Bottom-up listening

I used to work for a public complaints agency in the mid-2000s. We received complaints from around the country, investigated them, attempted to resolve them using alternative dispute resolution process such as mediation and conciliation, and made recommendations to public agencies on lasting solutions. My bosses were drawn from different backgrounds, and they cared passionately about the issues we dealt with. I learnt a great deal from them on how to approach the vulnerable and forgotten peoples of Kenya, how to draw them out to state sometimes painful truths to agents of the government, and how to listen to their issues with empathy and compassion.

By the time I was leaving the agency, I think, I had formed a philosophy of what lawyering is supposed to be: solve the problems of the client before you without substituting yourself for your client. Sometimes, in order to solve the client's problem, you have to prevail in a trial before a judge, magistrate or tribunal. Sometimes, it means finding an alternative way to litigation, such as the aforementioned alternative dispute resolution processes. And sometimes the problem cannot be solved and this needs to be communicated with compassion and empathy to your client. But in all cases, it is not my ego that needs to be assuaged, but my client's problem that needs to be solved.

The past four years have seen Kenya suffer a mega-drought not experienced since the 2007/2008 El Niño/La Niña effect. As early as the 2014/2015 seasons, we knew that the situation was going to get dire and going by our history, famine was all but assured. Famine response is, to my mind, a factor of time, logistics and speed. Time to plan, the logistical capacity to acquire, position and pre-position famine relief supplies, and speed in decision-making. Secondary measures include environmental rehabilitation programmes to build resilience in at-risk communities, especially communities that rely almost exclusively on rainfall such as pastoralists.

Drought, and famine, do not just affect pastoralists in Kenya; the whole of the Horn of Africa has been affected. Somalia, South Sudan, southern Ethiopia and northern Uganda are facing the same dire situation that Kenya is. Consequently, there is a fierce competition for scarce grazing fields. What makes the situation truly dangerous is the flow of small arms into Kenya from the battlefields in Somalia, South Sudan, southern Ethiopia and northern Uganda. In my opinion, no matter how effectively small arms are mopped up from the communities in Turkana, West Pocket, Baringo, Samburu and Laikipia, so long as the disarmament does not affect Somalia, South Sudan, southern Ethiopia and northern Uganda, fresh supplies of small arms will still make their way into Kenya, and they will still contribute to the instability experienced in the areas where pasture land is to be found.

The solution, to my mind, is not to wage war against peoples who are fighting for their survival. It is not to find new, questionably legal, way to exclude them from pasture lands belonging to "other communities". The solution lies in building resilience in those communities. Resilience can only be built by rebuilding public institutions and public utilities that serve the needs of pastoral communities. One of them is a logistics network that can move large herds of livestock long distances in a short period and with minimal losses; a banking and finance system that accommodates capital created by livestock; and a livestock and livestock products marketing system that can act as an emergency off-taker for communities willing to translate their livestock herds into cash.

But in order for these kinds of lasting solutions to work, Government must learn how to talk to these communities without patronising, infantilising or threatening their members. Government officials need to leave their suits, and the air of superiority the suits go with, in Nairobi. This is the whole essence of bottom-up decision-making. You listen to the communities at risk; you listen with compassion and empathy; you listen with the aim of solving their problems, not to win a war. Any other solution will be short-lived, much-reviled, and only lead to even greater resistance in the future. I fear that the mistakes of the past are being repeated.