KENYA A LAND OF DIVERSITY

KENYA A LAND OF DIVERSITY

All of you can concur with me that Kenya is a land of diversity and all and sundry must appreciate and embrace that. I pray, come 2017 we as Kenyans regardless of our religions, tribes  races or backgrounds we will vote people  whose world view are broader and more democratic.

It is so sad, to see some educated people making blanket condemnations and profiling whenever a few individuals of a certain religion, community or group do some stupid things. If one from a certain religion or community does something foolish, that does not mean that each and every individual from that group or religion throws his or her weight behind him or her.

As a matter of fact, Kenya is home to many people from diverse background, and it is our duty to embrace each other. No person, people or community was created from left overs of creation.

Everyone has value. It disturbs that some people still decide that certain people are not worth bothering with, simply because they are of different tribe or religion from theirs. Regardless of their backgrounds, everyone forms part of the human family.

Sometimes I reckon formal education is overrated in Kenya, because it is those who are educated who still have the parochial, myopic ideas clanism, tribalism and religious bigotry.

This is really disheartening, because formal schooling is a condition for an individual to see the value of all of humanity, irrespective of its cultural base. Those who do not reach out beyond their boundaries and seek solidarity only with ‘their people’ open themselves to the possibly of contributing to the suffering of others.

It is true; to heal this nation we’ll require that every citizen undergoes a change of mindset especially in their understanding of other ethnic groups and religions. It doesn’t matter about our background; we are one people, one nation, one tribe. Everyone in the world is worth being nice to. Because God never creates inferior human beings, each person deserves respects and dignity.

In the word of martin Luther, an individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic/tribal concerns to the broader concern of all humanity.

 

MAULID BILLIE ALI