Erick Wamanji
When the voice of Barack Obama boomed through the hall, Kenya was rising to fever pitch. There was hope. The country saw possibilities. Yet, even while the world was in Nairobi, still, a man somewhere at the slopes of Mt. Kenya accepted to be bundled to the boot of a white Probox. He squeezed among other five men, hardly room for a leg and fresh air. The driver banged the boot and zoomed off dangerously. No. this chap in Meru was not getting a free ride. Salon cars, especially the Probox, are part of our transport architecture. And like their matatu cousins, Probox are adding to the terror on the road. Sadly, folks, as a society we have cheerfully accepted this indignity. And it is not just on the roads.
One Michael Joseph, after analysing our lifestyles, concluded that Kenyans are a peculiar lot.
And nowhere is our peculiarity more pronounced than in our tolerance for mediocrity. The culture of ripping off Kenyans on bogus goods and services is perverse and scary. It ranges from the restaurant where your coffee comes cold and tastes dirty and the waiters are indifferent, to a priest who fornicates and robs the flock. It pans from the banking hall where the customer is treated like a terrorist and forced to queue for hours on end to the hospital where the doctor prescribes wrong medicine and doesn’t give a damn. The chain of this nonsense is long, and can run from Tanga to Timbuktu.
Folks, we have been cheapened. Or rather, we have cheapened ourselves.
But just why a society, so literate, so progressive like ours accept this bullshit to persist unabated? Well, silence, they say, is golden.
But silence can be scandalous when we let an affront on our very dignity and survival to continue unchecked. We have settled for less demonstrating ignorance and stupidity at an industrial scale. And Bo Bennett could as well have spoken of Kenya when he noted that
” Every day, people settle for less than they deserve. They are only partially living or at best living a partial life…”and settling for less is costing us a fortune – in dignity and progress.” I doubt even with Obama’s dose of hope, if we gonna rise with this swamp of playing underdogs.
Who cursed us? I keep asking. Distressingly, we feel so hapless yet we have the power at our disposal to create change. But, we have accepted mediocrity as part of life and moved on unbothered. It is this detachment from the collective quest for civility that is causing horrifying suffering along the streets, on our roads and in all the places that offer service. We have endorsed this kind of behaviour and that is why it has been perpetuated with impunity. A society can only sink this far upon the complicity of its people. The Greeks were convinced that civility held the state together. Civility was both a private virtue and a public necessity. Without civility, the state could not function. Now you understand why the anarchy in our society. We need to rediscover our societal values and construct in ourselves a sense of civic duty to demand that which is worth our dignity. A culture does not settle for less, that has pride and dignity, it reshapes a progressive future for its progeny. Getting the best is an attitude. There must be a construct in you to demand what your worth is. It is this attitude that will decipher the crap from the great. But this attitude of self-worth has to be inculcated in society. And it begins with one step.
Ms Parks
Let’s go back in time. The story of Rosa Louise McCauley Parks may not ring a bell instantly, yet it is the embodiment of self-emancipation. Parks is the courageous black woman who refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, USA for a white passenger. That was during the height of the notorious racial segregation. Yet, Parks knew her government would not act. She acted. And her action sparked a civil disobedience movement. Change came. Most tantalizing is that she was an ordinary Wanjiku who brought change. In 2003, Kenya was almost there. Narc’s triumphal splash to power thrust Kenyans to the pinnacles of optimism. Passengers even started to arrest cops receiving bribes. Unfortunately, the bubble burst too soon. Today, the best we do is to rush to social media and pour lamentations. Then, the heat stops. Then something else comes. It is a choppy lifestyle lacking in purpose and coherence. The most scary truth is that a majority of us lack the instinctive appreciation or discovery of a dignity, a right so inherent in every human being. Otherwise it defeats logic why an adult in his/her right senses accepts to be stashed at the boot of a car. It defeats logic why the priest exploits us to the bones and we sing Psalms to him. And so, folks, blessed is the day when a speeding driver will be stopped by passengers; when you will stop patronising a mediocre restaurant and when a contractor will be stopped on his tracks because of a shoddy job. The day we will be like Ms Parks, then, shall we trumpet, “hosanna, hosanna, Obama has brought us hope.”