Kamau Jawara, August 30th, 2024

Title

Kamau Jawara, August 30th, 2024

Description

In this interview, Kamau Jawara discusses his efforts towards community building while navigating the pandemic.

Publisher

Detroit Historical Society

Rights

Detroit Historical Society

Language

en-US

Narrator/Interviewee's Name

Kamau Jawara

Interviewer's Name

Taylor Claybrook

Date

8/30/2024

Interview Length

23:32

Transcription

Taylor Claybrook: [00:00:01] Okay. Today is August 30th, 2024. My name is Taylor Claybrook and I'm sitting down with...

Kamau Jawara: [00:00:10] Kamau Jawara. You need spelling or?

Taylor Claybrook: [00:00:12] No...Well, actually, you can, you can spell it.

Kamau Jawara: [00:00:16] Yeah. Yeah. Kamau Jawara K a m a u J a w a r a

Taylor Claybrook: [00:00:24] Thank you. So I'm going to start by asking what was your initial reaction to hearing about Covid like the initial idea that Covid is this thing now?

Kamau Jawara: [00:00:35] Yeah. I mean, I was actually like a senior at Wayne and I was living on campus. And I think, you know, from the outset, it was probably that fall 2019 where there were like, you know, minimal conversations about it, but it was like assumed to be something that would be resolved. I don't think it really reached its peak until probably March of 2020, where, you know, that's kind of like where Wayne State sent out notice. Particularly for students to, like, move out like they gave us like 48 hours. It was kind of like, oh. Okay. Cool. So, yeah, I think just my first thoughts in general was like one like it being historic because for me, you know, we I had lived through, like the swine flu I had lived through, of course, like other outbreaks. And this is kind of the biggest thing that I had seen where spaces were being shut down. And there was like, mandates to be inside. So it's pretty historic in that way of like how it very quickly shifted what like community and also to what, like people's day to day would be like. So yeah.

Taylor Claybrook: [00:01:41] And so that's when it was initially spreading. So when lockdown finally happened and they were like, hey, March 13th 2020, everybody has to go inside. What was that like for you?

Kamau Jawara: [00:01:50] It was wild. I think, for me like, you know, I moved back into my parents house because that's before I was like, even renting elsewhere. And the shift to ...one, that shift is interesting because you're, like, in your childhood bedroom, and so you're like, okay, like, how can I make this work? But in addition to that, you know. Graduating. I'm still finishing up my courses online, but after graduating felt very interesting because there wasn't that, you know, that feeling that we have. Okay, I've graduated and now I need to go to work. I need to go like find employment. There was a moment of calm and still. So I think in that way it was interesting, but it was also a good reminder for me, just sort of like what I wanted in terms of like community and neighborhoods, because like most days were finding hobbies. Like that's why everyone was getting into banana bread and stuff like that. But, also going for walks, it's kind of like seeing that, like, okay, like there are parks nearby, but there's not enough outdoor seating and there's not enough places where people can just kind of like, be and, you know, they can like socially distance. And so I think for me, it was pretty hard at first, just from the standpoint of like not having going from like full on engagement interaction to absolutely nothing. And then my like my immediate family. But then in addition to that, I think just the, the day to day, I was like, finding something to do was pretty interesting and, you know, it kind of turned into a lot of, like, skill building and hobbies and stuff of that sort.

Taylor Claybrook: [00:03:24] So going back a little bit, you said you moved into your parents home. Where is home?

Kamau Jawara: [00:03:28] So I'm an east sider. Like I'm a lifelong east sider So like, grew up off East Warren so my parents live, the neighborhood over from me. They're on Morningside, so it's over there.

Taylor Claybrook: [00:03:39] And then, before you moved back home, you were living on campus. Where? Which dorm?

Kamau Jawara: [00:03:44] Yeah, I was in the Anthony Wayne apartments. Yeah. Like, that was like the second year.

Taylor Claybrook: [00:03:48] Loved it there.

Kamau Jawara: [00:03:49] Yeah, they were great.

