“I don’t call it peace necessarily, I am just doing what the community needs” Gakire explains to a group of students he has taken to his newly established Dusego Empowerment Hub (DEH). Localized peacebuilding is a lesson I’ve heard in lectures and read in books, but one I didn’t deeply understand until I visited Dusego for the second time.
I have spent three years taking exams and writing a thesis using theories about how to establish peace. In other words, I have spent time thinking and theorizing on situations far away from my own, all the while studying at a university that has been deeply affected by the conflict in the Middle East. Simply put, I was trying to think my way out of a conflict that was at my doorstep. The sense of helplessness was absolutely overwhelming.
Dusego Empowerment Hub really lives up to its name. It is empowering in every sense of the word, and its founder and story inspired throughout that time. The work that I knew was being done in Dusego constantly reminds me that learning about how to create this kind of change and obtaining the tools to make change possible is one of the most valuable endeavors a person can undertake.
I was fortunate enough to visit this special place not once, but twice. Sitting in the familiar organized silence on the train in Germany, I now have time to reflect, reminisce, and dream of my return to the vibrance, the color, the light, the jo,y and the peace that Dusego embodies because of the incredible dream that has taken shape over the past two years. I will do my best to put it into words, but what has taken place is truly indescribable. You understand it with your heart, not your brain. No picture or story can truly do it justice.
When I first traveled to Dusego in January 2023, I was taken aback by its natural beauty. The enormous sun, rolling hills, bustling trees, and smooth stones engulfed me in a comfortable embrace, and I felt more at peace than I had in a long time. The stream brought life and a sense of community to Dusego, a stream Gakire grew up playing in, and a stream he seemed touched to return to. We were touched that he brought us here. We knew we were in a truly special place, but its future was brighter than I ever could have imagined!
In January 2025 I was once again welcomed by the same sense of calm, peace, and comfort, but I saw life in a different form. Children who were apprehensive of visitors just two short years ago were running up to me and practicing their English. My childish joy unapologetically took over as I played football, danced, laughed, and embraced all that nature had to offer with Dusego’s children, climbing trees, running around, and sliding down rocks. Suddenly the place came to life once again but in a different way. This is where I lost my words, but suddenly I deeply understood the importance of this project. As a local initiative, DEH almost seems to work in the background. It facilitates opportunity and unleashes potential, but does not impose it. And yet, it plays a very prominent role in the community; I cannot explain this contrast exactly. It believes in the children that it engages, embraces their ideas, and allows them to create a future for themselves. I saw this future in the children’s eyes as we danced and laughed, one I could only imagine in 2023. I realized that this was a future they now saw too. And this, Gakire insists, is the true power of this place.
“When I was younger, I wanted to be a priest or a motorcycle taxi driver” Gakire shared as he opened up about his motivations for establishing the Dusego Empowerment Hub. Despite his hard work, he believes luck played a massive role in his ability to venture beyond his village and study in Europe. He asserts that this was beyond anything he could have imagined as a child because he had never seen it. Gakire wants to give children in his village the tools to be able to dream big, and to know what is possible for them. In addition to the incredible skills that children here learn– music, dance, art, and languages just to name a few– Dusego Empowerment Hub is a place where a kid can truly be a kid. Children can express themselves, use their imagination, play, explore, and invent using the tools they learn from the engaged and hard-working staff. These tools don’t just allow Dusego’s youth to build a future, but crucially, to imagine the future they want to develop.
Listening to Gakire speak about the path to the establishment of Dusego, I revisited the hopelessness I had felt earlier this year. I recognized how hard peacebuilding can be. Whether it be those who doubt you within your community, a lack of funding, an inability to imagine what is possible, or a struggle to see successes. This project empowers me to keep going. It shows me that real, impactful change is possible; a truth that is hard to come by in the volatile world we live in, but a truth which now more than ever, needs to be heard widely.
With hundreds of visitors weekly (I say visitors for lack of a better word, these children own this space), the future of this community gleams through the eyes and the smiles of its joyful children.
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