by Margaretta Swigert-Gacheru
EVANSTON--August 15, 2017 :: I’m an ETHS graduate, but one who spent half my high school years hanging out with a New Trier boy from Kenilworth who was a huge distraction.
Somehow I made it to DePauw University where I got seriously radicalized. ETHS had primed me for ‘enlightenment’. ETHS’ multi-racial, multi-cultural, multi-class community provided me with more than adequate preparation for my making a graceful move eventually into the global community.
After winning a Rotary Foundation Ambassadorial Fellowship to study in at the University of Nairobi, in Kenya, I stuck around and got another degree. (I’d already gotten one at DePauw and another at National Louis University.)
That third degree would cost more money, so when the fellowship funds finally ran out, I got a great job as a journalist writing locally about the Kenyan (read African) arts scene. Of course, that would include my writing stories about former colonials and other Europeans as well as about Asians, and other visiting tourists (like Mike Jagger, Jesse Jackson and even British royalty like Sarah Ferguson, former wife of Prince Andrew, the Queen’s youngest son, to name-drop just a few of the ‘celebs’ that came to Kenya who I interviewed). My focus was and continues to be on writing about Kenyan Africans, both visual artists and performers, particularly theater people.
Early on I fell for an African classmate of mine at Nairobi University who I thought would be my Samora Machel--the handsome freedom-fighter from Mozambique who was assassinated by South African pro-Apartheid forces a while back--but not quite. In any case, Gacheru is a great man and he gave me (or I gave him) a beautiful son who is now a Major in the US Army based in Vicenza Italy.
This ETHS grad might look like a globe trotter since she flies back and forth from Nairobi to Chicago twice a year, but really I’m slightly schizophrenic since I seriously have two homes.
Evanston will always be the ‘home in my heart’ and the one that I may return to eventually. The town has gotten so very cool, I must say! Some will contend it always was super cool, but I was always keen to escape…which I clearly did.
I am here now for only a few more days and I have fallen ‘head over heels’ for Evanston. I have a wonderful brother Tom who’s here and I also have many incredible friends in the neighborhood. Evanston may have to welcome me back home sometime soon. That’d mean I’d finally get to attend one of those crazy high school reunions. ;-)
Until then, I’ll simply say ‘bon voyage’ while I get set to fly back to a country that unfortunately is in a bit of turmoil, having just had a contentious national election in which the loser refuses to concede defeat. People have died as a consequence. Hopefully we will see peace happening there soon. We pray there will be forgiveness on all sides and concern to see that beautiful country move forward.
For those of you who may have had plans to one day realize your planned safari to Africa: Do not fear coming to Kenya. Irrespective of momentary turbulence, it is a breathtaking country that you can easily fall in love with…possibly just as I did several decades ago.
Margaretta Swigert-Gacheru eventually got a fourth degree, her Ph.D in Sociology from Loyola University Chicago. Her dissertation Globalizing Kenyan Culture: Jua Kali & theTransformation of Contemporary Kenyan Art:1960-2010 is up on Loyola’s eCommons. Known in Kenya as Margaretta wa Gacheru, and as mentioned she has been writing about the visual and performing arts in Kenya for decades. Currently, she works as an Arts Correspondent for The Nation Media Group (Kenya). MSG contributes to This is Africa. She blogs at Margaretta's Jua Kali Diary and at Kenyan Arts Review. She also lectures at Kenya Methodist University. Margaretta is the author of Creating Contemporary African Art Art Networks in Urban Kenya. She's listed in Feminists Who Changed America 1963-1975.
EVANSTON--August 15, 2017 :: I’m an ETHS graduate, but one who spent half my high school years hanging out with a New Trier boy from Kenilworth who was a huge distraction.
Somehow I made it to DePauw University where I got seriously radicalized. ETHS had primed me for ‘enlightenment’. ETHS’ multi-racial, multi-cultural, multi-class community provided me with more than adequate preparation for my making a graceful move eventually into the global community.
After winning a Rotary Foundation Ambassadorial Fellowship to study in at the University of Nairobi, in Kenya, I stuck around and got another degree. (I’d already gotten one at DePauw and another at National Louis University.)
That third degree would cost more money, so when the fellowship funds finally ran out, I got a great job as a journalist writing locally about the Kenyan (read African) arts scene. Of course, that would include my writing stories about former colonials and other Europeans as well as about Asians, and other visiting tourists (like Mike Jagger, Jesse Jackson and even British royalty like Sarah Ferguson, former wife of Prince Andrew, the Queen’s youngest son, to name-drop just a few of the ‘celebs’ that came to Kenya who I interviewed). My focus was and continues to be on writing about Kenyan Africans, both visual artists and performers, particularly theater people.
Early on I fell for an African classmate of mine at Nairobi University who I thought would be my Samora Machel--the handsome freedom-fighter from Mozambique who was assassinated by South African pro-Apartheid forces a while back--but not quite. In any case, Gacheru is a great man and he gave me (or I gave him) a beautiful son who is now a Major in the US Army based in Vicenza Italy.
This ETHS grad might look like a globe trotter since she flies back and forth from Nairobi to Chicago twice a year, but really I’m slightly schizophrenic since I seriously have two homes.
Evanston will always be the ‘home in my heart’ and the one that I may return to eventually. The town has gotten so very cool, I must say! Some will contend it always was super cool, but I was always keen to escape…which I clearly did.
I am here now for only a few more days and I have fallen ‘head over heels’ for Evanston. I have a wonderful brother Tom who’s here and I also have many incredible friends in the neighborhood. Evanston may have to welcome me back home sometime soon. That’d mean I’d finally get to attend one of those crazy high school reunions. ;-)
Until then, I’ll simply say ‘bon voyage’ while I get set to fly back to a country that unfortunately is in a bit of turmoil, having just had a contentious national election in which the loser refuses to concede defeat. People have died as a consequence. Hopefully we will see peace happening there soon. We pray there will be forgiveness on all sides and concern to see that beautiful country move forward.
For those of you who may have had plans to one day realize your planned safari to Africa: Do not fear coming to Kenya. Irrespective of momentary turbulence, it is a breathtaking country that you can easily fall in love with…possibly just as I did several decades ago.
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