SERVICE ABOVE SELF, AN ETHIC WE SHARE

By Dr Margaretta wa Gacheru (written 6 December 2023) The Rotary Club of Nairobi has been my honorary club since I first came to Kenya on a Rotary Ambassadorial Fellowship many years ago. I was assigned to stay with RCN over the lunch hour every week, and I learned a lot about colonial Kenya during that time. Today, I’m a full-fledged member of our club. And I’m so grateful to have joined and found, not expatriate members but indigenous Kenyans in the membership. And young women providing a new dynamism in leadership and activism. I’m also seeing women walking side-by-side their male counterparts, evolving a new culture wherein equal partnership and mutual respect between men and women is happening as we work and have fun together. The beauty of our club is the way we can stick with the four-way test while having a good time in the process. A big part of our enjoyment is being involved in purposeful projects, like SCAW and Eye camps and Job Training for youth who, once trained, can go out and quickly get full-time jobs. I wonder what Paul Harris would think if he came back from Rotary Heaven and found our club currently being headed by a woman astronomer! And our previous president was also a female medical doctor specializing in public health. He would also see why our club has been called the Rainbow Club since we have members who come from a wide range of communities, from Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Ismaili, Jewish, and Christian as well as from Jain, Sikh, Catholic, Protestant, Kamba, Kalenjin, Kikuyu, Luo, Luhya, Embu, and Meru. Mr Harris most likely would be impressed with the strides our club has made and how adaptable members from District 9212 are as well. We might need to tell him how we all had to adjust during the COVID lockdown, but we quickly picked up sufficient skills to continue our weekly meetings using this awesome new invention called Zoom. If we were to meet Mr Harris today, I’d love to thank him for establishing the simple but supremely important motto, Service above Self. It’s important because it establishes an ethic that all Rotarians make a pledge to follow so that when we do anything with our Rotary Club, we can feel a heartfelt incentive to trust that we all share the same priorities and purpose. We can know, just as our District Governor has told us, ‘We are One’ .