Are you feeling lost? Are you waking up to a hunger for more besides the single straight story and path to success outlined for you from a young age? Are you at a crossroads [in-between life moments]? Are you moved by the signs of global crisis all around us (climate crisis, repressive governments, sky high thieving of public funds, coronavirus, the epidemic of loneliness, etc.), but unsure how to contribute? Are you questing to add more life to your life so you can truly live? To remember and enact who you deeply are, and why you’re here on Earth?
Join us on Rejea, a regenerative life programme!
Rejea is a year-long, part-time learning programme holding and facilitating people as they re-discover and re-connect to their life purpose and create a life project or programme that is in service to themselves, to the Earth and to society.
Based in East Afrika and drawing from many indigenous Afrikan traditions, some of which you will encounter on the programme, we believe that we come into this world to carry out a life-giving purpose. When known, our life purposes are actioned in the ways we live and the work we do, and sustain and evolve us, our human communities and the Earth.
When our life purpose is unknown on the other hand, and when we don’t have the tools to remember our purposes, disillusionment, confusion, suffering, and a feeling of lostness and meaninglessness ensues.
Rejea means return, come back, and do again in Kiswahili, the most widely spoken Afrikan language on the continent.
Rejea facilitates Afrikan people returning to fetch that which they forgot, were separated from, or have tossed out historically through the linked violent processes of colonisation, Christianisation and capitalist economic relations. We are re-membering instead our connections to our authentic selves, our ties to community, expansively manifested, and our reciprocal responsibilities to the Earth and all who are more than human (our plant, animal and other spirit relatives).
The truth is that all of these were once core to Afrikan indigenous life, knowledge and practices, and in Rejea we work from the deep belief that these lifeways need to become core again to Afrikans, and to the world to ensure thriving life for all of us.
Rejea is a regenerative life programme because it facilitates our coming back to life in reciprocal ways that restore and generate life for all members of community, in contrast to the present globalised extractive dynamic that spreads death in its wake. Rejea is an intervention to get you out of rote, uninspired ways of living, bullshit jobs and/or deadlihoods, help you discover your purpose and hold you as you redesign life and create projects or programmes that regenerate life on Earth during the transition times of ecological systems collapse, capitalism’s disintegration, and socio-political disillusionment.
During these crisis times, we are being invited into an evolution. Young people and Afrikans can be the architects of this shift, but while we are still locked into believing the disempowerment of their schooling, accepting the unfreedom of the political system as ahistorical, and daily engaged in an effort to survive in an economic system that is designed to work against us, stepping out and imagining something new is challenging if not impossible.
Rejea offers an opportunity to slow down, explore, rethink, reimagine, and redesign life and livelihoods.
Find out more info and how you can be part of this journey below!
JOURNEY INFO
- 240 hours (approx)
- opening 3 day retreat (non-residential) in an ecologically conscious location
- monthly life coaching sessions with a trained life-coach
- at least 3 five to seven day retreats over the course of a year, location TBC
- once a month afternoon check-in gatherings [optional/can be done remotely]
- sessions on life purpose, confronting fear, regenerative justice, visioning and a lot more
- site visits to regenerative projects within and outside Nairobi
- apprenticeship period
- closing 3-5 day residential retreat, including a night vision quest
The part-time structure of Rejea is designed to work around other life commitments you have, and provide a constant tapping into the work you will be doing as a journeyer on the programme. During the apprenticeship period, we will meet less frequently.
This structure of intensive time together also allows for participants coming from outside of Nairobi to join us.
CONTENT
Rejea is structured around indigenous, Afrikan and regenerative ways of being, knowing and doing. The year (11 months) is divided into 3 month sections corresponding with this structure and a 2 month closing and going forth period.
— opening —
We begin with an initial 3 day intensive dis/orientation which will create the programme container, introduce journeyers to each other and to Rejea, and open the quest they will be undertaking
— being —
The “being” section of the programme shifts journeyers’ engagement with self and each other, and the Earth through experiences of different ways of being in and with the world. We build up inner resilience through engaging in inner work, song, meditations, drumming, embodiment exercises, self-love tasks, planting, and more in order to rebuild a strong sense of self-value.
Memory work using orikis, meditations, dreamwork and the concept of a life purpose will engage us in beginning to discover our reason for being, from which the rest of the journey unfolds.
— knowing —
The “knowing” section picks up on alternate ways of knowing, and aims to build a critical consciousness about the state of the world today. Journeyers engage in community interviews, system mapping, action inquiry, site visits, and historical study. We also explore concepts such as rank and rank abuse and regenerative justice. Theatre of the oppressed and visioning are introduced to explore how we can shift systemic abuse in our contexts with our work and life projects.
A design intensive and regenerative design sessions allow identification of and working with place and allies for the benefit of self, Earth and society.
