaplaincy next to Daystar University. So in another life, I am a founder of the Catholic community in Daystar University! And the church has been erected. That was from 1995 to 2003, about 18 years for it to become a chaplaincy, and another 19 years for it to become a parish. So, in total, it has me taken 27 years to plant the Catholic faith in Daystar University. I was present in 2022 when Mary Mount was erected into a Catholic parish. And Mama was present! It was emotional. Now, it is a fully-fledged parish. So I don’t know how I got there, but that is Daystar for you. And so there’s a Catholic community, Catholic church, right outside Daystar.

Tell me about Daystar. You say it’s Christian.

The founders of Daystar University were an American missionary couple from Oregon: Dr. Donald K. Smith and his wife, Faye Smith. They founded Daystar Publishing and then eventually it went into communication and then into this big university. So again, being missionaries, they encouraged me because they are a missionary couple who left the comfort of the United States. Just as the early missionaries, they left nothing behind in Oregon. They sold everything, came, and founded the communication university in Africa. They’re now old, both of them over 90 years old, but they are on campus in Nairobi, still serving.

Literally everyone in the communication industry in the Eastern Africa region and beyond has passed through Daystar. On television, on radio, in newspapers, you see them. Even some alumni here in the United States did communication, and they’re doing well here. We have other programs. Now we have seven schools, but communication is the flagship program. Daystar was founded on communication, and we are still doing well in communication. Before I became director of research, I was an associate head of department of the School of Communication, the largest in the university.

Can you give an example of how different faiths work together at Daystar?

Yes! My Daystar vice chancellor came to me one day asking me if I knew Pope Francis. I answered: “Yes, of course I know Pope Francis.” He said that he would like to meet him. He was, he said, inspired by his writings and had even implemented them in his home and also in the university. He then said: “Encyclicals are written, are meant for Catholics, but other people are being drawn into it and it’s working. So I’d like to meet the pope and tell him that.” This was in the beginning of 2021. He was inspired by Laudato Si and even had the chance to meet with the pope personally in November 2021.

So it is possible to work together. What is good for you is good for me, if it does not disrespect God and destroy the environment. Because when it comes to oxygen, it doesn’t matter whether you are an atheist or a Christian or a Buddhist. We all want fresh air. We all want a good environment.

A study I want to conduct, and have discussed with my vice chancellor, is how Laudato Si has impacted non-Catholics or how non-Catholics are implementing Laudato Si.

You focus a lot on helping the students to realize, to finish their studies and to publish. Tell me about that. What else do you want to do with your communication genius?

I am very happy when I’m with students. I love teaching, I love research, I love helping students to move to the next level, because I was helped to move to the next level myself.

We had challenges before that time, but when COVID-19 hit in 2020, students struggled to write their theses, their dissertations. It was easier to help students when I was in the classroom. But when you’re supposed to supervise students, you’d see them struggling with the statement of the problem. This was even more true after COVID-19 when we were not in the classroom. Students come from different disciplines and they’re struggling with their research concept, with methodology. This is true for students who have already passed through the research classes and have done well.

But it was difficult to help each one one-on-one, and many were not pulling through. With COVID-19, the students were forcefully removed from their supervisors. They were on their own, and so were the professors. I started an online remedial for my supervisees. I said, “We can’t meet physically, but let’s meet occasionally online, on Zoom, and talk about your thesis and dissertation so that we move the thing forward.” We were offline for over a year. I noticed then that there were more than my supervisees coming to our meetings. They responded that they also needed help. I talked to my vice chancellor (he’s a professor of research methods), and we started the online remedials—13 sessions. Every session we would record the numbers who signed up, as we wanted to see who was coming. We would hit 1,000—graduate students, faculty, supervisors, people in industry. Thus, it was clear that there is a research gap. I tried alone, but it was too much. I’m a member of the International Communication Association, and I wrote to the executive director saying: “We need help.” People volunteered from Australia, from the United States, from Europe, offering some time on a volunteer basis. After the pandemic, everybody went back to their work and got busy.

