Still Proud to be Kenyan.

At the end of the day and without calling it the ‘Kenya we want,’ these formless conversations are articulating the illusions of the Kenya we have been living in.  Our hope is to finally break away from rhetoric that tells us we will one day get to cloud nine and yet we don’t have even a ladder today. There are many one liners that are products of these conversations but which we laugh off as witty remarks while failing to appreciate their true meaning. Such lines as “navumilia kuwa Mkenya”, “najihurumia kuwa Mkenya”, “naumia kuwa Mkenya”, are honest opinions of those who utter them and should carry with them the weight that led to their very expression. The emerging one liners that run parallel to new rhetoric such as “Vision 2030 Mission 2012”, “Vision 3020” should not be treated as jokes to be laughed at but as realities to be dealt with. The fact of the matter is that those of us that are proud to be Kenyan are proud in spite of as opposed to because. This means even though tunaumia, tunajihurumia, tunavumilia, bado tunajivunia. To be proud to be Kenyan is not mutually exclusive because it does not negate the fact that we are paying a heavy price for that pride.

Reality check is one of the terms and conditions attached to our pride and we are making that known. The Kenya we want has to deal with the reality of the Kenya we live first and similarly, living Kenyans need to deal with the illusions of the Kenya we have been living in.

For a tethered goat to enjoy the nourishment of new pasture, it must break the rope tied around its neck. As a kid who always invoked his father’s name at the slightest sign of trouble, I was scared to get out his shadow because I feared I would get my ass whopped. But when I emerged from his shadow albeit reluctantly, I realized as someone once wrote that it was my own shadow that was standing in my way. The moment I stepped out on my own was like a new breath of life to me. Earlier, I would only play around the house so that he could hear me when I called for help. But when I learned to fend for myself, suddenly I could go to far away places that I would never have ventured out of fear. And we all got stronger after we learned to stand on our own. And the same goes for Kenya, unless we break from the generation giving us these visions, we will only go as far the outline of their shadows. And given what they have done with this country since independence vis-à-vis other countries, they are a generation of dwarfs and so we only have so far to tether around. Around our necks are ropes that read corruption, tribalism, pillage, our turn to eat, and that is the menu of dwarfs that can only lead to stunted growth. If only we dare cut loose these ropes, we will realize that there is a whole world of opportunities for each of us to exploit. By finally letting our creative juices ooze freely, we will do by 2012 their vision of 2030. If we let the ropes stay, our kids will have to wait until 3020 to see 2030.

But our author moderator whose name I still haven’t recalled was not convinced. He said that death alone should not automatically warrant one a hero status. He asked to be told what people did that they deserved to be remembered for after their deaths. He said that JM had nothing for the people he professed to be speaking for yet he had been in government and was rich enough to make a substantial enough change for his people. He termed JM a populist who just fed people hollow words. But this guy who had arrived a bit late into the tent and sat next to me was not prepared to let that go unchallenged. He interjected and said he was from Nyanza and to establish credibility introduced himself as a grandson of one of those gentlemen who were in the loop back then. He gave us “witness accounts” of what happened behind the scenes on so many things and eventually got around to JM. He said that JM was indeed wealthy and in an effort to further humiliate the government which he had increasingly condemned over the years for creating “10 millionaires and 10 million beggars”, he was planning to give away his tracts of land to squatters. Having got wind of this plan and understanding the precarious position that it would have put the government in, Kenyatta and his henchmen had JM assassinated.

This little piece of information silenced our author friend for a while. But in following with his antihero mentality, I questioned our ability in choosing leaders not only in Kenya but across the continent. Over the years, most people who rose to be presidents of African countries were those perceived to have suffered the most, case in point being ex prisoners like Mandela and Kenyatta. This might as well have been the birth place of sympathy votes. In the end, the majority of such leaders became neocolonialists with colonial mentalities that were upheld by colonial constitutions. Going further, I expressed with contempt my disgust for the founding president, Kenyatta, who at one point referred to the Mau Mau as a disease. What followed shocked me and further entrenched my conviction that a potent question always trumps present understanding. Without asking, my off cuff remark about the founding president had put across a perception that needed clarification. The power of conversations is in their raw, informal, amorphous, unrepentant, uninhibited frameworks which mean no holds barred. There was no holding back what needed to be said in this tent.

My disgust at Kenyatta’s insult directed at the MauMau was met by the same answer from several people almost in unison. They all said “Kenyatta was never Mau Mau!” Who knew? I had on numerous occasions seen him on TV with his unkempt hair and beard proudly proclaiming “Mzungu aende Ulaya, Mwafrika apate Uhuru” and to me that qualified him as party to the Mau Mau rebellion. I even thought that this was the reason he was jailed for the 10 or so years. Though I was yet to read a book that said he was Mau Mau, nothing I had read said he wasn’t Mau Mau including all those history lessons in school. One of those who said Kenyatta was never Mau Mau was this short lady who had all through been quietly listening from the second row. Just to make sure we heard her right, this short, elderly, unassuming, impressively eloquent lady went ahead to tell us that Kenyatta himself was viewed suspiciously by the Mau Mau. She said that he was in fact never privy to what they did or planned to do. I remember people bursting out in laughter when she said that if we had followed Kenyatta’s roadmap for independence, we would still be a British colony. To her, Kenyatta was an opportunist, just a politician who was placed at the helm by elders because the true rebellion leaders were too illiterate to lead the country. She considered him a moderate and just stopped short of calling him a British stooge though she might as well have.

