Letter from Kenya:My words with Francis Mwongela

Writer Francis Mwongela

THE POOR KENYAN CALLED ‘WANJIKU’ MUST SUFFER BUT ANOTHER KENYA IS POSSIBLE

The industrial unrest in Kenya has beaten political arrogance. The Tana delta massacre and the Mombasa mayhem can make anybody sympathize with Kenyans. These are the signs of revolution. What happened during the Russian and French revolutions are a history coming to Africa. You may wonder why the government has taken the snails speed to rest these issues. I am sure the sons and the daughters of the rich class are in school and they don’t know where Tana river is. The poor Kenyan called ‘Wanjiku’ must suffer.

It does require the intelligence of the crow or a genius to foresee the apparent changes about to take place in Kenya. What has this and other generations not seen from the enemies of our beloved country? Enough is enough and its time for change and reforms. Our dreams have been shuttered! Dreams for better education, dreams to alleviate food poverty, dreams to have sound economic policies, dreams to have our hospitals in humane conditions, our roads are a mess, land injustices a nightmare, our women and mothers reduced to victims of unspeakable circumstances and domestic violence, dreams of a energetic agricultural zone! We cannot keep silent and watch this. It’s the right time to stand tough, rebuild our land, and restore our hopes, and the dreams of our generations and our forefathers’ hope for a bright and rewarding future.

Energizing the people of Kenya needs a trans-generational effort and capability. It would be unwise to stand and start bitter exchanges on political platforms and bicker how the other is not proficient. However, we still need to stand and look at the challenge in the waiting bay for the people of Kenya. Let us not test our bright future in the hands of political businessmen and tourists. Time is rife for issue and policy based leadership. If repeated severally it’s going to irk our hopes and kill our dreams. We must revolutionize our politics from story telling and entertainment episodes once in five years and five years of misery and ‘hot water drinking’.

What happened to us? Is it the legend of the proverbial Pandora’s Box in the Greek mythology opened due to lures of seeing and testing, and it unconfined predicaments in the world due to the fury of the Greek gods? I do not fancy supposing so because there are adequate resources for us all but they are not enough for one or two avaricious entities. We need to sacrifice. Let us not pretend that we can only see the challenges of our times and tender solutions to them when we are past 50 years of age! Even a youngster can still can spot and offer solutions! We are all one and the same!

The prime and the indispensable foundations of development in any humanity is education. We cannot pretend to forget the injuries of past and current Kenyan legislators’ woes especially the immediate after independence due to illiteracy. This caused the entire continent to lag behind and drag our nation behind in development. We must become exporters of education and not the illiteracy laughing stock of the nation and globe. Education is not only given to scholars by classroom teachers but also leaders who are models. Use iron to sharpen iron.

The key priority in Kenya’s development agenda should be education. With this, we shall fight insecurity, afford better health care, ensure clean and safe environments, create wealth by resource mobilization, understand basic human rights, fight food and material poverty, ensure high agricultural productivity, build viable businesses in the corporate world and cyber space, have better families and respond appropriately to the challenges of the modern world and salvage ourselves from oppressions of unscrupulous individuals.

This is my focal point and I present my rationale. However, it is not the end but the beginning of fresh hopes. We must invest more on our youth. Times are long gone for them to be used as political bigwig tools for a dump. The youths need to be accorded respect and dignity just like the senior citizens and the children. This is the driving focus and nucleus for trans-generational and visionary leaders. We must break some hegemonic forces in our society!