A Case of Perfidy

Patriotic or nah?

By Kennedy Karanja

I was born in Kenya, a beautiful country, where the general spirit of the people is split between patriotism and disdain: one extreme consists of those who sing ' najivunia kuwa mkenya ' and the other side echoes a sad ' najihurumia kuwa mkenya, ' – when I was in primary school a crude corollary developed from the latter, 'najikumia kuwa mkenya', which our underdeveloped minds thought to be really funny.

But your feelings for your country never really mattered, other factors took prominence primarily your ethnic background, learning this lesson first hand as I witnessed my neighbors slaughtered like chickens in the aftermath of the highly disputed December 2007 elections. Upright, law-abiding, tax-paying citizens who loved their country were killed, displaced and their hard-earned property looted on the basis of their tribes, not what ideology you supported, and that they dearly loved their country did not stop the assailants from treating them as second class citizens.

I saw sh*t hit the fan; men and women, innocent children even, killed for hailing from this tribe or that, and I am damn sure they loved their country, which turned herself against them and swallowed their blood in broad daylight, ignited by hate sleuthed, spewed and propagated by her own leaders that were obligated to protect these very people.

That was a turning point for me: previously agnostic and indifferent to my feelings for my motherland, now I felt aversion growing and almost choking me, but remained quite oblivious that I nursed such feelings until I started getting exposed to my country's history, and my innocent views started crumbling before the scary and dark realizations – a pattern of bad management, lack of plight for her citizens, cold murders and assassinations of her citizens (including my favorite hero, the great Tom Mboya, and her best statesmen), mediocrity, idiosyncrasies, explicit greed, rampant corruption so embedded into the system and permeating all levels of government (it seems that the only way the government can purge itself of this sickness is to cut its own leg!) – clarifying and intensifying the revulsion I had for my own country.

In retrospect and on deeper inspection, I found out the basis of this hate was the overarching love I had had for my nation, the great hopes, the bubbling optimism, and like a betrayed lover, was venting out my heartbreak and disappointment. Indeed, any member of the electorate would totally relate – after being seduced with big promises of development only for the elected to renege their promises, completely forget about them, or worse, turn to a totalitarian regime that's a metaphorical wife-beater, denying Kenyans their welfare, rights and killing any hope for a better future.

----

With the evolution of time, I have been putting most of these things behind me; the hate has turned into pity, and just like everyone else, resigned to the status quo, let things be, let the filth run on till the city is filled with garbage, as we watch in amazement how someone can fill so much of our hard-earned taxpayer money into a filthy sack and take it home, then embarrassingly watch these thieves on air and put their faces on our newspapers and social media posts until we turn them into celebrities, with ambivalent feelings – enjoyment and anguish, amusement and agony.

Najihurumia kuwa mkenya. For real.

There is not a day that goes by that doesn't bring tears to our eyes, but we only lament inside, since we are hard of crying. Yet another headline screams to our faces, 'Several billions of shillings looted!', and its nothing but sensational.

We cannot speak up, for what has not been said? Don't we also know what fate befell those who dared to speak up? We'd rather become zombies living our lives blissfully, ignoring everything that exists beyond our individual existence – forget the past, ignore the present, and look towards the future half hoping that all turns well, half expecting the worst.