In My Community

United by a lot of diversity, my community includes the people I meet with daily. It includes those that I have known for a long time and still yet the one whom I just met a few minutes ago. To me, community members are the people who understand me and at least have one commonality aside from the many differences. We will often meet and share food while we talk over our issues. In my community we value the social life and must congregate often to catch up.

There is the situation where you are able to talk with somebody, discuss issues of similar concern. You may be bound by one thing, for example same church, same area of residence, same language or tribe, same clan and many other things. These scenarios make you members of one community and the obligation of members in these communities is to help one another. It is expected that the younger would respect the older and the older would provide much needed guidance to the younger generation. There is freedom of expression however the freedom is only within the acceptable rules, principals and taboos. Most times, dissenting views from younger people towards the older people are not very well received.

The media influences my community in the sense that most decisions made, stem from opinions gotten from the media. There is a big respect for the broadcast media since they are seen to be very credible and most members in my community would love to have the ‘media-say’ as gospel truth. However the biggest challenge my country faces in informing the citizens is the level of literacy. With more than 42 tribes, cultural differences and language barrier offer the biggest stumbling block. English and Swahili are the national languages but not many people are conversant with them. Infrastructural problems also make it impossible for some people to be reached.

Citizen journalism is very minimal as many members in my community believe in thought leaders and unitary statements. Therefore most people believe in meeting together, discussing issues and having a person to present the issues to the relevant authorities. Nevertheless most of the decisions and opinions given are normally informed by what is consumed mainly on broadcast media.