Twenty-nine United States JournalistYouth are uniquely equipped to change the world because they dream. They choose not to accept what is, but to imagine what might be.
—DESMOND TUTU
KENYA IS BURNING. PEOPLE HAVEN'T BEEN ABLE to grow their crops for the last two seasons, and the food stores are all dried up. They're hungry, and they're angry. They swept into Nairobi and Mombasa two weeks ago and began rioting. There are so many of them the government lost control. The police are powerless. In the countryside, the scorched earth can't even produce a single green shoot. And when the rains do come, they're so violent that the topsoil is washed away, and people cower in their houses in fear. I see Kenya, I see my country, ruined by climate change.
It was late November in 2009. I'm awoken suddenly by the cry of a young child. The clock beside the bed says it's 3 AM, and I sleepily look around the unfamiliar room. It takes me a few seconds to realize that I'm in Nairobi, far from home, and today is going to be one of the biggest days of my life. My host's four-year-old boy walks barefoot into the room and right up to my bed. He is staring at me and crying.
“I am scared, Kevin,” he cried. He was having a nightmare of a burning house, and his scream was what awoke me. But my mind was heavy with the big day to come. After months of planning, this was our moment. The media was now daring us, the politicians were guarded, and civil society was eager to witness what the young people of Kenya could accomplish in the battle against global warming. All systems were a go.
Five thousand young people from across the country were preparing to travel to Mount Kenya and stage a symbolic protest against climate change. I was one of them, and I was helping lead the event. Yesterday, I had traveled to Nairobi, the capital city of Kenya, from my home in the far coastal areas to help stage the event. For I knew that this protest had the potential to make history.
I did not have much time to prepare. I grabbed a cup of Kenyan tea and caught up with the news. The international media was filled with conflicts in Somalia and the economic crisis in the United States. The local media was occupied with the story of a draught-stricken village. Everywhere I looked, the world was on the brink. One of our greatest challenges had been to try to get our story out to the world, because most mainstream media in the country did not think our story was juicy enough to be worth telling. If it was not politics, or some disaster somewhere, it wasn't a story. But after months of pleas and negotiations, we had convinced a local broadcaster to send a camera team. Now we just had to give them something worth filming.
It was set to be an event of a lifetime. A flash mob of Kenyan youth would gather at the base of our biggest mountain, Mount Kenya. The mob would hold hands around the mountain as a protest against the melting ice on its top and the threat climate change has brought to our source of life. A small group, me included, would then scale the mountain and unfurl a banner on live television with a message to the world leaders set to meet at the Copenhagen Climate Conference. I had no small task. I was in charge of everything.
The stakes were high. Police violence was a definite possibility, and maybe once it was all done, no one would know because the media might decide not to cover it. But if it worked, it might just be the final push needed to forge an international consensus on battling climate change.
The idea for the Mount Kenya action was born in early 2009. Sitting around the office, my classmates and I were reading the paper and drinking tea as usual when I came across an article that argued that the Copenhagen summit was a waste of time. This kind of talk makes me cross. It's not a question of whether anything is going to happen; it's a question of what will happen if we don't do something. I asked a friend whether he thought the meeting was going to bear any fruit. He told me he had no idea what the leaders were going to do in Copenhagen. It struck me that his reaction would have passed as normal if he was not a student of environmental science. But unfortunately, he was. If someone like him already felt defeated, then we had lots of work to do.
As for me, I had already been engaged in climate change advocacy for five years. At twenty-three, I was supposed to be making quick money and looking for a wife for the short life ahead. At least that's what my mother often told me. “Stop running up and down playing music to the deaf creatures embodied in politicians,” she would say. She thought that it was a waste of time trying to save a planet designed to perish. A desperate waste of time.
She would go on to tell me of how my peers were doing well professionally and settling down, some already upgrading to their fifth car. I never paid her much attention. But she did have a point. I was in a third world country after all, and everyone was running after the few resources remaining. And this hardly inspired much activism. To make it worse, there is a feeling among most that nothing we do here is going to make a difference on the world stage. Even if Kenya went 100 percent sustainable tomorrow, it wouldn't save us from global warming. We needed to get the big Western governments on board, and that wasn't going to be easy—especially for a bunch of kids from Africa.
