"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." - George Bernard Shaw
I can not say much about the Moi days since I was young, never really cared about politics, and the Maziwa ya Nyayo (the milk that President Moi used to donate to primary school children) never used to give any reason to dig further and learn about our president, and the politics then.
The first time I voted, was in 2007, the elections that saw Kenyans turn into beasts and our land turn into a war zone. This was a time in which Kenyans were divided, and ended up shaming ourselves. This time we saw Kenyans killing each other, destroying each others properties, fighting each other and embarrassing each other. Kenya became a loathing nation.
As much as we the Kenyan citizens are to blame for our own doing, we have to remember that all these issues came about from the fact that we were voting in people who in the long run ended up not caring about the state of the country they ended up leading. Our politicians did nothing much than hide in their palatial homes, while their constituents died, lost loved ones, lost their crops and lands, lost their homes. Till this date, there are some Kenyan citizens living in tents and make shift homes in random areas all due to the chaos that came about from us going to the ballots.
By now one can get the direction of this post. This is not a post that will rant on about the ills of this country, but rather a post full of questions on whether a patriot is really what George Bernard Shaw stated in the quote above. As a Kenyan I think it may be hard sometimes to be sincerely patriotic. I'm in no way saying that we shouldn't be patriotic, but we have to remember what we have been through and work on bettering our country, while still appreciating how far we have come.
In the words of Malcolm X "You're not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who says it."
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