Political Traffic: Kenyan Students in Eastern and Central Europe, 1958–69

This article explores the experiences of Kenyan students in the Soviet Union, Bulgaria and other communist states between 1958 and 1969. Existing studies of student mobility from Kenya in this period have concentrated on the experiences of students in the USA, a theme familiar to many readers because of Barack Obama’s family history. By contrast, and by using recently released sources from the British archives and material from Tom Mboya's papers at the Hoover Institute Archives, the article analyses the political debates that centred upon this much larger group of students who travelled East. The article demonstrates how newfound freedoms of movement were tempered by racism, colonial obstruction and domestic political considerations. The global opportunities that seemed to be presented by decolonization proved to be a chimera. The article locates the experiences of the students in a broader context of debates around decolonization and globalization, but emphasizes the importance of the students' experiences at home and abroad to the process of state-building being undertaken in Kenya at this time.

THE INFLUENCE OF CULTURE IN THE INTERPRETATION OF JAPANESE LANGUAGE INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALS

The mastery of any foreign language is affected by several factors, among them the cultural environment in which the language learning takes place. In an attempt to reinforce the language learning process, instructors of foreign language often make use of language instructional materials to enable students engage in motivating, appealing and interactive learning activities. The content of such instructional materials must be interpreted easily and accurately if they are to be effective. A major impediment in interpretation of instructional materials is the socio-cultural barrier which may interfere with the learner’s ability to decode the intended meaning in the content of the instructional materials. This hinders the achievement of the language lesson objectives. This paper discusses the influence of cultural elements on interpretation of the information in Japanese Language Instructional Materials (JLIM) by Kenyan students. This paper is based on the results of a pilot study carried out among college Japanese students in Kenya. It attempts to establish the influence and impact of culture on the interpretation of the Japanese language instructional materials by the Kenyan students. It is part of an ongoing research aimed at identifying the factors influencing the mastery of the Japanese language among Kenyan students. Theresearch is guided by schema theory, which describes the process by which readers refer to their own background knowledge in order to comprehend new information. The learners of Japanese language were subjected to some instructional materials and asked to answer several questions designed to establish their interpretation of the materials. Teir responses were compared with what is expected from the Japanese cultural context. Data was collected through a questionnaire. The results of the study show that unfamiliar cultural elements in the instructional materials negatively influence the interpretation of information. It is therefore recommended that the design of language instructional materials should take into consideration the culture of the learners.

A comparative study of psychotic and affective symptoms in Rwandan and Kenyan students

Aims.War and conflict are known to adversely affect mental health, although their effects on risk symptoms for psychosis development in youth in various parts of the world are unclear. The Rwandan genocide of 1994 and Civil War had widespread effects on the population. Despite this, there has been no significant research on psychosis risk in Rwanda. Our goal in the present study was to investigate the potential effects of genocide and war in two ways: by comparing Rwandan youth born before and after the genocide; and by comparing Rwandan and Kenyan adolescents of similar age.Methods.A total of 2255 Rwandan students and 2800 Kenyan students were administered the Washington Early Recognition Center Affectivity and Psychosis (WERCAP) Screen. Prevalence, frequency and functional impairment related to affective and psychosis-risk symptoms were compared across groups using univariate and multivariate statistics.Results.Rwandan students born before the end of the genocide and war in 1994 experienced higher psychotic and affective symptom load (p’s < 0.001) with more functional impairment compared with younger Rwandans. 5.35% of older Rwandan students met threshold for clinical high-risk of psychosis by the WERCAP Screen compared with 3.19% of younger Rwandans (χ2 = 5.36; p = 0.02). Symptom severity comparisons showed significant (p < 0.001) group effects between Rwandan and Kenyan secondary school students on affective and psychotic symptom domains with Rwandans having higher symptom burden compared with Kenyans. Rwandan female students also had higher rates of psychotic symptoms compared with their male counterparts – a unique finding not observed in the Kenyan sample.Conclusions.These results suggest extreme conflict and disruption to country from genocide and war can influence the presence and severity of psychopathology in youth decades after initial traumatic events.