Philo Ikonya, Freelance Journalist | Kenya

Aubrey Huff: What led you to your career?

PI: By my career, I presume you mean my freelance journalism but I have been in teaching, lecturing, research and publishing. But it is true that two things lead me. The first is love for the written and spoken word, languages and our being, the unique human ability to communicate in many ways at different levels whose significance overwhelms me. And the second and woven into the first, is my deep interest in social issues. I am a human and political rights activist.

I am a self-made journalist, and proudly so, as many writers have found themselves in the world of journalism at one time or the other. I will refer here to our own famous author Ngugi wa Thiong'o, his latest novel is The Wizard of the Crow, who once also worked for the Kenyan paper that published my contributions.

I love many books but Charles Dickens (19th Century England) made me dream of having a novel published before I was 25 years old. Well, I did not have a novel published but I got into newspapers. Now, I have three novellas and am looking for a publisher! In between, I have had many poems published. The Dickensian take and treatment on problems of the working class struck a deep chord in me. His perception of the socio-political issues of his day still amazes me. I am now a writer of both prose and poetry and I write news features. I also reported news for some time.

AH: What types of media do you use in your work?

PI: Today, I use online media, blogs and books more than newspapers. I publish my poems and analytical commentaries, my work as an activist and leave the news to others.

AH: How has online journalism played a role in your career?

PI: Online journalism has set me free as citizen and writer to a large extent. The girls, if I may put it this way, no longer must wait for the boss ... the man, usually in many parts of the world ... to get their word out there! If as a freelance journalist I was confined to the story that I could sell to this or that newspaper then, now I can apart from selling or writing a story for a publication that pays also publish my own kind of stories and say exactly what I want to say!

However, such wonderful space as the Internet has provided has also basically thrown into disarray following out of popularity ... You can put in measures to know who visits your blog but this does not always give you a complete picture of how people were influenced by your writings or the impact you are having, in other words, your traditional circulation lines are blurred and unless you are very savvy and include other voices in your reporting, it may all end up being about you plus, in all the traditional blogs I have visited, no matter how exciting, O or zero comment is very famous!

AH: Have you experienced any gender bias(es) in your career?

PI: In the answer above, I say the girls ... because in many parts of the world and not Africa only, gender biases are typical. In old form print journalism, some male journalists used to laugh at women feature writers. I could name them here but I won't, because they said women wrote the soft stories and they, the men, reported hard news. Ha! Ha! Ha! An outright lie and a lower than average capacity to understand the world ... ask Charles Dickens who was also a journalist! I have experienced and seen women experience all sorts of gender bias ... affecting them negatively and then lived to hear the men complain when women are given an equal chance and for a while some form of affirmative action! Until today, you can have a look at leading papers and media houses and count women managers ... almost always none! I worked with women subeditors as they called me who never made their way to the top but always left after some time mostly out of frustration because they wanted to be at the top and could not be!

AH: How have international experiences impacted your career?

PI: International experiences in networking especially with women have been vital to me. I remember it was first in the International Media Women Foundation and the conferences organised then that I got to meet other journalists and hear others addressing common problems from the whole world. This also meant that one's name went out there and sooner than later some stories were solicited. I had no idea where these meetings were in history then, and now looking back, they belong to the pioneering groups almost at least in Kenya! Don't forget the papers I wrote for in Kenya were international, but of course publishing abroad in Europe and in America catapulted a career. So, international experiences remind me of a Kiswahili ( also other languages) proverb that says that one who never eats out thinks only their mother (sorry, fathers are still learning to in most parts of the world) cooks best!

Right now, I am a writer in exile, Oslo's guest writer (in Norway), embraced by ICORN or the International Cities of Refuge Network. What would we do without international space? Sometimes a while from home is the only way to keep one going and sane.

AH: What do you think are differences in journalism between Kenya and the United States?

PI: Oh! This is a huge question which can be answered in a doctoral thesis! Just a few remarks. I think that I do not have a full view of U.S. journalism to comment but on the whole I know in the developing world laws that do not favour free expression are still an issue so that we can be said to sometimes be still negotiating the basics. That American publications of course are more and there is a huge variety of national and provincial traditional print papers and this is why the Internet is also exciting as it penetrates right through to the villages.

The USA of course seems to have much more resources and money to spend on leisure and sex life articles and pages full of fashion and celebrity lives. Our media cannot justify a stay away from issues such as HIV Aids and other development matters although sometimes, it also puts them in the back burner!

