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Life Onboard |
LAST UPDATE
December 9, 2006
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| site design imagesparkle.com |
| November 29, 2006 |
Jambo! Lighting Up Peace Boat - Chiaki Hayakawa |
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| Chiaki Hayakawa tells Peace Boat participants about her life in Kenya |
Her name means “1,000 crystals” in Japanese, and guest educator Chiaki Hayakawa certainly lives up to it. During her two weeks of participation on Peace Boat's 55th voyage, Ms. Hayakawa radiated boundless energy and enthusiasm, made countless friends, and helped to shed light on various subjects in both Japan and her adopted home of Kenya. |
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| Ms. Hayakawa dances on the ship with Kenyan music group Peter Band |
“When I was a child, I had so many questions,” she told her packed audiences. “Questions like: 'Why are we alive? Where are we going as people? How do people in other countries live? What makes them happy?” Answers did not come easily to her—nor did the understanding of her parents and people around her, who expected her to study hard, become a professional, marry, and settle down in Japan. |
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| Ms. Hayakawa felt inspired by the warmth and generosity of people living in extreme conditions like this shantytown. (Photo courtesy of Chiaki Hayakawa) |
Instead of following those expectations, Ms. Hayakawa left Japan and started traveling. In India, she saw that some people had so many things and others had so little, which made her wonder where the world was heading and how she should live life herself. Questions kept growing, so she kept traveling. Eventually, she reached Africa. “I felt a great sense of liberation when I experienced the great, wide savannah for the first time,” she relates. Throughout her travels in Africa, Ms. Hayakawa said she experienced the greatest acts of kindness in the harshest of environments. “People who had so little were always asking me 'Are you hungry? Thirsty? Do you need a place to stay?' They shared their precious resources with me, and they prayed deeply for my safety when I continued on my travels.” |
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| A view of the Kibera shantytown. (Photo courtesy of Chiaki Hayakawa) |
Ms. Hayakawa was so impressed by the warmth and strong spirit of people in Africa, that she decided to settle there and learn about life from its inhabitants. She found a job in Nairobi, married a man from Kenya, and had two children—all the while soaking in diverse experiences, such as visiting a slum of 800,000 people in Nairobi. There, she witnessed not only great poverty, but also great pride, spirituality, and thirst for learning in many of the people she encountered. She was so moved by her visits to Kibera that she helped open up a school for children in the slum, many of whom had been left homeless through AIDS, poverty, or abuse. |
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| A Peace Boat participant shows off fair trade products produced in Kibera |
“Many people say to me, 'It must be so hard to live in Africa and work with children in a slum,” said Ms. Hayakawa, “but the truth is, it hasn't been hard at all. The children there give me so much energy and teach me so much about life. And I've never suffered any discrimination in all my years in Africa. People there have been nothing but kind, welcoming, and open to me,” she told participants. Her school in Kibera, she explained, is one way of expressing her gratitude to the country that has taught her so much about living life fully and joyfully. To help maintain the school, Ms. Hayakawa has established fair trade enterprises that capitalize on the artistic and musical skills of people in Kibera. The fair trade CDs and beadwork she brought with her on the ship sold out quickly. |
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| Chiaki Hayakawa helped open a school for these children in Kibera (Photo courtesty of Chiaki Hayakwa) |
Ms. Hayakawa has joined two previous Peace Boat voyages, during which fundraising activities were held to help support the school in Kibera. On the 55th voyage, she showed participants a slideshow of how the money was spent. “With money from the 52nd voyage, we built four dorm rooms on top of our school so that children without homes could sleep there and feel safe, free of fear,” she said. “With the money that was raised during the 54th voyage, the school could hire a full-time teacher for one-year,” she reported proudly.
In addition to her work on behalf of Kibera slum, Ms. Hayakawa works as a freelance writer, photography coordinator, and eco and cultural guide in Kenya and Tanzania. She can be reached at ecotour[at]gol.com. |
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