By Regina Nyokabi
It’s true
that we’ve now managed to establish some form of civilized administration. But
our people’s minds, attitudes and manners are still very much in the jungle of
savagery where they were stranded for decades on end.
It seems
that colonialism did a lot of damage to our ethical, integrity and transparency
virtues more than it did to us.
This country
has gone through a lot of bad experiences in the last hundred years and more.
Situated in the horn of Africa, Kenya lies and literally appears like a
sleeping lion indeed.
If we start
with colonial period for example, the rule of the foreign did a lot of damage
to our people. To begin with, the colonialist destroyed all our sources of
authority, our traditional leaders and replaced them with either their imported
functionaries or local traitors. They also mocked all our customs and
beliefs, calling them savage, primitive, backward and heathen. Our people lost
their self respect and actually began to believe that they were worthless.
You might
think that colonialism ended over forty years ago, with the coming of uhuru, but it left a lot of unfinished
business in Africa as in Kenya. After messing up our minds and manners e.g.
dressing just to mention a few, the foreigners just abandoned us to our own
devices. What followed was even worse than what was happening when the
colonialists kept us in check through the use of force. We turned on one
another and on everything in sight and started an orgy of destruction that has
left our country in complete shambles.
In those
years of blood you had to learn to kill or you would be killed. If you would
not steal, you would starve to death. So we forgot all about respecting other people’s
property. You could not afford to tell the truth, even about your name or where
you come from. You risked being massacred, most probably because you came from
the “wrong” ethnic community. So we learned to lie about everything, including
ourselves. What has to be done now is to re-educate a whole generation of
people who grew up surrounded by lies ,theft ,deceit murder and all kinds of
violence and misconduct to start living decently. This is by telling them that
normal human beings in a free society do not have to lie, cheat or indulge in
violence to accomplish their mission.
I believe in
the intelligence of our people especially the young people. Re-education has to
start with explanation of evils of violence, dishonesty, bribery and lack of
self respect and eventually virtues of faithfulness, honesty, openness and
peaceful resolution of conflicts will be adopted
Above all
I’m confident, my faith is strong and determination unshakable that we’re
willing to change for a better future. After all, we all want development but
we cannot develop anything without developing ourselves, our behavior, our
attitude and our mentality.
1 comment:
Interesting piece Regina
Post a Comment