Yuval Noah Harari once said human beings are the only species who are capable of forming stories and actually believing them. Looking and analyzing what is going in the world at the moment, I willingly admit to the myth that Africa has 54 countries and one of them is Kenya. It is a story that was made up and we all believed it. There citizens being beaten in China and they cannot defend them. What if it was France or Italy or some other place with pink people” – it would have been war or something of the sort. Sisi ni Kuku” the late Mzee Moi said and it seems he knew something. If in doubt look at the independent responses that came out of the unfortunate events (terror attack) that occurred some years ago in Spain and in Kenya. In Spain it sparked worldwide responses and was published all over the world. The Kenya incident was taken as a mere incident with less concern despite having more casualties.
That said, I am forced to admit that some places are just called countries for identification and Kenya is one of them. Kenya is not a country but a fragment of the old colonial vase- pieced together. He is a boy given big-boys clothes and named BABA. By naming a Chihuahua -Simba doesn’t give it the strength of a Lion. It is a great lie that somehow sounds correct, especially when one superficially looks for the big words that make him a big boy- sovereign nation, with democratic institutions and a member of the commonwealth. Quite illusive terminologies we have believed.
First, what do we own to warrant the status of a democracy or to be a member of the commonwealth? There is nothing common and there is no wealthy being shared. Take for instance the British, they have a monopoly over tea in Kenya and other raw materials especially on the end product and thus dictate the price they pay to the enslaved farmers. On the contrary, I have never felt the ownership of Range Rover – even the so-called Travel VISA is a nightmare. When we show signs of independence, they point their mighty finger- to remind us who we are. In the year 1994, for instance, the textile industry in Kenya was booming and was felt all over the country. What happened to it? It was affecting the US cotton pillowcase industry. Immediately, Clinton assented to power and the Chihuahua was reminded that he was a dog and a not a Lion. Clinton administration imposed a quota on the textile imports from Kenya and the industry collapse and we went back to Mitumba. They couldn’t risk losing the Mitumba business in their dumping ground.
You might not agree with me, it is okay: Bertrand Russel advised us that it is sometimes healthy to put a question mark on all the things you have thought to be correct. Literally, let’s analyze some good events, for instance Olympics that are international. Other than the body and the talent, what else do we carry? God forbid, if they say every country to bring their own- we will go there with school uniforms and Kinyira.
In any scenario we are doomed- whether politically, socially, spiritually and worse of all economically. If you are lost ask yourself, as a sovereign nation- what do we export or what do we have control over the production, the processing and the sell? My friend, you will know that we produce children, Rungu and MBOGA ya Kienyeji. The rest we import and we do not have a right to say no-: we even import some of them but we don’t have a right to use them in their own place- i.e planes.
In the bigger but hidden screen, we have a union we call UN-. An institution that was formed after WWII to promote world peace and it has turned out to be the prefect . It carries around a stick and a carrot to whip the boys into line and when need be, feed them with goodies to rubberstamp their advancement elsewhere. WAR in their definition was between them and the rest of the Chihuahua’s are mere incidents- Vietnam, Korea, Somali, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Somali, Nicaragua etc. do not count but are also called COUNTRIES.
Now that the big money is in the Data mining industry and Kenyatta is promoting free internet- our election will be irrelevant. Big data companies that dared the US election in 2016 have all our information that we willingly gave them through the sham exercise name HUDUMA . It could have been a better idea, but we don’t own or have control over the networks. Shoshana Zuboff details this in her length work on Surveillance capitalism.
Do we even have power over anything? Jokingly, we couldn’t even retain the ownership of Swahili phrase ‘hakuna matata’ nor Kiondoo which were sourced, then owned and patent in the West. What else can we hold on to? Noam Chomsky was accurate when he said that when the West talks about promoting democracy what they imply is that these fragments in the name of countries must accept without question to be exploited unquestionably.
We don’t qualify to be a country until we learn to discriminate where options are limited, to dare to be poor with dignity than to act like one who has plenty in bondage. The future is doomed if individual responsibility is not taken to protect your own citizens- We would rather be wiped out of existence now than to be slaves in our own land.
My thoughts in brief- subject to debate.
Mshamba Abroad 