On the whole, media anywhere are very similar and then dissimilar. Everyone has covered the Vatican issues of sex scandals and other news in recent times ... yes, also in our community and local radios and publications. Some people think we are in a world of our own maybe herding giraffe and that there is only calamity in Kenya or Africa. What the government and the president does or does not do dominates the headlines everywhere and right now, a paper that has not reported the crash of the plane carrying the Polish president and his wife and over a hundred others does not deserve to be associated with news ... but you see with the Internet ... in minutes we were on Facebook, Twitter and buzzing messages on this sad event and expressing our pain for Poland like one big family! Touching.

AH: You said in a recent "Kenya is Burning" article, "The deep inequalities in our country would lead to the destruction of this nation." How can we, as women, fight these inequalities, both in Kenya and internationally?

PI: Women from the northern sphere should look to hold the hands of women in the south and together not just hold up the sky but rotate the earth on its axis. The woman in Iceland will find her issues just like those of the women in Poland are very much the issues of the Chilean, Bolivian, Kenyan, Indian or Chinese woman. Power with each other, one another can work and men need not fear.

Women, I think, have not or should I say have been kept from impacting in many ways on our societies. This is the missing balance. Nobody understands women power enough and if they do, they are afraid of what might ensue if women take charge. A few cases may prove me wrong but most women would understand and in many instances would practice not just power over but power with others. The world, most cultures makes the easier path choosing not to understand them enough. Not even the wise Chinese understand us whom they say hold more than half the sky! It is just fine to know we hold all the sky. The different churches many of which have impacted in education in the developing world are still puzzled by women's power. And as long as women's voices are not heard and as long as they are not in decision making, I firmly believe things will go awry and I have history on my side.

If the women of the world seize the light everyone will see. If they are educated to the core in all fields and according to their interests in sciences and arts, women, and this is their strength, will not rest until the meeting place of high education is recognizable by the huge impact it makes on the world. The subjects of the world and specialisations are divided in a psyche that favors the male. I think that most men are comfortable with such divisions. A woman, because of her ability not just to multi task, as most people agree, but also to connect, maybe 'multi-connect', if I may use my own word here, is able to see where the threads of peace drop, just like in a knitted jersey, and can more easily work to put society together. Women in power would question such things for instance as why governments put most of our money in military activities.

The world is not altogether a very inspiring place right now for many people. We can as women point to the fact that you cannot have a safe and happy society where all feel they have opportunities if the women are poor and not able to influence including and very importantly in the Fourth Estate, in governments and local level governance.

Women should resist being shadows by questioning policies and expenditures of the world particularly on arms and weapons. It is not enough to speak nicely about or talk to women or to honour them. Action should be taken on why women are not in all places key in local governments and visible in top government organs.

Years back, I think 1999, UN HABITAT published a study to show this makes an impact. We do not need to keep talking and re-inventing the wheel ... but to move those in power to make these things happen and to make masses of women show that they are not happy. What happened after Beijing and Cairo? I have not heard of any other big women's meeting for years!

Women should not agree to have anything seen as being for women and then be told it has no resources. I think of UNIFEM for instance right now. An organ is made for women in many countries and if we are to remember that the UN was set up to keep peace after 1945, then we imagine that it looked at the impact of war in the whole world on women and that it will not come up with a structure which it later says has not got enough funds to actually work for women. This is what my research in Nairobi showed. It is better not to have such institutions than have their names repeated all over the world as if they can make a difference if they cannot.

AH: Your articles show great courage. From where do you draw your strength?

PI: This fascinates me, too! A few specific times in my life I even sensed I am un-stoppable and it is overawing to be conscious of strength and courage. But other times and most often, I do what I find most normal and people see strength and courage. What can I say? I just know all I have to do is to keep going, I have my focus and I would dare say that I always think even when everything is breaking that my path is clear to me. (I can vouch for this as in a rolling car in an accident 25 years ago, I remember this recognition very distinctly ... thank goodness we survived it!) It is a strength that comes to me at all times and sometimes I feel it is a part of me. So it is something I can say I am grateful, for things have never been easy for me. But look, my maternal grandmother was a very independent woman who was very good at her work as is my mother. I have no reason not to be strong and anyway, to live the kind of life I live, you had better be strong! There are lives in which strength is just as important as oxygen and you just do not know how or from where it comes all the time!

AH: I read you were/are protesting the current violence in Kenya by wearing sacks instead of regular clothes. What inspired you to do this? What are you hoping your protest will accomplish?

