Akumulikaye mchana usiku akuchoma.1 George Floyd just was laid to rest next to his late mother, six feet deep; Kenya’s Hussein Moyo is almost at ease, 64 days later when his killer (a police officer) is apprehended. New York City’s mayor announced naming of streets “Black Lives Matter” in response to ongoing protests; Mutemi, our staunch Kenyan human rights activist is harassed by state ammo (police) for calling out elite families who’ve benefited a great deal from association with Kenya’s colonizers. Perhaps there’s some hope when their names are mentioned. But what happens when they become numb to the sound of their names? It’s a juxtaposition to behold. Racism is an ingrained fabric in Kenya we are not even privy to it. You may have to look a little closer to see why this structural problem continues to exist. The oppressor is no longer white. Just recently, protestors protesting against (mostly US) police brutality at the Nairobi US Embassy Consulate had the luxury of bringing their pets. Adjacent to this protest, a local community protesting against the same course got tear-gassed and arrested.

We have a great deal of decluttering to do. It’s hard work, and has to be done diligently. But here is what these problems look like for some of the tasks that lay ahead.

Nguzo zetu za kielimu bado zazidi kudumisha dhulumu za mkoloni.2 We have an education system architectured aptly enough to enlighten but tactically enough to not to disturb cannibalistic white supremacy strongholds. These cycles are enforced so strongly by regimes that it autonomously punishes those who dare to act and think otherwise. It traces back to doses of leadership stupor enough to pamper supremacists’ tendencies for selfish gain, what we so commonly refer to as politics. Our education systems are the greatest en/disablers of of this supremacist platform. While I was in primary school, we used to have a card that was given to anyone speaking Swahili/any language other than English. Thinking back, it’s sad we had to suppress our identities to avoid trouble. At the back of the card it had all names of the people whose hands it had passed. In the evening assembly, the ‘card holders’ were then punished. We are still reliving an oppressors’ system, they just change office titles. Michel-Rolph Trouillot puts in perspective when he acknowledges, “The Past—or, more accurately, pastness—is a position. Thus, in no way can we identify the past as past.” Education has been a great enabler for this anti-black agenda, serving the colonizer’s agenda.

Humu, haba na haba yashajaza kibaba; yanazoleka.3 These microaggressions graduate their way through our educational system. Christina Sharpe in her book, In the Wake, passionately argues that we must (re)think through “reappearances of the slave ship in everyday life in the form of the prison, the camp, and the school.” Each generation is becoming even more oblivious of these reappearances because of an inadequate education framework. Professors and their faculties addressing these important genres (like African Studies) are severely suppressed and unfunded; To get funding, they’d have to speak to a funder’s tune. This wake work is taxing, heavy and interwoven among generations. These systems were architectured not to reward any forms of rethinking. Academic disciplines questioning history aren’t particularly welcome.However, the singular eternal reward is an avalanche of generational liberations—the greatest fear for any system/regime serving a function of white supremacy. Currently, Kenya’s education sector is at the mercy of Kenya’s elite, serving the heed of colonial heads. The elites’ looting only leaves barely enough resources to spare. The remainder of the loot is touted as elusive ‘opportunities’. These will often be in the form of elite scholarship programmes with a promise of a rich network and development. This carrot-and-stick approach is slyly enforced as ‘opportunities’. At least from my schooling so far, ‘opportunities’ is the most abused reference in high school. Here, the Matthew effect (“The ‘rich’ get richer, the ‘poor’ get poorer”) takes charge; The ‘appealing’ (gifted) students will always be more attractive for the ‘next opp’ while the ‘less appealing’ student will always seem less attractive. If the ‘appealing’ student is quick-witted enough to game the system, they will eventually make those opps chase them instead—a lesson that becomes handy to them in an outside word that generously rewards monopoly tendencies. These micro aggressions enforced by our own black institutions compound themselves to further colonize Kenyan culture.

Utamaduni.4 Growing up in a cultured African home is a life achievement, particularly if you ascribe to a marginalized affiliation/identity. Growing up in a typical Kenyan household means you extraordinarily calibrate your ambitions and as a result you are naturally and constantly tired. “You want to become a journalist?” Just be careful to not talk ‘bad’ about x and y. “Oh, our daughter, make sure you hold yourself this way” lest you shame your family. Or scare away your husband! Retrospectively, these concerns stem from a genuine place. “Unaskiaje?” (‘How are you feeling?’) A typical interjection I’m often met with from my folks when I do something astronomically different from their expectations. This structure works effectively to make sure low income households stagnate, the script the white man revels in. Or what better way would you expect them to get cheap labor? Today, a majority of the swing votes in Kenya majorly consist of low income communities, or popularly dubbed as ‘Wanjiku’. This colonial agenda wafts in and out of our cultural pride.

Mwacha mila ni mtumwa.5 I was born into the Wadawida tribe. We make up no more than 0.75% of Kenya’s population. This is a community so small that it doesn’t take long to trace bloodlines amongst ourselves, just by virtue of being a taita. I giddy up when I’m in a public place and overhear people speaking Kitaita. In our county, more than half of the land belongs to the government. But if you dig deeper, this land was occupied by colonial chiefs, with land titles bearing their names (Sir Charles Goldman, a retired Mayor Leyzell et al) and their companies. 55 years later, historical injustices are still being exercised; the government is still wrangling with its citizens (the rightful owners) over their land. More jarring, however, is that a national park covers approximately two-thirds of Taita-Taveta county, a park whose residents barely benefit from—unless human-wildlife conflict qualifies as a reward. Just another classical shape of the colonizer changing form and color to look like us but deep down our leadership is a function of deep rooted colonialism. Accurately put, my community and others like it suffer from the present. Or daylight robbery as Ken Saro-Wiwa frames it. In his last letter — to his girlfriend — before being executed by the Nigerian state for robbery, he affirms his conscience for being his national treasury clerk-turned-robber, “Some men choose to be soldiers and policemen, others doctors and lawyers; I chose to be a robber.” After coming face-to-face with looting at transnational government agencies he classifies himself in the same vice with the educated elite looting the country dry, the only difference being he is “prepared to pay the price for it all” while the others aren’t. The colonizer today takes the form of bureaucratic leadership .

It’s stunningly easy to write #BlackLivesMatter; Black Lives Matter isn’t a black square; Black Lives Matter isn’t a hashtag; Black Lives Matter isn’t a Martin Luther King quote. For Kenya, it serves the function of a selfless fight against pre-existing systems and its enforcers. More than half a century ago, our freedom fighters marked the beginning of independence. To continue this work, we owe it to ourselves and incoming generations to consciously rid the colonial blueprints in education, culture and leadership still being enforced. While doing this we have to be conscious of the ever evolving enemy within. The colonizer speaks fluent Swahili, has a loud African name and is respectfully educated.

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Appreciation to my editor6 for crossing t’s and dotting i’s.

Footnotes:

  1. Swahili saying loosely translating to ‘He who shines a light to you during the day kills you at night’. Figuratively (in this use case) it figuratively means the people we trusted with our safety are now killing us. ↩

  2. Swahili loosely translating to, ‘Still, our education pillars continue to enforce the colonizer’s injustices. ↩

  3. Swahili translating to ‘A small potion/habit compounded over time and to unbearable levels’. Yanazoleka meaning ‘it’s spilling’ ↩

  4. Swahili for ‘culture’. ↩

  5. Swahili saying loosely translating to ‘he who abandons their culture is a slave’ ↩

  6. Editor prefered to stay anonymous. ↩