The Pokot say, “anyin tany aki ng’wan” or “tingeto kigh anka tÏkwÏl köromnyenyi nko ghöyÏnyanyi”. They mean that a cow is sweet and sour and that everything has its good and bad side.
Having said that, I think it would be prudent to direct our minds to important questions that affect us. The hallmark of democracy and freedom of speech is this: that individuals will engage in meaningful debate to spur socio-economic and political growth.
This calls for informed opinions, shaped by statistics, hard facts and the ability of being a ‘prophet’ to peer into the future, being able to have a quick mind to avoid the quicksand of personal-interest driven politics and embark on issue-driven politics.
I have delightfully (read painstakingly) read the Constitution, the County Governments Bill, 2012 and the Transition to Devolved Governments Bill, 2012. More than ever, if our minds were directed to the great task ahead of us, the West Pokot County might realize her dream.
As a people, we have perfected the art of mud-slinging, yet we are stunted by the same impediments—little or no infrastructure to write home about. We have committed intellectual fraud at the behest of our so-called elitism, yet we have not cared to address our minds to the challenges our education was supposed to solve. We have engaged in heated dialogues to espouse our views and opinions, yet the collective knowledge and wisdom of our people surpass all these—the people know the truth. We have reduced ourselves to clanging cymbals—we never ask why, we never ask how, we never ask when, we never ask the simple and obvious. We have failed. We are teetering off to the same pit we have been buried before independence and after.
Ordinarily, if a gazelle was being pursued by a lion, it would be expected that the gazelle would run as fast as she could. It is a race for her life. Wouldn’t it be ironical, then, that such a gazelle would instead walk or round off to some shrubs, acting as if she was perfectly ok? Wouldn’t it be fatal if she did so? Now replace the gazelle with us and the lion with the odds against us. Does it give you shudders that we still remain behind? That we occupy the lower rung? And do you see any hurry? No. No. There is no hurry. Our gazelles have leisurely wound up by the river banks, comfortably drinking water, oblivious of the pounce of the lion. Other gazelles would have been busy watching out for the lion of our under-developments and un-development but no, the coast is clear, there is no danger folks! Isn’t that cool?
May be I should not be too hard. You see, when you have drunk from the waters of pessimism for long, for some time you get accustomed to looking at things from a distance with that withdrawn look. When one has been cursed with bare-minimums in the affairs of a society, such a person might be inclined to look at life from that prism. So, after some time, everything is done in the ordinary way. There are no passions. There are no ideals. There are no purposes. Everything is stifled.
Therefore, you will see this in matters that matter most. There is always that detached look. Is that right? Wrong! I refuse to believe that our County lacks men and women who will, in a manner of speaking, take the bull by its horns. The reason why God in his manifest Grace gave us reason is for us to apply our intellects and come to a rational conclusion. The privilege society has given us, leaving behind thousands of others who could not go to school, is that so that we are the custodians of what they hold to be true.
Fellow County men and women, I have realized a somewhat displeasing trend in the West Pokot County Politics. We have reduced ourselves to incendiary tools spewing forth expletives. We have labeled each other ‘this camp’ or ‘that camp’ as if there was a mark of the beast on our faces. Tell me, who owns the collective history of the Pokots who have suffered even before 1963 and still suffer to-date? What would be so earth-shattering if one of our leaders wins or the other fails? Tell me, will the sun rise to light up the shadows of the hearts of Pokots who have always known pain? Don’t you realize that your expectations are a bit misplaced?
When a leader gets into office, other people celebrate; I don’t. I have since realized that the euphoria that sweeps me clouds my judgement to the extent that I don’t articulate the broader issues which will indirectly affect me. I have since realized that my duty as a citizen and a voter is to speak about the issues which a leader should focus on. But first, I should be a leader of my own, to address issues, solve them whenever I can and if all the voters did this then we will be marching forward. The limitations of my leaders are my own limitations. When they fail, insult each other, get locked up in personal fights, lose the bigger picture of the problems bedeviling us, then I see myself as a loser too. In them, I see my egocentricism, power-hunger and quick-fix solutions to long-term problems. The catastrophe is that we haven’t learnt a new breed of politics which can sustain logical, factual, reasonable arguments without it degenerating into name-calling, hatred and an abuse of one’s line of ancestors.
