Ignes fatui: but we are Kenyan

One interesting trait prevalent among Kenyans is their passion for conjuring tales of vivid imagination and then insisting on them so ardently that they end up being turned into truisms, never mind their lack of basis in fact.

The traditional method, is to take on a sprinkling of facts, throw them into a massive sufuria boiling with sliced and diced-facts, spiced up with fantasies for good measure, with a large pinch of salt for flavour and an unhindered splash of such outrageous fictions as would embarrass most, except we are Kenyan.

Read more from Kamale T here.

Opening doors

It is clear that the time has come for us to stop taking Kenya for granted, that instead we must make a passionate and compelling case for it.

We now have to argue ourselves and our compatriots into the idea of Kenya; to persuade ourselves of, and to think about, more deeply and with more clarity than we have ever had to summon before, the merits of this nebulous entity that we call home.

We now have to fight for it; the honeymoon, such as it was, is over. Before we do that, we had better know what we are talking about. It is important to remember that no identity is fixed, no way of being oneself immortalised in stone. Every morning, when we wake up, each one of us has to remember who we are, and act accordingly, gathering our recollection of self from memories, and dreams, from half-forgotten quarrels and recollections of things overheard, from our yearnings and loves and dislikes. We piece these little shards of reflected, refracted and remembered things together again every morning, to become ourselves.

Political tribalism, moral ethnicity

Unlike, apparently, rather a lot of the people I like and respect, I think that the boycotts strategy announced by the ODM is a disastrous move, one that can only lead to greater pain. Let me explain. John Lonsdale somewhere distinguishes between political tribalism and moral ethnicity. (Never mind that I've always thought it a slightly tenuous distinction - everybody thinks the same of most distinctions they didn't first think of themselves.) Political tribalism is the constitution of an ethnicity by competition for state power and largesse against other, similarly constituted, ethnicities. Moral ethnicity on the other hand is a set of assumptions about public virtue for people like us. Political tribalism is inevitably adversarial; moral ethnicity inward-looking.

Read more from Daniel Waweru here.

Flames in Kenya

The recent elections and post-election riots in Kenya bring forward great sorrow and also give one pause. Is this another situation where Africans tear each other apart, one may ask? How is it that people who have lived next to one another can go after each other in what appears to be the wink of an eye?

As odd as it may sound, I found myself, in reading about the Kenya crisis, thinking about an episode from Rod Serling’s legendary TV series The Twilight Zone. The episode is called “The Monsters are due on Maple Street” and it involves a power failure in a neighborhood that cuts the community off from the outside world and is completely inexplicable. A particular home, however, seems to continue to receive power. The family in that home has kept very much to themselves and has not been interacting with their neighbors. Suspicions fly that this family is either somehow connected to the power failure or knows something that they are not telling. The neighborhood ultimately erupts into violence. At the end of the episode, it turns out that aliens were behind the power failure, testing whether they can get humans to destroy themselves.

Read more from Bill Fletcher Jr. here.

Today I Cried

I consider myself a patriot, one true and pure in my love and devotion to Kenya. To understand how I got here, you would have to know my life story. Too long to be told here, but one that must be heard to understand my journey. I will not attempt to make you understand me, I fear it may be an impossible task. Besides, I may only have your attention for the next few minutes. Instead I will tell you about the two days that I came to realize just what being Kenyan is about.

Read more from Doris Sadera.

Raila Odinga's Denver Speech

Read and discussed presidential candidate's Raila Odinga's speech to Kenyans in the Diaspora.

Here.

Our tribes, our rights

I remember having a conversation with a lawyer friend of mine, where we were discussing whether the jury system of resolving court cases would be viable in Kenya. The jury system ,you would know, is one in which the accused is tried by his peers who, based on the facts presented in court determine his guilt or innocence and thus his fate. He laughed in my face, at my naiveté in conjuring up such a notion. This was not because mine was an unsound proposition but , he said, because I had failed to consider how deeply entrenched tribalism is in this country.

Read more from Sophie Mukwana here.

Vernacular files

It happens all the time, sometimes innocent, often not, still its capacity to cause offence and alienation is constant.

I am talking about that bad habit; we all know some of its practitioners, those among us who are so in love with their ethnic languages that they feel inclined, maybe even compelled to use them to communicate in public places and offices. These people are oblivious to the discomfort felt by those cannot help but hear what they are talking with their mates, even as they cannot understand it. These friends of ours find it very easy to gossip about people in and around the office by using their vernacular tongues instead of the standard Kiswahili or English that is supposed to be used in offices and public places.

Richard Mbuthia warns against tribalism. Read the rest here.