I believe the society we are living in and each of us who make this society are sick.We have a sickness that eats up our inner soul like gangrene. In my four months work in Mahidol University, I have been going through abstracts written by medical PhD and masters students and for a time I have started acquiring medical vocabulary and new knowledge about how our bodies function. With that in mind, I would like to dissect the Kenyan Diaspora community especially in Thailand where I have lived for 12+ years.
You may agree or disagree with me that Kenyans are very wonderful people and interesting at the same time. Our political and religious leaders have really divided us into ethnic cacoons and have made very small chinks tinted with their own coloured glass window from which we look at other societies. This poisonous division has made even Kenyans in the diaspora be very alert to their own false identity of belonging to this or that community and the words spewed by political analysts, politicians and other leaders like the labeling of members of other communities as backward, cooks,children, watchmen,thieves and etc are an outward manifestation of what has been deposited in their hearts right from home. This supposition can be seen in the events that have unfolded since independence and the gangrene has been eating up the fabric of the Kenyan society slowly. Ng’weno, (2009) was quoted to have documented the plague of ethnocentrism in his Weekly Review magazine and reported in one of the dailies that after independence, Kenya
That however does not say that there were no people who still had the vision of a united nation. From the time of independence we have had quite a few who have stood up even when all seem to have fallen victim of the ethnocentrism gangrene. In those days, we had nationalists, like Thomas Mboya, whose personal and public life had transcended beyond the preoccupations of ethnic chauvinism and parochialism, had possessed the imagination to lead the country in a new direction. (The Nation on Saturday 4th July 2009) . Mboya grew up in Juja Farm where his father, Leonard Ndiege, worked cutting sisal. The place where Mboya grew up in had workers from allover Kenya and even beyond. He was a true nationalist who reviled ethnic politics and sectarianism.I am told although I cannot confirm this, that Mboya could speak Gikuyu and Kamba languages fluently.It is said that he always opted for policies which would confer long-term benefits to the greatest number of Kenyans, and to the nation as a whole he therefore, pushed for free education at tertiary level, both Forms V and VI and at university. This was not only affordable but it also met the immediate manpower needs for the budding economy. Public investment was directed towards the productive sectors. The results were impressive. Kenya’s Gross Domestic Product grew at more than 7 per cent annually in real terms and more than 10 per cent in nominal terms. The successive governments have worked to destroy what was built by people like Tom Mboya. The political leaders of the like of Kabogo, Moses Kuria and Aladwa to mention but a few make a mockery of what was achieved by brilliant leadership of the likes of Tom Mboya.
The hate speech we hear comes from the abundance of the speakers hearts and the apologies given are just but hypocrisy and melodrama that borders comedy.Unfortunately this melodramatic comedy is played not on stage in the theatre to entertain but in the life line of Kenya's economic, social and political development. Luke 6:45 puts it thus:The [intrinsically] good man produces what is good and honorable and moral out of the good treasure [stored] in his heart; and the [intrinsically] evil man produces what is wicked and depraved out of the evil [in his heart]; for his mouth speaks from the overflow of his heart. So when you hear Moses Kuria, Aladwa, Mutahi Ngunyi, Kabogo and company speak, know that their mouths are spewing out what is in their hearts as deposited by system in which they grew up.
After disassembling the Kenyan society I have lived with, taught and trained while in Kenya, and live and interacted with in the Diaspora, I have observed and determined that its internal structure is wired with suspicion and mistrust and their ethnic antennas are raised so high. Their ethnic noses are like the two pronged snake tongue that can sense and smell any type of scent from a far. They can tell which ethnic community you come from in seconds. I think the..... "your name betrays you" statement rings a bell. Trust among Kenyans even in the diaspora is at its low. I have observed that when a Kenyan stands up to speak or interact with fellow Kenyans, antennas are always raised so high to detect the ethnic community one comes from and if the antenna will detect that the speaker hails from a community that does not subscribe to CORD coalition OR Jubilee- all that the speaker will say or do will be judged and weighed based on this background and not on the objectivity and value of what is said.
As an aid to discerning the functions and relationships of the Kenyan society in the Diaspora. I would like to liken it to the dry gangrene caused by a reduction of blood flow through the arteries. Kenyans hardly speak their minds or even what they feel honestly. I said that we are an interesting lot. In the diaspora, I have always heard people talking about "oh the office bearers must be a representative of the ethnic communities in Kenya", we must have the face of Kenya......" etc, to me all these are but other versions of ethnocentrism camouflaged in nationalistic semantics. I heard from one of my Christian friends here who echoed what Kabogo said that circumcision makes a man a better leader. Another one told me that she hates a certain community that if a leader from that community became president she would seek citizenship elsewhere. Each community is competing the other and trying to maneuver and vouch for his/her community. In 1985 a policy which discriminated against people from communities that were thought to have dominated job opportunities was used to place particular people in various courses at the universities. A student who scored minimum points to take Medicine in the University of Nairobi but was either a Luo, Luhya,Gikuyu or Kamba would not be allowed to study medicine because it was said that the communities had many medical doctors so a candidate with even less points would be admitted to take medicine instead. I had a friend who studied in St Partricks Iten and scored 16 points and wanted to take Law was rejected because there were many lawyers from his community. When I read what Kenyans in diaspora write and says in the social media, it confirms my fears that we are a divided lot. There was a report two women who were caught stealing meat from a butcher in South Africa and people in the social media started writing that the women were from central Kenya and therefore members of TNA. This stereotyping of communities is a symptom of the ethnocentrism gangrene I am talking about. Luos would like to identify with Obama and Lupita and therefore relegate other communities non-special. Kikuyus and Kalenjins would like to associate themselves to the presidents of Kenya who have come from their communities and hence relegate other communities to non-leadership proletariat whose only possession of significant material value is their ability to work. We have to dissociate ourselves from anything that is ethnocentric. If we have to function as united Kenyans, we need to purge ourselves of the sins of suspicion, ethnocentrism,hatred and evil competition through prayer and fasting not following the false prophets who have claimed to be prophets but following the Biblical prophets like Isaiah 1:16-17 who admonishes us in these words: “Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; Put away the evil of your doings from before My eyes. Cease to do evil, Learn to do good; Seek justice, Rebuke the oppressor; Defend the fatherless, Plead for the widow.
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