Åland Peace Fellow 2023: “The desire to learn is my driving force”
This year’s Peace Fellow is Clifford Okwany from Kenya. He is the third Peace Fellow to stay on Åland. Last Sunday he set foot on Ålandic soil for the first time – and now he is installed with us at the Peace Institute. Today the sun shines into the library, which will be his office during the fall. In two months, it will be much darker and rougher outside the window. But Cliff Okwany doesn’t mind. – I’m quite flexible as a person, he says, explaining how he got used to the cold during an extended stay in Norway. Norway as a country was very different from Kenya and there were things he both liked and disliked. But Cliff always tries to hold on to the good things. – I am driven by a passion to learn new things and in every new situation I look for what it could be,” he says. He has always had that curiosity. However, he has not always liked school. A political scientist and PhD student at the University of Nairobi, Cliff grew up in the eastern part of the Kenyan capital as the third of nine siblings. He says his sisters were much smarter than him. – I […]