{"id":41315,"date":"2025-03-20T18:54:23","date_gmt":"2025-03-21T01:54:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=41315"},"modified":"2025-03-20T18:54:23","modified_gmt":"2025-03-21T01:54:23","slug":"oh-i-didnt-know-that","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/oh-i-didnt-know-that\/","title":{"rendered":"Oh, I didn\u2019t know that!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some Kenyan history<\/strong><\/p>\n

Following Kenya\u2019s independence in 1963, a section of political leaders took over government after years of fighting for freedom. They were now charged with the difficult job of uniting and healing the country, keeping the nation safe and growing the economy. For a young nation, this was an arduous task. So, the initial cabinet met and passed legislation to focus economic growth in key sectors such as Agriculture, \u201chigh production\u201d areas of the country and zones with potential value in cash crops. This could be why Kenyan tea and coffee (both cash crops) are arguably some of the finest in the world!<\/p>\n

What this legislative decision meant for the country is that some geographical regions developed and grew faster than others. These \u201chigh production\u201d areas registered healthy economic progress and decent access to basic services such roads, schools, hospitals and so on. On the other hand, regions in the north of Kenya which are largely dry-land pastoralist areas suffered from lack of economic growth and continuously ranked as some of the poorest regions of the country. Even today, the areas are prone to tribal conflict and usually face the brunt of climatic shocks such as recurrent droughts, which are severe in nature. When the shocks hit, pastoralists often lose a lot of animals due to lack of pasture and water for their livestock. Furthermore, shocks such as drought, often claw back on any developmental gains that have been made by various actors and plunge more and more households into the cycle of poverty. When we see these stories in the news, most Kenyan\u2019s living in other parts of the country form their own cognitive biases about the northern areas. Some say it\u2019s unsafe, too far, not progressing from a development standpoint, hard-to-live in and so on. I must admit that I also had biases until I made my inaugural visit in 2012.<\/p>\n

Not quite the problem and not the solution<\/strong><\/p>\n

My first visit to a place called Marsabit, in northeastern Kenya, occurred in the middle of a terrible drought that had left many households trapped in a cycle of poverty. Even worse, acute malnutrition among children under five years of age, and pregnant and lactating women was critically high. After a few days of observing the situation and listening to a few people, my System 1<\/em>, humanitarian and development thinking, as described by Kahneman, had already kicked in.[1]<\/a> I thought to myself, instead of dependency on livestock (only), we can teach them to use the available water to irrigate crops and get a majority to turn to crop farming! Well, it turned out that this had been tried and failed more than once and I was wrongly thinking about the solutions to the problem. Duffy indicates that \u201cwe have a remarkable ability to ignore facts that don\u2019t fit in our worldview.\u201d [2]<\/a> He also adds that \u201cwe are more certain about how the world is than we should be.\u201d \u00a0What I and other actors needed to do is unlock Kahneman\u2019s System 2<\/em> thinking [3]<\/a>and critically consider the way of life of pastoralists as a pathway to solving this complex or \u201cwicked\u201d problem as is referred to by systems thinkers. This journey took decades, and we had to go through a process of unlearning and the humility to learn a new way of looking at the people and the problem.<\/p>\n

Unlearning and relearning<\/strong><\/p>\n

Over the years, I have had so many \u201coh, I didn\u2019t know that!\u201d moments of pastoralists and pastoralist communities that have altered my paradigm and made me an admirers and advocate for their way of life. A few of these are: –<\/p>\n