My 20 long years doing community accompaniment work has been an epic journey, leaving in its wake many footprints in the path of its journey. It is a journey that has been characterised by moments of joy but sometimes pain, moments of fear but also triumph. When I founded Ujamaa Center with comrades Matildah Musumba, Frederick Wachiaya, Simbi Kusimba and Everlyne Kwamboka all of us were very angry. A project we had cooperatively conceived to implement local urban programs in Mombasa Municipality as it then was, was sandbagged right before our very eyes by the leader who leveled very spurious allegations against my colleague Wachiaya following which he terminated his employment, a move that led the rest of us on the team to resign in solidarity with our colleague.

A moment of reflection at a small Cottage in the North Coast convinced us community development was a crusade and a cause to which one must be deeply committed. The Coast region we agreed was a victim of systemic exploitation, social inequalities and inequity that were deeply entrenched. To confront these structural challenges, we took the view that the existing political and social system that produced these problems had to be confronted through programs that understood progress beyond the confines of science to a process that is imbued with values and goals of popular participation.

Ujamaa was thus a response to that moment of need, which we believed, first, was the inability of communities to fully undertake their citizenship roles because they don’t know what they don’t know. Second was the deceptive character of the state and its institutions. Third was the predatory nature of the private sector. And lastly was the lack of accountability, disregard for human rights and social justice that was produced by the three preceding realities. We saw first-hand the system of oppression and exploitation that exists in the environment of the poor. A clientele system in which a culture of silence is enhanced. Widespread and persistent poverty, lack of basic social services and absence of security in most communities we accompanied was almost ordained by God.

In our estimation building, social capital was the single most important pursuit that would help communities ensure that development answers to their needs and desires. In an environment where popular participation is unfettered, the poor are able to analyse their own vulnerabilities, plan, implement, monitor and evaluate their own development, many years of our work at Ujamaa evidences this. We worked with community members with formal schooling and those without. While the former are far more amenable to analysis and or diagnostics, we observed that formal schooling alone is an insufficient condition in preparing communities for the citizenship roles. We can safely say that when one acquires the willingness to unlearn in order to begin to learn, then capacity building should be said to have started, and when one stops talking and starts to listen attributes which formal schooling seems to blunt, this should be a turning point so critical in community building work, itself a crusade, as we came to discover, that bears an emotional charge.

We took our organising work to the communities, we used experience rather than teaching and preferred practice over lectures in a bid to balance knowledge with practice. We used community-based mobilisers to provide continuous process of capacity building that is also reciprocal so that it adjusts facilitators as it does other stakeholders attitudes, values, behavior and practices. A bold civic engagement that centered citizen supremacy has taught us many lessons. Our work was modeled around four theoretical canons, we believed that:

• If we raise the political consciousness of the grassroots communities through training, accompaniment, presence and solidarity, then we enhance their commitment to transcend psychological oppression and support their resolve to take proactive action to transform their lives, that of their communities and the governance systems.
• When we root our work in the culture and political reality of the people then genuine political and social transformation can take place particularly when indigenous and endogenous resources are tapped to respond to context-specific problems and challenges including localized global conflicts.
• When we model a lifestyle and organizational culture that encourages critical attitude, spirituality and commitment to reflection and social action, we enhance the transformation of ourselves, partner organizations, funding partners towards more just and egalitarian relationships.
• When we constantly critique the dominant structures and systems and push our imagination to evolve alternative structures and systems, we are able to mobilize a critical mass to believe that an alternative world is possible where just and egalitarian

Let me share a story about a community I interacted with that I will call Case 1.

“Mary Munaa (not her real name), 35 an ECD teacher at Kaya Waa from 1993 is visited by menacing, machete-wielding community members who are demanding that she uproots the Catholic School and take it upcountry. Fearing for her life she vacates her house in the School to go and live in Kombani. Soon the children start smoking and drinking alcohol due to influence by adults. The children start engaging in unprotected sex, their parents are aware but the teacher is not. The teacher is blamed for these vices. Mzee Juma who donated the land to the school is the most vociferous in demanding that the teacher is sent away because according to him, he donated the land to the Church and the Catholic Priest only gave him a cow in return that he is threatening to pay back. Quarrying activities are commenced near the school toilet and some community members start smoking bhang near the school fence. Indiscipline among the children worsens as abusive and drunk parents become a common sight. Mary is teaching without pay. Kids in the school are armed with knives. “When I publicised details of payments for the borehole water the villagers assaulted me and vandalised the borehole to stop me from demanding what is the school’s right,” Mary says with pain. Both the school and the church had no choice but to close following which some parents and the children demonstrated against Mary, the chief demanding the opening of the school. Quarrying and sex for money are rampant among the children whose parents demand that they go back home with food like the example of Mureithi and KG 3 pupil. Majority are Muslim from the Digo community”

 Even in places where we raised political consciousness to a point communities understood what is right and what should be done, such wilful blindness was persistent. In all the instances we recruited community mobilisers from the community, these wonderful people did their best with minimal support but in circumstances such as the one I describe above, they either became complicit or avoided difficult issues. Communities are therefore over-romanticized, which is not to say that they do not suffer indignities that shame their decency. But that they are not altogether innocent in abetting the tragedies that visit them should be clear for those who do not know. In my next installment I will build on this story. How are communities authors of their circumstances? Why do we vote for demagogues? Why do we celebrate those who commit grave injustices upon us? DISRUPTION  will continue asking these questions.

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