Taylor Claybrook: [00:03:52] But can you explain your program, your undergraduate program?

Kamau Jawara: [00:03:55] Yeah. So I was an urban studies student here. Yeah. Urban studies. I think I had a minor, but I definitely dropped it, like along the way. But yeah it was urban studies.

Taylor Claybrook: [00:04:07] And so you mentioned that you were in your senior year, but, how was your academic career impacted aside from, you know, coming back home?

Kamau Jawara: [00:04:14] Yeah. I think it was...I mean, there's a couple of things. For one, the transition to, solely online courses was particularly difficult when you're doing your capstone just because that's like your that's you finishing up your time at the university. So I think that transition was difficult in terms of having to work with a group that you would probably generally see in person on, kind of like a deep research project. And even outside of that, like a lot of my academic time at Wayne was like spent doing student organizing, and like student programs. So very quickly we pivoted to doing zoom programing. It's like we have to, like, continue to have meetings or engage with each other, but not having that social cultural program that, like, was so easy to do in person. So I think just from like both the like academic challenges, but then also to the lack of social engagement and graduation was really difficult. And I mean, we were that class or there wasn't really like a graduation.

Taylor Claybrook: [00:05:16] Yeah, what was that like?

Kamau Jawara: [00:05:17] Yeah.

Taylor Claybrook: [00:05:19] I talked to a few people that had online graduation.

Kamau Jawara: [00:05:20] It was... It was interesting. I mean, they had the redux one that I didn't do and that was one that Stevie Wonder, so my bad. But yeah, for us, one of the big things for black students particularly is black...black graduation. And a lot of us are, like, super excited for it as students that like were really involved with, the Office of Multicultural Student Engagement and just black issues on campus. So we didn't have black student like black graduation. That was the first thing. But in addition to that, we had a zoom ceremony where I think, you know, President Wilson was president, and they kind of just, like, read off folks names, just kind of randomly, terribly, mispronunciations and all. And that was like one moment to kind of acknowledge your time at the university. And after that, you know, they mailed your diploma. So for me, it was tough cause it was like a transition from being very present and very engaged in a space to like, and also to nurturing, you know, better outcomes in a university. I think one of the big things that we talk about frequently is like my class coming in in 2016, you know, formed student programs that increased black male graduation. And then when we graduated, it was kind of like, see y'all, all right, cool.

Taylor Claybrook: [00:06:40] I'm going to read your name on a slide show, bye!

Kamau Jawara: [00:06:41] So yeah, there wasn't really like a good symbolic conclusion or acknowledgment of that transformation, which was interesting. So, yeah, definitely like one of the more strange experiences I think I've had in academic space.

Taylor Claybrook: [00:06:58] That will bring me to some of my later questions.

Kamau Jawara: [00:07:00] Yeah.

Taylor Claybrook: [00:07:00] Very interesting. I do want to ask, so you did kind of mention going from in-person to online. What was it like getting back into the world after some of the restrictions have been lifted? I know you were...You had been, you graduated by then?

Kamau Jawara: [00:07:13] Yeah. Yeah. So things felt like they started to lift late 2021, people were kind of like lifting some things, and then 2022 was like full on, go back into the world. So by that point I had moved, I was renting, I was living over in West Village, actually off of Jefferson, and either working by this point. It's like I was, you know, organizing for the work that I worked for. So I think my experience is a little bit different from most people, just in the sense that, you know, 2021, we had municipal elections in Detroit. And so that meant that, you know, we particularly, like a lot of my work, is engaging people in the political process, talking about it, educating folks, canvasing. So it really called for like a bit of like, how do we safely do canvasing, talking to voters, voter engagement while Covid is still like a high risk. And so a lot of it was coordinating particularly like with like our organization, but also to a partner orgs to do joint programing so that we could pool resources into one place of like, we need this many masks, we need this many like fliers lit all those things. And so it was, it was a bit strange because like folk where, you know, canvasing is already a bit of like a "Hi, I'm knocking at your door kind of thing" But folk were even more hesitant and cautious just because of Covid. And so there were new things that we had to do, like whether it was masking, whether it was instead of the usual five feet, maybe you're seven feet away and you're talking from the sidewalk. So there were a lot of changes, particularly to like, community work that happened. But also I think outside of that, there was still the reality that like, you know, for large engagements, if you are ever doing like a social event or family get together, there's a really high risk that someone would leave with Covid or there would be like a couple weeks after where folks are kind of recovering. And so that was still, I feel like a rhythm which made outdoor space feel very challenging. Just because I don't think everyone was as thoughtful about those things and those expectations. So it was like balancing that of like, I know what we should do from my like, public health standpoint, but also in, in most spaces weren't doing it.

