unpatriotic itchin' needs a patriotic scratch

"For love, for honor, for mankind." When they released Armageddon in 1998 that was the tagline, ostensibly meant to explain why akina Bruce Willis sacrificed their lives to go blow up the meteor that was coming to destroy the world (of course starting with America, as always :) The first two I get (yes I get love!), but that last one, for mankind, I have never understood. I've never seen the sense behind us having a predilection to identify with the rest of mankind just because we're similar, or with people my tribe just because we speak the same language, or people who come from my town just because we come from the same place, even people my race - just because we share ancestors. As irrational as I find love in general, this particular one I don't even bother rating - it's too out there.

When I was in uni I was in a club called SIFE, that's Students in Free Enterprise. Essentially it's a movement that aims to empower disenfranchised members of society with the economic wherewithal to empower themselves. So each uni carries out projects where they teach members of society how to make the money, then at the end of the competition cycle we all meet and present our projects and it's left to a panel to decide who's the winner based on who had the most financial and sustainable impact. My team was just the one - it was full of superstars! So two years running we go do these killer presentations, and two years running we win and get to go represent the country and our uni on the world stage [that's how I made it to NYC, btw], and the school administration used to be so proud of us that do you know how much help they accorded us? Nothing! Absolutely nothing. Even just a letter to say these are our people could you please help them any way you can we had to ask till we were hoarse, so lemme not even go into financial assistance. The first time maybe you could argue we were a small club, relatively unknown, but the second time around, we were already reigning national champs and we'd just done it again [we actually used to go present the trophy to the admin as a courtesy]. I swear there was even this time we thought seriously about going as independents, rather than emissaries of that uni!

I'm thinking about these things coz in the just-concluded Project Fame, I saw on Twitter some time that Kenyans showed Patricia madha ati coz she had voted out Debarl (or one of the others - don't watch broadcast TV so I wouldn't know), and I was thinking dude! she doesn't like the guy she doesn't like the guy. Me I wasn't even one of the people who were up in arms when a while back Kaz voted out Didge in SA I think. I totally got it. If she thought he should go then she shouldn't have had to keep him just because "we're kinsmen." Or that time that runner Keter agreed to be bought by Denmark, so that he even changed nationalities - good for him. If he thought they were a better deal he shouldn't have been villified for accepting it just because "he's a son of the soil." Lord knows this country hadn't done much for him!

I love my family. I love my schools - high school and primary, (obviously not uni). And I love the two towns I grew up in. And since I moved here, gotta say, me I love Nairobi regardless (pun pun). You see those are places and people that changed my life. But I can't say I love the countryside where all luhyas are supposed to be from coz I've never been there. I can't say I love ugali just because "it's your people's favorite meal." Obviously don't even get me started on the small transistor radio thing. I gotta have more than that "sentimental value" to go on. There was a time in I think '04 when Natalie Maines [one of the Dixie Chicks - she's actually the Dixie Chick who sings] went on national TV and proclaimed that she was ashamed of Bush as president coz of the Iraq war. Now, you need to understand that when you sing Country you don't speak out against a president who hails from Texas - which is Country's biggest market - so naturally there was massive fallout, their concerts and air play suffered, she got death threats, so she apologized publicly; but later she changed her mind and reinstated her earlier sentiments. And went and wrote a song to that effect [which the Texans boycotted but went on to win the Grammy for Song of The Year and Record of The Year and the album it was from, Taking The Long Way, Album of The Year anyway]. At the time, Natalie commented, "The entire country may disagree with me, but I don't understand the necessity for patriotism. Why do you have to be a patriot? About what? This land is our land? Why? You can like where you live and like your life, but as for loving the whole country ... I don't see why people care so much about patriotism." She said that despite being a citizen in the Holy Grail of patriotic citizens, and just like that [at the risk of sounding, well, unpatriotic], she became my hero.

END