YOU FOOLISH KENYANS WHO BEWITCHED YOU?

I have been writing a letter to God to ask why the season of madness in Kenya has arrived  early this time. Nearly two years in advance. It’s the season when reason departs Kenya. Its that time when you wish life had an individual pause button. You would pause yours and let all the idiocy ebb way. Why? This is the season when suddenly even professors experience a mental block.  Cognitive incapacity. They can’t think beyond tribe. Even the clergy are not spared. Pick  any contested political  issue in this season. Randomly! Give me two professors or two members of clergy and don’t let them open their mouths. Just give me their names. I will predict their ethnicity with more than 99% accuracy. That is  not their fault. My next prediction is their fault. I will proceed to predict on which side of the divide they fall vis-a-vis the issue at hand, without hearing a word from them. And I will be 99% accurate. You don’t need to be a statistician on this one. Its simple.  There will be a co-relationship between their arguments and that of the presidential candidate closest to their ethnicity or the candidate supported by the king of their ethnic fiefdom. 

 I have  been drafting this letter since a furahi day (Friday) visit to a joint here in the Pearl  of Africa called Inyamat. I really need to find out what that name means. I found it with difficulty only made a little bearable by google map. We were here as citizens of East Africa to celebrate a colleague who has “retired”.  He is a young lad just turned 50. You wouldn’t know he has turned 50 by just looking at him courtesy of his baby face. He has to retire. He has served his mandatory term of 10 years. We were here to tell him that he should keep his shades on because his future is still bright.  The young man is a Kenyan from the shores of lake Victoria. The meeting had been organized by a young lady from the slopes of the aberdare ranges where they grow potatoes like nothing. It must be the region that made the sons and daughters of the lake to baptize people from the slopes of Mt Kenya “jarabuon” or lovers of potatoes. In support of our sister two of us from the slopes of Mt Kenya and another from the Kuria community, not Wilfred Machage, were also in attendance. We had managed to drag along colleagues from Rwanda, Burundi, and Tanzania. 

The man of the moment was late to arrive. I was told he was just being a typical jeng. As guest of honour, a Luo  doesn’t just arrive “fuaa”.  He does it with some nyadhi. Style.  Inyamat has little sunken cubicles so when the son of the lake arrived we were seated below and he towered above us like a colossus. Just the way politicians like it. It was as if he had a natural podium. As soon as he sat down, we settled to what Kenyans do best. Light hearted banter. He begun by declaring that if I didn’t treat him right, he knows the car I drive, where I live and that he could easily mobilize hustlers to find me. He reminded me that his fellow hustlers are not particularly fond of dynasties. I wanted to protest but he reminded me that as hustlers they have copyright to the interpretation of who fits the definition “dynasty”.  There was a titter of laughter and chuckles. My colleagues know that the man drives a machine they have christened “the beast” because it looks like something Obama could have used in his last visit to K’ogello as president. The back and forth banter continued way into the night looping in all kinds of topics from across East Africa. There was not an iota of negative ethnocentrism at any one time. So I have been wanting to ask God:  “What happens to this jollity between Kenyans to the extent that we can turn on each other with such unfathomable savagery every five years?”

I don’t know whether God was teasing me but for a moment I thought he was trying to send me an answer through social media. In a WhatsApp group of a 1990s cohort of graduates from one of the public universities in Kenya, someone posted a clip of Martha Karua explaining why we should reject BBI. She was immediately accused of trafficking simplistic and tired arguments everyone had heard before. Others argued she had no locus standi to lecture anyone on anything because of things she did or did not do during her tenure in the coalition government in which she served as the Minster for Justice and Constitutional Affairs. 

In normal circumstances I would not argue with God but on this one I got  suspicious. I decided to test the spirit. I asked that we first revisit some simple things we teach in introduction to graduate studies. We call them fallacies. One of the fallacies involves attacking the person rather than the argument. Ad hominem. Martha may have failed as Minister for Justice and Constitutional affairs but is what she is saying in the video clip valid? She  raises a simple question in her analysis. In a country with more than 44 different ethnic communities how does appointing five people at the executive level constitute universal representation for the rest of us. I asked someone to counter that argument. No one did. Well, I decided to follow up. Is Martha’s argument simplistic because it’s simply true? I asked. No one responded. Except one. He argued that although some of us might offer some nice and high sounding arguments, when it comes to push and shove we all withdraw into our ethnocentric cocoons. His conclusion? We are all “bure kabisa”.  I could see he was falling into another one of the fallacies we caution against in our introduction to graduate studies. Generalization. I asked how he would read Martha Karua and David Ndii who are making a case contrary to that of  the president who comes from their community. Martha’s history  was brought up again. Sensing the risk of returning to the ad hominem fallacy, I threw a parting shot: shall we chew books up to and including university level and still continue being content with being “Bure Kabisa”?

I don’t have an answer. Perhaps I should just get on with my letter to God.