Anthropology News • March 2008

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The increasing Separation of Children from local Society in nyanza Province, Kenya

elizabetH coopeR u oxfoRD

There is much being done in the name of an ‘orphan crisis’ in sub-Saharan Africa. As in most cases of situations framed as crises, there seems too little careful contem-plation and investigation of the society-wide and long-term impli-cations of contemporary responses. One area where research lags far behind practice is in examining institutional responses to chil-dren’s care.

This Field Notes piece is based on ongoing dissertation research in Nyanza Province, western Kenya, focusing on the consequences of orphaning for children and families in this region and specifically how children’s and families’ responses to orphaning interact with institutional responses. The project was developed as a result of my dissatisfaction with the lack of inductive, long-term, child-focused research about orphaned children’s well-being, despite a recognizable degree of international policy consensus and a proliferation of institutional responses. Centered around the ethnographic study of the lives of children currently housed in two children’s homes in the city of Kisumu, my research also involves sustained interaction and interviews with children’s extended family members living outside of Kisumu, local child welfare officials, other children’s homes’ directors and staff and additional key informants, including individuals who used to live in various children’s homes in the area.

Children’s Homes of KisumuHigh rates of poverty and adults’ deaths due to HIV/AIDS in Nyanza

Province have resulted in large and increasing numbers of children lacking provision of adequate physical security, sustenance and access to education. Recognition of this situation has spurred the establishment of dozens of institutions to house, feed and school children by Kenyans and foreigners. In Kisumu city (population 300,000) alone there are over 60 nongovernmental organizations dedicated to the care and protection of children listed with the national government’s Children’s Department. Research among six children’s homes in

Kisumu, housing approximately 500 children in total (smallest home with 35 and largest home with 180 children), has yielded the following reflections.

Strikingly evident is the strong influence individual children’s home directors have over the kind of care provided to children. “Just like parents, everyone raises their children differently,” shrugs an American missionary who has, with her husband, run their own home (in fact, ‘homes,’ as there have been several starts and stops in their institutional history) for the “rehabilitation of streetboys” in Kisumu. A 30-year-old American woman who is the self-described “mother” (and applying for sole legal guardianship) to 34 children at her privately funded orphanage attests that her activities reflect her “personal walk with God.” In fact, each director narrates idiosyncratic beginnings of their children’s homes and describes how the organization of their homes reflects their individual values and life experiences. Longer-term resident children chronicle changing patterns of care in the same home as a result of different directors’ priorities and personalities.

The contrast between foreigner-founded and -directed children’s homes and those founded and directed by Kenyans in my sample is pronounced. The children living in the three case study homes run by local Kenyans live much more similarly to local children not in institutional care. In addition to using Dholou and Kiswahili in most communication at the home, serving the most common local foods and assigning children domestic tasks commonly done by local children of particular ages and genders (eg, child minding, water fetching, digging gardens),

the Kenyan-run institutions send resident children outside the home to attend school and church. The three foreigner-run homes have their own schools and churches located within their living compounds. Only one of the three case study homes directed by foreigners provides opportunities for the children to visit their families during school holidays, whereas all of the Kenyan-run homes build children’s visits to their families and home communities into their schedules. While many children’s family situations are often difficult due to poverty, the vast majority of children who occasionally visit their extended families attest that they appreciate and enjoy these opportunities. Evidence of respect for, and deliberate efforts to practice, local social and cultural norms among foreigner-run children’s homes is hard to come by.

One noted trend among foreigner-run homes in the Kisumu area is the goal of purchasing tracts of rural land for the establishment of more separate environments for children’s care and development. The two main reasons given by directors for relocating children’s homes from Kisumu to rural plots

are cost-cutting and increasing the separation of children from “outside” influences. The latter reason is emphasized by two US directors currently relocating their children’s homes from Kisumu to rural areas who have specific visions of the ideal type of children they hope to develop. In both cases, these directors contrast their ideal children with values and practices common among local communities. One director describes the “wickedness” prevalent in the children’s communities of origin and her intention to protect children from such influences.

What Do These Circumstances Mean for Children? A central question of children living in these group homes, their extended families, Children’s Department officials, as well as directors and staff of these homes concerns the sustainability of these interventions in children’s lives. The increasing isolation of children living in these homes

provokes much debate and anxiety about how they will eventually “re-integrate” into their societies if, or when, they are “let go” from institutional care settings. That the focus is on perceived challenges to “re-integration” reflects how separated these group homes currently are from surrounding communities and everyday realities.

Socialization is a concept that seems to have fallen out of currency among anthropologists. However, it is commonly invoked by child welfare officers in Nyanza Province. They argue that many children in group homes are being raised in culturally inappropriate ways and that they are not learning important social norms, values and practices. Beyond concern that children in foreign-run orphanages will be accustomed to standards of living that are not experienced by the majority of local people (eg, food, water and education access), local adults worry about how poorly equipped these institutionalized children are for taking on common age- and gender-assigned responsibilities. There is concern that those children who have not

Children’s Homes to Children’s Villages

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been able to maintain regular relationships with extended family members will not have the family connections and support they might need to be accepted by others, including prospective marriage partners.

Children express a similar concern from a different perspec-tive: They can easily contrast their lifestyles, competencies and goals with those prevalent outside of orphanages, and they are reluc-tant to lose these once they leave the institutions. They compare themselves favorably with peers who were raised in family settings that do not provide the same set of opportunities. However, these children worry that as soon as the support of the institutions is withdrawn their life chances will once again be compromised. As such, many children resent and protest children’s homes’ prac-tices of “releasing” children upon

reaching a certain age or qualifi-cation (eg, primary or secondary school completion). These protes-tations against leaving the home seem more desperate than those of other children leaving the security of their families’ homes given the rather pointed demar-cation made by directors between who is the responsibility of the institution and who is not. Some children have argued for their rights to “lifetime” support by the homes that raise them.

Research ReflectionsAlthough children’s home direc-tors conceptualize their inter-ventions as crisis responses, their operations indicate long-term implications for children, families, communities and even wider societies. Long-term ethno-graphic research on the implica-tions of these interventions for children and communities may

help to improve understanding of the consequences of the current options and alternatives. In partic-ular, the methodological and theo-retical advances gained by those engaged with the anthropology of childhood and the anthropology of development indicate that the discipline has much to recom-mend to this critical task.

PostscriptInterestingly related to the above notes is the response of various institutions to the insecurity in Kisumu following Kenya’s national elections, held on December 27, 2007. Two of the foreigner-run children’s homes, one of which has been in existence for over fourteen years and the other for four years, closed in February 2008 due to security concerns. These homes distributed resident children among their extended families, local foster families and

boarding schools. All of the foreigners associated with the three case study homes left Kenya during this period. The three homes run by Kenyans have remained open and one has taken in additional abandoned children during the post-election turmoil.

Elizabeth Cooper can be contacted at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford (elizabeth.cooper@sant.ox.ac.uk). During the period of insecurity in Kisumu and Nyanza Province following Kenya’s national elections, Elizabeth relocated to a nearby region of Tanzania. The profiled research in and around Kisumu is planned to resume and continue through 2009. Elizabeth’s previous work addresses out-of-school youth in Kenya’s Dadaab Refugee Camps and intergenerational transmission of poverty in Africa.

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