Kenya must build a national character

Many years ago, my son, aged seven or eight at the time, wrote a poem about the world as he saw it:

England wins,

France resists,

America pollutes,

Spain is beautiful,

China is large, and

Africa is magic.

Not on point in relation to this year’s soccer World Cup, as it turns out.

But it stunned me, at the time, in the way it captured in single words the character of nations, the way in which we all play such different roles on the world stage, even while our humanity is so much the same in its concern with love and glory.

In recent weeks, that poem has come back to me, and really it has been the magical Africa that has been on my mind, thinking about Kenya and its ‘character’.

For, from the inside, Kenya talks and thinks and behaves as if it has no national character, steeped in themes of passion, status, and wealth of some communities.

We are so close to our many strands and cultural priorities that we barely consider what makes Kenya as a whole tick, and how others view our nation.

What is it that Kenya stands for? What does our national identity encompass?

We are known, everywhere, for our friendliness, but nowhere for our kindness.

Our energy is notable, but so too is our unstructured free-for-all.

Indeed, globally, we are even ridiculed, for our very poor attention to administration, and systems, and human rights.

And it has been rights that have been on my mind of late.

For, when I began writing this column, its theme was consumer rights: Kenyans rights in employment, askaris rights to decent working conditions, our rights to operational fire tenders, and children’s rights to basic healthcare.

Yet rights are not a big thing in Kenya.

The Constitution put rights on the table in a different way. But so scant is our focus on rights in everyday decisions that we are barely even cognisant, as a nation, of the EAC’s Bill of Rights, which sits above all our legislation and defines the over-riding principles of our citizens’ protection.

And now we have our craziest ‘season’ yet— demolishing our city. And where are the ‘rights’ in that journey? Apparently, it’s just one more drama, of inexplicable point, drawing mass attention purely as a subject of gossip on who will get ‘hit’ next.

Indeed, it’s Brookside next, a friend told me Monday. He had called me late and sent me photos of his home’s wall, having arrived from work to find it scrawled with red paint: ‘GoK Remove’.

The environment watchdog Nema had visited. He had received nothing, nor had his caretaker or the building’s management. But that house is in a river valley, albeit nowhere at all close to the waterway.

So, we discussed what he would do. For the demolition crew often come early, and people don’t get much chance to lift out furniture and their other belongings.

I don’t think he slept well that night. And I hope, as I write, his walls are still up and he gets an opportunity to vacate.

But as my latest sight of ‘rights’ that Kenya does not recognise – being the right to possessions, the right to notice, the right to vacate, the right to sleep secure at night, the right to a stable home, and many others, I truly wonder if ‘magic’ is really the underlying character that will get us to any 2030 vision worth having.

Will it work, or even happen, or be worth achieving to build our castle, and its moat, in our land where nothing is recognised as yours or mine, and citizens’ rights simply are not a factor in the way we all proceed?

I guess that’s for us all to decide: beyond highways, where do we want Kenya to go and what do we want it to be?

As we demolish our past, and build our future, what is it that we are building here? Kenya is brutal?