Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose

There is a school of thought that believes that all the books that can be written have been written. They argue that anything that comes out today is not new but simply recycled and re written in one way or another. After the emails sent to me and the comments left on my post in defence of John Githongo I begin to wonder if the same is true for online discussions amongst the Kenyan community. For there are two topics that I guarantee you as surely as night follows day, will be brought up, debated, flogged to death and then left to rest on an almost perfect annual cycle. Well I’ve been online now for over 10 years and my first attempt at a website went up in 1996 so that’s the time frame I can talk about with any authority.

The first frequently recycled topic is, “so and so is a spy / agent of the government / C.I.D / Special Branch etc sent to watch us and report back”. From the original old school forum such as the KenyaOnline discussion list and RCBowen, through to the new school Mashada, Mlevi, KNY etc every year someone would come and say, “I have information that there is a spy on this forum reporting back to Nyayo House on the discussions we are having.” We would then have a month or two of comedy as people decided they were Sherlock Holmes and would use their super-duper-ninja-sleuth-skills to catch the spy within. After about 8 weeks people would realise that if anyone in Nyayo House wanted to monitor an online forum they could just log on from their offices and have a look themselves without having to pay anyone to do so for them so the basis for the whole drama was a little bit shaky.

The second topic that would come up without fail is, “Kenyans abroad are traitors / chickens / cowards of one sort or the other who have abdicated their responsibility”. Although we have been having the same discussion every year for the last ten years it may be fun to revisit it one last time. Not in full of course, but briefly.

I won’t deal with the ridiculous idea that all Kenyans abroad live the good life. If you still believe that Fresh Prince of Bel Air represents life abroad I am surprised you can even log onto a computer. I won’t deal with the whole lumping a group of people in one simplistic category for there are millions of reasons why people leave and why people stay. To suggest otherwise is descending into tabloid tendencies and I trust your intelligence that I don’t have to go into that. Then we get people trying out Kenyan each other, “yeah you live in Kenya but I go to shags more times than you” or “you can not talk about Kenya unless you are here to climb mats daily” this is just a distraction. I will not go into the amount of money Kenyans abroad send home, the expertise they learn, the importance of exposure in the 21st century. You know all those arguments and many many more and frankly after 10 years it gets boring repeating them over and over again. Especially as I stated before, we have countrymen and countrywomen out there who put their necks on the line, who because of their integrity and honesty put their families at risk. Most of whom you and I have never heard about and I am not one to second guess them and their motives.

This is my opinion. It does not matter where you are, Kakamega, Nairobi, Kuala Lumpur, Johannesburg, Accra, Manchester, what matters is what you are doing. We need a country of socially aware, socially conscious and most importantly socially ACTIVE citizens. This is not an option but a responsibility.

I love the first two lines of the third verse of our national anthem; “Natujenge taifa letu, Ee, ndio WAJIBU wetu”. My duty, your duty, our duty. That is a duty that too many of us abdicate. What good is it if you work in Kakamega, Nairobi, Kuala Lumpur, New York, Johannesburg, Manchester and you never put your mind to use on the questions troubling your community? What good is it if you live in Mombasa, Butere, Nakuru and you do not even know who your MP is, or how he voted? What are you doing wherever you are to fulfil your duty? This whole idea that your efforts are more legitimate simply by being at home is nonsense. Instead of looking around for someone/something to blame DO SOMETHING. Look at KBW. Spread across the world we have people involved in their communities and even leading socially active projects in Kenya. To be honest even just by writing, bloggers are doing a lot more than many people, in my opinion, simply because they are getting involved. I challenge any of you to show me a blog post that would be more legitimate if the person was writing from within Kenya rather than abroad. And if I can go a little bit deeper, the KBW/KUL Admin team is spread over three continents, 10 time zones and most us haven’t even met each other in the flesh, yet we hold honest debate and discussions on various issues because you know you are dealing with a group of socially aware people.

I respect people who come to you and say, “this is what I am doing, this is why it is necessary and this is how you can help me” those are my kind of people wherever they are even if they are at the North Pole. I can not stand people who shrug their shoulders say things will never change/it’s nothing to do with them/ and walk of to look for their next mwenjoyo completely abdicating their responsibilities. I can not stand them wherever they are.

There is something to be said about just being at home however. The last question in MamaJunkYard’s Kenyan blogs meme that went around last year was this: Complete this sentence: I am Kenyan because …
Bankelele’s answer is the one that sticks in my head.

Well there is my opionion, until next year when will go through this all over again. And no I am not Flying Squad, Special Branch, C.I.D, immigration a spy or anything (but then again I would say that wouldn’t I)!