Listen to Marcia Tate Arunga tell the story of "the stolen ones" and you'll begin to understand.

You'll begin to understand why she and 14 other African-American women, nearly all from the Puget Sound area, are heading to Kenya a week from today. You'll begin to understand why it's so important to them to take books for a school library, to provide showers for an orphanage and to finance scholarships, water tanks and solar-energy projects.

And most importantly, you'll begin to understand that when these women travel thousands of miles to see orphans and activists, teachers and villagers, they aren't exploring something vague and foreign and strange, but something they have carried within them all their lives: Africa.

"I am African," goes a saying whose author is unknown, "not because I was born in Africa, but because Africa was born in me."

Those words resonate with the members of a group called AAKEWO, African American-Kenyan Women's Interconnect, co-founded by Arunga, of Renton, a community-college instructor.

This will be the fourth time in five years that members of the group — professionals in education, the arts, business and public service — have traveled to Africa on a "cultural reconnection mission" seeking to repair the disconnect caused when ancestors of today's African Americans were taken from their homes and families to work as slaves in America.

It was on the group's first visit, in 2000, that a Kenyan woman put a question to Arunga and her companions.

"She said, 'You call yourselves African Americans. Where in Africa do you come from?' " recalls Arunga, 46. "Because she thought that we had all been able to trace our roots like Alex Haley had done."

Arunga explained to her that many African Americans don't know what area their ancestors came from, that the very nature of the slave trade meant that genealogical records were scanty or nonexistent.

And then, as the American visitors listened, the Kenyan woman told a story passed down in her family for generations, of individuals who suddenly went missing and were never seen again.

The missing people, mourned by those left behind, were forever referred to as "the stolen ones," she told them.

"And so," Arunga said. "She looked at us and she said, 'You must be the stolen ones. Welcome home.' "

It was an emotional moment, said Joye Hardiman, 60, another member of the group's Vision and Planning Team.

"To know you were missed. That was powerful," said Hardiman, executive director of The Evergreen State College's Tacoma campus. "It generated a spirit of reciprocity — wanting to be able to enrich the places that we were visiting. And we became family."

Hardiman said hearing that "the stolen ones" were mourned and remembered ran counter to accounts she'd seen in textbooks in Ghana, which suggested that those taken into slavery were misfits and malcontents.

That textbook "mythology" was created to justify slavery and sever the emotional bonds between Africans and their lost kinspeople, said Hardiman, one of five women on this year's trip who hold doctoral degrees.

Bonding over afternoon tea

The idea behind AAKEWO can be traced back to the late 1980s and early 1990s, when Arunga, a Seattle native, was living in her husband's homeland of Kenya and noticing a growing sense of activism among women.

In 1997, Arunga's sister-in-law, Phelgona Okundi, ran for a seat in Kenya's Parliament, and although her election bid was unsuccessful, it energized her supporters, particularly women, boosting their involvement in social and community projects.

The following year, Arunga, who had moved back to the U.S., invited Okundi to an afternoon tea in Renton, to meet a half-dozen African-American women from various occupations.

As the women listened to Okundi, emotional bonds began to form, and the event stretched into the evening, then the night.

"We didn't go away, so she [Arunga] started feeding us," said Benita R. Horn, 58, a human-resources consultant. "We went past tea time and through dinner. ... We sat in a big circle and each woman shared who she was, where she grew up, her family, her experience, her education, her career — how she got to be who she was that day."

Out of the discussion, an idea was formed: The women would travel as a group to Kenya, meet African women, explore common ground and find ways to make positive changes.

AAKEWO COLLECTION Benita Horn helps plant a tree outside a girls school in Kochia, Kenya, in 2004.

Seven women went on the first trip in the spring of 2000. With varying casts of participants, other trips were made in 2003 and last year. The group plans to return to Kenya every year this decade.

Okundi, co-founder of the group with Arunga, died in a car accident in 2003, a month before the American women's second visit. Her spirit, Arunga said, lives on in the group's projects and dedication.

Each of the group's trips have been to Kenya, building on Arunga's ties there. Her husband, David, remains in Kenya as the personal assistant to the Minister of Roads and Public Works.

But the women's emotional connection to Africa transcends national boundaries. "Our identity is with the continent, not just with the country," said LueRachelle Brim-Atkins of Seattle, owner of the organizational development and training firm Brim-Donahoe & Associates.

"Our ancestors probably did not come from Kenya, because most of the slaves in America came from the West Coast of Africa," said Brim-Atkins, 58.

At this point, all members of the group are women. "Women tend to be the traditional culture bearers," said Brim-Atkins. "We are the ones who generally tell the stories, who educate the children about the culture."

But in the next few years the group is likely to add men.

"Resonating experience"

To appreciate the desire to reconnect with Africa, it's important to understand the brutal and systematic nature of the "disconnect," said Horn, of Renton.

"In the enslavement," she said, "there was an intentional process put into play to disconnect us from our culture. Families were broken up. We were forbidden to speak our original languages, forbidden to practice traditions and customs. We were not allowed to gather in groups of more than three or four unless a white overseer was present ... all so we would be more pliant and not be prone to uprisings or retaliation."

In spite of all that, Horn said, "the miracle" is that aspects of African cultures and traditions survived — as the women learn when they meet their counterparts in Africa.

"What our delegates often discover in the course of their experience is tapping into that resonating experience. ... They may say, 'This dish is just like a dish we prepared at home,' or 'This family custom is just like ours,' or 'My aunt grew up saying that phrase.' "

Over the years, AAKEWO members have contributed thousands of dollars of their own money and funds they've raised in their communities to a variety of causes in Kenya.

Among the projects on this two-week trip, the group will finance a septic system, bathrooms, showers and solar lighting at an orphanage in Kisumu, a city of about 185,000 people. Previously, the group purchased cows and chickens for the orphanage.

In Kanyamfwa, Arunga's ancestral village, the women will give books to a school library and funding for a tent and 250 chairs which a women's group will use for gatherings and rent out for income.

Also on this visit, the travelers are taking pens, paper and other supplies to a school in a poor section of Nairobi and money for scholarships to a girls' secondary school in the village of Kochia.

High on the group's wish list, said Brim-Atkins, is someone who could arrange and pay for the use of a cargo container to take more books, school supplies and other necessities. The women have been limited to what they can bring themselves, two 70-pound pieces of luggage per traveler.

In each of their efforts in Kenya, they take their lead from African women.

"We don't go over there as the arrogant Americans [saying], 'Oh, we came over here to tell you people what to do and how to do it,' " Brim-Atkins said. "We don't take a project on unless they've told us that it's something that they need to have done, and that they've already started it."

In addition to the accomplishments in Africa, Arunga said she hopes the group's activities will help create positive images about Africa and foster expanded relationships between people here and there.

One project with both practical and symbolic value has been planting trees outside a girls school. As the planting expands, it may eventually recreate a portion of the rainforest, increasing precious rainfall in the area.

Alma Lorraine Bone Constable of Bellevue, who started a company supporting artisans and entrepreneurs of African descent, has made the trip twice and planted a tree in honor of her mother, who is unable to travel. "I've got an 8-year-old daughter, and as soon as she's old enough, she's going to go see our tree, so there is that family connection."

"It goes back to the idea of reconnection," said Bone Constable, 40. "We were taken, yes. But now we're back. And not only did we come back, but we have our roots back there as well."

Jack Broom: 206-464-2222 or jbroom@seattletimes.com