My study is on how communication constitutes organisations. I did not want to study your everyday organisation, but instead pursued an expanded view of organisations, and so therefore I settled on Chamas (the formal plural of Chama is Vyama, but there is a way in which this sounds like a political party in Kiswahili…so for this study, I use what we call them, Chamas.). I felt this would also expand the view in literature of Chamas as feminine, informal, and sometimes amorphous entities.

What are Chamas? And what are they not? Chamas know who they are. If you call people who meet to organise a funeral or a wedding only, a Chama, they will protest. A Chama is an organisation- complete with vision, leadership structure, a clear awareness of self, and for many, a sense of unmatched togetherness. Chama meetings have direction. People talk, and argue, and listen, and disagree, the  break up, get back together, laugh, make tough decisions, they hug, and give back to society. They are real. They are a unique organisation because they may not (some do) have direct employees , but nevertheless, Chama members actually work for the Chama.

A Chama, like all other organisations, is constituted through communication. Studies in Organisational Communication have three schools of thought that extend this view (The Montreal School, The Luhman’s School and The Four Flows). All Brilliant ways of thinking of communication. And sometimes really complex. They all have arguments on how  communication constitutes an organisation, but I particularly resonated with the Four Flows because of its specificity, and wanted to explore how the Flows would explain the constitution of a Chama. Needless to say, majority of these studies have been done in the West and on large organisations. There are documented differences in organisations and ways of life between different people of different cultural leanings, and the Kenyan Chama provides an interesting exploration of the reality.

Many African countries have Chamas and they all go by different names-Circles in Uganda, Ikimina in Rwanda, Ikirimba in Burundi, and Tontines in most of Francophone Africa. In Tanzania and Kenya, they are called  Chama. A chama is a fascinating organisation- it is a refuge to some, a family, a school for others,  a bank, a church, an institutional memory – it is not just one thing, it is different things to different people rolled up in one.

My interest, however, is how the Four Flows explain the constitution of the Chama, and even seek to see if there can be an extension of the explanations. I am not testing it as a model, I am explaining the Chama, a popular phenomenon in Kenya, as an organisation (based on the Four Flows explanation of how organisations are constituted) as well as building a theoretical case for how exactly communication constitutes the Chama. As I mentioned, this view of Organisations as Communication has gained popularity in North America and Europe,  but it is interesting for me to explore, and perhaps extend, how it explains the Chama.

so, this is an unapologetically  qualitative study, and I intend to find out these intrigues of communication through observation, in depth interviews, and reading material on the Chamas.

The thing about a qualitative study is that it humanises people and sees them not as statistics, but as people living their daily lives meaningfully, and then seeks to understand these meanings, from their perspectives. It is good to understand how many chamas there are in this country, but I find value in asking people why they feel part of the Chama,  how they make it what it is, as well as what they learn from it.