Rain Barrel Communications — Waithira Gikonyo: On Communications and Big Belly Buttons

Waithira, always on the look-out for new and exciting projects

Waithira Gikonyo is a Rain Barrel Director and Executive Board Member, presiding over a global project portfolio of training and capacity development from in her home in Nairobi. With a doctorate in journalism and mass communication, Waithira worked at UNICEF for two decades, crafting learning programs that helped UNICEF staff improve their communications in program delivery. After returning to her native Kenya and semi-retirement, she joined Rain Barrel in 2021. Ellen Weiss, a Rain Barrel Associate and renowned children’s book author, spoke with her recently.

Ellen: Waithira, tell us about your early life.

Waithira: I was the youngest of seven children, and grew up on a large farm, which my mother still manages at age 96. The main crop was coffee We had some animals too – cows, goats, chickens. I didn’t really help, but I did chase the chickens.

After primary school, I was sent to boarding school close to Nairobi. It was a small school, right in the middle of a tea farm. It was beautiful, and I made lifelong friends there. When it was time for college, I followed my two brothers to the U.S. – I went to the State University of New York at Geneseo. While I was there, I worked at the college radio station. Because I had an accent, they felt I was better suited for being a DJ than for reading the news. I loved being at the radio station. I had been planning to go into law, but suddenly I thought, wait a minute, this - communications - is what I want to do!

I took courses in agricultural journalism, going out into the community to get information to farmers. It was kind of an introduction to communication for development.

Just curious: what kind of music did you play as a DJ?

“Dancing Queen” by Abba! We played that over and over! And “Hotel California,” and “Bad Girls” by Donna Summer. The hottest of them all was "Le Freak!"

Then came graduate studies, research and the UN years. How did that unfold?

I met my husband in graduate school at the University of Wisconsin, and I had my first daughter while I was working on my dissertation. My husband was in Kenya, working, so for a few months I was on my own with her. It’s tough to bring up kids in that country of yours. There's no help. You can't afford babysitters. I think the experience gave me grit and the discipline to just get things done.

Much of the work on my dissertation was done in Nairobi, because it was on family planning and decision making in low-income communities.

After I finished, I taught and continued research in Nairobi. I began working for UNFPA – the UN Population Fund – and after some years I went to New York to work at UNICEF. My daughters were both in boarding school themselves by that time.

Can you tell us about your work for Rain Barrel?

For me, it’s a natural fit. As you know, Rain Barrel has a huge network of Associates. I try to match people with the right skills to the right projects – and then get people to work together, which is fun. The clients are all different; there are no boring moments. While you’re on a project, you feel like a family – you’re texting constantly. Then when it’s over you really miss each other.

What tends to be your biggest challenge?

Sometimes clients can lose focus if something big comes up for them and they have to turn from the project at hand to something else. For example, if we’re working with a health ministry to strengthen their capacity to promote vaccination against polio, and then COVID comes, they’ll suddenly pivot our collaboration towards creating demand for vaccines for COVID. That’s understandable, of course, but then my challenge is sometimes, how do I get the clients back to the energy level they had before this interruption, and refocus on polio? And people don’t have much time for training when they get busy.

What parts of your work do you love?

It’s great when everything is working really well. We did a training for UNFPA on reproductive health in Eswatini, which was formerly called Swaziland. The whole group had a lot of energy, our team as well as the client. You could see they were personally as well as professionally engaged by this sensitive topic.

I like working in different languages. I’ve worked in French, and I just speak a little. My main languages are English, Swahili, and my native Kikuyu.

What do you do in your spare time?

I always have a project I’m working on, usually house projects. I have a project of the day, a project of the month, and a project of the year – I call them my POD, POM, and POY. A project of the day might be something like moving the paintings around in my apartment. My current project of the year is putting up a cottage on an avocado farm I’m trying to start outside of Nairobi.

Can you tell me what about your early life might have pointed you in the direction of the work you do?

I think that leaving home early to go to boarding school, and then leaving the country at quite a young age, gave me focus. I don’t ever forget why I’m doing this work. It’s about women and children. Seeing the women picking coffee on the farm, with children on their backs, in the heat and the rain, ultimately made it clear to me that I wanted to focus on women and children.

One last thing: I’m wondering about your name. Does it have a specific meaning?

Yes, Gikonyo means a big belly button in Kikuyu! Many male names are nicknames, so most likely there was someone on my father's side who had a big one of those. On the women's side, it is quite different. Kikuyus are matrilineal and are believed to have all come from a line of eight or nine women. Each woman had a role in the house. Waithira is the one who welcomed people, who made sure others were safe and well taken care of. I’m still the one who welcomes people. I love entertaining! Waithira also can make it rain. I wish I could do that!