Applying RC in My Life
Jane Lucy Wambui Gachihi, from Nairobi, Kenya, shared this story with me at a workshop in Northern Uganda and gave me permission to share it in Present Time and on the RC e-mail discussion lists. I’m delighted to give more people an opportunity to meet her!
I love RC very much. Maybe because of that, in everything that I do I bring the tool of RC.
I have put a lot of time into dealing with a case at home. After separating from my husband, in spite of the love we had for each other, I discovered that he was totally unwell due to depression. I kept visiting him where he was staying with his family and could notice very easily, from my experience with sessions, what he was feeling. He would yawn a lot, and sometimes I could read the anger in him.
I became for quite some time the counselor, and he the client, though he didn’t know that. His brothers and sisters asked, “What is this that you do?” They said I seemed to be the only medicine for him and begged me to do anything I could.
I engaged in lots and lots of sessions and adopted this project as a leader. I even read about the use of RC with regard to full recovery. Truly this helped us completely. Our two grown daughters were very encouraged. There was lots of hope that my husband could become fully well.
Over the years he became well. He was able to resume part-time work and come back home without any problems. He and I decided that every Sunday after church we would have sessions. Now I had introduced RC completely, to where we could talk two-way. Today my husband is an RCer, and he’s always excited about anything regarding my RC work.
My daughters have expressed interest in becoming RCers and using RC in their organizations, and we are making that official. And my husband and I, as Grandfather and Grandmother, have been instrumental in “play listening” with our grandchildren. They love that they can sit in the middle of the room while we are listening and share “news and goods” and disappointments. I delight in seeing them so well able to express themselves. They have a lot of love for Grandma and Grandpa and look forward to coming to visit us. I believe that now we are all fully RCers. I’m able to run the house without feeling the gap. It was broken, but now it’s back and okay.
Throughout the time I have been in RC, since 2004, I have also been involved with women’s groups. My husband is supportive when I do groups with the church, travel to meetings, facilitate at workshops, and so forth. After recently moving from an up-country home to Nairobi again, I got elected in the women’s group in the church, even though I was new to it, and I believe it’s because of who I am as an RCer.
In South Sudan I worked with the Christian Women’s Empowerment Program and offered, with Wanjiku Kironyo (the Regional Reference Person for Northern Africa), an introduction to RC. The women were able to strongly embrace the tool of RC in addressing the oppressions they’d been going through. With the war of over twenty years, and the lack of support because their men had been completely taken over by drunkenness, they were not able to figure out what to do. Using RC they were able to think it through. Many of them started small businesses.
I also worked in Juba (South Sudan), where we introduced RC in a similar way. Since I returned to Kenya, I have introduced it in the Catholic Christian community in Machakos and now Nairobi.
I have kept in touch with my groups—through the media it’s easy—and I occasionally make the trip to Machakos and the Sudan. They’ve been waiting for peace to come back. Discharge has helped them so much. They’re good!
My passion really is family and women’s groups. Because of the work I’ve done in my own family, people see me as a resource. Recently I assisted in a workshop for youth in Nairobi. When the young ladies talked about the oppression of women, they were able to express themselves so well. After listening to the steps I’d gone through, and how I’d never given up on my husband, they promised to take leadership in their families as well. It gave them the morale to think, “Yes, we can do it!”
Nairobi, Kenya
Reprinted from the RC e-mail discussion lists for leaders of women and for RC Community members
(Present Time 182, January 2016)