Coming full circle.

If you are a US citizen, you are likely to aspire to beat Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett or Mark Cuban at their game, though I suspect many US citizens increasingly view The Donald with great sympathy. On the other hand, if you are a Kenyan citizen and you have made your mark in the private sector, your greatest desire is to become a Big Man or Big Woman in the Government. There are exceptions to this rule, of course but these are the exceptions that prove the rule. The private sector in Kenya has an unhealthy relationship with the Government of Kenya, and that is the reason why Free Laptops for Tots will be beleaguered for the foreseeable future and  the Standard Gauge Railway will cost us more than we bargained for just like the Turkwell Gorge Dam did.

Look at the parade of corporate honchos who have made the serikali their home since 2003. They made their names in the private sector - in banking, commerce, investment, research, medicine and a whole host of endeavours. Some were respected members of the clergy and academia. Some were notorious for their exploits against the forces of law and order. All of them claimed with a certain degree of credibility at the time that they wanted to serve the country and that their expertise, under the right leadership, was what this nation had been waiting for. We believed them and placed them on pedestals. It was too late when we realised that all of them have feet of clay. We have been paying the highest price for this folly ever since.

The United States government is no less corrupt than ours. Nor are the British or French governments any less corrupt. Indeed, British government officials have received official protection for corrupt deals in faraway places such as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Tanzania. France's involvement in the corrupt regimes in West Africa is knowledge in the public domain. But in protecting their national interests, the US, Britain and France will go to extraordinary lengths to keep everyone in line; their officials may be lining their pockets, but they do so keeping the big picture in mind: the homeland comes first!

Look at the private sector saviours come among us and weep, fellow Kenyan. In their haste to line their pockets they sold us to the devil and his hordes. Look at the tenders granted by the Kibaki government; how many of the military transports from China are on the road today? How swiftly did we come to the realisation that rolling lorries are unsuitable for our military? Was it before or after someone come to save us had trousered hundreds of thousands of dollars as earnest money?

Look at the tender-combat between ZTE and Huawei over the surveillance cameras tender. The loud murmurings that ZTE's man in the Interior Ministry was reassigned to "other duties" and that Huawei's man is now the one in charge have simply refused to die down. Do you remember that incident involving Members of the National Assembly taking money - sometimes as little as two thousand shillings - to ask embarassing questions on the Floor of Parliament or have you forgotten, keen to keep your eye on the ultimate prize: a government tender of your own?

Our saviours are not out there somewhere waiting in the wings to swoop in and save the day. That is a fantasy best left to small children and the mentally weak. We are our own saviours, but only if we are willing to what must be done to sort out our national interest. We need not act morally; that is the preserve of the clergy and the education sector. But we must keep our eye on the big picture; we do not prosper if prosperity is limited to a few fat cats selling the family silver to the Chinese or the Japanese of the British or the Americans. We all prosper if we sell what we sell for the right price and we all get a cut.

We are many nations in this country. We hold stereotypes of nations that are not us very dear to our hearts. We are selfish to fellow Kenyans and generous with the stranger with a fat wallet. It is why parts of Kenya wish to secede; after all, the involvement of their government in their lives has been more in the form of a war than anything else. It is why other parts of Kenya believe that their is the only nation destined to rule. If we refuse to heal the schisms that permanently segregate us, we don't have to worry about the Ebola virus wiping us out; the triple threats of poverty, ignorance and disease identified by Kenyatta the Elder fifty years ago will do that for us.