PI: I am glad you see it as inspiration! At the time I started very few people understood what I meant but I still did it. The inspiration came from finding myself in a difficult place after the elections debacle of 2007 Dec. in Kenya. I had tried since the year 2001 to impact my country politically, and you know, it took Obama the same number of years to be senator and then president of America, and I was seeing a pattern of retrogression both in the people I thought I could move up with to electing a new kind of leadership. I vied in my rural home to become a member of Parliament twice. Once in 2002 and again in 2007. I found unbelievable political propaganda among of all people women in my rural zone. I heard them say things about a presidential candidate not from their tribe that made me feel like retreating to my own work and forgetting about trying to influence. But after this experience, the worst came when I saw the country breaking up, burning and poised towards civil war and indeed on the brink of one. It was impossible to speak normal language and be understood.

I believe in the language of signs as well as in the fact that women's dress can be used very powerfully and has been used all the time by mainly religion and fashion designers to say something. I reclaimed this power of speech in this humble way and it worked. It opened doors for conversation even with armed paramilitary persons near Uhuru Park and the Serena and at a time when the nation seems to have lost all reason and gone mad, this brought some sanity! Two of us pleaded with them to stop using live bullets. This dress made people speak in an atmosphere where fear and confusion threatened to choke us! I continued wearing this sack dress to protest and soon it became quite a loud message of resistance. I felt I accomplished something. Only Ann Njogu who is a Woman of Courage Award recipient of 2010 told me, "Philo, go on.. it makes sense. To be normal in such circumstances is actually to be mad. You are right and don't worry, you are my hero today, tomorrow they will join me in admiration!" I had asked her to dress in the same and also told her my frustration when some people saw me in the city and they rang my family members to say I was embarrassing them in my kind of madness. I knew that many people understood this was not a fashion statement ... but hmm! Some fashion houses began to go for sackcloth!

AH: Was there ever a time when you felt you could not keep fighting for your cause?

PI: Never. Right now, I only have the pen for my work and all the deepest and longest winter in Europe for the last 25 years has not been able to make me stop dreaming of Kenya the same way I felt as I wrote my novella Kenya will you marry me? Which is yet to be published. In fact, when I cannot drive my cause or causes, I feel sick.

AH: Your unwavering honesty and bravery concerning the violence in Kenya are really inspirational. Who inspires you?

PI: You know that we do not have a past filled with misery in Africa. That is a lie for those who say it or think so, and sad. I know our ancestors had completely organised lives and that crime was not condoned. I know about 500 people died in the early 20th century when two Maasai girls were raped because the people led by Arap Samoei at the time got so angry at such a violation. We did not condone theft and so how also do you rationalise the stealing of votes to use as a certificate for leadership and where we are right now?

AH: What advice can you give to women about to enter the journalism profession?

PI: Please do not hesitate. Everything here pays maybe not in money but in a way by virtue of choosing this career is for you very important.

AH: What is the importance of journalism to you?

PI: As long as you can send a message out there and someone gives you feedback, there is life!

Interviewee: Philo Ikonya

Philo Ikonya was born in Kenya. She studied Linguistics and Literature at the University of Nairobi before proceeding to Spain and Italy where she studied Spanish, Education and Philosophy. She worked as a freelance journalist and teacher. Philo is recognized in Kenya for speaking out against injustice and corruption. She was arrested several times for speaking out. Her poems published in various anthologies have been tough reflections on Kenya's governance and inaccessibility of wealth to the majority of the population.

Philo is a good product of her parent's hard work and sacrifice. Her mother was her first language teacher. It is from them that she learnt to defend her freedom of expression as her father shared with her many of his experiences as a detainee during Kenya's liberation from British rule. Philo is guided by creative initiatives for change and many have acknowledged being inspired by her.

Philo last wore the sack to protest the violence in Kenya on 9th September 2009, and she was arrested in it. She was calling for the change in the Police Commissioners office as police brutality grew, the sacking of the Anti Corruption boss who had allowed impunity as well as of the Attorney General who has served Kenya for over 30 years.

Interviewer: Aubrey Huff

Aubrey Huff, 20, is a sophomore at The University of Iowa. Huff is a journalism and mass communications major. Huff has a passion for writing and proofreading. She hopes to one day find herself an editor of some kind. Huff is currently a member of Dance Marathon, an organization that benefits children's oncology patients at the University of Iowa Children's Hospital. Huff's Diversity Dialogue Leader training sessions last semester, where she closely examined culturally formed identities, were where she first became interested in the discussion of women in the workplace. This led her to the Gender and Mass Media course. Having only travelled outside of the United States once to Prince Edward Island, Huff is really excited to gain international perspective. She thinks that by learning about other cultures and how they treat women and the communications field, she will improve her cultural awareness and better understand journalism on an international level.