Nonviolent Communication Changes Lives in Rural Kenya!

Nonviolent Communication Changes Lives in Rural Kenya
December 15, 2009

I am spending most of a week on an island in Lake Victoria in Kenya, the second largest fresh water lake in the world, I am told. The area is beautiful – green and blue and totally undeveloped. My host is the family of the local NVC organizer, who has co-ordinated my visit and escorted me from Nairobi, 10 bumpy bus hours plus a ferry trip and motorcycle ride. The patriarch of the family was telling me, in what seemed like an open and genuine way, what a happy, satisfied man he is. With his cows, chickens, land and family he has everything he needs. As he was taking milk from the cow this morning, he seemed delighted to let me know that this cow provided sufficient milk for the tea all day. (Note: by American standards this is very little milk. These are the skinniest cows every because of a shortage of grass, due to little rain? I am not sure. I hope to figure out how to get photos up once I have faster internet access.)

I am writing this blog entry at the office of a non-profit organization on the island called Badilisha (www.badilisha.org), which means change in Swahili. This organization was founded two years ago with the financial assistance of some NVC trainers from Holland and Germany. Its goal is to support harmonious, low-impact living in the area and it has projects such as sharing information about permaculture, woman's empowerment, a scholarship fund for children (especially orphans), a support group for the caregivers of orphans, a woman's empowerment group (including microcredit groups) and NVC trainings and practice groups. Evans, the head of the permaculture project told me his work includes trainings in seed bed preparation, crop rotation, water preservation and renewable energy (the facility runs exclusively on solar polar and has some income from charging people's cell phones.)

I asked Evans whether there was a relationship between the commitment to permaculture and the one to NVC. He said that since the goal of the organization is to support ecologically sensitive, low impact lifestyle this usually involves collective and/or co-operative living and NVC is a vital link in making this type of living more comfortable for everyone.

I am here to support the NVC groups and am intrigued that they have about 100 people in these groups, which meet weekly. I know that in the USA it is not easy to build such a large community so quickly, despite the availability of many more resources and I am very curious about the success of this venture here. My trainings begin tomorrow, but today I am delighted to have had a conversation today with the organizer of one of the NVC practice groups, an older woman named Ruth.

Ruth told me in general terms that she valued the NVC practice group because it helped her to understand more about people. I was curious just how this has played out in her life and asked her to be more specific, to give me an example of how NVC had helped her. She told me that her husband has had a habit of drinking a lot of alcohol and then coming home in the evening and being very difficult including beating her if he was unhappy with something she did or did not do. (I have heard this particular story a lot in East Africa.) She said that after studying NVC she sat down with him one day when he had not been drinking and served the both of them tea saying she had something she wanted to say to him. She said she wanted to have a loving relationship with him. “Don't you think I love you?”, he asked. “When you argue with me and talk to me unpleasantly and beat me after you have been drinking this doesn't feel loving.” she said. Shortly after this conversation he came back and accused of talking about him and his drinking to people at the church. She said that she hadn't talked about him at the church, but that she was taking this NVC class and learning about people and how to understand them and communicate better. She invited him to attend the NVC class which he did. She said from that point on he stopped drinking, stopped beating her and that they have a really good relationship.

I was really stunned so hear such a moving story of hope and change. Shortly thereafter I spoke Evans again and asked him if he was in an NVC practice group. He said that he was but that because of travel he doesn't attend as consistently as others. I asked him about the impact of NVC on his life. He said that before NVC he really wasn't enjoying coming home to his wife very much and would often avoid doing so. He would ask her to do things for him in the morning and when he came home and they were not all done he would be upset and they would argue a lot. After studying NVC he said that he learned to express the needs behind is requests for her support and to listen to her and understand why she didn't do what he had asked. He came to understand just how much she was doing and why she was unable to get everything done. He said that now he doesn't really ask her to do many things much for him; he takes care of many of his needs himself. And there is much more harmony at home and he enjoys being there.

These stories were so moving and powerful to me. I feel really motivated to support this community as much as possible this week. And I wonder if there is something about African society which makes it more receptive to NVC than American society. Clearly, African society is more collective than individualistic American society, but I am not exactly sure why this would make a big difference in terms of NVC receptivity. In any event, these stories certainly lay to waste any concerns I have had about NVC being “too Western” or “too individualistic” to be of use to African people.