Is Curiosity Enough to Care?

As I settle into the long days of summer, I find myself reflecting quite a bit on the past…perhaps in an effort to prepare for the future.

Below I’m sharing a vignette that has been making me think. This was the opening vignette to my Master’s thesis in Oxford where I studied the negotiation of moral values in a Kenyan children’s home for girls that was funded and run by Mary, an American woman who hired local Kenyan women to mother and oversee the home.

That time in Kenya was very challenging for me both personally and as a researcher because I found many aspects of the Americans’ attitudes, behaviours, and running of the home to be, most generously out-of-step or most harshly neo-colonial, in their relationships with Kenyans.

Have a read…

Supper was finished, and dishes were cleaned.  A group of approximately twelve Kenyan Standard 7 and 8 primary school girls remained in the dining hall with Mum Mary[1], the White American director.  Mary is distraught, exhausted, and at times her voice quivers as she holds back tears.  She is utterly disappointed in their behaviour, their grades, and pleads with them to be more respectful and harder working girls.  The girls all have their heads down; they are slumped in their chairs and only look up if asked.  When heads rise, they look annoyed, embarrassed, or stare off into the distance.

Mum Mary begs for an answer as to why they are not more grateful, more respectful of their mums and their home.  She shares the younger girls’ traumas and demands why they can’t be better examples for girls who have been mutilated with razors, molested by uncles, left behind by deceased parents, traumatised so deeply that they didn’t speak or smile when they arrived at Mary’s Hand.  Mary uses the Biblical story of the prodigal son as a metaphor for the girls’ potential renewal and return to their forgiving mothers at the home.  The story was a paradoxical choice as it was followed by anecdotes of girls who became pregnant and were forced to leave; there was no forgiveness for those who made ‘the biggest mistake’. 

Mary asks if she should continue ‘begging for money’ in America to keep the home going.  No girl utters a word.  Devastation is an inept word to describe Mary.  She had such optimism, energy, and determination in the early years.  Today she is at a loss to understand why the girls do not show more gratitude, respect or care to her, the woman who has fought to give them an education and a new life.

I wrote this vignette after my fieldwork was finished and I was back in Oxford. I wanted to have both an open and empathetic look at the founder while being clear-eyed about the kind of manipulative threats she would shout at vulnerable children. By my pen, Mary could easily be painted as either dichotomy…either the good, virtuous woman who has given her heart, her life, and her money to this home…or the neo-colonial racist who disrespects and questions the capacity of Kenyans, appears to dislike living in Kenya, and makes you wonder if she is racist or just intolerant of anything other than her way.

As time has passed and my experiences (and hopefully wisdom) have grown, I am more bothered by this piece of writing because it is incomplete. The dissertation attempted, however successfully or not, to demonstrate nuance. Could this piece of research see Mary as the founder with honourable intentions who may be deeply flawed but still human? Could this piece of research identity real problematic aspects of the children’s home while still acknowledging that there was plenty of reason to try to improve it rather than burn it to the ground? I don’t know. 

But reading the vignette in isolation, it’s incomplete. What isn’t included are my observations, reflections, and frustrations at how much she needed constant words and actions of gratitude from the children, how much she needed to be praised by Kenyans, how much she needed to be revered as some sort of higher, Mother Teresa type-angel who came to save them.

It is not enough to have a good intention. The founder had good intentions. But anyone with a decent level of education (like Mary) needs more than intention. They need curiosity and humility. 

It boggles my mind when people are not curious enough to even briefly consider a different person’s experience. How can a person so physically or emotionally close to another human being not be curious enough to imagine what might make their life different, harder, less just? Did Mary ever consider how walking through life might be different for a vulnerable Kenyan girl than from the way she was raised in a different country, different culture, different era? Only she knows how deeply she had ever engaged in this curiosity.

Whether we are white, Western people engaged in working and living in Sub-Saharan Africa, or just any person going about our daily lives, how much thought do we put into choosing our words, behaviours, careers, hobbies?

Do we make choices based on who we want to be or how we want to be perceived?

I think for Mary, she wanted a bit of both. She wanted to live a life that reflected her faith – she wanted to feed the poor, give to the needy, clothe the naked. But she also wanted to be treated like and perceived as a savior. She couldn’t shake the White Savior narrative from her aspirations. Perhaps she couldn’t shake wanting to be the White Savior because implicit in being the White Savior is an assumption that the White Savior knows more, is better educated, is more intelligent. This is the fault; this assumption of superiority is the cause of a lack of curiosity to learn about and from the people around you. Mary was caught up more in how she wanted to be perceived than how she truly behaved towards other people.

And it is difficult to not judge her or others. It’s actually quite easy to judge, especially in East Africa, the many misguided, poorly executed, and fundamentally unhelpful organizations that began with such good intentions.

I don’t know if I’ll regret writing this, but it I believe my higher self knows that I must have empathy and curiosity for those Westerners who are working on what I perceive as misguided missions. That is harder to swallow than simple judgement.

In my own work, I struggle between recognizing the knowledge that I have acquired and created through my studies with a fundamental truth that there is so much more to learn. But the truth is also that I hold professional expertise that allows me to make professional assessments or professional judgements. Perhaps I need to ask myself if I can different professional judgements from moral judgements.

So when it comes to moral judgements…

How much curiosity do you have to truly wonder about the experiences of others? Does your curiosity breed empathy? Does practicing curiosity break down barriers or build walls between you and others?  

Does your curiosity make you a better person or does it make others perceive you as a better person?

Hopefully it actually makes you better.

If I want to be a curious person full of empathy, then I must ask these questions of myself and not just ask them of Mary…or of any other person I’ve judged. That’s what I’m going to focus on this month – asking these questions of myself and I invite you to ask them with me.

Writing Note:

I’m going to take this month of June off from posting as I’ll be on a highly anticipated family trip and I want to be in the moment every moment. I’ll be back in July posting each week.

[1] The names and identifying characteristics of all participants have been changed to protect their privacy.