KENYA AT A GLANCE

To be true to ourselves, Kenyans over years has been seen as a nation with great development potential. The past week I was engaging in a debate (on a light note) with my Ugandan friends who seemed convinced that their country was better than mine and were boasting to me about their new electric car model made in Uganda. I felt challenged but that was before I went on Google and came across amazing statistics to my favor. In East Africa, including Burundi and Rwanda, Kenya tops the literacy level chat with a whopping 82% literacy rate. Besides that, the statistics showed that a Kenyan born from a poor family has the ability to do even better than their counterpart from a rich family in any of the other East African countries. These amazing facts among others put my head high throughout the rest of the argument and I felt like Alexander the great after conquering a number of nations; or to bring it much closer home, I felt like our cousin Barrack Obama after the confirmation that Osama Bin Laden had been gunned down…#LOL.

However the recent on-goings in the country have made me question either the facts I read about, or our realization of the same. Beyond Kenya was the ‘nanny from hell’ in Uganda who vent out her anger and frustrations at her boss’s innocent daughter and almost killed her. I will not say I am glad the girl’s daughter dealt with her mercilessly or else my Human Rights law lecturer will question my class attendance. And yes there was stripping in Mombasa and in Kayole and we made a big fuss about it and even took to the streets. Our beautiful Esther Passaris also rocked a mini-skirt and we all changed our statuses on whatsapp to #mydressmychoice. We made fun of it and usual the most rancorous mob in Africa KOT took this time to exercise and try their hand at graphic design with their numerous memes and hilarious picutures. For some time it was an argument as to who was to blame for the incidences. We questioned whether the women needed to be blamed for their dressing or was it the immorality of the men. I could hear some girls or is it women or ladies even question as to why men would do such when women do not interfere with their uncouth trouser sagging habits.

Today however I have been left in utter disgust and abhorrence at seeing how a woman was treated inside a bus. I did not get the whole story but from the video I could tell that the woman was probably forced into the bus and they did what they did.(WARNING!!Video with graphic content) I have lacked the right words but since I will post the video at the end of this piece then you will be keen to be your own judge. However two things struck me from the video, one; how on earth a man would stand seeing a woman get hurt, physically for that matter. Worse is that one had the guts to record it for fun’s sake. The men were pounding on her like hungry wild dogs on prey each wanting a piece of action on her. The girl’s screams were not good enough to secure her freedom. She was literally like a chick at the mercy of surrounding hawks. The men’s hands danced around her genitals like a pianist on his instrument. It was painful. It was agonizing. The most bizarre thing however  that caught my attention was on one of the attackers. Judging from the long sleeved michuki shirt he had on, he must have been the driver of the matatu. But that is not it; he had a wedding ring on. This was a guy who was presumably to go back to his wife that night, get a hot shower and probably after a sumptuous meal make passionate love to his wife ready for the next day’s hustle. If my religion allowed me to put it aside for a moment I would have dropped a bombshell of insults but how unfortunate, they would not be enough. Oh, and my religion apparently would not.

Then I realized a thing, there is no more content that needed debate anymore. It begged the question to me as to what the exact problem was. Is it our eroded value system? Wait, do we have a value system? What is its composition? Who defines it? For a second (probably more) my mind was in constant spin motion trying to wonder to what extent we have lost it. Are we that lost that there is no hope for redemption? Are we like a speeding Nairobi matatu towards the wrong direction? If there were to be any hope then from whence will it come from? Our society has become the Golgotha of humanity, just dry bones.  It dawned on me that we have been living a lie, the lie that our nation is coming together yet the only place we are together is when on our knees at  the mercy of self-destruction. It is the same irony of a kwashiorkor ridden child with a big belly just like that of a rich man on a nyamchom diet. Our society has lost its touch on humanity.

It is true that indeed women have also decided to dress in way that leaves very little for men to imagine but that is not a justification for rape. The world is now a den of lions and the earlier we realize that the better.  That video proved to me that unemployment is not the problem, idleness is. We could have jobs but literally nothing to do. That way we can close our offices at 5pm and still have the strength to be involved in such. This is now a battle of victims and opportunists exchanging buttons and unless the problem is dealt with from the roots then the noise and hullaballoo will only amount to verbal diarrhea whose stink will do nothing but block our reasoning and wit. We have to know that there is a class that appreciates brawn to brain. That there are a specific group of people we cannot reason with.

I will end with this, let us be critical and identify the underlying problem, do an in depth self-analysis and find out our individual and collective role in curbing the problems.