Yes! Your Tribesmen are Idiots too.

My mum tells me that my middle name, Kibet, means that I was born during the day in our mother tongue. I am just happy that my name has a meaning at all. My mum understands several languages that are not her own and can converse in them with the ease, flair and pride of the actual tribesmen and women. I marvel at her abilities especially given that I understand more Chinese than my own mother tongue, Sabaot. I was born and bred in town and for as long as I can remember; I have been conversing mostly in English and at times in Swahili, the Sheng version of it anyway. My real Swahili sucks. In essence, I am a Kenyan who speaks Swahili (read Sheng), English, and bit of Chinese, but who is yet to learn his own mother tongue. I never felt any guilt about it until I reached university when I realized that there was a certain pride in being able to converse in your mother tongue. It gives you some sense of belonging that you will never find in English, French, Chinese, or Italian, no matter how well your mastery of them. I at one time started pressuring my mum, hounding her for not teaching me this essential part of our being. I later resigned to the fact that it was too late to learn it anyway.

However, in all my school life, tribe had never been an issue. My not being able to speak Sabaot – also called Elgon Maasai – had never been a concern of mine or of any of my friends. I actually thought that most kids my age could not speak their mother tongues, because I had never heard them speaking it at all. We all spoke the language we all understood, and it ended there. Back then, it never hit me that Tiudy Kamau and Caroline Njeri were Kikuyu, Anne Majani and Wallace Simiyu were Luhya, or that Peter Ombongi and Nathan Magambo were actually Luo. They were simply my friends, and I would not have found it strange if they all one day came to me and started speaking Greek. The point is, I never associated name with tribe, and I never knew that tribe could be the basis of either friendships or enmity. The same happened in High school, where though tribe was more visible, it was just that, a small part that made our school unique. Friendships cut across tribes and were defined by our mutual interests, performance in class, sports which was in my case rugby, and also, for the smokers, drinkers etc. by affinity to misdemeanours. Tribe never had any value in defining relationships and associations for it was that thing which is there but nobody sees nor pays attention to it.

But come campus, tribe was no longer about the beauty of the cultures that we all represent; it became the single divisive aspect that defined all our relationships. The pride that people exhibited while speaking their mother tongues became counter-productive when it was used t erect walls between the different tribes. And very few were willing to look let alone jump over the wall. Looking back, our knowledge of the tribes grew as we moved through the different levels of our 8.4.4 system such that by the time we all reached the University level, our knowledge comprised even the stereotypes which unfortunately became our outlook towards the other tribes that are not our own. Suddenly, insulting that politician who was spreading hate speech was interpreted as an insult to the whole community that the politician belonged to. The many tribal based student organizations became the avenues through which people took collective offence at certain statements, or decided who would run for the student union position, to represent the tribe’s interests. Pathetic! People, personalities, and by extension, free thought got lost in the tribal translations interpretations of every little thing. Our Universities have become slaves to tribal politics, and in such situations, vested interests reign supreme.

Vested interests are the curse that this country has had to deal with since independence, and that tribalism has exacerbated. You would imagine that a University setting would be just the setting where plurality would be most embraced. You would expect that the knowledge gathered over the years on our way to joining the highest learning institution on the land would be enough to enable us to see the person beyond the tribe. But no! The quote “Ignorance is Bliss” proves true when you observe the tribe dynamics of the Kenyan society. When we were young and had no idea about what our different tribes meant, we were genuine in everything that we did. The childhood innocence that we all had was slowly but surely wiped out as people grew up into the world of their parents, parents whose eyes are myopic beyond their own tribes. Slowly, the friendships that we had became redefined by our parents’ ignorance and stereotypes. In a way, I have retained my childhood outlook and approach in life for the simple reason that I cannot speak my mother tongue. For me, not being able to be speak Sabaot has ensured that I am not an insider to any tribe including my own, and that makes me simply Kenyan.

With my unique tribal outsider perspective, I have gotten angry on so many occasions whenever important national issues have been reduced to tribal disputes and alliances. I have also gotten angry at my friends and colleagues who are otherwise bright and reasonable people but whose Achilles heel has always been tribe. Tribe has had the uncanny ability of turning people inside out. Kenyans become fools when their tribe is concerned and unfortunately, that is what almost made this another failed state and still what has the latent potential of destroying this country.

But here is the truth that Kenyans need to hear, and must learn not to take offence at. And they should remember this every time they insult people based on tribal stereotypes.

• Your own community has fools;
• Your community has mad men;
• Your own community has corrupt officials;
• Your own community has murders, thieves and robbers;
• Your own community has prostitutes;
• Your community has people who preach hatred;

The point is, everybody’s community has every manner of persons of ill repute and while that may be the case, it is important to note and even crucial to know that the converse is also true.

Each community also has people of incredibly exceptional repute and who usually become victims of generalizations. For those who have studied sociology, you will better understand the fact that “Sociology is the scientific study of the causes of individual behaviour” and as such, similar causes will almost always result in similar behaviour, irrespective of tribe.

Is that so hard to understand? If not, be the bigger man or woman, and jump over the fence.