Thread by @wmnjoya

It is only this year that I recognized how brutal and passive aggressive Kenya is. We hate those who excel, and we also hate those who do not win the rat race. So our lives are a constant and painful bumping between the two walls of the national path called average.

We punish each other with violence for going above the boundaries of average, and we punish those who go below the boundaries of average. As Sitawa Namwalie told me, every reponse to imagination in Kenya is "No."

If you perform above average, Kenyams punish you for being different. They tell you

1. you are a know it all
2. on whose behalf do you speak? Talk for yourself.
3. why are you talking about only X and excluding everyone else?

We are very skilled at doing this: if someone mentions going to visit a neighbor Y, we ask "kwani is Y the only neighbor? Why are you excluding other neighbors? Are you saying that other neighbors don't deserve to be visited? Are you saying other Kenyans don't have neighbors?

I'm not done.

We ask: why a neighbor and not a relative? What do you have against relatives?

Woe unto you if you perform below average so that people stop attacking you. Oh no. They wont praise you for your humility.

We will say

1. You are a cheat
2. Who do you think you are?
3. What is wrong with you? You are such a failure.

And the role of the police and the instutions is to remind you of the two walls every waking moment.

Think of it. You excel in Std 8, you're carried shoulder high and interviewed by TV stations saying you want to be an engineer or a doctor. You go to the national high school of choice, and in form 4, you repeat the good results, and then again, the singing and media interviews.

Then you land in engineering or medicine, and everything starts going south.

You are told degrees are useless. You're asked why you're in a uni and not at TVET. You're told to be an entrepreneur, but you graduate and you have to pay your HELB loan, so you cant entrpreneur.

And then the government wastes billions on a white elephant built by Chinese engineers. Or employs and pays Cuban doctors better than Kenyan doctors while telling them to be entrpreneurs.

This stuff makes one go crazy.

The toxicity of Kenya is brutal, and is driving us insane.

And if you are not the top in class, the abuse is just as bad. In school you are mocked by teachers. Given less food. Put in the foolish class that gets less attention. After results, Matiang'i announces that you have always been cheats, so if you failed, it's a legit result.

After school, you're told to entrpreneur your way out of this punishment. But you cant get loans from the bank, you have no title deed. The Youth Fund is looted. Meanwhile, you are starting a family, so you have to smuggle your new born out of hospital in a bag.

And if you are male and survive to the age of 30, sober, you are a miracle. Because you could either be shot by police for not hearing them call you, or you could drown in drugs and alcohol, or you could simply reach your wits end and do something drastic to others or yourself.

If you are a woman, you are either poor and broken from being put down by family and institutional violence, or being insulted as a non-woman because you are not poor and broken from being put down by family and institutional violence.

So those who survive all this abuse end up living with survivor's guilt for not falling under the weight of abuse. But if, in a moment of insanity, they get into a position where they can design a system that stops the abuse, this is what happens to them.

https://twitter.com/wmnjoya/status/1140133371303071744?s=19

The challenge for the Kenyan 99%, the 50 million minus the 8,300 Kenyans who own more than the rest of us, is to break this cycle of insanity.

The first step is demand an end to inequality. The 1% protect their wealth by creating institutions and systems that make us go insane.

So when we oppose yet another bureacratic system of oppression, stop asking us silly questions about if we will ever be pleased by anything GoK does. That is abuse. You are not only inflicting abuse, but you are also supporting the 1% as they abuse us.

If you dont have the strength to challenge this abuse, that's ok. Because that work is tiring. But for freedom and sanity"s sake, stop using that passive aggression on those trying to challenge it.

For those who can, we must continue calling out the abuse of our institutions.