Imagine a 44-year-old adult. Let’s say his name is K. K is a grown man, but an underachiever. He dropped out of school early, and does menial work for little pay. He watches his neighbours with envy: some have developed their own businesses; others get large pay-packets for performing highly skilled jobs. K has to get by working for the neighbours on low pay.
K’s life is subject to many vicissitudes. He is often hard hit by unemployment caused by events beyond his control, and is forced to go those same neighbours for occasional handouts. They usually oblige, but only after much lecturing and preaching. Some even go as far as to offer money only if K allows them to take charge of his life. He has to follow their instructions and account for every penny he takes from them.
As you would expect, K is an unhappy fellow. His wife and children have abandoned him because they don’t want to associate with a loser. He is often found in bars squandering other people’s money and complaining loudly about his life. He points out how he helped so many of his ‘friends’ when they were younger, only for them to dump him later. He talks incessantly about how his forefathers were rich and advanced people who fell victim to vicious exploiters. Then the alcohol runs out, and K shuffles around looking for more handouts, and receives more lectures.
If you knew K, would your advice to him not be obvious? Get a grip on your life, man! Stop thinking of yourself as useless, for a start. Acquire some real skills that allow you to get more out of life. Take responsibility for your own affairs, and stop depending on others. Forget about the past, real or imagined: it’s standing in the way of your future. Rely on your self and your own efforts – stop begging. You may suffer for a while, but eventually you will rise up on your own steam, and you will engage with your neighbours as an equal, not as a basket case.
It sounds obvious when personalised, but when you realise that ‘K’ is Kenya, and that his ‘friends and neighbours’ are the rich countries, it all gets hazier. K’s life is that of independent Kenya: underachieving; brainwashed to feel inferior; happy to depend on others – all the while complaining loudly and tediously.
I feel humiliated – do you? Why should a grown-up country have such little self-respect? Why should it run itself so badly that it is constantly in need of help? Why should it squander all its money instead of educating itself so that it can become something better? Why should it stand by and watch other nations raise their skill and productivity levels and their average incomes, while it remains stuck in a low-wage low-quality prison? Why should it be a lowly waiter at the ball, while others partake in the feast?
Why should it be home to every patronising partner and do-gooding NGO in the world? Why should it have to listen to lectures and strictures about reforming itself – instead of just doing it? Why should it stand to attention to foreign ideas, gurus and methodologies, instead of doing its own thinking for itself?
After we get humiliated, let us also get angry. Angry not at those patronise us, but at ourselves. All these people only line up to aid us, assist us, teach us and control us because we have made ourselves so pathetic. Let us not deny that we DO let our people starve every so often; that we DO allow our leaders to be the richest people in the land; that we DO mismanage our economies and our affairs; that we DO create a situation in which our youngest and brightest fall over themselves to leave the country; that we DO allow savage and barbaric militias to grow unchecked in our midst. After those admissions will come enlightenment.
Where is our dignity? This country is filled with thoughtful ideas, with brilliant people. Yet most of us stand by and watch the circus while the world laughs at the clowns on stage (and sends aid). We are all grown up as a country – we don’t need aid, we don’t need other people’s business models. Kenya, and Africa, must come to the party as an invitee, not as the driver of the taxi.
Listening to the great buzz of talent and determination that can be heard in the land these days, I have no doubt that it will happen. The only question is how soon; and how much longer we are willing to wait. There are world-class organisations emerging from within us. There are people sitting in our midst with the ideas to change the world.
But to make it happen, more of us need to feel the insult of our situation. I feel it – do you? I want it to end now – do you? I know what I’m doing about it – do you?