Kantai interjected at this point probably because he felt compelled to give us the bigger picture. He said that before we go ahead with the rebellion theory, we should keep in mind that the much hailed Mau Mau rebellion killed only 32 people during that whole independence struggle. If I had a detachable jaw, instead of it dropping I would have thrown it away. That is how shocked I was. They say that every rumour usually has some truth to it and this is a sacred statement to skeptics like me. Even skeptics usually hope that there is truth to most of what they interrogate and this one of those things I never thought I would hear. Here I was thinking that we fought tooth and nail, through blood sweat and tears like the Vietnamese did against America, and had the British running out of this place in an embarrassing defeat. Apparently not; there was no white flag and running scared and instead, the settlers who left only left after they were paid by a loan that we took as a country from the British Government to buy them out. I do not know about you but if I am fighting with somebody on whom I barely land a punch, and then I take a loan to pay him to leave me alone, I am the coward of the century. And I wouldn’t tell either because that is nothing to write home about. And since few people know about the 32 people casualty or the loan that we are still paying, the government did a pretty good job covering it up. Most people still believe that we valiantly ran the British out.

While I was caught up in the above thoughts, our elderly lady continued speaking. She had the same serious intonation in her voice and was speaking on a more personal level now, like a mother. She told us that she is from Central province and that she had seen all these before. By all these she meant the tribal bickering, the endless arguments about who killed who, and the entrapment of people in cycles that led them nowhere. She said that it was a pity that in 2009, we would still be discussing the very things that her generation wasted decades on. And extrapolating how these four decades were wasted, it was easy to see how Vision 2030 would end up becoming Vision 3020. She ended with a plea that was so forceful it came out like an order.  She told us to just stop with all this nonsense of who killed who and for what reasons and instead focus our energies on more productive things. And with that, the conversation effectively came to an end with Parselelo confessing that he wanted to clap for her. The next minutes were spent on closing remarks in which nothing new was said.

This is just one conversation and such are the intricacies of most conversations and the weight they often carry. We each left that tent as I have left many other discussions, informed, curious, and eager to share the knowledge. For me, what lay ahead was crystal clear. First I would write a post about it in my blog, which would be followed by sending links of it to both my twitter and facebook accounts and I would then engage those who would care to reply to the blog post. That is my way of keeping the conversation going. Looking at Kantai, I wondered whether what was discussed would influence his perception as he drafts his upcoming book on Tom Mboya. Watching Alkags, I also wondered whether he would do another compilation of short stories because the astoundingly compelling case our elderly lady friend had just made gave credence to importance of hearing out such unheard voices. Glancing over at our author guy whose name I have given up on, I smiled as I speculated whether in light the temporary reprieve that JM had been given in the tent, he would be less critical of the man either in subsequent forums or in his writing. I hoped that everybody who was present at that tent would tell their friends and colleagues the bits of information that they found most intriguing on their end. It would be their way of keeping the conversation going.

But even as I go out of my way to either initiate or join ongoing conversations about this potentially great nation of ours, it is not lost to me that people wake up differently. This evokes memories of our younger days when we had to contend with the fact that our fathers were mere mortals. There were those of us who took it in our stride and then there were those who needed to cry a river first before embracing the harsh reality. In between the two, there were many more categories which stemmed from the ease or difficulty that people have waking up from deep slumber. For instance, there are those like me who are light sleepers (mild insomniacs) and hence do not need the huge cathedral bells to wake us up. Just a whisper and we are wide awake ready to take on the world. By virtue of being light sleepers, we are woken up by the sounds of politicians sneaking around at night plotting with fellow thugs about the next big catch at our expense. Our duty then has become that of watchmen, keeping vigil and raising alarm at any sign of trouble be it a typing error, an off cuff remark, or unholy alliances. Though we all eventually sleep, it is never too deep or for very long because our biology and psychology does not allow us.

But there are more: there are the insomniacs who are keeping eternal vigil. There are those who set alarms to wake them up; that alarm rang loudly when the country approached the precipice in the post election debacle and now they are wide awake. There are also those who set alarms only to throw them in water because the reality of waking up and smelling the coffee is too great to bear. They are a challenge. There are those who sleep until they can sleep no more; like an ostrich that puts its head in the sand, they think they will avert the worst if they just ignore it. There are those who can only be woken up by nightmares and only by drawing them a picture that this country is a nightmare waiting to happen will they wake up. Then there are those who sleep walk; they honestly think that since they are walking they must be awake. This is a hypnotic trance that needs to be broken for them to be of any help to the rest of us. Lastly there are those who wake up but not fully. My friend Dallas for instance, on waking up, he stays in this stupor as he simultaneously scratches his stomach and crotch. That tells me that he fully wakes up when his food and posterity come under threat. There are others who need hot coffee, or jogging to be fully awake. Such is the challenge facing this amorphous revolution that began in whispers. The whispers have become conversations which may now have to change into shouts of dissent if we are to wake up everybody to the reality that is with us today.