This is the thought that kept me moving the morning of the action. Despite my rude awakening, I was out of the house within minutes and on my way to Parliament Square where we were to all gather for our “Green Mile” departure. Green Mile was the name we gave to the environmentally friendly travel we were to stage to and from our destination. Two local companies had partnered with us to facilitate the Green Mile travel. One company was offering five buses. The other was offering fuel made from recycled vegetable oil that would otherwise have been drained into municipal drainage systems by five-star hotels.
It was a chilly morning. We left at 5 AM, armed with two writers for the local press. They were young enough to understand what we were fighting for. Our destination was Nyeri, a calm town at the foot of Mount Kenya, a four-hour bus ride from Nairobi. A couple of minutes before 9 AM, we joined a group of about five thousand young faces in Nyeri. It was a very emotional moment for me. Mobilizing five thousand young people may have seemed like a normal task in a developed country where young people have a clear view of the skyline in life. In a developing country like Kenya, most youth are disenfranchised with life and don't give a hoot about advocacy. They're too worried about getting one of the all-too-rare jobs available to young people and making sure they'll have enough money to start a family. Abstract issues like climate change seem like a problem for another day, once your basics have already been covered.
We had been working for months to break through this apathy. Here in Africa, it's all about creating networks. Community groups are strong, and if you can get a group on board, you will instantly have hundreds of members on board as well. It's far better than trying to convince people one by one. What's more, almost everyone belongs to a church or a football club, a mosque or a choir. So we reached out to all kinds of groups; we met with their leaders, and they spread our message about the urgency of fighting climate change in a way that was suitable to each group. We didn't have lots of money, but we did have numbers. And that is our strength. Across Africa, we've seen time and time again that he who mobilizes the biggest number of people carries the day.
They don't have to be hardcore activists, just people who support you, regardless of whether they really understand why or not. Numbers get the media's attention. Numbers get the government's attention. We're not asking people to do much. Just come out and show support. It's a way of saying something without speaking, without having to know it all, without having to be a radical.
In Nyeri, we gathered at a stadium and had a session with the local leaders who were kind enough to give us the go-ahead for the flash mob. Even the member of Parliament for the region was present. This was highly unusual. More often than not, we felt like freedom of expression was just a piece of write-up in the Kenyan Constitution and not a reality for most Kenyans. Not with tear gas canisters and gunshots flying every time in any kind of protest.
I had seen it firsthand during Kenya's 2007 presidential elections when protests in the streets were violently repressed by police. I was an electoral officer, and accusations that the vote was rigged turned into mass marches in the streets. You could feel the tension. People were willing to sacrifice their lives for political gain. The government had a police force that was capable of deadly tactics. It was a vicious cycle, and one with an inevitable result: 1,200 people killed and some 350,000 displaced.
But we were hoping that we had taken all the right precautions to avoid any violence. We had met with the local authorities, and our location was perfect for the event. Mount Kenya is on national parkland and administered by the Kenya Wildlife Service, who were enthusiastic and supportive of us. So instead of having to face menacing police, we would be accompanied by friendly wildlife officers.
So we gathered peacefully at the stadium, all five thousand of us. I stood up on the stage and addressed the gathering, telling them how important this action was. “We have a moment to make a case for Africa,” I said. “We have a moment to right the wrongs causing climate change. This is our moment,” I shouted. I was not the best orator by any standard, but with the crowd's cheers, I knew this movement we were making for ourselves was coming alive. It was an unforgettable time. Africans taking ownership of an international issue wasn't just symbolic—it was a declaration of our importance. I hoped that this would mean that African voices would be heard on an international stage. When I finished, people were excited, and we rushed out of the stadium ready to take part in something historic.
Mount Kenya is the second-largest mountain in Africa, and going around it was not child's play. We realized how naïve our idea, or rather my idea, of holding hands around the mountain was. There were places that were impassable and others that had wild animals. So we went for the next best option. We gathered around the mountain as best we could, not necessarily holding hands. Then the five of us leading the protest, including myself, started hiking up the mountain.
