Ujamaa

Ujamaa is Swahili for familyhood, cooperation and the most renowned proponent of Ujamaa was Julius Nyerere, Tanzania's founding father.

I invoked the spirit of ujamaa in early 2000, in the aftermath of the floods that devastated Mozambique. Mozambique, unlike some other African countries that I won't mention, had exercised good governance under the leadership of Samora Machel (tragically killed) and his successor, Joaquim Chissano. So I thought Mother Nature was sending out the wrong message when her tears caused extensive flooding in low lying Mozambique.

At the time, I was waiting on the FTC to approve a merger (more like a takeover) between the company I worked for and a British energy behemoth. Once the takeover was complete, I would be out of a job because the behemoth outsourced their IT and the office I worked at would be shutdown.

The seeds of the idea were sewn by someone else, but I saw an opportunity to turn a 100m race*, between myself and my supervisor, into a fundraiser, by getting the other company employees to bet on the outcome of the race, with all the proceeds going to, what was by then, a major international disaster appeal for Mozambique.

There were about 325 employees in that company and while not everybody contributed, in 3 days we had raised over £1000 - we only had a certain window of time to work in. It felt really good depositing a cheque for £1000+ into the account of the Emergency Disaster Appeal fund for Mozambique.

To all those ARCO British employees who helped me invoke the spirit of ujamaa back in 2000, I say now as I did then, asanteni sana (Swahili for thankyou very much).

*As a footnote, I failed to win the race, but the success of the fundraising rendered the outcome of the race irrelevant - I failed successfully