THE MENTAL CAGES OF MARSABIT

I am from a small town, Marsabit , it is a beautiful place, beautiful not in the sense of scenic aesthetics- you know the flowery lanes, clean streets, tarmacked roads and the sort but beautiful nonetheless. The beauty of small towns like Marsabit is its people, the smallness of their beliefs, the depth of their small convictions, the communal sense of being, the extent of their hate and love, their gossip, their pretenses, their lies and truths, laughter and tears- the simplicity of even their complex issues and Ideas, of daily living. The ease with which one can assume many things and just be okay, the seriousness with which even the slightest of things can be brought to life...one minute an issue is just a small murmur in the air, then it becomes a quasi-secret gossip to be whispered, then a few hours later, a full blown concern, truth with people swearing, phone calls are made, and confirmations sought…from the villages where the issue is rumored to have happened, then phone calls from the villages to the town to seek for more information.

A section of Marsabit Town

I am touched by the communal side of my small town. I have on more than one occasion been confronted by people, strangers who have without a care let me in on the darkest sides of their lives, their problems, their challenges and the gate pass into their lives, into their dreams and fears is just their knowing me…knowing somebody I know….knowing I am so and so’ s son, brother, lover, father, mother or niece; friendship is kindled ….with just your name you can have cousins, uncles, clansmen, in-laws materializing out of total strangers. This is community. You can walk into people’s homes and have free lunch, free bed and engage in a long talk with the members of this household and walk out as easy as you came. Or strike lifelong friendships by just a few minutes of talking.

Yet, this communal outlook is this town’s greatest challenge. There is something sinister that lurks behind the welcoming smiles, their too trusting loyalty, and the ease with which people can take in convictions and clasp it tightly with their lives. This loyalty, the undivided love that is offered too freely, it can be seen everywhere, in schools, in the market, in the village, in households- it has been passed on like an infectious flu- like something necessary, like fashion and any kind of dissent is frowned upon- if it’s against the communal think- keep it to yourself.

There is some mild sycophancy, an instantaneous unshakable fanaticism, rumors and speculations, spontaneous worries fly back and forth and in just a few minutes various versions, modified for various ears- the conspiratorial, the impressionable, the doubters, the fanatics each of them blowing like hot airs rife and palpably in the air! The fodder that feeds propaganda and in this way suspicion is bred, nourished and nurtured to live whole lives- lives bigger than human life, and the suspicion supersedes propaganda and transcends into hatred, into blood, into murder, revenge- crosses border and grows into an international crisis- the Oromoland, into the Burjilands, into the Gabra areas of Ethiopia. Cousins and relatives in Ethiopia wonder what is happening in Kenya and send a few guns and horses to go fight off aggression to the respective community- then the buzz dies down, slowly, the angst goes silent for a few hours, a few weeks, months and possibly a few years- then the rumor begins and previous scars are piqued, rancor boils and the suspicion grows into propaganda, the propaganda into suspicion, suspicion into fear, fear into hatred and hatred into impulsive wars and on and on ad infinitum goes the reign of rumor in the land of the gossip. Gossip and rumors have a way of growing wings to fly, have some mutable characteristics in my small town, the capacity to remake itself into funny tales, into shocking news, into war cries, into songs even.

And when my friend often says “you will run mad, reading so many books” I will never take those words seriously than my worry about who hears it because I may wake up two weeks later to people’s sympathy or a distant relative coming all the way from the village  asking my mum

“How is he now? We heard he ran mad after reading so many books?”

Or just wake up a new person, with strangers regarding me in a new light, with awe because they heard that I read so many books and I am supposed to behave in a certain bookish way.

And somehow this communal naivete, this too trusting loyalty is in the hands of a few, it is easily manipulated, it is a switch box that can effectively unleash raging currents of hate, love, sympathy, contempt, love and life- those who thrive on anarchy are using it- a few months ago the local leaders gave a simple decree- do not buy from two communities and do not work for them- then the loyal people, communally decided in that mob way of thinking followed the decree and overnight we had meat, whole steaks, fillets and entire goats rotting in the butcheries and people being beaten by hooded goons in the evening for defying the decree to buy from “marked shops, butcheries, wholesalers” there were hushed whispers, fear of unseen eyes watching, one women was beaten while her husband watched because she had a “concubine” from the “marked” communities,  there were more  cases of tearing of shopping bags and open pouring of purchased goods from the marked shops. The poor suffered, business men suffered, casual workers lost their jobs and daily wages, they returned home to face their hungry children, then slowly life came back and business is now returning almost to normalcy.