— doing —
The “doing” component applies the learning of the 2 previous modules to acquiring skills to enable our life projects to root and take off. Journeyers reach out to identified (1 or 2) skillsmasters of skills which they want to develop or hone for their desired projects with whom they will apprentice for a period between 2-3 months. Journeyers practice living in alternate value systems by making a gift exchange for their learning during this time. Skillsmasters may become lifelong mentors.
— going forth —
In the last 2 months of the programme, journeyers make final presentations of their projects and prepare portfolios that demonstrate their learning.
To close the programme, participants make a vision quest outdoors that solidifies their life purpose and their plant, animal and other spirit allies during a 3-5 day residential retreat. The retreat is also a celebration of the journey we have been on as we go forth to continue living regenerative lives.
DATES
Rejea is planned to start in 2021. Applications are open on a rolling basis until full so get your application in today!
VALUE EXCHANGE
The cost of holding Rejea is approximately KES 22,750** per month for a pilot of 12 journey-makers. **(exact amount to be confirmed in 2021).
For you undertaking this journey, this means that we will have our retreats and monthly gatherings in a cozy, green, inspiring space, safe transport to several site visits, the full energy of the facilitator, various guest resource people and 2 co-cordinators, wholesome community meals and snacks, the support of a trained holistic life coach, accommodation during the closing retreat, and necessary resources and materials during the journey.
In recognition of the deep need for this work in our Kenyan context of silenced but ongoing colonial trauma, and of our commitment to equitable and accessible value exchanges, we are working to raise money to be able to offer scholarships and reduced costs for those who need it.
We are doing this while also honouring our desire to deliver the most nurturing and life-giving programme we can, and recharge, celebrate and invest in the wisdom, time and labour of all who participate in preparing and holding you as your journey to reclaim yourself in Rejea.
Reach out to us if you are interested in journeying with us, but have concerns about the finances, and we will endeavour to work out a mutual and nourishing exchange.
We are also open to offers of solidarity in monetary form and in kind, so do get in touch if you would like to be in solidarity with this work.
In particular, full or part scholarships, a green meeting space, materials to make the space home-y, stationery, organic wholesome food for community meals, transport minibus, and coaching services would be especially appreciated. Email Wangũi on wakamonji[at]gmail[dot]com if you’d like to offer any of these or something else.
FACILITATORS
Wangũi wa Kamonji is a retriever and bearer of indigenous Afrikan lifeways, recentering Afrika, Earth and ancestrality in her offerings to the world. I work as an independent researcher, dancer, storyteller and facilitator of regenerative presents and futures rooted in indigenous Afrikan ways of being, knowing and doing. I have a Masters in African Studies with Environment from University College London (UCL), and a Bachelors degree in Environmental Studies and Urban Studies from Wellesley College, USA.
I have undertaken research-learning journeys in Afrika, Latin America and Asia exploring cities, food, and community innovation in low-income urban neighbourhoods. I combine research with storytelling, dance and process facilitation to create diverse public spaces for critical consciousness and transformation in order to go beyond the challenges facing Afrikan environments and societies and open alternate spaces of power drawing from a radical new-oldness. I am a trained facilitator in process oriented psychology and have facilitated young people on study abroad programmes.
Why do I offer Rejea into the space of Nairobi/Kenya/East Afrika?
I have been through at least 15 different formal educational contexts in my life. In many of these I experienced disempowerment from being told that knowledge exists only in books and in an all-knowing teacher. This contradicted my early childhood experiences in which I learnt about the world through intuition, exploring my mother’s garden, learning from plants, my mother, and with my brother, a toy-car maker.
Around my neighbourhood in Ongata Rongai, children made mud dams when it rained. Later I realised that schooling robbed many of them of their natural curiosity and innovative embodied knowledge, and branded them as failures and stupid, and therefore valueless to society.
I convene Rejea, for people to remember and reclaim their dreams, power and value, and deliver their gifts to benefit selves, Earth and society.
CO-FACILITATORS
Resource people* join Rejea to share certain skills necessary to shaping and stepping into regenerative living and livelihoods from an indigenous Afrikan perspective. These include storytelling, drum circles, theatre of the oppressed, design thinking, permaculture design, visioning, working with the Earth, confronting fears on the path to unlearning, etc. Resource people are individuals who have undertaken similar journeys of unlearning and relearning that Rejea journeyers are on and will be additional inspiration.
Site visits to locations, groups and initiatives living regeneratively are planned to expand possibilities open to journeyers, and enable them to learn from others’ journeys. Some of these include community waste up/recyclers, community libraries and social justice centres, agroecological projects and forests.
**The bulk of the course is aimed at journeyers engaging with their own knowing which reverses the traditional disempowering model of schooling with a hierarchy of knowledge-holders. Resource people serve as a support to journeyers and co-facilitators with Wangũi.
In addition to sessions facilitated by the hearthkeeper, Wangũi, and resource people, journeyers on Rejea will have regular sessions with life-coaches and the support of 2 co-cordinators.
Ready to journey with us? Click below to apply today!
