UNDERSTANDING CONFLICT

It may not be easy for an ordinary man to understand what conflict is in local community public speaking. Its very interesting that our parents took us to school learn. People learn and excel but how do we rewards our parents apart from one kilogram of sugar? Its quite healthy to analyze certain issues in local languages, which in most case have been found to be deeper than English. For some one to learn well, he/she should first understand the concept in his own local language. In most cases African educated people tend to even mix vernacular with English when speaking to their parents who may not understand the meaning.

In this aspect Life in Africa Kireka is begging to translate these common English words into local language (luo) in this respect, the community members will be learning. For example there are these terminologies:

“Thawi” meaning quarreling
“ kigesa” meaning complaining
“kale” meaning okay
“Tich acheil” meaning Monday
“sabiti” meaning Sunday

And so on and so forth. These are very common words in our daily speeches that our community needs to understand well.

Back to the topic, one may need to know if conflict is normal, unusual or if it occurs.

In my perspective, conflict occurs in all relationships and it occurs at all levels ie, international, national, community, domestic and personal level. It might be good but if not handled properly may end into negative results. This is one of the biggest challenges in our communities that those leading the communities should learn how handle or to resolve peacefully and this is what life in Africa kireka strives to discuss with its community members.

It’s not easy to separate the people from the problem or conflict but how do we do it? People develop conflicts every one other time depending on many factors that surrounding them. Some time I think conflict develops as a result of stress. It’s truly essential to develop tools that will help in the process of separating the people from the problem or conflict. This is very important because may make do not mistake each other for being the conflict, which only leads to fighting each other instead of fighting the conflict or problem.

With this common understanding of conflict or problem, there is need to be soft on the people but hard on the problem. But one may ask what some of these tools are? To solve the problem, know the cause. In this respect the first tool here would be dream game, belief me or not try ask your friend what his dream is and hear if does not tell you about dreaming for good things only.. such as being able to have enough food, having security, more children completing higher education and getting into gainful employment, reduced death from voice and thousands of good things human being can ever talk of.


Another interesting tool I would think of is the human knot game, one time try to ask people to join their hands and form a circle. Ask for the few to act as observers. choose to fall in and out of the game as a leader they will follow you joyfully but let them entangle into a completed human knot ask them to restore the circle it may not be easy to reverse the process. We may therefore understand that conflicts begin simply but becomes hard to manage later. And also conflict needs analysis and cooperation of those involved because you may realize that from the observer’s perspective, some people are in great pain during the conflict and as a matter of fact even the leader of the game gets caught up in the conflict. Let conflict not get on your way and if does how do go about?