A lot is happening in this country currently – you’ve got to wonder how those with breathing difficulties have been copying up with the dizzying pace of unfolding events.
The Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) is struggling to shake off a private acquisition that was negotiated at ungodly hours, despite incessant panel-beating a new public health insurance scheme has refused to smoothly transit to the other worldly, the courts have whistled for the new university funding model to kindly go for a water break, and that is before you ask why Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua has not been smiling to work at 5am with his camera crew in tow like he used to do last year at a time like this.
Those who went to school to study political science have been taking turns on mainstream media to warn us that in politics, nothing happens by coincidence. The only problem is that their target audience swore over their dead bodies never to follow local news on traditional media; they say we’re pathologically boring, criminally rigid, and slower than the mails delivered by Posta Kenya. It has to be said they’re bang on the money, we’re guilty as charged, and should take the jail sentence that comes with the crime of being born earlier than desirable.
However, instead of rendering their parents jobless by migrating to social media in their herds, a national Gen Z conference should be called to discuss how best to retire the generations that went before them with less pain in their hearts and a sustainable social security in their sunset years. If there was a time in our lives that service should be our earnest endeavour, it is now when things are thick and we need to huddle together.
Often, it’s been said that every generation has its own set of unique challenges they’re called upon to surmount. Our parents might have enjoyed life at the university with free money, quality food and post-graduation job security, but they also lived under a one-party political dictatorship that strangled anyone showing signs of befriending free speech, ran torture chambers in full glare of the international community, and sent greetings to anyone who refused to wave the index finger whenever the president was within shouting distance of their surroundings.
It’s not the ideal external environment to raise children knowing state terror was always listening in to your private conversations. The fear might have gone with the 2010 constitution and the subsequent progressive laws that have liberalised the political space, but that is not to say the Gen Z have no other challenge left of them that is unique to their generation.
As students of history, we spend quality time with political literature written by those who went before us and how they managed to navigate the political trauma when they were at our age, hoping to learn critical lessons to inform the future survival of the species waiting in the wings to run the course when our knees become weak. One running theme in all the historical texts by our political heroes point out to the manner in which they managed to harness the collective spirit of the youthful movement to protect one another from public policies that seek to do more harm than good.
Events this past two months have demonstrated to us that we have arrived at that critical moment where all generations in this country are needed to read from the same page of the sociopolitical formbook.
There is a famous catchy reggae beat that terminates with a hook about the predicament of those who were born to suffer. Those who’ve not been watching local television for outdated reasons need to eat their pride and reconnect with the suffering of Kenyans being turned away from dialysis centres because of the glitch in the new health insurance model, commiserate with university students deferring their dreams due to the uncertainties of the new university funding model, meet government contractors being auctioned due to non-payment of pending bills. The list is long, but you get the point.
Transcultural integration
Working in synergy towards a collective national goal is not only a moral imperative, but it’s also an investment in the overall wellbeing of the individual self which will, in turn, lead to the prosperity of the country in general. It might sound like cliché, and you might be tempted to doze off at another mention of such NGO lingo, but there is no other familiar line you rather fall back on when you need inspiration to get going again. If it’s fit for purpose it means it isn’t broken, and if it isn’t broken don’t fix it.
At every village funeral there’s always that ruggedly old fella sitting lonely at a dimly-lit corner of during vigil night deep in his own thoughts that are occasionally interrupted by a monetary trance, and who claims to have the spiritual ability to connect with the dead. If you can get that chap to speak on Dedan Kimathi, he will tell you that the Mau Mau ring leaders, of years gone by, did not care who took the credit for the fall of the British Empire in Kenya for as long as the freedom was achieved and everyone left the forest to go back to the soft life they nearly died while fighting for.
At a time when every Kenyan is walking on eggshells for fear of stepping on another government scandal – when our energies have been sapped out of our lives by the sheer magnitude of the brazenness, when everyone around us is trying to stay alive from the draining demands of a diminishing purse – we can only have a fighting chance if every generation is convinced that they still have a stake in this country, and without them the public pushback against the state onslaught on our lives will be meaningless in the grand scheme of things.
Those in the arena still left with energy to burn should periodically remind themselves not to take off on their own – even when the temptation for personal glory is proving irresistible – and leave the wise old pack behind getting clobbered to nothingness with no one left behind to provide cover.
This country was built through collective effort and it must remain so through the sands of time, as it is the only way to entrench inter-generational cohesion necessary for transcultural integration. If a rising tide has to lift all boats, then it must start immediately before the state does what it always does best: biting more than it can chew, then chewing all of us in one swallow.
