Rising Voices is saddened to hear about the death of Dennis Kimambo, who was an integral part of the RV grantee project REPACTED in Nakuru, Kenya. Close friend and colleague Janet Feldman writes this tribute to the life and work of Dennis and how he impacted his local community through magnet theater and outreach to youth.

This news dropped on me like a ton of bricks.

Online we’ve all got many weak ties and I was weakly tied to Dennis Kimambo. There are weak ties that are weak because they are brief. But online nowadays there are people  we connect with over lengths of time. That’s the way it was with Dennis. I remember a history and the cutting short of his life feels so significant.

I noticed on Facebook that I’ve got 50 mutual friends with Dennis. That kind of sorting is interesting. My connections mostly stem from an online social network called Omidyar Network which is long gone. But one group of Facebook friends Dennis and I share is bunch of kids in Uganda who make change in their community.

The grassroots work of Dennis Kimambo made a real difference, but of the sort that’s hard to imagine: What might have been without him. So the really important thing is his imagination of what might be if people come to understand each other. What we might become if we could resolve conflicts without violence. 

I am sad about my friend Dennis Kimambo’s death. My thoughts turn to my many weak ties online. There’s an accounting of sorts where I realize how some of those ties are very important to me. I’m not sure that what to do is to try to strengthen those ties or even how to do that. But I do have a desire to thicken the ties, to pay more attention to them. I believe it does make a difference when people outside local communities notice and engage with others making positive change inside their communities.

Rest in peace Dennis Kimambo. You are not forgotten.