revolving speckles donates!burp cucumbers,bus …

i think it’s important that we continue to challenge each other on the -isms that we readily propagate and pretend are a joke. to my mind, tribalism and racism are two heads of one monster.

The point I’m trying to make is that we should be free to celebrate our diversity positively.

What I’m saying I have no beef with is friendly banter e.g. about how a Luo would have 3 mobile phones – bisssnesss, sossial and for mama watoto. I also have no problem with having Luo, Kamba or Kale nites at Carni, where even me as a GEMA member can go and dunda as I sample an aspect of Kenya I’m not familiar with.

The three examples you cite are INSULTS, pure and simple, designed to put someone down or make them feel inferior. Comments of this nature, whatever their base, whether tribe, race, physical features etc are totally unacceptable.

We are here today because politicians, in their attempt to build fiefdoms to assure themselves of office, have exploited our diversity negatively. This is the NEGATVE stereotyping that we must put to death!

I feel guilty of perpetuating this tribal hatred coz yes I too have forwaded those joke emials and texts but without seriously thinking of the intentions.

I have been proud of my ethnic background and alwyay made sure to tell people that I a ‘pointy’ of two kenyan tribes.

If I can change the mindset of my two kids, I guess a bit of my work is done.

In theory, tribal loyalty is a beneficial concept but in practice it almost always turns into a monster and suddenly the country is on fire and people are [literally] losing their heads. The last 3 weeks have reveled the grotesqueness of the Kenyan psyche which has, for the most part, been concealed under a thin layer of feigned national unity. If tribe continues to trump everything else, every time, then the various groups have no business living together.

I’m a child of the 1980s and I spent the early half of my childhood in a pretty well mixed residential area in Nairobi and had the same set of neighbors for 15+ years. It was clear that some of our neighborhood parents were teaching their children hate evidenced by what came out of their offsprings’ mouths when they hurled the classic tribe inspired insults at us. We grew older, went to the same schools and even dated and I often wondered what it took to turn things around – I don’t know, I never asked. It would seem that my hostile neighbors’ children had chosen to take a different path from their parents and decided to see us as people and not those [insert tribe here] people. This is just one hopeful example – could it possibly translate across the nation?

…the extent to which young people will go to determine exactly where i come from so they can put me in a box labelled tribe X is both amusing and sad…

The above quote suggests that in Kenya, one is not complete unless he/she claims links to a certain tribe. I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve had to deal with the same when dealing with my peers and it hasn’t stopped even though I now live abroad; the same behavior has been transplanted and, quite frankly, as much as it’s amusing sometimes, it annoys me more and reminds me how long we have to go to achieve true unity.

Only a very small percentage of Kenyan youth have experienced a true heterogeneous upbringing and understand life beyond the constraints of his/her tribe. The truly progressive youth are too few and isolated that their efforts would add up to nothing in the face of tribal resistance, that is, if they are willing to try in the first place. Either way, good luck.

I always say that our colonial past has a lot to do with our current issues but we can’t blame the Brits forever since we, at the very least, know right from wrong and many a time we choose to do wrong. The only way I see this problem going away is through massive organized cross-assimilation or by way of conquest by a larger, much stronger culture and being forced to embrace the new singular culture or perish. Both solutions are unrealistic and would take eons to realize anyway. We’re pretty much doomed like the rest of the continent – call me a pessimist.:frown: :(

One, the BMX/Chopper rider from the some middle class hood in the city represents the minority of Kenyans. The majority of Kenyans still come from up country, and their first exposure to multi-ethnic relationships is in Uni or even at the workplace. Most student organisations in campus, the citadel of all things modern, have only 1 criterion – that you are from a certain tribe. Still the case today.

Second, true socialisation happens in the home, at the lunch or dinner table. I mean, how many times did we hear our own BMX/Chopper buying parents talking negatively about other tribes with neighbours in mother-tongue. Look at the womens groups in these estates, and they are based along ethnic lines. So despite our cosmopolitan upbringing, the seeds of ethnicity were being sowed in us, subtlely and slowly.

I personally have no problem with the so called ethnic jokes. For example, Luos are reputed to have flair and flamboyance, while Kikuyus are meant to be industrious or entrepreneurial. Nothing wrong with making fun of this, or highlighting these differences, coz bottom line is that the nation of Kenya comprises many nations – the Luo nation, the Kamba nation etc. If these differences between us are harnessed correctly, then what should emerge eventually is a stronger better balanced tribe – the tribe called Kenyan.

Our leaders since 1963 to date have failed to nurture this tribe called Kenya. Instead, they have used these differences between us to stake political power bases for themselves. Instead of harnessing the flair of the Luo and the industry of the Kikuyu to create a stronger nation, our leaders and our parents generation have used these to pit us against each other.

If we, the BMX generation draw a line in the sand and say that it ends with us. If we determine that we will not sow these bad seeds to our kids, and determine that when we begin to get into public office we will focus our energies on the things that unite us, I think we will leave our kids and their kids a Kenya better than the ones our parents are handing to us.

However, this is a process that will take time, but as it happens we must continue to commit ourselves to it on a daily basis.

What i’m really worried about are kids in primary school, who’ve heard so much said in homes by adults in these past few weeks and will go back to school and not see their friends and classmates in the same way again.