Our leaders need to tell us what they will do differently, how, why and such things. We would like to interrogate them—whether we support them or not. We would like our leaders to respond to the worries of our fathers and mothers back at home. We would like to feel their remorse. Not only that. A lot more on what they will do beyond the remorse. We would like to feel right with our consciences that the leaders we will elect will not lead us to early graves—or more particularly, our parents—and that they will carry our problems in their hearts, worry about them in their minds and do something about them.
We would like to see our leaders unite us, to infuse within us a sense of brotherhood. We would like them to feel our pain, share in our victory and dream our dreams. We would like to ask them what happened to the skies, once full of clouds of abundance in our lands, and now barren with scattered promises and fulfillment. We would like to ask them which from which river did they draw water for our cows and which tree did they water to fruition. We would like to ask them if they have stirred dust into our eyes before, filling them with grit, and whether they are fit to calm whirl-winds or they are the whirl-winds themselves. We would like to ask them which food they brought and to which cooking pot and who did it feed. We would like to ask them if they will maintain the spleandour of the moon at night and the radiance of the sun during the day. We would ask them to watch the tired brows of our parents and see whether they can recognize the tiredness of their looks and the despair their voices. We would like to ask them not to scare our cows with their big cars nor look down upon our huts nor fail to sleep in our mud-beds (Ok, this is drastic, right?).
If they don’t they will not be fit to occupy our public offices. We would want a servant leader who will do everything as we command. But how will we know all these if we cannot find them out in a sober, detached way? If we shut our hearts and minds, how will they know what we want? That is why I get very worried. Very worried.
When a leader gets into office, other people celebrate; I don’t. I have since realized that the euphoria that sweeps me clouds my judgement to the extent that I don’t articulate the broader issues which will indirectly affect me. I have since realized that my duty as a citizen and a voter is to speak about the issues which a leader should focus on. But first, I should be a leader of my own, to address issues, solve them whenever I can and if all the voters did this then we will be marching forward. The limitations of my leaders are my own limitations. When they fail, insult each other, get locked up in personal fights, lose the bigger picture of the problems bedeviling us, then I see myself as a loser too. In them, I see my egocentricism, power-hunger and quick-fix solutions to long-term problems. The catastrophe is that we haven’t learnt a new breed of politics which can sustain logical, factual, reasonable arguments without it degenerating into name-calling, hatred and an abuse of one’s line of ancestors.
Our leaders need to tell us what they will do differently, how, why and such things. We would like to interrogate them—whether we support them or not. We would like our leaders to respond to the worries of our fathers and mothers back at home. We would like to feel their remorse. Not only that. A lot more on what they will do beyond the remorse. We would like to feel right with our consciences that the leaders we will elect will not lead us to early graves—or more particularly, our parents—and that they will carry our problems in their hearts, worry about them in their minds and do something about them.
We would like to see our leaders unite us, to infuse within us a sense of brotherhood. We would like them to feel our pain, share in our victory and dream our dreams. We would like to ask them what happened to the skies, once full of clouds of abundance in our lands, and now barren with scattered promises and fulfillment. We would like to ask them which from which river did they draw water for our cows and which tree did they water to fruition. We would like to ask them if they have stirred dust into our eyes before, filling them with grit, and whether they are fit to calm whirl-winds or they are the whirl-winds themselves. We would like to ask them which food they brought and to which cooking pot and who did it feed. We would like to ask them if they will maintain the spleandour of the moon at night and the radiance of the sun during the day. We would ask them to watch the tired brows of our parents and see whether they can recognize the tiredness of their looks and the despair their voices. We would like to ask them not to scare our cows with their big cars nor look down upon our huts nor fail to sleep in our mud-beds (Ok, this is drastic, right?).
If they don’t they will not be fit to occupy our public offices. We would want a servant leader who will do everything as we command. But how will we know all these if we cannot find them out in a sober, detached way? If we shut our hearts and minds, how will they know what we want? That is why I get very worried. Very worried.
It is time the elites of West Pokot County took their rightful place. It is time they asked serious and hard questions. The County needs men and women who will shape her politics. History will judge us harshly if we don’t do this. Think about it. That is the way I see it.
