I am a self confessed backfired anthropologist, backfired in the sense that I am interested in the area of study without formal training in it. I remember when I was studying a BSc. course, a local TV chanel aired a documentary on the Aborigines of Australia. Man, I followed the series yet I am not generally a TV person. I would then recount everything about it to my classmates the following day.
I am an extrovert who will mingle with people everywhere, from the matatu driver, mama mboga to an executive somewhere. My mind then tends to pick out social traits including the main features of their language. This came about as a result of being born and raised among communities that are not my own and so I grew up picking other peoples habits. When I was old enough to go to my rural home alone, I notice the difference and asked questions. That is how I ended up a backfired anthropologist.
Njonjo Kihuria in Weekend Star published on Saturday July 28/29 2012 writes about the uneasy calm among the Kikuyu living in Eldoret. I was not surprised, I interact with people at all low levels and so I have known that all is not well. I even wrote an open letter to Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto on my blog Political Rallies will not solve Land problems in the Rift Valley about the same.
Njonjo pens off with a punch on what I have always believed about in my heart. A sixty year old business man told him that cultural values and taboos might not allow the Kalenjin to walk the talk on peace and reconciliation. It boils down to culture, the imprint of our way of life that the 'white man's' religion, education and 'sophistication' has not been able to erode.
To solve our social problems and even develop our country; we must look at our cultures as ethnic entities then gear our people towards creating a Kenyan Culture. You will never do this from the ivory tower in Nairobi or from the podiums of political rallies. I read in the biography of former Singapore Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew how he approached his country's development at independence by tapping into the Indians, Malay and Chinese- culture, fears, strengths and weaknesses. We all know where Singapore is today.
Kenyans of Asian and European descent have never felt Kenyan. No wonder some Kenyans in the social media fora were not impresses by David Dunford when he carried the Kenyan flag at the opening ceremony of 2012 London Olympics. They invest in Kenya then take their profits elsewhere because we have never fully embraced them.
Until we look at Kenya in the eyes of PLO Lumumba; "..give me the hard working mode of the Kikuyu, the loyalty of the Akamba, the athleticism of Kalenjin, the flair of the Luo...." -we will form another National Cohesion and Integration Commission- Reloaded, to solve our social issues.
I mentioned this in several blogs of mine, our fore fathers did it well and even came up with new social entities like how several tribes merged to form a luhya sub-tribe Kalenjin + Luo + Luhya = Tiriki. Another one is why Luos tend to walk to the cliff and are even ready to plunge in The Luo siege mentality in Gor Mahia fans. If we are to sort the mess in our social fabric, then we need to be proactive about our way of life.
Culture is our finger print, even those who claim they were born and brought up in Nairobi can never escape this. We have to decode the fingerprints of the units that make up Kenya and engage them from their point of view. If you understand where someone is coming from, you stop fearing him then you enter into a realm of discussion and not arguments.
Like Nelson Mandela said, "we are all born loving, we just learn to hate." The hardest thing I have realized at a personal level is to unlearn, I can learn anything but to unlearn a habit or way of life, is a fight that one has to fight from the depth of his soul. Our culture, is written in our souls, we never think about it, we are just who we are.
Good work Mr. Njonjo, and may NCIC begin to look at social integration in a new light. KENYA ni KWETU.
No comments:
Post a Comment