the final part coming soon…

The Draft Constitution is out. I am actually elated that it came out this soon and more so because we get to give feedback on what we think. I have just acquired a soft copy version because it would be easier to peruse through it while I do my work on the computer. That is the good part. The bad part I politicians have started running their mouths, spearheading posturing antics that can threaten yet another constitution making process. The scary part other than them not reading the draft first before opening their mouths is that they probably have an audience that is either too illiterate, to ignorant, both, or too tribal to think otherwise. That is what I want to write about today.

First I will let you know where I am at. I have been busy with my thing that has started setting its own agenda and dictating my pace. But even with that, I picked up a copy of the draft constitution so that I can read it and make my own conclusions about what is of contention. I am sure that many sober minded Kenyans are with me on this point. Even the not sober minded have the reality of the 2007 elections to sober them up for long enough read through this document. But I am afraid that things are still the same with regard to thinking for ourselves and not relying on political impulses for decision making.

A few years back, we were in the same place that we are at now. The Bomas draft was out and all the people I look up to for political, civic and legal wisdom were almost content with it. But then the AG took that draft, ran around with it; from Kilifi to Naivasha and I think Kilaguni too. In the end, what he presented for us to vote for at the referendum was not what was produced at Bomas. Being a lawyer, he knew which clauses to “edit” and had done so. The people I look up to said that this was a bad thing for so many reasons. They partly influenced my decision. Largely, I voted no for the draft constitution then because the AG “a lawyer” had run all over the country with this document and all over sudden it was billed as better than the Bomas Draft. I thought not and my gut said NO! So I voted no. Not so much because I read it but because I did not trust it.

And it is all about trust, isn’t it. We must all be able to trust the constitution that governs us. We should not feel that the constitution is skewed towards some interests more than others. I was not so sure that I could trust that constitution that the most sober minded people in the country advised me against. At the end of the day, my choice to vote no was because of this eternally wise quote,

“In any struggle between doubts and certainty, cast your lot with doubt and then proceed with certainty.”

But this year is different. I have the draft with me and will be reading it in bits and pieces for the next three weeks or so. From watching all those lawyer series from Boston, I actually believe that I have in my grasp a pretty good understanding of the law and constitutionality. More important, I understand that all legalese is subject to interruption and hence the reason I need too seek out people who will correctly inform me about those aspects of this draft that are not clear to the naked non-legal eye; the sense beyond the jargon…

Lee Thayer happens to be one of those writers who have greatly influenced my thought process. He wrote, “Pick people who inform you very carefully. They can as readily sink you as save you.”

The last time we had a discourse on the constitution, we as a country picked politicians to inform us. We now have the benefit of hindsight because we know how that ended. I propose a different route altogether this time round. Even before the draft came out, politicians were at it again, posturing for positions that they are pretty sure will be skewed in their favour. And let us be honest, most of these politicians who are already mouthing off are complete idiots. And I do not mean that as an insult, I mean it as a statement of fact. Their only asset is a loud mouth and short memories; that way, they get to shout whatever they want without thinking about it and not worrying about the implications. You and I have to worry because we were the victims of such careless speeches the last time round. So I ask you today, read what you can in the draft constitution and carefully pick who will inform you about those areas you find contentious.

I do not know about you but I have a couple of names in mind when it comes to such analysis.

• Muthoni Wanyeki: She is the epitome of calm, collected, eloquent and supremely intelligent. She’s headstrong and resilient too. She has been in the Civil Society for long enough to understand the implications of most of the issues that we will be seeking clarity on. When it comes right down to it, I trust her. She is watching my back and every time she speaks, I can confidently assert that she is speaking on my behalf.
• Mutahi Ngunyi: I doubt that there is a better political analyst in the country than this man here. He calls it as he sees it and takes no prisoners in his analysis. I advise you to read his columns in the Sunday Nation for the next couple of weeks. I am sure he will have something about this draft that you will need to ponder about. He writes well, is exceptionally intelligent, very wide travelled and has killer anecdotes in his pieces. Lastly, you’ve got to respect his candor.
• Louis Otieno: I like this guy. We would get along if we met. This is the only TV Host that I have followed from station to station. He is now at K24. This man here has the most intuitive interviews in Kenya and possibly even Africa. When politicians shy away from your panel when you invite them, you must be doing something right. WATCH HIS SHOW. H e leaves no stone unturned and will not shy away from asking what needs to be asked. He is no sycophant and his questions always catch the least bright people in his panel napping. No wonder politicians run from his shows.

That is my two cents worth. I really hope that we have learned our lessons. If I could have it my way, I would cut off the tongues of politicians.

Sobriety is needed during this most important juncture in the course of our history.

Keep in mind that progress requires some casualties. I just hope that those who inform you are not politicians and that politicians will be the greatest casualties of this new constitutional dispensation.