Gabriela Mistral Arrives in Africa

Eighty years after Gabriela Mistral received the Nobel Prize, Chile is debating how best to honor her legacy: with a statue, an avenue, or a new national award. But it is worth remembering that true homage is not always cast in marble or dictated by protocol. Sometimes, it blooms quietly in distant soil—without name or ceremony—in small yet transformative acts.

In Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, there is a school named after Gabriela Mistral. Just another one, a reader might think. But when that tribute appears on the other side of the world—in a country with a different language, history, and geography—the question is not why it’s there, but how her words managed to cross borders and tongues. To this symbolic recognition is added a tangible one: the Chilean Embassy has distributed more than five thousand copies of her children’s poems, translated into Swahili, Kenya’s local language alongside English. It’s a simple gesture, but a meaningful one. Yet what truly matters is not the circulation of her texts, but the enduring vitality of her ideas—and those have indeed reached Africa.

For Mistral lives wherever a woman is cared for, wherever childhood is protected, wherever dignity is defended as a right rather than an exception. She lives wherever acts of radical tenderness and pedagogical vocation take root—where abandonment and despair are resisted with what is essential: presence, affection, and a word of encouragement.

The Nobel laureate wrote that to educate a woman is to make her free and dignified, and that “opening a broader field of possibilities for her is to rescue many victims from degradation.” The person who embodies those words today—perhaps without ever having read them—is Domtila Ayot, a 75-year-old Kenyan woman who has devoted her life to supporting pregnant girls and adolescents in extreme vulnerability. Her story has yet to appear in books or documentaries.

She lives in Kibera, Kenya’s most densely populated informal settlement—and one of the largest in Africa. With patience and courage, Domtila has built a shelter for young mothers who would otherwise face their struggles alone. Amid overcrowding, poverty, and neglect, her work—like Mistral’s in her time—consists in turning the impossible into something livable, and the livable into something hopeful. Both women, from different geographies and eras, share the same calling: to protect women, affirm their dignity, and open horizons when all seems closed. One through words and diplomacy; the other, through daily and often invisible action.

Moved by this reality, ten years ago a group of young Chileans joined the effort on the ground, founding Fundación Maisha, a Chilean-Kenyan initiative that now supports hundreds of women through pregnancy and postpartum, allowing them to welcome their children in the dignified conditions both deserve. Through international cooperation, this foundation has made care, health, and education a concrete act of justice—just as Mistral envisioned.

Perhaps that is one of the deepest tributes to Mistral: not a statue, but a continuation; not a celebration, but a sowing. For between poetry and action, we continue to open that field of possibility she dreamed of—not only for Chilean women, but for women everywhere.

Simón Pinto Flores

Former Field Volunteer 2025

Fundación Maisha