Harambee, the Word on Kenya's Coat of Arms — Epoche A2
Last month I took a matatu from Nairobi to a village outside Machakos. The fare was 200 shillings and the journey took just under two hours. After the town the road is red earth. I stayed with Mama Rose. On my second morning she told me about the storm in March. The wind took six sheets of mabati , the iron roofing, off her neighbour's house, and the rain came in onto the children's beds. The next morning eleven people arrived with hammers, and they had finished the roof before lunch. Nobody was paid. Mama Rose cooked ugali and sukuma wiki for everyone, and that was the arrangement. In the afternoon I sat with Juma, who teaches at the primary school. He wrote one word in my notebook: harambee . It means "all pull together". It is written on the coat of arms of Kenya, and it is what people say when money is collected for a hospital bill or for school fees. His own school knows the word well: after independence, parents in many villages built the first classrooms themselves, and a school that began that way is still called a harambee school. I asked him whether the helping is always equal. He laughed and said no. Some people come every time and some people never come, and everybody in the village knows exactly which is which.