She stands with parts patched, gold to iron, silver to plastic, copper to wood, bronze to charcoal and the feet, firm of full clay.
Golden head,bronze arm, clay feet...Kenya, the giant colossus
Madman 1: That Kenya is a great country is no doubt.
Madman 2: That Kenya is not a great country is in doubt.
Madman 1: Say something different from mine…!
Madman 2: Don’t say something that is the same as mine…!
Madman 1: Ok. That Kenya is great is in doubt
Madman 2: That Kenya is not a great country is no doubt
Madman 1: Are we saying anything new?
Madman 2: We are saying the same old thing, the same new way…
Madman 1: And the same new thing…the same old way…Makes sense don’t you think?
Madman 2: I don’t think. And you don’t think. But we think it makes sense.
No, ladies and gentlemen, she will not crumble and break into a thousand pieces. It will crack in bits and the pieces will fall off as we replace them till one day we will have a country, a giant whose whole body is golden. For now, what we have is a colossus with clay feet. There is a great book called the bible, one of the stories in it goes like this;
The Dream of A Great Statue
“You, O king, were looking and then, there was a single great statue; that statue, which was large and of extraordinary splendor, was standing in front of you, and its appearance was awesome.
The head of that statue was made of fine gold, its breast and its arms of silver, its belly and its thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay.” (Daniel 2: 31–)
And while this king was still dream watching, a rock was cut out and it hit the great statue which was crushed down iron, bronze and all became like chaff.
In another dream, Kenya was the giant statue. And I was not dreaming. We have a country so patched up. The tit-bits that make us are not in any way golden but they will do. They have their own strong points. What makes this situation even more precarious is how the government spokes person in conjunction with brand Kenya and ministry of tourism and ministry of National heritage have over the past five or so years have tried to make one big giant statue called Kenya out of this patches. And what they have so far come up with is a colossus with clay feet.
Efforts of integration and cohesion of the people of this nation which have been championed by the spokes person for the government through his Najivunia kuwa mkenya campaign, the ministry of Tourism and the ministry of State for National Heritage and Culture with the search for a national dress disaster failure, and the National Cohesion and Integration Commissions’ all over the place approach at unifying Kenyans have only done one thing; exposing the parts that make up this giant and how putting up one unified nation will take more than a national dress, cheap patriotic slogans and commissions whose names sound right.
Colored in and out
The reality is that we have a country with beautiful diversity. Here are the facts:
We have over 44 ethnic communities; this translates to over 44 languages excluding English and Swahili. The youth in Kenya make up 36% of the nation’s population and are the nations’ future custodians of its laws and economy. They have their own language –sheng– which is clearly out of the sphere of the old guards who should be mentoring them now. Kenyans speak Kiswahili in class and when they are answering police officers. They use English in offices but when the boss leaves office, they revert to their ethnic languages incase there exists two from the same community in that office-especially government offices. Over all, the ethnic language is the language of choice to many.
Tell me, how do you expect to build a country when everyone speaks his/her own language?
I need an answer here, and please be honest with yourself: If you heard two people shout ‘help!’ One shouted in Swahili and another in your ethnic language. Which one would you feel the urgent need to respond to? I hear when Kenya gained independence; the government decided that Swahili will be the national language. National language indeed.
On matters religion, we are predominantly a Christian secular state which is increasingly becoming intolerant and impatient with other religious groups. The alleged harassing of Muslims with or without the Al Shabaab threat is certatainly as political as it religious. There is a growing suspicion and bile like mistrust that is growing amongst people of these two religious orientations.
And if religion is something of a divisive diversity, then our hard wired and deeply gene webbed ethnic orientations is one huge boiling point of our divisions. The reference of a Kenyan starts with ethnic profiling, goes to ethnic profiling then ends at ethnic profiling. When people complain of unfair employment, they refer to this community has taken up all the posts in the government… When they want to complain of unfair resource distribution, they refer to this region which has all industries and institutions of higher learning… When they want to complain of leadership problems, they refer to this leader from this community who did this…Hell… Even when they talk of militia men and gangs, the gangs, the reference is laid in what ethnic community they come from.
We see ourselves more as members of an ethnic community than as a nation. We see ourselves more as speakers of a language than as people of a common tongue-Swahili. We see ourselves more coming from Central, Nandi or Siaya than as Kenyans.
There are national signs of cohesion which any united and properly cohesive state or people normally have. They include an agreed national dress Think of a flowing agbanda from West Africa, the red Chinese tube dresses, the flowing kanzus from Israel of other Muslim countries. These dresses identifies you as a people from a common place, you need to look at the kinship that these people have to contend this.
Then we have language. A common language that can be spoken and understood by everyone. Language does not guarantee unity but it makes communication easy and reduces discrimination based on what language someone speaks. It reduces the suspicion and apprehension that lurks in our offices when a new employee walks in and everyone is waiting to hear their second name.
I have looked at our country and wondered what these parts of our great giant statue may be. A good constitution-Golden head of Kenya. Breasts and arms of silver- free political space in Kenya. Belly and thigh of bronze-our diversity culturally and ethnically. Legs of iron-language diversity. Feet of clay-language. We do not have something which we as Kenyans can say is proudly us, well except loins and Maasais. So here we are, a people who have no common language, no common dress, no common national culture or even one aspect of culture that runs across all cultures that we have, even religion is profiled according to regions…True… we lack a central unifying factor that badly. Forget what other nations think of us. Our leaders; political, church or otherwise are the most divisive of all.
These people...
The efforts at cohesion and integration by government spokesman, Tourism ministry and National Cohesion and Integration Commission will have to be approached from other more informed and enlightened point than those silly slogans and knee jack shameful decisions like secretly monitoring people’s phone text messages by NCIC.
But don’t worry; this giant statue of a nation, this colossus called Kenya is safe for now.
No, ladies and gentlemen, she will not crumble and break into a thousand pieces. It will crack in bits and the pieces will fall off as we replace them till one day we will have a country, a giant whose whole body is golden. For now, what we have is a colossus with clay feet.
Peteroduor's Blog 