ENGL 1100 - Prologue & Ch. 1-4

• Dik-dik: a small antelope
• Sukuma Wiki: collard greens
• Kanga: a retangle of pure cotton with a border and patterns
• Combat Action Ribbon: a marine award received for receiving and returning enemy fire
• Swahili: a common language of East Africa

• Bronze Star: the fourth highest individual military award. Awarded for acts of heroism or merit in a combat zone
• Purple Heart: awarded to members of the US Armed forces who are wounded by an instrument of war in the hands of the enemy
• Anthropology: the science that deals with the origins, physical and cultural development, biological characteristics, and social customs and beliefs of human kind
• Genocide: the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group
• Squalor: the condition of filth and misery
• Tinderbox: a person or thing that is highly excitable, explosive, flammable; a potential source of wide spread violence.

• Jambo: an informal greeting to kids or foreigners
• Sheng: Swahili slang
• Vipi: the greeting for the youth and thugs of Kibera
• Poa: the return for vipi meaning "cool"
• Mzungu: white people
• Gota: a fist bump; the unofficial greeting in Kibera

• Choo: pit latrine (hole used for excrement)
• Kibra: the literal translation is "bush"; this is the place where the Nubians live
• councillor: a mamber of the ruling KANU political party
• Wazungu: foreigners
• Salaam Alaikum: a greeting-"Peace on you"
• Kiroboto: African bedbugs
• Ugalli: : A maize porridge or dough
• Matatu: minibus
• Khat: a drug; a flowering plant that reduces appetite
• Mshamba: farmer

• Mandazi: deep fried bread
• Nyama Choma: roasted meat

• What can you buy for $26?

• How do you define poverty?

• Does poverty alone make people less trustworthy?

• How would you react if you were exposed to bedbugs somewhere you were staying?

• How would you feel if your worth was defined only by your significant other?

• What is your opinion of war?

• Are war and peace opposing forces or is war ultimately just a means of creating peace?

• Why do you think that governments often turn a blind eye to those who live in poverty?

It Happened on the Way to War

Prologue & Chapters 1-4

Prologue:

Chapter 2- Big Gota (Fist Bump)

"Suddenly the two worlds that I had worked so hard to keep in their own compartments were colliding."

Contextual Information

• The people of Kibera thrive off of their own community, looking out for each other.
• Make a living in the markets selling sex, vegetables, haircuts, water, manual labor, etc.
• "Mad Lions", the name of the "mob justice" group.
• Raila Odinga, leader of the NDP
• NDP is the opposition party to the government of President Moi, who lost power after twenty-two years.

• Rye Barcott spends his last month at Chapel Hill researching for his trip to Kibera
• "Cesspool where people swim in their own shit" and "a no-go zone of filth, thuggery, and ignorance."
• Rye arrives in Nairobi, and meets with Elizabeth and Oluoch at Fort Jesus, where they dubbed him as their child, and gives him his African name, Omondi.
• Meets with Dan Ogola, a trusted youth leader and acquaintance of Oluoch.
• Dan takes Rye to the sums, showing him their living conditions, and teaching him the appropriate greetings with the youth and "thugs," as well as Swahili Sheng.
• Travels to the Ministry of Education with Oluoch, and receives his research permit.
• That night, Rye returns to the slums to stay with Baba Chris and Dan, where he learns Baba Chris is dying of malaria.
• This hits Rye hard, learning that the cost for treatment to save Baba Chris, which he cannot afford, is less than the cost of a haircut in the United States.

• Rye Barcott, a marine, recounts how his missions in Kibera started in the Prologue.
• He tells the story of how he met a woman named Tabitha and spent five weeks in Kibera, Kenya which is in Africa during his junior year in college.
• While in Kibera he learns the culture of the people, the language of the youth, and he gets a first hand experience of their hardships as well.
• Rye later starts a non profit organization with Tabitha.

Contextual Information

• Carolina For Kibera is an International non governmental organization. It's headquarters is in the Kibera slum which is located in Nairobi, Kenya.
• Sheng is "a language of the youth that mixed Swahili, mother tongues, and gansta rap lyrics. It had no formal rules, evolved rapidly and was intelligible to elders."

Glossary

Discussion Questions

Chapter 3 - The Present and the Future Leaders

Contextual Information

KIYESA: Kibera Youth and Environmental Sports Association that hold soccer tournaments each year to try and bring peace to the youth.

MYSA: A youth development program with a professional soccer team

The Ethnic clashes of 1995: Two days of blood shed

Nubians in Kibera

Kenya’s Independence: When Kenya was released from British rule

KANU: Kenya African National Union, a political party

• Rye is living in the slums of Gatwekera
• “For many, the community was their only insurance.”
• Rye has to be careful with money in Kibera because it can create a dependency on him
• Rye periodically returns to Fort Jesus and talks with Elizabeth
• Because he needs to meet a Nubian youth, he talks with Taib about the Nubian society
• While talking to Taib he meets and befriends Ali, a Nubian youth
• Ali takes Rye to his home and they lift weights together
• Ali's home was infested with kiroboto
• Rye learns about the Ethnic clashes or 1995 from Ali's friend, Kassim
• MYSA is talked about a lot so Rye goes to learn more about it in Mathare and meets Salim
• Salim tells Rye about MYSA and they talk about war and how the youth are not only the future leaders, they are also the present leaders

Contextual Information

• Father in marines. Armed forces growing in United States. Children joining, following parents.
• Initial trip to Kenya: children in "The Globe" with glue bottles in their mouths.
• Rwandan Genocide: 1994. Ethnic violence, cultural clashes. Hutu, Tutsi, Twa. Hutu dominant. Extremists wanted to exterminate the Tutsi culture.
• Kibera slum houses about 1 million inhabitants.
• Violence in Kenya.
• Multi-party politics in early 1990s.
• Kibera located outside of Nairobi, Kenya.

Chapter 1 - The Grenade

Chapter 4 - Because I Can

Cultural Relations

• There are a various amount of swahili words used to emphasize the culture he is experiencing.
• He tells Salim his experience with the choo.
• "hotels are for eating, not for sleeping".

• Rye meets with a man named Jumba learn more about NGO's.
• He meets Vanessa who is a year old girl dying of AIDS, and she is the main inspiration for the chapter title.
• He later meets with Elizabeth and she tells him her dream of opening up a Montessori.

• Recollection of his childhood
• Father was a marine, Vietnam veteran. Received Bronze Star & Purple Heart
• Barcott wanted to follow in his father's footsteps and become a marine
• Mother was an anthropologist
• At the age of fourteen, in 1993 traveled to Kenya with his parents
• Stayed mostly in Nairobi
• Walked the Masai market with his mother, past "The Globe." Saw a young girl that changed his perception of the world.
• In high school, accepted a full-ride scholarship to UNC Chapel Hill for ROTC scholarship
• Mom encouraged him to take Swahili in college
• Professor Mutima, bonded with Barcott over Africa
• Mutima from Rwanda; talked about the 1994 Rwandan Genocide
• Disclosed to mother that he wanted to travel to Rwanda
• Began contacting people with his proposal for a research trip to Rwanda
• Burch Fellowship; $6,000 grant
• Semper Fidelis
• Ethnic violence in Kibera