we might as well be strangers

Last Sunday's sermon was very awe-inspiring. It was about us being ourselves. Being the Africans we are meant to be. Unapologetically, so the preacher said. It really provoked me. Most of the stuff he said is actually true about us. We walk around wearing those loud t-shirts that scream Kenya in glow-in-the-dark colors and paint our faces red green and white, so that we show we're patriots. We make a loud hash every time we buy Kenya, so we can show we support our local industry. We try so hard to tell our friends where it is we come from, and we tell ourselves twenty times every day, "I'm proud to be Kenyan." So the question was: when has it ever been in contention that we're proud? Who asked? Who challenged the status? Why do we feel that need to outwardly go out of our way to prove our love for the motherland? It all sounds a little fake sometimes if you ask me. If it was real, if it was genuine, it would just come through. It's almost as though we're trying to convince ourselves that we love the motherland!

The things, according to him, that people who don't come from here love about our country and us: we're all family, you don't need to call ahead to show up at someone's door step, we own things communally, we place a greater premium on people and relationships than we do on time and systems, our mother-tongue interferes with other languages, like english, we cook a mountain of food every meal - just in case guests show up unannounced, cousing is not even a Kenyan concept - here we're really all brothers and sisters. If you look carefully, you'll find that these, the things others admire in us, are the things we're ashamed of. Someone is speaking and they shrub and we laugh at them. Someone shows up an hour late for a meeting and we call that "Kenyan timing." and that's enough to explain everything. We don't even trust ourselves to lead ourselves. We think we'll run our own institutions to the ground if left in our hands [and of this Im actually guilty. When Geoffrey Griffin of Starehe died, I was strongly of the opinion that if a black person were put at the helm of the school that was going to be the beginning of its downfall. Imagine. That's not even an outsider talking about a local, it's we ourselves talking about us! I stand corrected, btw. They put a Kenyan in charge and he took the school back to the top] You go to that Java at Adams and there's a ka-waiter looking askance at you like "Now this one, what does he want here?" A Kenyan. One of our own, not a foreigner!

We could perhaps blame this inferiority complex we have on colonialism. It's the kind of thing that cuts deep into people's psyche and damages sometimes irreparably their self esteem. Slavery is the worst form of oppression. It teaches us that we're not good enough. That we're somehow insufficient, and we need someone else to validate us before we can present ourselves to the rest of the world. From the gospel according to Willy Lynch, [a guy who was called in by slave owners in the south when they feared they were losing control of their slaves]: Keep the slaves physically strong, but psychologically weak and dependent on their master. Keep the body, but take the mind. But be that as it may, really, are African countries the only countries that were colonised? Wasn't the United States of America a British Colony in the 18th century? They fought for their freedom, and when they got it they set about creating their own identity. Never mind that the country has actually surpassed their colonisers. Let's just focus on the basics: today there is nothing American that reflects british influences. Nothing whatsoever! The britons have an unwritten consitution, Americans wrote down theirs. Britons are a monarchy, the American system is presidential. The Britons keep left when driving, Americans keep right. They even speak different flavors of English, and spell things differently. It's like the Brits were never in the States. Look now at our dear Kenya. The roads are still the same. The language is still the queen's. Infrastructure is still the same. We even used to have Kenyan Pounds as part of our currency. Our very legal system is like 60% English Common Law! Look at precedent, and you'll see names like Lord Demming, Lord Erroll, Oliver Wendell Holmes jr. et al. Surely, is anything we are that is a creation of our own?

I guess there comes a time when we have to ask ourselves: is patriotism a task or a life philosophy? Is there like a 21-point plan for being Kenyan? Are there things you have to do to show it? Is it in the dress? Is it in the fact that we speak our mother tongue fluently plus that of our next-door neighbor's? Can we quantify the amount of Kenyanness in someone? Langston Hughes wrote the poem I, too, sing America as a harbinger for the coming of the day of the black. Back then, before Rosa Parks and before Martin Luther King, when beaches were still segregated, here was a black person saying "Besides, they'll see how beautiful I am/And be ashamed--/I, too, am America." This should be testament to the fact: Things don't affect you psychologically unless you let them. Nothing external to you has any power over you, says John C. Maxwell. JD from Scrubs was once having one of his usual waking dreams, about being Robin to Turk's Batman, and he asked himself something interesting: "How low is my self esteem that Im the sidekick in my own fantasy?" At the time I lauged - it was a funny joke. But it's starting to seem more and more reality about us Kenyans, and Africans in general. It's our land, they're our minerals, the lakes and mountains were ours first, for crying out loud this is the cradle of mankind. Where it all began. And yet before the rest of the world we bow and ask, "How may I serve you today master?" 

The caged bird sings with a fearful trill/Of things unknown but longed for still.

END