43 pages • 1 hour read
Find Me Unafraid: Love, Loss, And Hope In An African Slum
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Symbols & Motifs
Priests and The Church
Kennedy spends his childhood looking up to the Catholic Church as a place of refuge. For a period of time, he supports his family by accepting donations from a nun. Later in his childhood, when he lives on the streets, he attends Sunday mass to see his siblings and his mother. An Italian priest takes an interest in Kennedy, helping him to go to school and get a job. Kennedy had never been happier. “‘A priest,’ he says with total seriousness. ‘That changed later on. But I saw the priests living what looked to me like a nice life; they were the ones who had food to eat, driving in cars’” (87). Priests initially provide a path to education, food, and safety, although this changes suddenly when a priest sexually abuses Kennedy. The Italian priest gets called back to Europe, and he is kicked out of the school he is attending on a scholarship. After the abuse, Kennedy feels abandoned by God.
He does turn back to the Church to establish a meeting place for SHOFCO in its early days, but they kick him out for teaching about condoms and safe sex for AIDS prevention. He is happy to find a new place to meet (the soccer fields) where he is not bound by an organization’s tenets.
Dreams
Kennedy’s dreams for a brighter future in Kenya motivate him throughout this life. He dreams that he will make lasting change in his community, that his family will have enough to eat, and that he will be able to study and go to school so he can learn to help others. These dreams keep his hope for a better future alive and inspire him to keep fighting, despite the disadvantages of poverty and violence: “I, too, wanted to lead my people into new land of promise, but didn’t know how. I didn’t dare dream. There was no light by which to dream” (139). He struggles through an environment that is devoid of dreams and hope, and, because he holds on to his own dreams of a better future, he ends up making lasting change for himself and his people.
Kennedy and Jessica’s marriage is foreshadowed by a literal dream that Kennedy has when he is younger, before he meets Jessica. He dreams that he will marry a white woman in a flowered dress. He shares this with his friend George, not wanting it to be true, since he always wanted to marry a “black queen.”
When Jessica suffers from malaria, she dreams that Kennedy told her he loves her: “[H]e wipes the sweat from my brow and whispers the words I love you. I shake my head, unable to distinguish between memory and fever dream” (147). After this so-called dream, she asks Kennedy what he said in the hospital, and he admits openly that he loves her. This is the start of their romantic relationship that will later end in their marriage.
For Jessica and Kennedy, dreams, both literal and figurative, are symbolic of the power hope and love have to affect positive change in their lives. Through dreams, the authors release their fears, overcome their differences, and move towards peace.
Whiteness
Skin color is one of the most noticeable differences between Kenyans and Westerners in the book. For Kennedy, as with many Kenyans, whiteness symbolizes money, privilege, and a level of freedom that is unprecedented in their country. Jessica is acutely aware of her whiteness and the privilege that she brings from America: “No matter how much time I spend here I can’t escape the whiteness of my skin, the way I stand out no matter what I do. But it’s more than my skin. It’s my privilege” (290). She understands that her whiteness provides her with a safety cloak that makes it hard for her to become a part of the community in Kibera or to ever fully understand the plight of its’ citizens. Jessica’s whiteness also puts her at risk in Kenya, making her a target for scams or violence, and Kennedy confronts her whiteness by advising and protecting her.
Hesitant to work with Jessica at first, Kennedy he is wary of Western organizations and white intervention in Africa. He has seen firsthand how outside organizations run by white foreigners never make lasting change because they lack involvement from the locals who have a better understanding of the community’s struggles and the barriers to change. Despite Kennedy’s aversion to white foreigners, he opens his organization, his home, and eventually his heart to Jessica, despite their many differences.
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