Still Proud to be Kenyan.

I am here today because I needed to email somebody, but I feel I have to say more about the predicament that led me to send that email in the first place.

I am an honest man. I do lie to people. I have lied to people before, but decided that telling the truth was better for all parties involved, and I have been clean since. But the virtue of telling the truth especially in Kenya is becoming virtually nonexistant.

When I was in campus, less than a year ago, we were told in AIESEC that , “if its not on paper, it does not exist.” That meant that for all the marketing calls we did, it was imperative that those we talked to signed whatever we had agreed on. People no longer trusted the word of mouth. A gentleman’s agreement no longer has a place in Kenya because there are few gentlemen here today.

I had more trust in people until I got burned in a crucial transaction for a project that I ran then.Important to mention that it was a lady on the other end of the transaction, meaning the ladies are in on it too.

If you have been visiting this blog for a while, you probably know that I am learning, albeit slowly, how to be a gentleman. And Kaasa is cheering me on. I have already mastered opening doors for ladies, pulling their chairs, sorting the bills, mutual respect, courtesy etc. And my biggest achievement to date has been keeping my word.

I will agree that I have heard problems with the timing, but thats all. Even if I might be late, or the timing may not be right, I will keep my word in the end. It means a lot to me that I do that.

But the problem comes in when I expect others to do the same, as was the case today. I have been through hell trying to buy the HP12C calculator for my CFA exams. Eventually, though late in the game, I got two possible ways of buying the calc. I chose the bird at hand.

A lecturer at one of the Universities here said that he could get me the HP12C calculator since they imported them in bulk. I was elated. I sent my brother to go pick it up for me and the guy had a calc, but that was not what I had ordered. They actually never stock it  to begin with.

And to make matters worse, he says that “HP12C is too difficult to use and that the one he had was better.” Difficult for who? Was that his choice to make or mine? He eventually claimed that I had not specifically said which calc I wanted. Mind you, I never asked for a calc, I asked for the HP12C Platinum calculator. Isn’t that clear enough?

He took my KES 8500 because I had no choice for its too late to import one.

If only I had made this guy sign something, I would sue his ass – if we were in a different country to begin with.

Honesty. Was it so difficult for this man to say from the onset that they did not stock what I wanted but had another one that I might be interested in?

Is it too much to ask for the simple truth? I can handle it.

This was my third year in campus and I was heading for an important function that day. I was then the VP of AIESEC, a student organization that does wonders for those who engage in its activities while in campus.  That morning, I dressed up as usual, not official, but casual smart wear. This is the thing, I tried tucking in my shirt when I was in primary school, and it was the most uncomfortable thing ever. I would sit down and there were these uncomfortable bumps on my ass made by the shirt in my shorts that drove me nuts. I may have tucked in badly, but that is beside the point. The several times I tucked in, the same thing happened over and over again until I decided never to tuck in my shirt again. I never did and as a result I had my ass whooped by the teachers throughout primary school, and even though I was not whooped as much in high school, I was suspended enough times for more serious issues than not tucking in my shirt. But that was always the other issue on the table while the teachers discussed my suspensions. I was that stubborn but from a purely logical standpoint – which I was always ready to explain. You see, most people in school who did not tuck in their shirts did so because it was cool but I did so because it made sense to me. There is a difference. But I digress.

In campus, I mostly wore those kinds of clothes that did not require tucking in, and on that end, I was covered. But there were other things that constituted being men in campus. Most of us would wake up some few minutes to class time, go take a shower, cologne, get dressed, eat breakfast or not, and then head to class, all in less than 15 minutes.

But this was an important day, and I wanted to do more than the usual. So I did all the above, but I looked for more that I could do to look the part when I went to this function. So what was this that I never did that I decided to do this time round? Look in the mirror. I remember turning to my roommate, Dallas, a good friend with whom we had gone to the same high school and now campus, to ask him for a mirror. He gave me a puzzled look, and suddenly broke out laughing, hard, and I joined him in laughter thinking, yeah right! As if! Dallas then heads on to the next cubicle, where we usually took our breakfast. Marto, another high school friend stayed there. I asked my third roommate, a conservative SDA Christian who had two timetables on his desk, one for class and one for church, for a mirror, and he politely said he did not have one. So I head to the next room, where I find Marto, his roommates, Dallas and a few other mutual friends. I ask them for a mirror, and again that silence accompanied by a puzzled look that Dallas had given me earlier, and then laughter. You would think I had asked them for tampons. After the laughter subsided, Marto summarized the whole thing to me in a three word sentence when explaining why he did not have a mirror…

Hiyo ni Luxury!