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{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Sunny,
I am an ardent reader of your articles which are insightful and mind juggling. Congratulations once again for the website; it is a move in the right direction. I believe complacency amongst the Kenyan people is a major block in realising meaningful change. After having travelled to a number of countries, it is sickening to compare the inaction and slow rate of progress in our country, vis a vis what individuals out there are consistently doing. Kigali, a city that was seriously dilapidated due to the genocide is a model example of what action, committment and vision can realise. Your article made me angry at myself for the many times I am hesitant to take action on a matter which ought to have been finished. Thank you and may God continue inspiring you to get us out of this “comfort zone”. As regards your last question, am not 100% sure as an individual of what to do. Any leads?
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Duncan:
Thanks for the heartfelt comment. What should you do, you ask. The answer is particular to every individual. We are all given skills and resources that we can use to good effect to change the country. I am using the power of words in my articles in the press; I am also teaching better business practice at Strathmore Business School; and work with my clients as a consultant to spread good practice.
For you, the answer may be different, depending on your skills and background. But never imagine that you don’t have a role to play. Every one of us has a sphere of influence, however small. We can all infect other people with positive thoughts and constructive ideas for change.
Step one, as I wrote today, is to feel the insult of our situation. Let us first get angry with ourselves for tolerating this mediocrity for so long. Let us look around to see what Rwanda and Botswana and Mauritius are doing. And then let us refuse to accept anything less for ourselves.
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Thanks a lot for your insightful articles; I always look forward to reading your Sunday column. I am particularly happy that you raised the issue of our youngest and brightest falling over themselves to go abroad. I am one such person and I feel really bad when I realise that no one minds when I do that. I wish our politicians and policy makers would know better. (I have intentions of coming home eventually:))
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I believe our politicians are an unflattering reflection of ourselves; we elect them, dance behind them and congratulate them as they steal our money and destroy our freedoms. We should stop trying to boil the ocean to feed everyone and concentrate on how we can each catch a single fish to feed ourselves today. We have to take responsibility for our actions individually and collectively and not accept laziness and excuses in ourselves and others.
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You know now that you mention it, it’s kind of weird that everybody but we ourselves seem to see that we have ‘problems’ and in turn have the ‘fix’ for them?
What happened to the fact that the shoe wearer should know where the shoe pinches?
How come we have worse infrastructure than we had at independence? Or we’re waiting for some NGO to come do a study?
How is it that our life expectancy dropped with our independence? Take the No. 8 to Kibera and take a walk deep into Laini Saba. Might enlighten a few of us.
When Kalembe and his ilk are Ministers because we were too lazy to vote or didn’t care either way, we shouldn’t expect miracles.
We should either get leaders that reflect what we aspire to be or forever keep our peace!
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Wilfred:
When everyone but K knows he has a problem; and everyone but K knows how to fix it; what does that make K?
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Sunny,
Are you sure that K doesn’t know he is a lazy, irresponsible drunk?
I think he knows all too well his failures and what he needs to do to save himself. Listen to him speak about his issues in bars and to anyone that will listen, he is never short of ideas. K lacks the courage and discipline it takes to rid himself of self pity and the infantile worldview he has.
Maybe K should go to Alcoholics Anonymous and get into a 12-step program. While K is at it, he should also see a shrink to help him deal with his maturity issues that keep K holding off hard work while he waits for the big day. You know the big day, the one where his relative/tribesman will make it big and carry him into the Promised Land on his coat tails. The day is around the corner, there have been many false starts but this next one will be the mother of all “deals”.
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Sunny:
After thinking long and hard, I finally figured it out… it makes ‘K’ the asylum where the inmates finally got a chance to rule.
Seriously, think about it, the inmates rule the vast asylum which ‘K’ is made of, hence proof of the theory that insane people do not know that they are insane!
Better still using part of Kamau’s analogy, a drunk finally got to own the bar.
So while we don’t see anything untoward about our the way our society works, the rest of the world keeps throwing us gobs of Prozac and into AA hoping to cure us of this malaise.
Hopefully we haven’t developed natural resistence to the cure.
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Wilfred and Kamau:
Thanks for the very entertaining (as well as very insightful) analysis.
