Caitlin Dwyer

I’m going to Kenya!

I was awarded a $2000 grant from the Regional Arts and Culture Council here in Oregon to research my nonfiction book, Courage. With that money, I’ll be traveling to Nairobi, Kenya in spring 2024. During my week in Kenya, I’ll be trying to locate the plantation where my grandmother grew up—a defunct coffee and tea farm established during British colonial rule. My goal is to stand on that soil and try to reckon with the difficult, complicated inheritances of colonialism: the sheer destruction done to people and culture, the loss of land, and the sense of belonging and ownership that played out in my great-grandparents’ cultivation of this soil. My book explores the inheritance of history: how the geopolitical and social events our grandparents lived through pass down to us, in stories, in genetics, and in moral codes. Through this trip, I am searching for the remnants of colonial influence in my own family and reckoning with our own complicity and responsibility in a postcolonial era.

Suffice to say I am thrilled. Last spring I was able to travel to England for 10 days to research the first part of my book. This second grant allows me to complete research on the era of my grandmother’s early life. I’ve been to southern Africa before, but never Kenya, and I’m beyond excited to see a new country and privileged to do this creative work.

Huge thanks for this grant to RACC, who funded this venture.