Say hello to Riverside Usafi Group

So I have basically settled into a pattern where I catch up on office work from home in the mornings and then go to Kibera in the afternoons for meetings. This week, these meetings were largely regarding the establishment of the CBO, the process for which is now finally underway, after a fairly bumpy ride.

The biggest difficulty has been working with James from YDF. He is supposed to be in charge of the entire process. But as it happened, he missed virtually every meeting we had this week – Monday, Wednesday, two on Thursday, and Saturday. On Thursday, however, Chelina and I talked with him and made sure that he was available to meet with the community on Saturday to write the constitution. Not only did he say he was available, he asked Chelina and me to arrive early so that the three of us could discuss strategy.

But when we got to Kibera on Saturday afternoon and called him, he told us he was in the CBD and wouldn’t be back until the community meeting started. Then when it was time for the community meeting, we called him again – only to find out he was still in the CBD and probably wouldn’t make it at all. Only after the meeting was over did we discover from Bernard that James had been avoiding us on purpose. It turns out that James thinks he should be paid for the work he is doing, but rather than actually talking to us, he was just going to not do the work until we offered to pay. Unfortunately for him, I think his plan backfired – we may just remove him from the project and let Bernard handle it.

There is also a very real possibility that Chris and Power of Hope will be removed from the day care project, which has been their responsibility. Since Chris has only occasionally been showing up for events and meetings recently, we are basically going to wait and see if they come up with the plans for the center that they are supposed to have by the 1st. If they don’t, they will probably just be off the case. Where we go from there, I’m not sure, since I don’t know anyone else who knows how to set up a day care.

However, despite these difficulties, we have managed to get the CBO off the ground. At the constitutional meeting yesterday we had a very good turnout, and everyone who came was helpful, committed, and had a lot of really good ideas. It seems like the people in this group are really enthusiastic, and they also seem to have at least some familiarity with community organizing. Hopefully we will finish the constitution in the next few days and the group will be able to vote on it and get off the ground officially by the end of the week.