Writing with Juliet Iwelunmor

It’s becoming truly clear these days that sustaining anything in a community setting is about integration. Of course it includes the different parts that make up an evidence-based intervention or program, but all these parts for communities limited with resources, need to be integrated into a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. 

Take Jollof rice, my favorite meal to prepare every Sunday in my home. The individual ingredients are unique on their own, whether the rice or tomatoes, onions, or curry, or even oil used to make the rice. The identity of each ingredients matters just as much as their integration or transformation into a pot of Jollof rice that is loved for many, hence the significance of integration. Note though that integration or transformation into a pot of Jollof rice is not without fire. In fact, my Jollof rice often burns just so I get the smokey flavor and the more the rice burns, the better the taste. The same also for sustaining anything in a community setting. The struggles with lasting will require you to know pain, know fire too, to experience what it means to be whole, transformed into something of value that remains. 

The process of integrating anything so that it lasts requires that we fully experience the tension, competing demands and interests that often makes the idea of lasting impossible to achieve. It also requires us to be fully open, vulnerable, as we lean into the tensions, the pain, attempts to remain may bring. 

It’s with these ideas that I begin a new journey into starting sustainable communities for health. We failed over a decade again in our attempts to build sustainable communities for health. We do so now afraid and prepared to fail some more. Some of the things we will do will seem like we are flying through the seat of our pants. We will fly anyways as we embark on this adventure into the unknown with what it means to sustain anything. We are also scared. The beginning is upon us and we are so scared but after the feat we pulled off today, I see that we are not alone. A community is forming and they are taking their space to help craft a real world story of what it means to last. We are all entering this adventure scared but our fears, our doubts, the tensions, the stress seem shared by all and from a place of love. To sustain anything, you must first love somethings. 

Out of chaos, we are becoming clear with what it means to love good, see good, live it too, as we attempt to last. All this may make sustainability still seem impossible. But remember we expect to fail, so we are marching along to the beat of a different drum. You won’t read about our ways in your journals. Real world barely uses journals and we are in the process of changing how we tell sustainable stories. Our strategy isn’t any different from the old tactics though, we are just changing the path we take and our cornerstone is a community built on love, a sustainable community for health.