Can you beat that?

“I was busy revising and I came across a topic that mentioned luxury and that prompted this trip down memory lane.”

I felt Cynthia’s frustration when after she had written an article on the absurdness on of Uhuru’s dismissal of the budget debacle as a mere typing error, somebody called her an ODM affiliate etc. Writing as a financial expert who understands the intricate workings of financial instruments and more so how by virtue of such things as back testing, an argument of typing error would not fly – she had a right to take offense. It is really frustrating to write something based on your professional capacity, experience, knowledge, and education and then have it reduced to a party or tribal argument. And it usually comes in two ways; one, as it happened to Cynthia, she was accused of being an ODM affiliate when she refused to buy that BS that the 9.6 Billion discrepancies were a typing error – mind you, no sane man or woman would buy that. Then, some other idiot thought that her article trashing that typing error argument meant she was an ODM  affiliate and went ahead to address her as such – as if she was now part of the family. I understood Cynthia’s frustration when she had to explain that this was not a political issue and hence the reason she had posted the article under the Finance and Economics category.

But that is the unfortunate reality that has become Kenya. I have been planning to write on this for a while now but have not managed to. But yesterday, I could not let this go.

Some days back, I had written an article that called for us to reevaluate how we write out history. I wrote that our people are scared of writing the truth out fear of the state. This has been the case since independence. I argued that we are not a great country – socio-economically – fundamentally because past leadership failed to rise beyond petty tribal politics and greed and yet there are a few books out there who have dared interrogate these leaders comprehensively. All we have are rosy books that hail our past leaders as heroes yet the state of our Nation leaves a lot to be desired. But as it has come to be expected, somebody sieved through all that I had written, looked for where a leader from his tribe had been mentioned and then looked for a reason to take offense. I requested him not to reduce my blog post into a tribal debate. But there have been more like him who have always found an angle to take offense on behalf of their tribe, and/or political party as it was the case with Cynthia who is the author of The Way I see It.

I am getting tired of this, I swear.

I am yet to delete a comment that has been posted to any of my posts, even the ones that insulted me, but it may be about time to start. I will not write things from a rational end and then have all its merits ignored so that we are now engaging on party and tribal discussions. My blog is not the forum for debating your tribe or mine, your party affiliations or mine, and I will be damned if I let you or the next person take offense on behalf of your tribe and party here yet neither are up for discussion here. If what I write is not to your liking or to your parties leverage, deal with it; I am here to discuss issues, Period. If you are to comment, please do so as a Kenyan who agrees or disagrees with what I write on the merits of the content itself. Hey! If it pisses you so badly, I will as I have always done let your comment that insults me stay. But the moments you even think to comment on behalf of your tribe or party, thinking that I am writing here for on behalf of or against either; don’t. It will be a waste of space and time and which I will delete. As I said, take offense or appreciate something because you have a brain that is not wired to tribe and party.

People usually prefer a problem they cannot solve to a solution they do not like. Increasingly, Kenyans seem not to like the solutions from people who are not from their party or tribe, or both since tribe has come to mean party. My blog is called “Still Proud to be Kenyan.” I gave it that title because I love my country and I am proud of whatever goes right here and concerned with all else that is going wrong here. Everything I have written herein is from that standpoint. I am a Kenyan first and my articles are Kenyan. I did not call it proud to be Kalenjin, or proud to be any of the a thousand and one parties here. I said Kenya because I will not be reduced to discuss tribal agendas and conspiracy theories. And as I wrote in one my previous articles, there is something greater that transcends tribe and petty politics that connects us all and that is what I want to dwell on.

Yesterday, while watching “The Making of a Nation,” the learned and feted Historian, Prof. Bethwel Ogot said that; “History should be about SHARED EXPERIENCE.” What is it that all Kenyans share? If we find that, we will better citizens of this potentially great country.

As I close off this topic, I urge you once again; please appreciate or dismiss whatever I write from your standpoint as a Kenyan, on the merits of the content.