Pretty strong title huh? To be honest, the title makes one very small omission, the title should actually be “Why we are responsible for the riots and what we can do about it.”

200+ people are now dead in just 2 days….absolutely amazing.

It’s about 2 a.m. as I am writing this. It is now the 2nd of January in Australia and the reports just keep coming in of more and more violence and unrest from home. What I want to discuss in this post isn’t the political minutia that’s behind the riots and unrest – I will say it again; as far as politics go I am quite ignorant. What I do want to discuss is the psychology behind it?

What I want us to do together is to understand the factors that are behind the violence back home. Then with a clear picture of what is going on back home we engage in serving the people of Kenya so that we can help take that beautiful country to a place much better than before this disaster-filled election. Here I sit in Australia with a very marginal and superficial understanding of why our fellow countrymen are slaughtering each other with such zeal. I decided I had to start blogging early so that I could understand what’s going on back home and assist other Kenyans to create practical, positive solutions that are win-wins for as many Kenyans as possible.

The Challenge

With that in mind I would like to “open the floor” to anyone who is willing to honestly and clearly express their thoughts and feelings about the election, the riots and the political situation in Kenya. I would also like to open the floor to anyone who has any initiatives or plans for how we will get the country out of this mess.

Why not Just Go to Mashada.com or Read the Nation? Why bring my conversation to the Displaced African?

I strongly recommend that anyone with a heart for the situation back home ‘keep in touch’ by going to forums like Mashada.com and reading newspapers such as Nation newspaper. The main thing that separates this website is that everything in this website is focussed around how we in the diaspora can serve and assist with the situation back home. This website will be a directory guide for anyone in the diaspora who has a heart and wants to get involved.

So What Do I Know?

To be honest with you through most of 2007 I had completely forgotten there was an election back home. Anytime I heard that someone was flying back to Kenya I would temporarily be reminded that this was THE YEAR but for the most part, people around me didn’t talk about it much.

The around October-November things changed. There was an election in Australia and so any conversation about an election in Australia would naturally lead to a Kenyan election conversation. The other big thing that got the diaspora’s attention was when Raila Odinga put his hat in the race and then…..had a chance of winning.Oooohhhh! Now that got the conversations going on all four cylinders.The conversation pretty much snowballed from there.All of a sudden:

1) Reading Nation newspaper was a daily, tridaily and 20xdaily event.

2) People realized they could subscribe to receive live streams of KTN and KBC online (go to www.africacast.tv for KTN)

3) ‘After church chit chat’ turned into exuberant analysis of the canidates and there was basically an epidemic that began with ‘e’ and ended with ‘lection’.

With all this election fever in the air (of which admittedly I wasn’t a part) I managed to pick up a couple of things and here now is my understanding of the situation from a Kikuyu perspective.

Conversations With Kikuyus: Pre-election fever

I think you already know how I feel so I will get straight into it. My ushago (home of my grandparents) on my mother’s side is Rift Valley deep in Kalenjin and Maasai teritory. The Kikuyu population there is quite large and for the most part they co-existed pretty well as far as I know. Now apparently around the time Raila’s campaign was gaining steam, my grandmother began to receive threats that as soon as Raila came into power they had best move out or they would be forced out. In addition to that many Kikuyu’s were concerned that should Raila come to power this would mean an end to the Kikuyu tribe as we know it and Raila’s supposed bitterness towards Kikuyus would lead to even maybe genocide and/or general displacement of the sons and daughters of Agikuyu.

Then of course there were the many Kikuyus who simply couldn’t fathom or comprehend the thought of being ruled by Jaluos who they perceived as having an alien culture, being rowdy, impetuos, uncouth and kahees (uncircumcised) or otherwise had some other irrational fear and hatred of the tribe of Lwanda.

Now mind you this wasn’t universal: Some Kikuyus wanted Raila voted in, disillusioned by Kibaki’s new formed love affair with Moi.

