by Becky Lam
In an instant, her voice shot up an octave in pure joy and excitement: “Oh yeah, it’s the best for little girls! They give them a measure to achieve to get a patch, it’s incredible! And I’m very Type-A.” There was a structure for success and palpable anticipation that appealed to the best parts of Kijafa in her youth. “I was a sucker for it as a kid—I loved it. Then going to Girl Scouts Camp was, for sure, my favorite part of childhood. It’s so fun. Everything about Girl Scouts Camp is THE BEST!”
Kijafa described her experience as a Girl Scout with the same level of enthusiasm as she had as a young girl. She had spent a large part of her adolescence playing outside in the Texas Hill Country, so she was no stranger to the outdoors. But what she didn’t get growing up as a latchkey kid in a small Texas town was the sense of community she found with the Girl Scouts. Selling cookies was the easy part (who doesn’t love coming home with a box of Thin Mints or Trefoils?), but what the cookies meant for Kijafa and many other girls was the opportunity to go to camp.
Before settling into the Hill Country, Kijafa grew up as a military brat, bouncing around with her family from place to place. (It served her well later in her young adulthood: “I’m really used to transitions and moving. I never lived in one place for very long.”) By the time she started fifth grade, her mother moved Kijafa and her brother out to Leander, Texas. She remembers the feeling of remoteness and living in the middle of nowhere in the country. “Growing up, you would leave Austin and drive north—and then Austin would stop and there would be nothing and nothing and nothing and nothing—and turn down this little road. And you’re like, ‘Where am I going?’ All of a sudden there’ll be my neighborhood: it was five streets of developed houses like a tract home development and then nothing around it for miles.”
By the time they arrived in Leander, Kijafa’s mother was a single parent whose main intention was to get her children safely out of the bad neighborhood where they last lived. They had been living in a place where the local crime and violence meant that the kids couldn’t play outside. “That was the whole point of her going to the suburbs or going to not a rough neighborhood was that, ‘Y’all are gonna use that space. I’m paying this mortgage, you’re gonna go outside!’ So we went outside.”
During the summers, her mother locked Kijafa and her brother out of the house, chastising them for watching too much television and forcing them to actively play or socialize. At that time, everything that surrounded their neighborhood was undeveloped land, so it resulted in a childhood full of climbing trees, swimming in the river, and playing in the fields. Kijafa always had an affinity for the stillness and solitude of nature, so she didn’t mind spending so much time outdoors. And when she wasn’t alone, the family dog was with her playing in the yard or out on a walk. Gradually, the outdoors became a reliable constant in her life and a place of refuge. “I’ve always found taking the dog for a walk and going on hikes is the one familiar [throughout] living in different households or different roommate configurations and that kind of thing. Yeah, it’s definitely a place to find familiarity.”
Kijafa is grateful that her mom persistently pushed her and her brother outside. Her mom was never a hiker or camper, but as a busy single parent, encouraging her kids to participate in activities like soccer and scouting helped expose them to new things and kept them busy. That’s when Kijafa went to her first Girl Scout Camp and immediately, she was hooked. She always looked forward to selling cookies each year because it was how every girl fundraised for summer camp:
“It’s a pretty easy mark. That’s the whole thing as a kid—you could always go and so everyone went. It was a really openly equitable thing to do. And then, Girl Scout Camp was amazing! It was this world of just all women, which in hindsight was so cool. The staff was all female and we did everything from hiking to lake stuff to trails and just everything was outdoors. And you’re sleeping in tents and there’s campfires and flagpoles—just so American, if you will, but I loved it… In my head, I can’t imagine a group of girls being able to get together and be so congenial, but there was never fighting. You always made best friends by the end of it.”
Simply the ability to participate was remarkable to Kijafa. By taking the financial burden away (because again, who doesn’t want to buy boxes of Girl Scout cookies?), it meant that a lot of different girls were able to experience camp. Kijafa’s troop was comprised of all black girls and when she went to camp, she felt a huge sense of camaraderie with everyone there because being in the outdoors brought them together. “Girl Scout Camp was really diverse, which was kinda cool, so I think it was a huge normalizer [because] people just like you liked the outdoors, and you just went.” Whether the girls were from the country or the city, there was nothing that divided them and to this day, Kijafa still keeps in touch with a few of the friends she made at camp. “It really made the outdoors accessible… It definitely was a huge mix of people from all over the state.” Girl Scout Camp was a unique experience that she reflects on as an influential part of her upbringing.
Between the rural surroundings and the Girl Scouts, Kijafa recalls her adolescence in central Texas as proverbial and idyllic. It was the longest time she had ever spent in one place, so when the time came to apply for college, she was itching to leave. A small town upbringing left Kijafa yearning for urban life while giving into visions of what “the California Dream” looked like. “I lived land-locked for so long, I definitely wanted the beach life or whatever I imagined that to be in my head.” So she researched schools around the most quintessential big city by the beach, Los Angeles, and wound up in the valley at Cal State Northridge.
One major factor in her decision to move to L.A. was maintaining a proximity to the outdoors. “I wanted to travel and I wanted to see things and I felt like Los Angeles was the vanguard of all of that! It’s just so many opportunities of ‘The Big City’, but I could still have the beach and nature and all the things.” Access to the coast, Southern California culture, and the sprawling urban environment painted the picture of Kijafa’s college years. She quickly noted how the “outdoorsiness” of L.A. stood in stark contrast to the Texas pride associated with the rural, outdoor living that she had grown up with. In L.A., the world surrounded the sun. “You can go surfing and hiking and snowboarding (if you’re into that) all in one day. And still be downtown and in the major metropolis… the outdoor malls were the things that was the weirdest to me.” And because all of her friends surfed, one day, she picked up a long board and started surfing too.
