When Mukami Kowino announced to her father that she had been accepted to study law at the University of Nairobi the announcement was not met with the excitement she expected. Her father did not regard investment in women’s education as particularly useful and told her so. But she was adamant to pursue her dream of working in the field of human rights and so off to school. When she graduated a few years later with her LLB the family celebration that was led by her maternal grandmother was in one for the record books; after all she was the first woman in her family to become a lawyer! Life had not been particularly easy for Mukami – her father had battled schizophrenia all her life. A cruel disease it meant that their small family unit became isolated from normal social life that many take for granted. Dealing with mental illness in Kenya is often a secret that families deal with behind closed doors, often shunned by many that do not understand the challenges that come with supporting a family member who is suffering from their condition. For Mukami it meant that she grew up fast and became adept as a child at taking care of herself.
Perhaps her life history of seeking protection for people in difficulty led her to her choice of law – but not for battles in the courtroom which she used to watch on the famed legal show The Practice, but rather for the often harrowing and more demanding arena of Human Rights. Her first job out of campus was working as an intern for the Children’s Legal Action Network (CLAN). After a few months she was bumped up to a stipend of Ksh 3000 and soon after to a salary of Ksh 5000. Not quite the dream legal career she saw on TV, but her heart was soaring. She was doing work she loved – fighting for the rights of children who had faced sexual, criminal or domestic abuse. The work was heartbreaking but crucial and each day offered new insights to the challenges many children in Kenya face.
From that immersive experience into social justice work Mukami moved onto working with a number of youth focused organisations – setting up programmes with the East Africa Community and enabling youth to get involved in social justice issues. While her work was rewarding, Mukami faced a new challenge. As a young woman an ugly reality reared its head in her workplace – often she would get hit on, receive suggestive remarks, insinuations or blatant sexual harassment at work. Her major frustration was that this was in a service organisation – a reality that she just could not reconcile with. With unequivocal confidence in her inner value system she decided to take the high road and quit. She realised that it was just not a workplace that she could continue to serve in. Looking back she says that each of these instances were integral in moulding her sense of leadership. Her experiences agave her a crucial understanding to what was key to building positive and constructive relationships with people around her, in the workplace and beyond. This journey has led her to Forum Syd, an NGO that works to support young Kenyans who are using innovative and creative ways to become agents of change. One of her favourite quotes is from a Bob Marley song. We must emancipate ourselves from mental slavery for none but ourselves can free our minds – each day she finds new ways to encourage the youth to do exactly that.
As a Kenyan Mukami worries deeply about the increasing tribal negativity in Kenya. She has had insight to different aspects of what it means to be Kenyan with a family made up of different communities across the country yet Mukami firmly believes that the road ahead is still an exciting one – she views her story as one that is still being written, and the great thing? It’s a blank canvas that she gets to create.