Taylor Claybrook: [00:09:35] And on that same note, I do want to ask how is your sense of community at school and in your personal life?

Kamau Jawara: [00:09:41] Oh, so this is the yeah, the question. I mean, for me, in university, it was like that was everything. I was not like.

Taylor Claybrook: [00:09:49] Also you said you had, you created an organization to improve black male graduation. Can you...What's the name of that?

Kamau Jawara: [00:09:56] Oh, yeah. The org was called the Brotherhood. It was founded in 2017. Yeah, spring of 2017. Really with the focus of, like, focusing on black male retention and then more long term, it was like helping build other black leadership, student organizations at Wayne. So for me, community with that, like, I had spent a lot of time not only like you like using that as like a revenue vehicle for like cultural programing, but also the other things, whether it was like study sessions, whether it was building programs where people could meet professionals in their field and externship. So yeah, most of my like, kind of cultural experience was there, but also to in programs like warrior VIP, the office of multicultural student engagement. It's a really a lot of student programs. That was like most of what I focused on. I always joke that I was like, my grades are fine. I was never like a I'm never going to have a 4.0 here, I didn't care. So yeah, for me, community was like largely a lot of folks my age with a lot of similar orientation and values. And I think that your follow up question was like, what was it like after.

Taylor Claybrook: [00:11:11] Your...sorry, how was your sense of community impacted in your personal life?

Kamau Jawara: [00:11:16] Yeah, I think it was very different in the sense that, you know, we had a short period where we were doing, you know, zoom calls or we were talking and kind of hanging out. There was like a zoom book club at a particular point that I facilitated in 2020 where we I think we're reading Origins of Urban Crisis. And so there was like a lot of supplementing what we weren't necessarily getting in person. And I think the difference is that 2020 was a really ripe year for people just having time. So there was like a lot of I mean, there was a lot more engagement than I anticipated for some of those things, just because people like needed something to do. I think the challenge was you know, there it was, balancing both grief and also like purpose in those spaces, I think. Just because it was something that was so immediately close to people in terms of families, losing family, losing elders, a lot of folks actually needed time to, like, unplug and unpack a lot of that before doing social programs or saying like, oh, we're going to like screen a film. So it was very different in the sense that, like a lot of our, trauma work or like restorative work that we were able to do with people prior to the pandemic was in-person, it's one on one. You can kind of have a conversation. The shift is now that, like, you have to do a lot of it, like digitally. And so that actually it's it's much harder to have like probing conversation with someone to understand like what they're going through. When you have that kind of gap of like digital and oh, what? Like, did you speak or where are you going to be all those awkward things, yeah.

Taylor Claybrook: [00:12:57] So you kind of talked about some of the things that kept you busy during lockdown, but you also mentioned, the skill building. What was your skill?

Kamau Jawara: [00:13:07] Yeah, I really honed in. I don't know. I, just as, just probably...

Taylor Claybrook: [00:13:12] I know we all did so much. So you mentioned banana bread, and I was like, I used to make banana bread. Yeah, I used to go on walks and do rollerskating and longboarding.

