To the People of Kenya

My beloved fellow Kenyans, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, leaders and followers, the schooled and the unschooled, the rich and the poor, the employed and the unemployed, I plead that you listen to me, but first, read and reflect a little on the following quotes:

“Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom. Let it be our endeavor to merit the character of a just nation.” Thomas Jefferson

“It is the characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.” Henry David Thoreau

“Bear in mind that brains and learning, like muscle and physical skill, are articles of commerce. … The only thing in the world not for sale is character.” Justice Antonin Scalia

I visited you as uninvited guest at a time of great excitement about the democratic process of electing the country's leaders. Your excitement touched me and I became involved in your excitement too. Even though I had been away from home for almost twenty years and felt a stranger at home, I was proud of you. My excitement was mainly on the premise that you, my people, had grown and that the good news of democracy had been accepted in your souls and no longer were you passive to the process of electing the leaders you deserve. On the voting day, Dec. 27th, 2007, you flocked the polling stations and expressed your democratic right. As you all voted, your children, your guests, and all who were within and without the country's perimeter watched with anticipation as when a baby is about to be born by an expecting mother. The mother was in the hospital theater bed, time ticked and Dec. 27th came. The labor pains were intense, swaddling clothes had been bought and the family, the Kenyan people, waited. They expected to greet and celebrate the baby on the 28th. It passed. The 29th passed, too. Anxiety made the family restless. You wanted the doctor to tell you what had happened. The messages of the nurses and the aides made you more anxious. The 30th came, the new birthday celebration had aborted. Because of your intense preparation to celebrate the anticipated new born of a birth that could have ushered in a new beginning, the doctor announced a private divergent celebration of the older brother's 6th birth day. The doctor was almost lynched. How dare you? The family asked. Everywhere cries of disappointment were heard. Hurt emotions took the intellect and reason captive, and a once well neat, at least apparently, family of a united nation and at peace tore each other apart as an old fabric worn for years, now good for nothing, safe only for mopping the floors.

More than a quarter a million family people have been displaced and 1000 innocent family members have died as a result of the miscalculated, unwise, and apparently intemperate unprofessional single unjust action, bordering unpatriotic immorality. The older brother seems not to care what is happening to the family. How long, dear Kenyans, is the uncaring attitude of apparent uncaring arrogance going to persist?

We are one people. We share markets, institutions, farms, offices, and resources. Our fathers were brothers and our mothers were sisters, and if they were, then good logic has it rationally that our great, great … grand father is our one father and our great, great … grand mother likewise is one.

It is now over one month, and the unrest has made the nation more restless. We are suspicious of one another; what we have shared for decades since independence is becoming un-sharable. Why?

For three weeks I have been here in the USA, I have restlessly browsed the websites anticipating good news from Kenya. I have read and reread, I have turned to the Bible and history to make sense of this unfavorable and unwelcome events in a country a completely love, and I have not found a soothing answer to the Kenyan problem. Though there is no solution providing answer, the problem is multiphase d and is rooted in historical cultural tribal practices, inherent unsolved political misunderstandings and conflicts, economic inequalities, un-prosecuted injustices, above all incompetent leadership, and at the base yielding to misleading corrupt human nature, which is the root of all distasteful and hurtful happenings.

The intricate mystery of human nature

Both written and oral history is full of very ugly scenes of the story of our unrestrained uncontrolled undisciplined angry nature. We are deeply rooted in this nature, and when we let it loose and it controls our higher powers, we become worse than ravenous wild brute beasts. We loose sense of reason. It then matters not who we are, where we are or what we do. We have become too divided a nation. We have given in to our worst side of our natures. Christianity at its core of values is a religion of nonviolence that turns the other cheek and feeds and clothes its enemies. Where did we take our Christian values, given that 75% of Kenyans profess to be Christians? Was the blood of Jesus Christ shed in vain? Have we deprived God His glory and therefore reaped war instead of peace? Did God deceive us at the birth of Christ when angels sang, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”? Did He?