Our chosen location was significant. Community members of the largest ethnic group in Kenya, the Kikuyu, believe they originated from Mount Kenya. So by climbing it, we were returning to our roots. As we walked up, the rest of the five thousand young people, representing the future of our country, stood around the base in silence. Their silence demonstrated the gravity of the problem: we were being muted internationally, but our very livelihoods are what are at stake. Yet, though we were keeping silent, we weren't just going to stand by and watch it happen. We had a message to deliver through our banner, and we hoped that this message would make it out to Kenyans across the country, to Africans across the continent, and to people around the world.
The climb was hard; the cold was biting. I was in decent shape, but I didn't feel like it at the time. Early into the hike, my feet were already sore, and my legs ached. I wanted to give up along the way, but remembered the cry of my host's four-year-old son: “I am scared, Kevin.” With climate change, the entire Earth would be burning, not just the little house in his dream. I had to do this.
We walked in single file, and while we started out purposefully, energized by the gathered group at the base, all conversation died out, and we each entered into our own heads, battling our own demons, asking ourselves, Is this going to work? Is anyone going to care?
The forest was thick, and it closed in around the rocky path. The strong sun was blocked out by the trees. We were trying to move forward, battling through the branches, but we couldn't see our way. We knew that we had to make it, and we kept pushing uphill, but we didn't know exactly how we were going to get there or how long it would take. It was like the battle against climate change itself. We have an idea of what a carbon-neutral future looks like, and we know what direction we have to move in to get there, but we don't exactly know how long it will take or how it will end up working.
It took us six hours to climb to the top of the mountain. Everyone else was still bravely keeping the silence in respect for the endangered mountain. The whole drama was being transmitted live to the nation on television. As the forest finally gave way and the blue sky opened up in front of us, my friend Grace ran ahead with a burst of energy she had been holding back during the climb. At the rocky summit, we could see for vast distances in every direction. It felt like the center of the world. It was at this moment that we unfurled our banner and unveiled the message: SAVE THE WORLD, SAVE AFRICA, SAVE MOUNT KENYA: WE NEED A DEAL.
“It's too wordy,” one of our team members said. “We won't be able to pass the message well enough.” I argued that we needed to capture both the global and the local aspect in the messaging. The message was simple. All we needed was a large enough banner. The one we ended up using was one hundred feet (30.5 meters) long and sixteen feet (4.9 meters) wide. I think the message was visible enough. And later, when we saw it on the news, we knew that people agreed.
We left the banner at the summit, held up with poles we had brought with us. I turned around before entering back into the forest for one last look at the banner. It fluttered in the distance. What had seemed so big when we were painting it and building it now seemed so small, dwarfed by the majestic mountain and swallowed up by the endless sky. We had done what we set out to do, but now it seemed like such a small gesture in the face of the daunting worldwide crisis of climate change.
The climb down was exhausting. The five of us had been used to a lot of physical training, but the exercise was nevertheless tiring, and at times we had to stop, rest, and have some food. By 6:30 PM, we had reached the base and gathered with the rest of the participants. But they weren't the only ones at the base of the mountain.
The prime minister had sent a representative to congratulate us for our bold gesture, and he strode forward from the cheering crowd, promising us that he would take our message to the rest of the world. The media was now listening. The camera flashes popped as I shook his hand. Now that the prime minister had taken interest in us, we were a story. He announced that the prime minister had personally reserved hotel rooms for us so that we would be well rested for tomorrow, when we would set on our Green Mile journey back to Nairobi.
The next day my friend Lawrence cried out, “I'm tired,” as we climbed aboard the bus. He was part of our team and had put in countless sleepless nights planning for the event. “But it was worth it,” I added to break the silence that was beginning to give me the feeling that my colleagues felt we were stretching ourselves too thin. “Someone had to do it,” I added. I was happy when I saw the smiles beginning to form on their tired faces.
