Readings

It's a long plane ride from Los Angeles International Airport to Nairobi — twenty-four hours in the air, and you get there two days after you started. I arrived with a couple of extra boxes containing books — theater books of all kinds, textbooks, and play scripts. On the label I had boldly printed their destination: Ford Foundation East Africa Office, Rahimtulla Tower, Nairobi, Kenya. Perhaps because of this address — either that or the literature — I was able to pass through customs without paying the duty for which Kenyan Customs is notorious.

When funders move into indigenous communities they tread a very fine line. On one side of the line they have a duty to undertake sufficient investigation to ensure that they properly understand a funding request and their own role in relation to it. On the other side, obtaining the information may conflict with the ability to acknowledge and give appropriate respect to the applicant's indigenous culture and its bounds.