“Ever since I came here, I have learnt to be patient with the residents and I listen to their cases keenly before rushing to make a decision” Says Ms. Mebakari Rashid, an assistant county commissioner in Murang’a
By Mohammed Omar
Special for The Plu
She wears a commissioner’s uniform beautifully studded with command insignia and stripes, her head is crowned with a mob of black hat.
The brims of her shoulders pithily portray ‘Kenya Administration’ two words that are beautifully written in golden letters and that make 28 years-old Ms. Mebakari Nsaga Rashid, a woman of authority.
Ms. Mebakari who is strong both in brain and brawn is an assistant county commissioner in Murang’a a county where she has been putting her best foot forward to showcase the pristine leadership style of Muslim women.
“I enjoy my job, but it is also demanding” Ms. Mebakari told The Plu while carefully enunciating her words.
Ever since she started her job in September 2015, Ms. Mebakari has grown to be a community peace builder and social activist battling with drugs and illicit brews from Muranga’s devastated neighborhoods of Kiharu and Gaturi along river Mathioya.
Ms. Mebakari admits that this was a wakeup call that would change her life completely because she knew this wasn’t an easy job like her previous one when she was an accountant at a transport company in Mombasa.
Born and brought up in Kwale, a majority Muslim county, Mebakari’s headache was moving away from home, first as a young woman and secondly as the only child of her parents.
“I was happy to be among the few applicants who were shortlisted for the county government jobs but I was also scared because I did not know where I would be posted”, she said
Her insatiable desire to be a social worker helped her overcome the fear of the unknown as she moved into Murang’a to start a new career, a new home and a new challenge- that of a woman leader
It is for this reason that she is able to keep up to her duties at work where she is sometimes required to wake up in the middle of the night to attend to emergencies.
Her old job enabled her to perform her duties from behind a desk where she worked with spreadsheets on a computer screen but her new role in populated Murang’a is different, complete with outdoor activities sometimes engaging in daunting operations to flush out illicit brewers.
Mebakari’s typical day is too long often punctuated with community meetings, cases and issue-solving and most demandingly she leads operations to arrest brewers.
Traditional illicit brewers who usually avoid detection by local police operate from makeshift platforms along river Mathioya, surrounded by brush and trees dripping with vines. And this is where Ms. Mebakari has to occasionally go and face them head-on.
This rough terrain unfurled into riverside of jungle is a no-go-zone for a woman, but for this unshaken young Muslim woman, it is where her responsibility lies.
As young as she is, Mebakari is a supervisor to five chiefs and nine assistant chiefs who are all older than her. “I treat my juniors with respect but I also ensure they do their work and follow instructions” she asserts.
When it comes to matters responsibilities, she makes sure that her juniors who are answerable to her do their work appropriately.
In her daily community service, she speaks very deeply and passionately about every issue affecting the local community, but addressing the issue of illicit brews is her priority.
She doesn’t know how long it would take to deal with the problem of brews but she is nursing a brimming hope that one day Murang’a and neighboring counties will be free from this menace.
From the tenets of Islamic teachings where patience and respect is a valuable undertaking, Ms. Mebakari deals with her subject with zeal.
“Ever since I came here, I have learnt to be patient with the residents and I listen to their cases keenly before rushing to make a decision” she says
And her role as woman assistant commissioner has seen a remarkable achievement in her tireless efforts to forge an efficient response to deal with community problems. The only challenge she says is communication.
Coming from a Mijikenda tribe, Digo, Ms. Mebakari finds it hard to communicate with the elders during barazas since they use Kikuyu as the language of communication. To overcome the language barrier problem, she seeks a translator.
The story of Ms. Mebakari is a powerful indication of the role women in general and Muslim women in particular can play to address social problems.
She is among the few fearless women who are tapping into leadership to change the perception of the society in dealing with demanding situations.
And now Ms. Mebakari who is a sociology degree holder, aspires to become a county commissioner in the near future something she admits requires hard work and patience.