With that our brothers and sisters took to the polls

Election Irregularities

Around the time that the counting began to ’slow down’ it became pretty apparent according to the reports that there was a chance that Kibaki was stealing votes. The Kikuyu reaction:

Some thought: “Kibaki has done so much good over the past five years and Raila is too radical and hateful of the Kikuyus:We have no problem with the rigging, he just should have done it wiser”

Others thought: “ODM probably did it too and they are being so pushy and forceful about the results, if they want to manipilate the electoral process, PNU (Kibaki’s party) has every right to do it?”

Fewer people than there should have been thought: “We are not sure if Kibaki stole.HOWEVER, if he did we must restore justice to the process and get to the rightful winner of the elections and the true choice of the people.”

Post Elections

Kibaki in the greatest comeback in human history came back from what had been a consistent trail in the polls to steal the election by a nose hair. 15 minutes later there was a huge crack in the middle of Kenya and hell spilled out. The almost universal reactions in the diaspora were concern, fear, desparation, empathy, sympathy and a whole host of other negative feelings all rolled into one.

An interesting reaction I heard expressed a few times was:“There was going to be violence against Kikuyus either way. This way at least our relatives back home have the government machinery protecting them and we have a president who will bring peace back to the country after a couple of days or weeks things will calm down na kazi itaendelea (”the work will go on))

Why Do Kikuyu’s Think the Violence Is Taking Place?

Power! To paraphrase: ” The other tribes in Kenya have replaced Moi with a Kikuyu face. They think we are responsible for all their problems and we have all the power in the country and now they want all the power and think that getting rid of Kibaki will get rid of this grip we have on power and leave them to scoop it all up. Somehow by getting rid of Kibaki their whole tribe will become rich tomorrow.”

That in a nutshell is my understanding of the Kikuyus in the diaspora’s perception of why the violence is taking place. Kikuyus, if there is anything I am missing, feel free to leave a comment and add to the body of knowledge. My other fellow Africans, from any other nation,tribe and ethnicity please feel free to also leave a comment and share your feelings. If you have a blog, track back to this article. The closer we get to the truth, the closer we get to ridding our brothers and sisters back home of all the pain they are experiencing now and prevent them ever having to go through this again.

Be blessed and share so you may be a blessing to others,

Mwas

PS: I have full intention of starting up the blog as was originally intended in mid January by blogging on the 10 things I wish I knew before I came to Australia so brace yourselves for that

I am now feeling much better and much lighter after expressing myself on my previous post.Now after reflection here are a couple of distinctions:

1) It’s a pretty negative article; My hope is in having the contrast of hearing what I have to say when I am coming from a great place and when I am coming from a negative place you will understand me and the messages I present to you via this site a bit better.

2) Kibaki did do some good work during his term. He did a helluva lot of things wrong but from what I heard he really created some long term positive tangible changes while in office and I honor that.

3) If the media, reports and the way Kibaki and his team have acted during this election are to be believed, I think one can easily come to the conclusion that Raila Odinga is indeed the fourth president of Kenya. If this is the truth, my hope is that the true winner gets what is rightfully his and that my lovely home keeps moving in a positive direction regardless of who is in power.

4) I know some of you have looked at the challenges and questions I put forth and thinking, “They are great but I am just not there yet.” That’s great! Take one idea that resonates deeply with you and reflect on it, if you pray, pray about it, focus on it and let it haunt your soul and slowly and surely let it ge

Today is the last day of 2007. I have been working behind the scenes over the last month or so setting everything up so that around mid-January I can begin writing pretty much full time on this blog. I feel forced to write this post early because today is genuinely one of the saddest days of this year for me.

Now to put it in perspective, this year I have damaged a lot of relationships with people, done mean hurtful, disrespectful things that made me feel as bad as the person I hurt, I have been homeless and broke and I have been lonely and scared. None of that feels quite as heavy as what I am feeling today.