It was in college that she also learned how to backpack and “rough it” in the woods. She dated someone who grew up in the outdoors hiking the Sierras and the John Muir Trail. “I definitely took my camping up a notch with that relationship and definitely learned backpacking!” All of which helped her prepare for her next journey after college: living in the desert of southwestern Africa. After finishing back-to-back degrees in Public Policy, Kijafa joined the Peace Corps and was sent to Namibia for her tenure. “So then, I lived in the desert. I don’t know if that counts? I mean, it’s outdoorsy and all, and ironically, again, I lived in the city.”
And by “city”, she meant a town of a few thousand people. “I wanted to go to Africa and I definitely wanted to be in an African city, that was my dream.” She had imagined a dense, urban center like Accra, but when the Peace Corps assigned her to work with a non-profit based in Namibia, the second least densely populated country in the world, Kijafa knew she was in for a long haul. “It was like a lot of my small-town-ness came back to me. And it’s just this little city plopped in the desert.”
In Namibia, she often hitchhiked from town to town and tested her wilderness skills with light packing and minimalist camping. One of Kijafa’s favorite trips was backpacking through the Erongo region to see one of the archaeological examples of Bushmen cave paintings in a remote mountainous area. The hike required trekking out and camping in a valley that felt like the middle of nowhere. (Much like the ‘Dawn of Man’ sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey, whose famous landscape scenes were filmed in Namibia.) A deeply humbling experience, Kijafa was grateful that her backpacking knowledge helped her through this trek and many others to come.
For two years, she worked as a health volunteer doing HIV/AIDS prevention education with primary school kids. The coastal town where Kijafa resided reflected much of the colonial history of forced occupation, violence, and indigenous displacement in a country that was once controversially referred to as German South West Africa. “The town was called Swakopmund, which is the most German word you’ve ever heard. And when you walked around, it felt like a 19th century German village… It actually felt like moving to the 1930’s Jim Crow South. It was so weird, there was so much racism I experienced and it was so intense.”
Not only was she taken aback by the existing infrastructures of colonialism, but she was also stunned by the landscape of the surrounding coast. Controlled by the lucrative and maligned diamond trade, some beaches with rich gemstone deposits were widely known to be where trespassers were shot on sight with no questions asked. Apart from the deadly use of force and adding to the ominous atmosphere, the Namibian shores of the Atlantic Ocean was unwelcoming and cold:
“The weather there is very much similar to San Francisco. It’s a cold, foggy beach [where] the fog will melt off by the afternoon and you get an hour or two of sunlight. But the water is this Arctic current coming through and there is a huge population of Great Whites in the water. So I never got in the water that much there. I knew people who surfed there, but I was like, ‘Absolutely not!’ It’s a world class surf break. But also, you need to be a professional surfer… Every now and again, I’d meet expats from western countries who were there just to surf it.”
Working with the impoverished local communities while living among the colonialist townspeople was painfully disorienting. There were clearly two worlds pitted against each other. On one hand, Kijafa spent her days with the indigenous people around town who burned plastic refuse in their cooking fires, unknowingly spewing dangerous toxins into their air, water, and onto their food; while on the other hand, she watched European tourists who ventured out to remote lodges, touring the “exotic” landscape and hunting for wildlife. Of the indigenous population: “They’ve lost so much of the connection to the land because I think they were forced to when they were colonized and [oppressed] in this way. It’s really sad… That was the most emotionally complex thing for me. And then ironically, they put the black American volunteer in the racist white town.”
Once her service with the Peace Corps ended, Kijafa returned to Los Angeles and immediately found that she could no longer stand to be there. Having experienced what she did in Namibia, the culture and industry in L.A. were now tinged with an odious color. She needed to get out. “It was a really rough transition back. I was very unhappy in L.A.—it was just not a good returning path.” At the time, an old roommate had moved to San Francisco and Kijafa followed them on a whim. She was looking for a slower pace of life and a new community that felt more authentic and aligned with her values.
It is in San Francisco that Kijafa made a new home. Having found what she needed, Namibia now feels like a lifetime ago. She’s gained a sense of purpose in the community and pursues work that she loves with a foster care mental health agency. “It’s been a lovely unfold. I’ve always worked with kids professionally, [so] I definitely think I’ve prepared my whole life for this jam. I’m killing it in my career, which is cool. It all culminated here in this place.” She’s also rediscovered home through the comfort of nature with all of the city’s parks, trees, and proximity to the wilderness. San Francisco reminds her of Austin, only with more people and better walkability.
As someone who’s moved around a lot, Kijafa recognizes that having access to nature has been her version of a security blanket, providing much needed familiarity and stability. She still regards the outdoors as the one constant thread throughout her life. “I think that maybe when I was younger, I just wanted a fast life. Just moving and things and happenings and activities and stimulation! And now as I get older and deeper into my thirties, I recognize that nature provides a stillness that I don’t get anywhere else in my life.” (She even misses her old “country” lifestyle.)
Today, she credits her dogs for forcing her to take walks and to slow down as she often gets wrapped up in work. She’s focusing on being more intentional about getting outside for weekend hikes or camping trips. “You kinda have to leave the city to really get to the middle of nowhere and I feel like, especially living in a densely populated urban environment, it’s so important to do that.” It’s still a work in progress, though she’s gotten better at accessing nature as her healing space. Or as Kijafa puts it: “Get out to get perspective.”