Kamau Jawara: [00:13:19] And it was just like, whatever my ADHD pulled me into, I mean, part of it was like a lot of reading, particularly like urbanism, but also to political theory. So I was like really interested in a lot of that, just like building upon, like what I went to school for. A lot of, like, music history. I've always been a big music nerd, so that was a big thing that I really honed in on. That period, I was taking courses around, like, fundraising and like, grant writing was another thing that was like honing in on, and in addition to that, I think just like getting back into art illustration, digital art. So a lot of I think things that I'm now like introducing to the world just visually and creatively, were things I was working on, whether it was music, whether it was art, illustration, like cartoons. So a lot of those things, it kind of created the impetus for like, oh, I can like dive back into all these hobbies, and weirdly got back into, like, gaming for a little short period, which it didn't last, but it was nice for the moment to just, like, do something else. So yeah.

Taylor Claybrook: [00:14:29] Yeah, Covid definitely gave us the opportunity to dabble in a little bit of everything. Yeah, kind of fun sometimes. Let's see. So what was it like interacting with your family that lived outside of the house?

Kamau Jawara: [00:14:44] I mean, it was very rare. We did, I do remember this distinctly. We would do similarly, like zoom calls, and it would be like once a month, generally on a Sunday, and it would be evening call. And I mean, there was just like the implied, you have to be here. It would be really awkward to like, oh, where like, why aren't you on the call? But, I think it was nice just for folks to have... it was pretty much my dad's side of the family that did this. It's nice for folk to just, like, be able to update each other on, like, what's going on in each other's house. What's new is like, oh, I change this in the house or. But, yeah, I mean, it was pretty, like, tame. It wasn't like something deeply engaging. But that's also speaks to my relationship with them. Yes, it was cool. Yeah. You know, it was helpful.

Taylor Claybrook: [00:15:33] Yeah. I was telling one of the other interviewees who is also black. It's it was hard during Covid because so many black families like we build community around being around one another. Yeah. So Covid was it was hard on a lot of people, especially the older folks in black families that didn't know what zoom was exactly. They were like, like, can I see you again? And...That whole thing.

Kamau Jawara: [00:15:56] Yeah. It meant that you have to call like you have to call... You know, my granny's 82 now, so I meant that I had to call her as opposed to, hey, we're gonna hop on a zoom call because it took her a while to kind of get there. Yeah.

Taylor Claybrook: [00:16:10] Is there anything you wish Wayne State would have done differently? Or is there anything that you appreciate about the Covid efforts?

Kamau Jawara: [00:16:19] Yeah. I don't know what they could have done differently. I do think that in terms of the kind of like rapid move out that was, I mean, the same state of panic that I think most people had. So I actually why I think it was a big inconvenience for a lot of students, just from a like class standpoint of like, not every student can quickly like, hey, we're going to rent a U-Haul and move. But I do think that like for them, they were trying to respond as quickly as they could while also preserving housing for immigrant students and first generation students that needed to be on campus. So I think in that sense, they responded the best way they possibly could. Just, like, how do we reduce the amount of risk that we have on campus? The one place, I think, where there were... Was opportunity for you know, probably some support is I think that, you know, I talk about this a lot with a lot of, you know, that I graduated with and other folks from when there wasn't a lot of support around how do we sustain student programs, how do we sustain cultural programs on campus? Just because I think everyone was so honed in on how do we move courses to being hybrid, how do we accommodate in that way? And so I think there's a lot of student, participation and student programs that just kind of dissipated during that period just because there wasn't a like, a toolkit or support or ways for, them to think about, you know, what things can we fund that support to and programs? So I think that's probably the biggest thing I would think of is just a ways to kind of support students through some of that, and then also probably additional resources from the like, mental health standpoint. I think Wayne State, it's been very interesting about like random mental health days here and there, but I think there was definitely a need for that. You know, particularly when I was, after I graduated, it's kind of a little bit working still for VIP. And this was around the time they were consolidating some of the, pre-college programs like Apex. And some of those things are being absorbed into one thing. One of the things that they weren't as thoughtful about is. You know you have maybe you have 600 incoming black and brown students that are like moving through those kind of like bridge programs, and then you're, like, siphoning them all to one place. You actually need to kind of create some resources for them around mental health. Particularly like navigating college, understanding that it's going to be twice as hard being at home and trying to do school. So, I think that's probably the only big thing I would change or like, wish they would have done. It's just really thinking about their incoming classes and the way that they could kind of build a better container for them.