Today I feel ashamed; It’s currently 7a.m. and sometime around 2a.m. last night we watched live TV streamed directly from Kenya that bore news that Mwai Kibaki had “won” the election.

Now first of all I must confess that I am in deed quite ignorant of the detail and idiosyncrasies of the Kenyan electoral process however a lot of what I have seen and read from a variety of news sources suggests to me that basically Mwai Kibaki stole his way to power. Now to be entirely honest this doesn’t hurt much; in my opinion that’s how the political game is played, there are a large number of ills associated with politics and I know speaking to Africans this idea is nothing new.

What does hurt me is the ridge that this election in such a short time, less than a month, has caused between basically the Kikuyus and for the most part other tribes in Kenya.

Open the Floor

I would like to open the floor to anyone who is willing to speak honestly about why they think the ridge has been caused and what their perception is on the whole ‘tribal rivalvry’ that is currently taking place.

The Kikuyu Reaction

The reaction of Kikuyu’s hurt because a number of Kikuyus are fully in acceptance of the fact that Kibaki might have stolen the election but their thoughts are:

We won! We won! Can you imagine that kahee (for those who don’t know, this is an uncircumcised boy) was almost ruling our country! But Thank you God….we won! It was good that Kibaki rigged it…..but he should have been wiser about it wink wink

The Other Tribes in Kenya on the Other Hand Have a Very Different Reaction:

 This is worse than colonialism! This is worse than Moi! Those Kikuyu dogs have had a stranglehold on power since we got our independence and now they have stolen our country. We have two choices:

1) Take to the streets in an epic confrontation that will either end in death or freedom from Kibaki and his Mount Kenya mafia. It is better to die than not be free….

2) Those Kikuyu dogs have five years just five years and then hell shall have no fury like a (insert your tribe here) scorned.

Now these are bad enough. But add to that:

1) No one seemed to be voting for a canidate, everyone seemed to be voting and making their choice- and rest asssured we in the diaspora voted vicariously and looooouuudly- based on who they don’t want; either we don’t want the kahee (This word came up way too many times) or we must get rid of those Kikuyu thieves (and I know every tribe probably has their special name for a Kikuyu)

2) No one seemed focussed on the fact that they were voting in people to perform PUBLIC SERVICE; No one held the leaders accountable to anything. Do you remember 1992 when people were taking to the streets, it was to demand democracy? Do you remember 2002 when rainbow was the right color, we were demanding an end to corruption? Since then it’s been a downhill battle; Oranges vs Bananas may as well have a battle between a team of oranges vs a team of bananas because basically everyone barracked for their team with very little consideration of the consequences of sticking with their team. Raila vs t in such chaos”

Ladies and gentlemen can you imagine if every time we sat down to engage in political discourse we took all these small brilliant ideas that people have to improve our countries and basically used the discussion to formulate plans to make these visions and plans realities. What if we took these vague abstractions and reflected on them, structured them and turned them into manifestos, decrees and codes of conduct? What if every time we left a political discussion we were leaving with a plan of action, just a tiny little thing we could do to get us closer to a shared ideal of what Kenya will look like for all 40+ million of us? What a fantastic alternative don’t you think to the name calling, the irrational insults and the constant pedantic critiques of each other.

Ladies and gentlemen I know that I have rambled for a long time and I want to make sure that I at least leave you with something useful. Ladies and gentlemen:

1) Rather than focus on the poison that is people of other tribes, why not ask the question, what can we learn from the beautiful history of all the tribes in Kenya that can make today better for me and my fellow Kenyans and tomorrow better for all our children?

2) Rather than have discussions on tactic why not take the time to formulate a collective vision using absolutely magnificent tools like Mashada and using all the brilliant tactics we have come up with over the years to get us to this wonderful shared ideal.

Thank you and I wish nothing but blessings upon AAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLL (absoloutely all) Africans.

Mwas