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The struggle with many a rigid Logooli cultural practices

  The Logooli community is one of the deeply cultured societies – with near everything supposed to have been done as per custom – to allow another custom to follow. One example is that for a mature man (with a child or more) to be buried, there must be a house structure at home. Another is that a boy must be circumcised and nursed in father land. If maternal family decides to, the boy will have a hard time reconnecting with father people - a dent on his masculinity. There were two children who got burnt to death in a house in Nairobi. The single mother had left for night work. Elders were told that one of the children was Logooli. The other, the woman had sired with someone else. The Logooli family wanted to burry their little one and long discussed the do’s and don’ts. Of a man who died childless and the grave was placed as if he had died as a man with children. It should have been dug on the sides, the grave. A real thorn should have been thrust in his buttocks, his name go...
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Hello Development Agent - You need to widen your circle

The larger your circle, they wrongly advise, the more the bullshit to deal with. But how can you reduce your circle when you are a community development agent?

Take the case of Wodanga Ward, Sabatia Sub-county. The community, on the surface, can be said to be homogenous – sharing same Logooli culture and language, a rural community where people know each other in one way or another. 

Yet heterogeneous too as Wodanga is made up of five sub-counties and numerous villages, often separated by valley bottoms. Talk of clans that a development agent has to know, talk of churches that shape the talks. Talk of the genders and different age-groups that are directly or indirectly involved in a project. 

How then can you avoid having a wide circle? That is difficult. And is bullshit the only returns gained from increased association? 

Perhaps by seeing too much bullshit is when one gets the heart to keep on, despite. To seek deeper and know the cause, whether external or internal. To more or less become one with the community, where their shortcomings do not overcome your vision to them. 

Do not fear then, fellow brother or sister in your desire to engage. Do not give up when one option fails or the noise is stronger than your spirit. Yes, and many have been there, branded wrongly. You take it differently when you are sure you did the right thing. 

Force yourself to that church even when you think a modern believer should be given a yearly calendar and if anything Sunday offerings sent on phone. There you will be, listening to unnecessary church notices as you think of them, before you can be given a chance to say what you had. 

Attend the open funerals, if you have time. Or could you be able to make your own congregation? We work with existing structures for a reason – we, thought community development agents. 

And it is not for outspoken personalities to do that. You, the loner or ambivert can catalyze community action too. If anything the project, like a human, needs the liveliness of an extrovert in coming together to take action and the meditations of an introvert for monitoring to sustainability. 

From the larger circle, when planning again, you can now admit enablers on the strengths you have personally identified. Whom you would not have known had you decided to avoid being a participant in forums you knew were of no benefits to you. 

Suffer it that your community engagements are not to drain you. Take a moment and start thinking how you can overcome the challenges and in the end rise up as a notable community leader – and that, to me, you will be the bull that shits best if not the happy farmer’s lactating cow! 


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