Monika Lawrence's Portfolio
Africa, Kenya, Rural

Originating in Mexico, sisal’s razor-sharp blades once played an important role in the textiles industry, easily grown in arid landscapes worldwide. With the development of synthetic fibers, sisal became a largely forgotten crop, but today it’s gaining global economic importance again as a biofuel source and an alternative to glass fibers in composite materials used in the car, construction and furniture industries. Yet the social and cultural impacts of this supposedly environment-friendly resource on local people are even more dramatic. Easy talk about sustainability in the West overlooks exploitation of individuals, families, and whole villages elsewhere in the world

Africa, Kenya, Rural

For more than a century, the Dwa Estate has harvested sisal in Kibwezi Division, Kenya, but the 25,000 acres of the Estate once were also the village homes of thousands of local people who were displaced. Violent confrontations with the Estate’s askari (guards) take place in the context of deep poverty that forces more than half of the residents work at least part-time for Dwa in order to supplement their meager income. While Kenya’s new constitution of 2010 has emboldened some villagers to confront decades of harassment, Dwa has recently announced plans to repurpose sisal not as a fiber crops but as a biofuel source, which could make the land it occupies suddenly much more valuable. What the future holds for those living along the boundary of the Estate remains unclear.

Africa, Kenya, Rural

Though dependent on his cane now, Kasuni Mung’atu still walks defiantly tall along the highland edge of his small farm hemmed in on all sides by the Dwa Estate’s razor-sharp sisal. A lifetime of caring for his family has been marked by years of legal battles with Dwa’s askari (guards), so Mr. Mutungula’s dossier of court cases, police reports, and injury records now accompany him as frequently as his walking stick.

Africa, Kenya, Rural

Dwa has used a wide range of tactics to intimidate the villagers.Regina Musyoka remembers when askari sprayed herbicides on her crops and cut down neighbors’ fruit trees, while villagers walking the boundary path have been beaten.Regina lost three quarters of her farm when Dwa moved one of its sentry gates inside her land from its original location three miles away.Later, they redirected the Kibwezi River away from her farm also.

Africa, Kenya, Rural

Here, destroyed sisal plants are a visible sign of the tensions between local people and the Dwa Estate. To really appreciate the issue, it’s worth pointing out that even after the sisal are uprooted, the kivuthi cinders have to be cleared to a depth of at least two feet just to get perhaps a quarter of an inch of useful soil for planting crops.

Africa, Kenya, Rural

Muteto Mbali is the chairman of a vigorously active local community group, Ngukivukya. Some neighbors disapprove of Ngukivukya’s aggressive attitude, insisting Muteto isn’t really representative of local interests because he’s been living here only since 1975.For his part, Muteto considers it his home because his father’s family settled the area in the early 1900s before being driven out by British colonial farmers. When the Kenyan constitution seemed to give them a chance to finally correct such past injustices, Muteto and a dozen others pushed deep into the estate in 2011 by growing crops and letting their livestock graze there. Dwa bulldozed everything and killed 23 of Muteto’s goats, leaving their heads left in the scarred fields while the meat was illegally sold by the askari. Mbali never got compensation for the goats, just for one cow. Yet it was his victory in court that resulted in the 2012 order that has since halted the conflict, and Muteto remains fiercely confident about his future on his reclaimed stretch of land, even as he keeps a watchful eye on Dwa’s freshly-planted sisal rows across the road

Africa, Kenya, Rural

Livestock found grazing inside the sisal rows have been “arrested” and slaughtered, but Kenya’s new constitution of 2010 emboldened some villagers to confront decades of harassment, clearing sisal to reestablish pasture.

Africa, Kenya, Rural

William Mboya remains undaunted by the Estate’s tactics.He remembers when his father’s farm was torched by Dwa askari, but now he’s raising his family on the same land, reclaimed in 2012 when he and a handful of others dared push deep into a part of the Estate Dwa no longer actively uses.

Africa, Kenya, Rural

Dwa bulldozed nearly all the reclaimed acreage, but a court order stopped all further activity on both sides of the struggle. While many were forced to retreat to the smaller farms they struggled with before the conflict, Mboya held on to his reclaimed land, improvising a watchtower in the middle of his cornfield to maintain 24-hour surveillance on Dwa’s askari. As seen in the background, the Estate has since replanted the bulldozed area with fresh sisal.

Africa, Kenya, Rural

The difficult relationships villagers have with the Estate complicate relationships with one another. Mr. Nzungula also tried to reclaim land in 2012, but was unsuccessful. Nicknamed Mr. Koka (“Mr. Lonely”), most days he wears an askari uniform, guarding the only major water source (claimed by the Estate) against unpermitted use by the villagers in “Baghdad”. Mr. Koka’s children attend the Estate’s school but are regularly threatened with expulsion if their father continues to support efforts such as Mboya’s.

Africa, Kenya, Rural

For local people with long histories of survival in a dry region, water is not just a material necessity but an especially spiritual resource. The giant bamboo and thick reeds of the Ithembo ya Kilui are home to ancestors and animal spirits with whom people maintain important relationships with their land. But when the government asked Dwa to reinforce the old Kivungoni Dam to provide a reliable water supply, the Estate did so by surrounding the public dam with its own private wall, charging people for access. Nearly sixty years later, little has changed.

Africa, Kenya, Rural

At home, Mr. Koka maintains local traditions of hunting large game like elephant with handmade bows and poison-tipped arrows, even as his cell phone lies nearby in case someone calls. A gentle man with a soft voice and a generous outlook, after the conflicts in 2011, he nonetheless started building a boundary fence around his tiny homestead, hoping like so many to make clear his intention to hold onto what little he has.

Africa, Kenya, Rural

At Mr. Koka|s home.

Africa, Kenya, Rural

Kameta Agreyi, father of three married children, here with one of his grandchildren. By necessity he sells his labor to DWA, while at home he tries to remain a member of the community. While he trusts court rulings about land conflicts more than politicians who for years have ignored Dwa’s abusive treatment of local people, he opposes activists’ pushing into the Estate. “What should I do with the extra land?” he asks bitterly, “There is no water!” Like everyone else, Kameta dreams of getting a title deed to the land he has, but the 2012 court order that halted the worst of the conflict locally also indefinitely stalled the processing of deed applications.

Africa, Kenya, Rural

Life on the edge of the Estate is hard, sometimes even dangerous. Barely 10% of Kibwezi’s population has land deeds, 65% faces chronic hunger, and the HIV/AIDS rate is twice the national average. These children live in an area nicknamed “Baghdad” because of frequent conflicts with the Estate’s askari, even though more than half of the residents work at least part-time for Dwa in order to supplement their meager income.

Africa, Kenya, Rural

Memories run deep in the rocky badlands near the Estate. Masingu Wambua remembers shrines, homesteads, and cemeteries people were driven away from when sisal was planted in a landscape once crisscrossed by streams and frequented by elephants, buffalo and leopards. Today, sisal occupies less than a third of the land Dwa occupies, but the villagers are still refused access to their former homes and fields.

Africa, Kenya, Rural

What the future holds for the children living along the boundary of the Estate remains unclear.Dwa has recently announced plans to repurpose sisal not as a fiber crop but as a biofuel source, which could make the land it occupies suddenly much more valuable.At the same time, the Kenyan government has signed a deal with China to have a high-speed railway built right through the Estate, requiring the clearance of considerable acreage and therefore the replanting of sisal closer to the villagers

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