The sky was blue that day. The bus ride back to Nairobi was unusually long. I took a nap, and when I woke, we were winding our way into the capital city. The trees looked greener and the air smelled fresh. There was a beauty about the world again. The media was waiting for us. We had a press conference, and the room was packed full with journalists from far and wide. We had been noticed. I was nervous, but this is what we wanted. Now that we had the media's attention, it was time to use it.
I left for the Copenhagen Climate Summit the next day with the four colleagues who had hiked with me, carrying photographs and videos of our action to show the world leaders. We felt that there was plenty of media hype around our action. With a handful of lessons and experiences, we had hope that a better future was feasible. The world is what we make of it after all. You could see this hope playing on my face and the faces of the many young people I had helped inspire. But in Copenhagen, I came up against the harsh realities of geopolitics. We had succeeded in getting some attention in Kenya, but out in the bigger world, no one had ever heard of us. What's worse, the message the prime minister gave us at the base of the mountain was not the message he and other African leaders were giving the world at the climate summit.
Despite the fact that my continent, our continent, was going to be hit especially hard with climate change, our leaders weren't taking the problem seriously. This was clear in Copenhagen. On a major international debate moderated by BBC HARDtalk's Stephen Sackur, other countries had sent their presidents and prime ministers to talk, but the only African representative in attendance was South Africa's environment minister. It was an embarrassment. It was as if Africa wasn't taking climate change seriously, and the world wasn't taking Africa seriously. She seemed outgunned. I was sitting in the audience with Kenyan Nobel Peace Laureate Wangari Maathai and wondered why she wasn't up there. At least she would have had something to say. But she was not invited to speak, and as I later spoke to the head of G77 and China, there was a sense that Africa was being deliberately muted on the world stage.
I soon came to learn about an offer leaders from developed countries made to developing countries, some token sum to heal the wounds caused by climate change. A type of climate financing that would give African nations the monetary means to adapt to a predominately Western-caused catastrophe. The discussion of a ten-billion-dollar annual climate fund for developing nations may have sounded great to many. It did have the African leaders, with smiling faces from the news, wining and dining their counterparts. But the stark reality is it will cost one hundred billion dollars a year for developing nations to adapt to climate change, according to the World Bank, a far cry from what we were being offered. But instead of maintaining a voice for African nations in the negotiations, we were quiet afterward, selling our future away for a small piece of a the political and monetary pie. It infuriated me to the bones but showed me that politics was mightier than environmental realities, no matter how bad that reality was.
Then, after two years of talks and so much preparation, President Obama showed up on the last day of the conference. He went into a room with the presidents of China and India and some other countries, and within minutes they had produced a document supposedly forging some sort of “international consensus.” But if anything, it really showed who's calling the shots, only a few select rich developed countries. I was left with a feeling of powerlessness, so were we all. Of course, Obama's roots are in my country, Kenya. What happened in Copenhagen really showed how the world is such a small community, yet a community against itself.
The summit left a feeling with us all that only the powerful countries make decisions. It brought into focus how the politics in the world work. There's a lot of talk, but only influences count. I believe developing countries can have a role in changing this pattern. Africans can lead the way, but I'm afraid we're not doing it yet.
Since Copenhagen's failure, I haven't given up the fight; if anything I'm fighting even harder to making African voices heard. I'm organizing and building networks, as this is what we need the most right now. It's about building these networks between Kenyans, between Africans, and between people from around the world if this movement is to truly be global, to truly be effective, and to truly make the change we need. Because I've seen that you don't need lots of money to change things. It's money, in fact, that's holding change up. What you need is people, groups of people, to get together and make a stand. It's the only way.
As for that four-year-old boy, I spoke with him many times after. The dream of a burning house still plagued him from time to time. But the dream started to change as the fire began to dwindle. The fire became intimidated and backed down as more and more people sprinkled water on its core. Soon those people became a mammoth crowd and the water like a rainfall. And he too, the little boy, joined the crowd, taking down the fire until it was no more.
Kevin Ochieng is currently serving as youth advisor to the United Nations Environment Programme. When not working for UNEP, he is working within his own organization called Earthfest, a youth network across Africa that is encouraging an environmental movement through education, local actions, and promoting green jobs.
Twenty-nine United States Journalist
PHOTO BY AUBREY EDWARDS