Taylor Claybrook: [00:19:12] So if you don't mind me asking, are the organizations you were in, are they still active today?

Kamau Jawara: [00:19:18] A few are. Yeah. Black Student Union is still present. I believe the Network and RISE are still present. Most Greek organizations are still going. I think those would be the only ones, because I don't think, QTPOC queer trans people of color. I don't think the Brotherhood, well the Brotherhood isn't and then the Sisterhood isn't. And I don't think that AAPSO, which is...

Taylor Claybrook: [00:19:46] Yeah, and I only ask because, like you said, a lot of student organizations suffered during Covid, and we had those few like the greek organizations that slowly made it back onto campus when covid was over. So I was just wondering, like...

Kamau Jawara: [00:20:00] Yeah I'm pretty... Yeah, a lot of that is like dissolved and some of it has been consolidated into things like Black Convergence, or Crockett Lumumba Scholars. But yeah, a lot of it's gone.

Taylor Claybrook: [00:20:11] And then the last question is how has Covid impacted who or where you are today, where that could be academic, career, personal?

Kamau Jawara: [00:20:21] I think, I mean, it's all of the things, I was hosting..I'm sorry, I'm a big anecdote person. That's why I'm not running for office.

Taylor Claybrook: [00:20:28] No, it's, you're very involved in the community.

Kamau Jawara: [00:20:32] This is always like, a like... I'm just thinking of a story, but, like, I was hosting, like a black male talk the other day. And one of the things that one of the like, one of the guys shared, you know, he's 31. He's a dad works at U of M, kind of like in administrative work. But he acknowledged that like the meeting that we were having, which is really just like getting to talk about the challenges we're facing, both like materially, politically, economically, mentally. At this particular moment, he realized that like in this meeting, he was coming out of the fog of the pandemic, and he kind of said that to the room. I bring that up because I think for ...for me and probably others, there is a bit of like survival that I think we inherently took on. Particularly in 2020 because of the pandemic and also the like, political arena in 2020 and what was going on. So a lot of us kind of adjusted to like, how can I survive? How can I just like, whether it's like finding employment, whether it's hunkering down for how long. And it actually pulled a lot of people. But I think what's kind of ironic about it is like there were folk that were exploring new hobbies, new interest, but not a lot of ways, like when we came out of the pandemic, a lot of those dissolved for a lot of people. Yeah, it was like, oh, I got into all these things, and now they're kind of gone. Or they're like taking a backseat, because I think we were very quick to say, okay, the world is back open. Now I need to like hyper activate around, like working a ton or like so, so forth, so on. So I think now what we're kind of seeing, which is interesting, like four years after kind of similar, in terms of like context that folk are in politically and also just socio.. Socially. There are a lot of people that are like waking up or like, whoa, what happened? Like, where was I for four years? A lot of folk that were kind of feeling on autopilot, but I think it's because we immediately rushed back into, okay, like we're going to go back into status quo business per usual. And not really think about how do we reshape our communities. Our society. So for someone to be radically different so that this thing doesn't happen again.

Taylor Claybrook: [00:22:51] I think that's a really good perspective because I feel like you're right. So many people went back to work, and we didn't really reflect on the fact that we lived through a global health crisis. Yeah. Where a lot of people died, a lot of people were very traumatized. So it's good that you... You know, remain true to what you believe in. I think that's everything. So. Do you have any additional...

Kamau Jawara: [00:23:19] Yeah I have many thoughts, I don't think they do...Yeah, they don't belong here.

Taylor Claybrook: [00:23:23] I mean, if you want, you can share some. It's no pressure.

Kamau Jawara: [00:23:27] Yeah. I don't think there's anything else. Okay. Yeah.

Taylor Claybrook: [00:23:30] Okay. I

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Citation

“Kamau Jawara, August 30th, 2024,” Detroit Historical Society Oral History Archive, accessed February 14, 2025, https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/items/show/1068.

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