How Many Friends Do I Have Left?

It has become the norm for me to recount my friends after every general election in Kenya. Even after moving so far away from my beloved country, the cancer that shamelessly eats into and drags our nation behind refuses to hide its face and most poisonous fangs in the broad day light thousands of miles away.

After every election, a segment of my friends kind of drifts away from me after they suddenly discover that I am a ‘one of them’. The ‘them’ here to mean what the rightfully former PM every now and then when it suits his phrase calls madoadoa. For example, before the political campaigns intensified towards the last election I and my friends were all hustlers until I would mention Uhuru.

The ‘them’, fifty years after independence, which by the way their forefathers with others fought for but a contribution that has never been duly recognised, are still the national menace, the thieves and murderers of Kenya, never been of any good even after one Kibaki’s ten years of national success.

I was a hustler like everyone else and mtu wetu in all social places as long as I did not mention my political stand which was and still is pro Uhuru. But the minute I argued the pillars of my conviction, valuably as such notwithstanding, I would become ‘one of them’.

I was shocked in several instances when people I considered as good friends suddenly and without my effort of a provocation would draw a line to the friendship by vehemently spouting the ‘abominable’ kikuyu connection.

Good God! It’s not enough that some social media spaces have dedicated they time in highlighting the seemingly eternal sins that ‘the tribe’ has and continue to commit to the great nation of Kenya. A fly can not die peacefully in Kenya of natural causes without a kikuyu hand being seen as having something to do with its demise.

And these as I have remarked earlier has so shamed some members of this one big ‘Kiambu mafia’ that they have denied their membership in ‘them’. Others silently take the scourge in what our founding father mzee Jomo would have found straight up outrageous, “suffering without bitterness” again.

Before and after the 07/08 general elections, the UN after carrying out a national investigation found the kikuyu tribe the most endangered tribe in Kenya. At the time of course was because the talk of the madoadoa and the 41 against one sponsored by the former PM had spread to the Great Rift and all other regions but the central or mount Kenya part of the nation where the 1 was concentrated to form one giant doa.

I thought that was water below the bridge but come the year 2013, right into the 21 century, and still ‘it is the Kikuyu’!

I have now realised just how naïve I must have been all this time. I mean I have never, believe it or not, looked at any other Kenyan by his tribe. And though I may have contributed to what I figured was usual common tribal talk and jokes which is inevitable in a nation made of 42 tribes, and though I am aware of their tribal orientations, I have never judged anyone including the former PM; the head of the anti-kikuyu movement, by their tribe or the actions of some of their tribesmen. Also believe or don’t, but it’s my truth.

And this has made it very easy for me to socialise with any of my friends across the board. I was shocked in my naivety, to hear the talk of the “sio Kenya” in close quarters. 

At a lesser gathering, a good friend of mine suddenly chimed ‘nyinyi wakikuyu’ at me to the total embarrassment of our mutual friend and his tribesman while trying to explain corruption in Kenya! How did I get there?

I had to defriend another from my list of friends on face book after she posted with total disregard to others’ feelings (probably still does) an endless chain of kikuyu condemnations after her candidate the same former PM of course, lost in a general election he could never have won and the supreme court petition there after! Btw whatever happened to “we will respect the Supreme Court decision”? But then the kikuyu bribed the good lords?

Is it not enough with Muthama who amazingly still walks the street of Kenya a free man after his tribal vitriol outbursts or again Rayila’s “thieves have taken over”?

Another one of my friends commented on the same book of faces that one of his friends, “a guy I’m sitting next to” had declared that “Raila will never be Kenya’s president” which he had finished off with a “guess what tribe” his friend is. I ask, was it really rocket science to perceive that Raila could lose in that election? And from there come to the conclusion that that was the end of his presidential quest?

And the latter friend has now made it a habit to point out sarcastically that I must be a very happy man since ‘our own had won’. Does it have to be this low? I am a kikuyu and just as Uhuru can’t help that he was born a Kenyatta and thus an “innocent inheritor”, I can’t do anything about it, but is there a chance that I may have seen the better president in Uhuru than Raila without any regard to the tribe? Is there an iota of a chance?

And just for the record, it is very possible that unlike the Otonglo kid, now son of Uhuru, my personal, especially financial status might not improve just because “we” now have mundu wa nyumba, or muthamaki if you keep insisting in the big white house on the hill. Very very likely, I dare say.

Another one, straight to my face while we were discussing the Mutula death insinuated that “he was killed by them”, remembered that I am one of ‘them’ and pointed out “si nyinyi”.

Haiya!… The cat that was stuck in a jerry can for four days, that was us?

Still on record, my perennial mention of Raila and my anti-rayilaism is deeply founded from the man’s own personal crusade against the Gikuyu, his inconsistent statesmanship, his political incoherence and to sum it all up, his grand disrespect of constitutional institutions.

My number of friends, I have fathomed, has been diminishing after every general election which thus begs the question; how many friends do I have left?

Eh..should I now start considering all Kalenjins my best friends out of the Uhuruto dynamo?

Earlier On...Ethnic Profiling Has No Place In A Democratic Kenya.

Five years ago...House Of Mumbi Heritage Or A Curse?

P Bryan Njoroge.