A wise man of the ancient once said " when I was a child, I did childish things. Now that I am a man, I have put away the childish and act like a man". I was in Kenya about a month ago, and during my visit two interesting events occurred. These were the live telecast of parliamentary proceedings and the verdict on the Tom Cholmondeley Delamere case.
These were both significant events in the history of the country, one heralding a new era of openness and maturity for the Kenyan society. While the other displaying our inability to deal with an old era, and its resulting diversity. We focused our attention on the narrow prism with which every Kenyan seems to define self, by - race, tribe, ethnicity, in evaluating guilt. However, inspite of these two momentous occurrence, I was intrigued by a different phenomenon, one more apparent and obvious. I watched the central figures of authority in these branches of government. And conspicuous on each head, the Speaker, Kenneth Marende and High Court Judge, Muga Apondi, both wore these hideous blonde wigs in what appeared to be either oblivion or pride.
When I was a child, I copied and aped a lot. I pretended to be my father, a policeman, a soldier and we made costumes that allowed us to look the part. I believe we called it 'kalongo'. This throw back to my childhood was an epiphany into the state of Kenya's maturity. We have a population looking at figures in authority with real expectations of life and death, however the leaders are playing the part aping some distant colonial era, some servant of the Royal British Empire. This lack of self awareness or knowledge of self was excusable in the 1960s, but 40 years later we are still playing 'kalongo' and acting the part.
Games have no accountability and the outcomes are not real. We have had vision 1995, 2000, 2010 and now 2030. These are words on paper, a script for a well choreographed play, where all the actors go back to their real lives after the curtain falls with a fat paycheck, nothing real.
Some will site tradition, and I am the biggest fan of tradition, however we must pause and ask ourselves whose tradition. We as Kenyans run the risk of playing the baffon, the joker, the jester at every court. Parallel to a colonial tradition we have a liberation tradition and too often we have honored the colonial over the liberation tradition in Kenya and to some extent Africa. Lake Victoria, Victoria Falls are just symbols of this immaturity, an inability to take full ownership of yourself.
We need to rediscover who we are and rekindle what our true values were and here is my short list of where we should start.
- A new constitution that reflects the will and tone of the people to replace current one handed down by the British
- Full ownership of our successes and failures - its the only way we will learn to do better
- New land policy that honors indigenous land rights - otherwise what were the struggles for?
- Renaming of all national symbols and land features
- And finally getting rid of those UGLY WIGS