Certainly, K’s record over 44 years suggests that madmen or drunks have been in charge!
There is a different analysis which suggests that no, no-one is mad or stupid, it’s just that all the incentives are set up to reward those who plunder, rather than those who build. This thinking will feature in a future article – watch this space.
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I read this pathetic “harmless looking” article and I just had to express my utter disgust at the Author’s ignorance and lack of taste.
YES the colonialists ARE FULLY TO BLAME for Africa’s woes. Racial brainwashing is psychological and it can take GENERATIONS to heal psychological wounds.
The colonialists did a good job of making the African feel like worthless scum who cannot do anything by himself/herself.
And this is exactly what the sick, unpatriotic article is trying to insinuate. That Kenya was much better off and more prosperous when it was under the colonial powers. That we cant do anything by ourselves.
Go to any 5star restaurant in Kenya. You will be treated like some second class citizen simply because you’re African. PHSYCHOLOGICAL RESIDUE OF COLONIALISM still exists in kenya and we have to fight it.
Let me ask you, who was benefitting form the pre-independence prosperity? Certainly not Africans deprived of their land, Jailed, banned from going to school, and kept in dirty concentration camps!
You need to THINK before you write – else you’ll come out as an ignorant insensitive fool!
I am proud to be a KENYAN!
I love KENYA, my country.
We shed blood for our freedom. Let us VALUE it and be proud of our freedom fighters!
It’s might take time but we will HEAL one day.
We know what the british did to us and we have forgiven them for their evil deeds (thats why descendants of colonial rulers still have hundreds of acres of land they did not even purchase!).
Look at Chomodoley (or whatever his name is) – he believes he has the right to shoot dead any African who walks into his hundreds of acres of land. And he has demonstrated it for all to see. To him an African is a worthless animal, a pest whose existence on this planet is not justified.
Kenyans – lets UNITE against this PHSYCHOLOGICAL EVIL. Together we can overcome it!
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Maina:
Talk about missing the point! Since you understood the exact opposite or everything I wrote, I don’t even know how to respond. Read the other comments in this post to try and understand what discussion is taking place here…
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Hi Sunny,
Didn’t mean to insult you. Please delete the part that reads:
“You need to THINK before you write – else you’ll come out as an ignorant insensitive fool!”
I must’ve gotten overcome by emotions (Guess I should have thought before I wrote that line hehehe…).
But I definitely understand what the article is talking about and still stand by all my other points.
Self deprecation is not an answer. We should not at any moment believe that we are incapable of rising up and taking control of our destiny.
Worse – we should not pass such a mentality to our children – if we want to break free from this very real Psychological Colonialism.
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Maina:
Thanks for the clarification. But then, are we not in total agreement? That was precisely the point I was making: that we have been brainwashed over the years into thinking of ourselves as inferior. That we must feel the insult of the situation. That the answer, however, is to face up to our problems squarely and honestly, and take charge of our own destiny. Where are we disagreeing?
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The aspect of “what is the real cause” has not come out clearly in your article. At no point should any Kenyan accept or believe that the mess is our fault.
I can see Kenya tranforming slowly into economic independence.
It might take time – but Africa will one day be healed.
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This is the first time I am visting this site and I am loving it. All I came to do is see the responses people were making about why Kenyans don’t read. I was too eager to know… and then I read several articles and this one has really got to me.
This was really creative to potray Kenya as human being. But the article made me angry, not angry to pick up a gun, as one famous person said, but angry to want to make some changes. At least you know what you are doing about it, I still don’t. I’m quite young (21) so I guess I still have time to figure that out.
Our leaders, we choose them but I don’t think we have much of a choice. Every other person you elect turns out to be a replica of the ousted one. There is nothing they can say to convince us that they are better leaders because we have heard it all before. What I always say to myself is, Kenya will change the day I am elected president. Then I could do things my way.
Thanks for your website, it’s cool. And the article really sparked something in me.
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