And just yesterday I was walking around the villages, and the many settlements around town for a simple exercise, a polio monitoring drive. I walked into many compounds and homes and walked out. In all the homesteads I was more than welcome; I was kindly treated, served tea and ate those small tumandazis, popular in our town…sweet. I ate lunch in one of the households and then my host talked about peace in general for a while, then not realizing my feigned interest, she leaned closer and in that conniving way of crafty elderly women she said almost whispering

“You know so many of them have died, everyone is hiding their shame”

Pause

A picture of the backside Marsabit

“I was in Moyale recently, believe me there is more to the war in Moyale than you know…..they are using spirits…jinn…. They tried burning the house of one of them and it could not catch fire…..can you imagine they even bombed it and it could not catch fire…..”

Surprise on my face

“Yes!!….every attempt at burning failed until they had to call the sheikh….a sheikh who came and in front of everyone cast out the jinn….11 of them…can you believe….Jinn…11..”

I listened carefully, putting all the oohs and aahs and mmmhs as demanded by her dramatic narration; she delved into details of exorcising the jinn…she painted the picture of a jar of fresh blood found under the bed….the sheikh standing in the middle of the house while cats appeared and disappeared, with unseen dogs barking from the many rooms….I endured all her talk until the jinn finally disappeared and the onlookers looted and burnt down the house….with just one bomb….boom!!

I sat there trying to act normal, refusing to psycho-analyze her, trying to believe that she too did not believe what she was saying and that maybe she was high on something she accidentally took. That maybe this is a lie….and she may say something like….heyy stop listening…am just pulling your leg. But believe me she is not alone, I have heard this talk more than once but I have always banished it to the back of my mind, locking all those tales into a tight cage somewhere in the past. The other time, a sheikh was accused of casting demons into six madrassa going children, (there is even a video clip of this somewhere), the local leaders, chiefs, councilors and a local MP were present…the crowd was a big one, the sheikh and demon possessed girls sat on opposite sides with the crowd watching them in awe. Then the girls began talking in funny tones and the crowd almost ran away….the demons/jinn in the girls were confessing before a powerful sheikh….how they came from Somalia and they were treated to chicken blood or something like that! And that they were here for some sinister affair!!

Unbelievable is your thought now….but this is something that is happening, this directionless-ness, and confusion, this murky, voodoo, fanatical, primitive, ungodly ways belong to this century. To this present; It is a village in a supposedly post modern city. This village will endure- this traditionalism will mutate into another form, an amorphous state of our backwardness, it is the intersection of primitive traditionalism shifting into something more sinister, more traditional, more backward and obsessive; imprisoning our thoughts, caging our minds into small cages of aggression, irrationality, fanaticism especially of the region-political nature, propaganda, confusion and anarchic gossip. I avoid some of my childhood friends who have stuck in some state of mental quick sand because in one way or the other they will delve into that irksome Illuminati talk, they will vent their anti-west, anti-American supremacy sentiments, talk about the new world order as if that matters then say a few things about Jesus….about Prophet Issah and eventually narrow down and zero-in on me

“Please do not die a Christian” they will say. 

THE DOWNSIDE OF PATRIOTISM

Do nothing from factional motives [through contentiousness, strife, selfishness, or for unworthy ends] or prompted by conceit and empty arrogance. Instead, in the true spirit of humility (lowliness of mind) let each regard the others as better than and superior to himself.
—Philippians 2:3

A few years ago I was in the southern section of Ethiopia and one evening while flipping through the channels, bored by the Ethiopian Amharic broadcasting television stations; I chanced on one broadcasting in English and was enjoying some talk show about something African (I don’t remember what). I became so engrossed and was aroused by the old man who having watched me asked

“Do you understand what they are saying?”

I understood speaking or even understanding good English in Ethiopia especially the southern side is something that is not always seen. I nodded and added

‘Yes I do’                                                

The disbelief on the old man’s face was pardonable

‘…all of it?’ he said with his hand making an expansive sweep.

‘All. of. it’ I answered back

Then the elderly man in a way that has ever since been a part of my thoughts whenever I think of Kenya’s supremacy or lack thereof, or whenever comparisons are made between Kenya and other African states, or whenever any inappropriate comparison is made for the sake of malice or some covert agenda the old man looms large in my mind.

