Quit whining. Cheer instead!

We are not cheerleaders, most of us. We are mostly grinders, toiling in abject circumstances to make ends meet, though they very frequently do not. Many of us carry crosses of differing weights. We do so with stoicism, without quarrel or complaint. We are not national heroes; quite frequently, actually, we are figures of pity, scorn and ridicule. But we don't notice that either; we are too busy toiling. Every now and then our toil pans out and we are freed from drudgery. Every now and then. Not always. But we are not cheerleaders.

You may not know this to be true, but few Kenyans give two shits about the image of the Republic among the comity of nations. The population of adult Kenyans who will ever own a passport and use it to visit the great United States, the former colonial mistress the United Kingdom, the snooty France, the laissez faire Italy, the Teutonic Germany, the hedonistic Brazil, the xenophobic South Africa, biblical Israel or the sandy beaches of the Caribbean. These Kenyans will never experience the "humiliation" of another Kenyan badmouthing the Republic in Washington, DC, San Fransisco, London or Rome.

The Kenyans who experience this "humiliation" are entitled to their chagrin, but they should not imagine that their is the only proper emotion to be expressed or experienced when a Kenyan with a specific experience of the Republic describes that experience as anything but sun, sand and "warmth." I had a friend when I was in Standard 8 called Eliud. He joined my class after we had registered for the KCPE. He joined my school from Molo. He joined us after his father had been butchered right in front of his eyes, after he, his brother and mother had been forced to watch their home being set alight, after they fled Molo for Nairobi. No matter how many stories of "Kenya Rising" are published in world magazines and journals, Eliud will never sing the songs of praise being sang by Kenya's cheerleaders.

For ten years Mwai Kibaki tried to rebuild Kenya. He has many successes to his name. But no matter how forgiving Kenyan are, no one will forget that he watched as Kenyans butchered each other over a botched election - and he did nothing. It took the intervention of foreign powers to stanch the flow of blood in the streets. There aren't enough cheerleaders in the world to erase the images or the stories. It should prick the consciences of the cheerleaders that thousands of Kenyans lost their homes and they are never getting them back.

Kenyans will also never forget that Mwai Kibaki saw what forty years of KANU had done to Kenya, and the great corruption it had fostered and nurtured, and when he had a chance to sever the Gordian Knot of grand graft, he instead gave us Anglo Leasing, Triton, Kazi Kwa Vijana, Maize Scandal. We can hide behind his defence that it was not him, but his ministers. We can try, anyway. The truth is, as Harry S Truman was wont to remind Douglas MacAurthur, the Buck Stops With The President.

Now we are called to cheerlead our observations into an amnesiac forgetfulness. There is no grand corruption in Kenya. There is no ethnic corruption in Kenya. There have been no disappearances of young Kenyans in Kenya. All the youth of Kenya will get jobs. Every Kenyan is happy. Kenya is a happy land. Barack Obama said so. So it must be so! The cheerleaders are proof. 

Why don't you malcontent Kenyans become cheerleaders too? Stop raining on the parade. You don't have jobs? Go to school and learn something that will get you a job! You don't have money? Get a job, work hard, be lucky, pray. Anything is possible. Quit whining, and join the cheer squad!