But I realized that the students still had a problem. I have about 20 and proposed that we would meet every Saturday, beginning, say, with the first chapter, the statement of the problem: How do you identify a research problem? How do you narrow it down? What are your research limitations? The justification of the study? Thus, I started again. There are currently students meeting on WhatsApp. I realized that the students, although they have gone through the research courses and are now writing their thesis, cannot make the ends meet. There’s a research deficiency in the continent, let me put it that way. Some of the people who are coming for the remedials are even government employees, policymakers, official researchers of certain ministries, professors. One professor said, “May I come to learn from you?”

We can also support sisters. There were sisters who have completed their studies and are writing their theses, but not making progress. A message from one of them startled me. She had done her proposal defense and failed. But in real life, she had scored an A in research. You see the contradiction. I reached out to encourage her as I was encouraging other students, telling her, “Resubmitting is part of the academic journey. We never give up. I’ve been disappointed for a few hours, not days. Then I wake up, and walk ahead.” She answered: “Thanks, sister. The tears of disappointment have to run down but I will rise up. I think I really need a thorough walk through research methodology. I do not understand how I could get an A in theory but not match that in practice.”

The numbers of students threaten to break my back: students who have an A on their transcript in research but they cannot put together the pieces of their dissertation. So this is my dissertation remedial, my mentees—who now number 297—in a class that I run every Saturday from 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. Nairobi time. They have supervisors who can’t help them, because the supervisors themselves need help. So this is what I do for leisure!

A long pathway forward. It’s not something to finish overnight.

These are gaps that few see. Now, social media and short attention spans for so many are accentuating the problems.

What do you see as the major communication challenges for the sisters? Is it telling the story, being known?

Telling their own stories is a big problem. I tell the stories of everybody except my own story. I’m a production director, a script writer, and a producer. So I stand behind the camera. When the camera is on me, I’m like, “Oh, what am I supposed to be doing now?” 

I feel comfortable telling people’s stories. That is the story of almost every sister. We like to give, to do for others, but not for ourselves.

These are important stories about the lives of women.

Women, yes. Too often the assumption is that women are there to be seen, but not to be heard. So there is a need to tell our stories. We started telling the stories of sister communicators. These are sisters who are savvy on social media, tech, story writing, all that. You realize that we do a lot of stories about people out there, except our own. Even the communicators are finding it difficult to talk about themselves. You’re like, “I’m supposed to talk about myself?” We are used to talking about others. Once we are done with the project about the sisters in the communication field, we will be writing stories on sisters in other fields. And you can see that on our website. It’s good to talk about others.

As we talk about empowerment of women, we are constantly back and forth between the specific, distinctive roles of sisters who are seen as an untapped resource and then the general problems of women within the society. Your story starts with that, that your father had no boys and that shaped your life in some ways. So the sisters can be champions of women, but also finding their own role.

You mentioned ecumenism earlier. What is your understanding of ecumenism, or interreligious relationships?

When we talk about ecumenism, it’s not always about sitting and having dialogue. It’s also to emphasize that humanism is possible. Different faiths can live together in peace and serve God. Interreligious is my relationship with other faiths: any other faith that is not my own. 

My being and succeeding in Daystar is a testimony to interfaith possibilities. Daystar is not Catholic, but I have found my footing there. They have also benefited from me as I have benefited from them. It’s possible we can coexist. We can coexist pursuing the same ultimate goal.

How do you see the ethnic and religious links? There are dilemmas as to the cross-paths between the ethnic and the religious: obviously not the same, but often linked.

They are two sides of the same coin. It is not always possible to remove someone completely from who they are. No one is born a Christian from their mother. You are socialized into that. You are born in a certain culture, but you are also socialized into that particular culture. When we had the post-election violence in 2007 and 2008, I was in Rome. There, I discussed the home issues with our ambassador. There, we seemed to be united. But when we returned home, when the plane touched down, you started to realize the different groupings. We also saw that in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Rwanda has always been more than 90% Christian and Catholic for that matter. But you can never know what is in somebody’s heart. The ethnic conflict could be there and could arise based on the way someone understands who they are. During the post-election violence, there were reports that there was also violence within religious communities. People can feel: “My people are dying in my village, and it’s this other person in the leadership that is causing that.” There was that trend, very much present, I fear.

Looking at history, it’s not uniquely Kenyan. Look at Rwanda, Northern Ireland, and many other places. A human being is a human being, irrespective. So now, you need to come up with survival tactics or how to tolerate in such environments.