‘You know the Kenyan education system is good BUT their military is nothing’ he said, and the way it came out was more than disparaging, it was both a mocking sarcasm of Kenya and a confirmation of the supremacy of Ethiopian Military. Coming from a history of militarism and protracted civil war I just shrugged the old man’s sentiments as just a rash conclusion without any relevance whatsoever to how my understanding English was a representation of Kenyan education system.

Other instances have taken place since then, all adding in one way or the other to the growth of an idea at the back of my mind. One such instance was that of my Ugandan schooled Kenyan roommate whom we often in friendly verbal plays disregarded as just another kid who schooled in ‘a very third world state-Uganda’ with Museveni’s militarism being infused into him through the school curricula.

And on another instance in a weekly evening poetry/spoken word session in one of the varsity lecture halls one blogger stood up and going by the weekly theme of “paying tribute to Kenyan Defense Force”, he made some positive remarks which eventually shifted to the Kenyan regional supremacy.

 “Kenya is a super power” he said and went on to bash Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, the two Sudan-s, and Ethiopia. He created such a negative picture that made Eastern Africa states such tiny names that clung to the mighty Kenya-Dwarfs that need not our attention.  I sat there thinking How naïve!

But in mid last year, a young beautiful Belgium lady came to Kenya from Ethiopia through Moyale and on a journey to Lake Turkana we had enough time for interaction. Whenever she talked about Ethiopia and how good it was I subconsciously found myself telling her of similar better things in Kenya. Had it not been her pointing it to me, several days later, that I seemed to be selling Kenya as better than Ethiopia, better than anything Ethiopia could offer, while I hadn’t even seen the part of Ethiopia she was referring to. I wouldn’t have known the shit that my patriotic zeal was painting about me-about Kenya and Kenyans. It was such a blind groping that never thought that there could be other better things, places than Kenya in such “backward” places as Ethiopia.

I have over the years come to regard this with some seriousness; I am not, most of us are not any different from the Ethiopian elder in the remote Oromo land. The blogger in our spoken heart I have referred to because One’s state encompasses the very ideals that constitute ones identity, the body of pride and all that is good in any state elicits the same kind of response all across the world- the flush of patriotic sentiments, both sadness and joy. And it is part of this patriotism ingrained in citizenship through years of socialization that manifests when ‘others’ seem to invade, to supersede the complete body of beliefs and attitudes one holds about their state.

I have made the conclusion that patriotism is on a large extent negative... bear with me…I am making my case.

But what is Patriotism?

The standard dictionary definition of patriotism reads “love of one's country.”  Patriotism can be defined as love of one's country, identification with it, and special concern for its well-being and that of compatriots.
(read more)

Patriotism is negative

American political theorist George Kateb, argues that patriotism is “a mistake twice over: it is typically a grave moral error and its source is typically a state of mental confusion”. He further argues that patriotism is “a readiness to die and to kill for an abstraction … for what is largely a figment of the imagination” (Kateb 2000, 901, 907). Kateb conceives a state as “it is also constructed out of transmitted memories true and false; a history usually mostly falsely sanitized or falsely heroized; a sense of kinship of a largely invented purity; and social ties that are largely invisible or impersonal, indeed abstract …”

Patriotism is deceptive; it is a farcical self flattery

Leo Tolstoy found patriotism both stupid and immoral. Despite this, patriotic deception is alluring; it is scurrying away from truth in matters dealing with our realities – our identities. It often entails lying to yourself. Isn’t it baffling when eventually the scurry from the truth, reality reaches a point when it can no longer hold together- when the deception “self-consumes” and self abashment begins in bitter earnest when like Morgan “you do not see nothing to smile about”- the dawn of reality on the prison of lies. This reality becomes a guarded entity- we can self condemn, poke fingers in our affairs and yodel all we can but one statement made even in jest, or anything that seems to slight the spirit of our state from the outside, from other people, from other states will break the self bemoaning about our inadequacy to proclaim a mighty stance of self flattery; a patriotic zeal in which we find ourselves in a narcissistic self adoration. The state becomes a neo-liberal fetish, a glowing jewel that is to be guarded and protected. This self adoration surrounding the state by its citizenry is informed by thoughts like “we are good, they are bad”, “our bad are better than their good” which is an extreme form of patriotism whose mantra is “Our country right or wrong”.

