Government working with the community?

This week has been jam packed with days spent in the field. I have to admit that I'm consistently impressed with Kenyans' passion. But also their ability to talk and their audience's ability to sit and listen. In almost every meeting, I am left tapping my feet hoping the speeches will end shortly while the Kenyans wait patiently for the talker (which they all are) to finish.

Ironically, some of the most formal meetings I've attended have been in small, rural villages in Kenya. First of all, every person stands up to introduce themselves. After introductions, the MC usually introduces other important guests then gives a synopsis of what will occur at the meeting. At one of meetings, we had a speech from the committee chairperson. Oh and if you have question, it's necessary to raise your hand then stand to speak your piece. My favourite moment occurred in one of these formal meetings when a chicken walked in to stand in the middle of the floor. He came and went from the meeting at will with no one paying him any mind. I kind of wished that I had that chicken's abiliy to come and go from the meeting.

Even though these meetings are more formal than I'm used to, I've had some powerful moments at them. The first happened this week during a training session for lobby group members. We were training them on the new constitution. Kenya swore in its new constitution in late August. The high in the country is amazing right now. Everyone is talking about how this constitution will change the government. They have high hopes that it will fight corruption and ensure the equal distribution of resources with the implementation of county, as well as national, governments. Historically, members of government have given their tribe, or local region, more resources. Ok, enough history.

My moment in the lobby group training came right at the end. One of the members commented that he wanted to see the lobby groups become finanically sustainable associations in the future. His comment was really cool because Valerie (the project manager) and I had discussed implementing the same idea the week before while writing the final report for this program. Valerie asked me to respond to his suggestion. So I was the one who got to tell them that we are submitting a proposal with that very suggestion to UNIFEM. We'd suggested that CREADIS give lobby groups a loan for start-up capital for income generating activities in order to make them finanically sustainable, as well as allowing them to pay for stationary, lunch and transport for people who attend their meetings. It was amazing to make this announcement because they all clapped for me. I then had to tell them that currently there is no money, but it's a wonderful thought for the moment. I just felt so special when they all clapped for me!

The next day I went to an Accountability Forum. The Kenyan governments has a number of devolved funds that communities can access in order to improve their communities. However, the issue is that these devolved funds often mysteriously go missing while proposed projects are either shoddily completed or not even started. CREADIS with its partners trained community monitors to monitor these projects. This particular day we had gathered stakeholders, including some government officials, to talk about the projects. Of course, we mostly spoke about the projects that had gone awry.
I think the most productive part of this forum was bringing the government officials together with the community members and NGOs to dialogue. Government officials have mentioned to me how NGOs can often make them feel as if they on trial, rather than trying to work with them. I felt the engagement on both sides to try to start working together. Of course, right now its all pretty words.

I did stand up at one point to try and make it a bit more than pretty words. The community members had been complaining about access to information at the government offices. The governance advisor suggested that the government offices post the information on notice boards. Then the community members started to discuss how this suggestion would be difficult to implement. At this point, I stood up to ask the government officials representing their offices if they could act as our lobby in the office to produce these notice boards. One of the officials promised to have the notice board posted in two days. We still need to follow up to find out if they've actually fulfilled their promises, but I'll keep you posted.