Thread by @wmnjoya

Mindukras or #upperdeckpeopleKE, the people who ridiculed the arts and social sciences as irrelevant to the market, are now surprised that Kenyans are stigmatizing people who have been affected by covid.

Let me school you about why Kenyans are stigmatizing and mocking them.

1. We're helpless. Kenya is run by a corrupt president whose current preoccupation is not our health, but fixing any alternative voices and getting his bureaucrats international jobs. He gives a rat's ass about us. The healthcare system is privatized and we don't trust it anyway.

We're getting lectures on what to do, what we're not doing, but at the back of our minds, except for the governors who have private ICU beds, we're basically not sure we'll get tested or treated.

If you had done the arts, you would know that satire is the laughter of despair.

So stop lecturing us before you understand us.

2. Stigma is the fruit not of foolishness, but helplessness. Stigma happens in a country that is hierarchical, because that society has to be delusional to keep up with the fiction that it is perfect mzungu country.

That's Kenya.

Because Kenya has always deluded itself that it meets western standard of hubris, democracy and racist madharao for Africans, it doesn't like contradictions to its PR. Sick people contradict our #Magicalkenya image. That's why we blame the victims.

That what Kenyan journalists did in 2008, when they blamed PEV victims for spoiling Brand Kenya and making us look like countries like Somalia and Congo.

In Kenya, we blame victims. By now you should be used to it.

Finally, can you channel all that anger you direct at us...to the source of our mess, the corrupt, cannibalist @StateHouseKenya ?