Earthing in East Africa in Two Journeys: Kenya & Tanzania

In Kenya

We journey to Kenya to Umoja Women’s Village, which is a small compound founded in 1990 by Rebecca Lolosoli in order to escape the rape and spousal abuse she was subjected to as a young woman. The village gradually expanded to include 48 women as well as their children. Umoja is relatively isolated from surrounding villages, yet is entirely self-sustaining. The women support themselves through a combination of business endeavors with tourism being their main source of income. 

Outcomes:

1. Explore what it would mean to live in a sanctum in which each woman learns to live together, take up arms together, break bread and deliberate together for the sake of bringing that future of women having that type of agency closer to our present. 
2. Witness and honor real life examples of raising boys outside of patriarchal structures and through matriarchal leadership.
3. Learn and unlearn specific configurations around accountability and forgiveness as a key to resistance that differs significantly from Western, North American Indigenous paradigms of restorative justice. 
4. We will learn the social contract established between women in African Indigenous matriarchal societies or villages.

In Tanzania

We journey to Tanzania where we’re engaging with restorative and racial justice partners, creating space for what is possible for our climate and communities via access and mutuality with the land. Those who journey with us will be immersed in conversation and ancestral practice for sustaining ecological systems and learn how African indigenous people view their relationship to the earth and the living, natural environment. On this journey, we will visit activists Charlotte Hill O’Neal and Pete O’Neal, two activists building a peaceful community and stewarding land in Arusha, Tanzania for over 53 years. We will visit the United African Alliance Community Center (UAACC) was formed in 1991 with the expressed purpose of sharing and disseminating knowledge in areas relevant to the promotion of creative, productive, and wholesome lifestyles giving a strong sense of empowerment to the youth both in village and urban settings in Tanzania while strengthening opportunities for positive global community ties among people of diverse cultures around the world.

Outcomes:

1. Engage in a learning exchange with the O’Neals, our hosts, who became African American pioneers in their ancestral homeland.
2. Learn about windmills, farming, raising livestock, and appropriate technology.
3. Our journey will consist of medicine walks, visiting the traditional Boma, and visiting the hot springs as well as traditional homesteading and vegan/vegetarian lifestyle in East Africa.
4. Learn about African indigenous ways of honoring the land and how the O’Neals developed a homestead on the slopes of Mr. Meru in Imbaseni, a rural village in the heart of the traditional homeland of the WaMeru tribe.
5. Learn from the traditional Maasai tribes in Tanzania during our stay.

Dates: April 5, 2025 - April 12, 2025

Deposit: $1,000

Full Amount: $5,500

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