Thread by @wmnjoya

I didn't know Wahura Kanyoro. But upon reading what she wrote, I am angry, not sad. And when I read people talking about beefing up mental health treatment and discussing depression, I'm even angrier.

This is what she wrote in December 2020.

There was a very clear catalyst for Wahura's sorrow. It was a country whose government has so much contempt for medical workers who get trained and work hard to help us maintain our health.

How are they treated? Wahura was very clear.

She said working in public healthcare "was slowly killing me to work as a precursor to the morgue instead of as a doctor." Put yourself in Wahura's shoes. You're trained to protect life, but you are reduced by a cruel @MOH_Kenya to be an escort for the end of life.

There is nothing worse about this psychotic country of Kenya other than its death energy. Death energy constantly makes us do the opposite of nurturing life. It makes us go against our gut instinct as human beings, and that is why it aggravates mental vulnerabilities.

In education, the same dynamic happens, but teachers take out their cruelty on children and students so we never seem to notice. We think the injuries kids suffer in school is a morality problem rather than a structural one.

See the stories at #tyrannyof3pc.

We teachers are also forced by @EduMinKenya to contradict our mission of enhancing knowledge. I complained on NTV that @KICD was preaching water and drinking wine, because it was telling Kenyans that CBC encouraged kids to ask questions while it demonized me for doing the same.

Which brings me to the next thing Wahura mentioned. She said that the anti-medic propaganda was so powerful that it demonized medical workers for simply saying they couldn't watch the carelessness with which they treated healthcare.

Let me quote her:

"But those strikes also taught me that government is GREAT at spinning things. They would ONLY take the demands about compensation and twist things around. If I wasn’t privy to the meetings and negotiations being held, I would have fallen for that propaganda."

Imagine that. The people at @MOH_Kenya who treat Kenyans with so much contempt, and who talk so badly about you when you stand up to it, are so good at the PR that even you would almost believe it if you didn't know better.

Is there anything more gaslighting than this, surely?

To be in the care sector of education and healthcare is to be in constant gaslighting. GoK says things in the public that just do not match reality, and they demonize the people who do the actual work. I had a meltdown over this, and when I recovered, I started #maishakazini.

And Wahura was right to talk about how Mogusu's death was obscene. But for me, the obscenity was extended by Mutahi Kagwe who had the audacity to think that he could lecture medical workers on how they should mourn their collegue.

The arrogance. Shame on him.

Wahura asked for empathy. Not pity. She wanted us to put ourselves in the healthworkers' shoes, and to take the claims of the healthworkers seriously for humanity's sake, not simply for some woiyee mental health advocacy. We should be angry, not sad.

Anger drives us to demand better. Sadness makes us do nothing. This narrative making Wahura's grief an issue of mental illness, Mathare hospital etc is important, yes, but less important than the structures that are making us sick and making us despair.

I'm just sick and pissed off about mourning doctors for things that have nothing to do with medicine and everything to do with politics. In 2017 we were mourning Eunice Sango. This year it was Stephen Mogusu and now Wahura Kanyoro. All young. What nonsense is this @MOH_Kenya?

And I mention them not because they are the only ones, but a symbol of what this government is doing to its people. It is making us work contrary to our inbuilt instinct to care, and then mocking us when we demand employment and humane working conditions.

This government is literally eating its young. Even hyenas, says a proverb from the people of the Mukuyu tree, are not that insane.

@MOH_Kenya you take the greatest blame for Wahura's despair. Yes, YOU.

And to the rest of us Kenyans outside this cannibalistic government, the message is this:

Our work must bring us DIGNITY, must allow us be CREATIVE, and must allow us to express our LOVE. Work that makes us do the opposite tortures the soul.