Kenyans on twitter

My thoughts on the portrayal of “our supremacy”, or “patriotism” as a negative thing has often been amplified by Kenyans on Twitter. Not in a positive way but a very negative line of subtle #self deception.

The Kenyan rampage on twitter on any African states that provokes, bursts their sentimental patriotic bubble is a threat that should be eliminated with ridiculous hash tags #someonetell………. and at best the mob psychology that lies dormant even in the highest circles of our most respected i.e. the #culturecreators in the Kenyan society including both its elites and politicians becomes alive, it possess them in showing solidarity in attacking covert enemies from trying to mess with us.

c'mon 

Finger pointing, name calling or mocking banter of the inadequacies of others in Africa is not on the western scale of specks and logs in eyes but a famous adage of a baboon that not seeing its own ass laughs at and ridicules other baboons’ asses and in Kenya we have reared a baboon, and the finger of the famous baboon is #someonetell……hash tag. The claptrap banter of an egoistic citizenry expressing their patriotic sentiments and conceptions of ‘Kenyan supremacy’. The total disregard of existing realities, absolving our own weaknesses; showing our strength by pointing to the weaknesses of others is what the declaration of our ‘supremacy’ is pegged on.

And just the other day I came across an article by Kingwa Kamencu on Why Nigerians are miles ahead of our writers in the Daily nation of Friday, October 25, 2013. In this article Kamencu tries to draw a comparison on why West Africans are excelling in the literary world while East Africans are trailing behind. She asks

So, why aren’t East African writers hitting the jackpot of fame, analysis, money and acclaim like their West-African contemporaries?

She quotes Parselo Kantai who in self flattery says “The East African project is in a way more interesting than the Nigerian one.”

The article is apt, it is timely too but Kamencu spoils it when she subtly brings out the comparison like it is a battle, a sort of competition, a war that Kenyans ought to win

Even with the understated war for supremacy between Nigeria and Kenya seen on internet spats, Nigeria is in truth not the only country our writers need to fight.

What Kamencu in her article did was give a voice to ‘our’ belief. The belief that we are better than Nigeria and we could outdo them by just putting in place a few things; a vibrant publishing scene, Good PR for our writers, I searched the article to try and see if she has recommended learning from Nigeria or west Africa. But there is nothing like that, since she already has declared a war between our literary scene and the Nigeria one, she thinks there is not a chance for a collaboration between Kenyans and Nigerians working to improve each other. This is further amplified when Tony Mochama nails it

Mochama suggests looking further afield for challenge and inspiration. “We could look to the US where they have set the bar because of their dominance. They have an exciting tradition of literary magazines - The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Dog And Pound and others.

But couldn’t we look up at Nigeria and West Africa for this inspiration and challenge you may want to ask!! And here Mochama says

….As a third world country, India would be an example of how to write in an international language but still break away from the West,”.

I am not trying to belittle Kamencu or Mochama but they seem not aware of the negative connotation that seems to lurk behind the comparisons being drawn and the recommendations being put forth or if they are, there is a deliberate pitching of the East against the West in the African literary scene. There is an underlying patriotic tone that is tied to Kenya and East Africa in this piece. It is not on the extreme end of patriotism since Kamencu has been careful to notice and acclaim the superiority of Nigeria without lying.

How do we as Africans view each other in the face of Patriotism?

Each state has a single one sided story of the other, when it comes to self comparison. We can’t detach Biafra, Boko Haram, the con men, political upheavals when we think about Nigeria. Or fail to see hunger and starvation, press censorship in Ethiopia. Or when we think about Somalia all one sees is the war, the famine and big bellies. Problem steps in when we fail to transcend these “single story” about others in our outlook. When we start sweep our own murk under the carpet.

This distracted and divided image shapes our perceptions of the ‘African problem’. No one feels like part of it, we thus end up conceiving the continental problems as outsiders, as if we are not part of the murk. How do we deal with regional integration, pan-Africanism or the unity of Africa? When we envision the African problem not as a single bloc but fragments of the otherness informed by the convictions of one’s own superiority?

And if you had not noticed most people when thinking/talking of African problems rarely consider their own state, this is always a thing that comes with human nature; wanting and wishing to distance themselves from problems.

Can’t each one of us disavow and just tone down the superiority of the other? Couldn’t we instead work with each other, to learn from each other? Re-conceptualize our image and our problems, Collaboration instead of Competition.

 “The love for one's country is in many cases no more than the love of an ass for its stall” J.B. Zimmermann