As Busara, we have had the privilege of bearing witness to how the public and social sectors have been re-imagining their work through behavioral science while also playing an active role in driving and shaping this evolution. With this groundwork, we provide a set of reflections from conducting our CSO research programs, which has taken us on a winding journey close to a decade and, as with all meaningful research endeavors, generated more questions than answers. The reflections provided in this groundwork are not meant to provide definitive conceptual conclusions or insights regarding how to motivate citizen engagement in East Africa. Instead, they are organized around the lessons Busara has learned. In sharing these reflections, we hope to provide civil society practitioners, applied researchers, funders, and policymakers with insights on the valuable ways to think about understanding, evaluating, and applying audience behaviors in bottom-up governance and citizen engagement interventions in non-WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Developed) contexts.