A hawker sells Kenyan flags in Eldoret town, Uasin Gishu County during Jamhuri Day celebrations at Central Primary School grounds on December 12, 2019.
Photo credit: File | Nation Media Group
What you need to know:
We all live in a world in which many things are fake, or artificial. This includes many countries, including Kenya.
Kenya is both artificial and fake. It’s artificial because the British and other Europeans made it up.
Kenyans, if I can even call them that, are in love with virtually all things European. Let’s see – the English language, the Christian religion, European names often under the guise of Christianity, dress, hair and Western European education. The list is endless. It’s a twisted love affair of the cultural subservience of the enslaved to the enslaver. This mimicry, or proclivity for worshipping things European, is now part of Africa’s zeitgeist. Most Africans don’t even question it anymore. They have fully submitted to Eurocentricity. Today, I want to address an important question about Kenya’s intellectual surrender to Europe and the West. Should the country called Kenya continue to use that name? What’s Kenya’s etymology, and why cling to it?
We all live in a world in which many things are fake, or artificial. This includes many countries, including Kenya. That’s right – Kenya is both artificial and fake. It’s artificial because the British and other Europeans made it up. They did so because they could. It’s fake because as a state, it lives on the largesse of the West. Kenya is actually a state-let, not a real state. When Kenya confronts problems – which is almost always – it looks outwards, not inwards, for help. We go begging, bowl in hand. For most of Kenya’s life, the US and Europe were our default benefactors. Today, China has joined that league of paymasters. Only fake states look externally, not internally, for help.
