Let’s unleash potential of our ‘primitive’ energy

I recently decided to take stock of my day and ensure that at least one extraordinary thing happens to me daily.

I figured that this will make life more interesting and keep boredom at bay.

This is also based on the wisdom that the art of happiness lies in the power to extract that feeling from common things.

The Korean Air advertisement that referred to Kenyan people as “indigenous and having primitive energy” sparked outrage in the social media.

We criticised the advert and demanded an apology and the airline obliged.

This has resulted in some of my happy moments being driven by the primitive energy theme; this has also been a trending theme on twitter. First I must admit that the airline will have much greater awareness among Kenyans than it could have ever had if it never made the mistake.
One of the extraordinary things that have happened in the last few days is that my parents gave me a live jogoo (cock).

I was excited about the gift. I no longer need my alarm clock to wake me up the next day.

My parents, however, warned me that the jogoo was primitive and that it would crow at odd hours.

The fact that the cock was kienyeji (indigenous breed) fitted very well with the words featuring in the offensive advertisement.

We had a long debate about the word primitive which narrowed down to a certain lifestyle that existed during the pre-independence era which was referred to as kariko. The term had something to do with being primitive.

kariko, they said, was used to refer to an uneducated girl who was basically unpolished. She wore sheet of cloth instead of a dress. During those days the difference between an educated girl and a kariko was so important to the educated girls that they kept finding new ways of differentiating themselves from them.

In those days the educated girl was referred to as a madam and there was a saying that “sixteen karikos make one madam” which was supposed to indicate the proportion of madams in society.

The modern-day equivalent of a “madam” would be a diva.

They have been extensively targeted by Divas soap, Standard Chartered Divas club and Snapps alcoholic drink advertisements targeting divas.

There is no modern day equivalent of a kariko but the idea gives an insight into how you can target a lifestyle group successfully while segmenting your market.