Chama

Finding community and sisterhood abroad through reinvented traditions from back home: the story of how my mother found and built community through a new Chama. Chama (Swahili for group, Kenya) is a community of women who come together to connect, support each other and monetarily invest in one another monthly. The group has a set order and rotating schedule in which one woman receives a fixed amount of monetary funding. For my mother and her Chama in Germany the Chama has taken a new form; instead of monetary investments the Chama supports, empowers and finds community. They help each other with smaller questions, such as finding an African supermarket or places where to buy ingredients from back home or bigger questions surrounding women's rights in their new home. The aspect of monetary investments are usually to support sustainable projects back home in Kenya.