Humans are the species that kidnapped their parents and imagined themselves as superior parents. We are a generation of stems, branches, and leaves that denied their roots and still dream of bearing fruits. We are the cats that eat pregnant rats and seriously plan for the future. Our leadership systems replicates the council of wolves and hyenas discussing how to best conserve the affairs of sheep and goats preservation.
Lessons from life experience, history, philosophy, psychological conditioning, and the current state of Africa today reveal with ease and incredible clarity the path of degeneration laying upon Africa and the world as a connected complex whole. From the stories of tomorrow that never come, broken promises, memories, ideas, dreams, and the hope of new horizons, Africa is still impoverished and still hostage to the narrative’s of separation.
Widespread global social, economic, environmental, and psychological catastrophe still threatens Kenya today. While decision-makers are desperately searching for quick fixes to maintain their “cosmetic powers”, the root causes of most of these crises are still affecting most Kenyans on the ground. The shreds of evidence of these catastrophes are overwhelming, and the more we keep masking these truths with “mechanistic” data of growth and prosperity by commodifying everything, the more we will keep sacrificing many of our people and their local ecologies to sustain the few self-proclaimed blind gods of the 21st century.
Cutting through the prison of concepts and habitual denials as an “egoic” evasion, the story of separation exposes the deep roots of the current crisis facing Africa as a place nested within the other planetary crisis.
Our collective mindset both as victims and beneficiaries of the same things that are working against us, lack of will to surrender to our comfort zones and addictions are part of the self-sabotaging behaviors of the entire system on both internal to external fronts, to give birth to the newness of today as a potential for tomorrow.
From a regenerative perspective, most countries in Africa, including Kenya, are still in an unending debt trap, becoming economic slaves to the lords of separation and rule, impunity, and toxic consumerism. The current inability of these countries to live without depending on their lenders is making many of their patriotic citizens unable to even afford their basic daily bodily needs but to rely on the same lenders-made institutions and charity programs by selling hope as a currency of tomorrow.
The experience of going through the COVID-19 pandemic has not only exposed most of our inabilities and abilities as Kenya to dealing with crises at a national level. Despite the celebrated breakthroughs and criticized breakdowns, Kenya, like most African countries, is still servants on the table of civilization with minor powers to hold any abusive power accountable for the cries of her children. The Kenyan factor is that there is a need for radical transformative change from separation to wholeness, which must begin at an individual level, also seen as shifting of perspectives back in place and rediscovering our home in place.
The journey to re-discover your home in place presents a high-value potential for our uncertain future. The present moment is still volatile to most Kenyans and speeds up the conversations of despair into victimhood, or victory hood based on your tribe, religion, dynasty, health status, economic class, education, and imperial powers that seem to validate how we exist as a nation within the set of global standards.
The system of separation is about pushing the other side to decide who lives and who dies, especially those who don’t meet the set standard. For instance, some key challenges facing Kenyans today and receive little to no publicity to mobilize collective actions includes; loss of biodiversity, climate change, water pollution, and acidification, ecological degradation, social-economic collapse, individual to collective trauma, polarities like divided communities/ families, information pollution and propaganda, human to nature conflict, toxic food production system, loss of local cultural heritage and sense-making in place. Some of the usual quick-fix solutions for these precedented challenges that have seen to rise in suicide cases, despair, depression, domestic violence, abuse, and other mental disorders among the youth, is to increase the budget and buy more anti-depressants and train more psychologists to join in the extractive health care system whose priority is profit over life.
As the “hot age” is fast approaching sooner than expected. Kenya must now decide to prioritize her environmental issues of today or keep cutting trees to build churches in the name of a god who is separate from nature. When we use plastics and toxic chemicals irresponsibly, they accumulate and pollute our oceans, lakes, and rivers, therefore feeding us back our poisons through the food and water that cause diverse health problems we are dealing with today in our societies.
“The promise of tomorrow never comes”, and it’s time we address the problems of today by regenerating one place at a time while allowing future generations to decide what is best for them based on the challenges of their days. If we make moral decisions today, we don’t need to worry about the future, but the illusion of caring for the future generation needs to stop if we want to move forward to a greater potential as a connected whole.
All this is not breaking news or emerging stories, our ancestors warned us and are still telling us today; “mwacha mila ni mtumwa” (one who abandons culture is a slave). Our generation was born without a home. We often heard the stories of how home used to be before our forefathers. We were forced to abandon our indigenous ways of life and follow the western paradigms of the colonial masters. Our fathers left the fertile lands and migrated to the city to learn how to make money and fit into the master’s way of life. Our mothers grew cash crops to pay for our school fees, hoping tomorrow their sons will speak, and dress like the masters’ kids and also inherit the kingdom of heaven as they wrote in their new bible study.
I know some of us are too blind to see where the cage of separation begins but I challenge you to observe how you interact with the world around you in place. Try to see it with fresh eyes and try to find your place and what “here” means to you. Are we prisoners of concepts designed to work against us? Whether these are conscious human decisions or allegations, I also accept I might be an ambitious wannabe writer, who is both a beneficiary and a victim of these extractive separatism systems.
Unfortunately, to be first among the slaves or to live in golden cages does not make you a little free. In the prison of concepts; all prisoners must first agree that all concepts must work against them for them to take part in the games. The prison of concepts also allows role models (players promising to commit to all the rules of the games even if it means going against themselves or their fellow prisoners). Role models receive luxurious packages in their golden prisons.
Similarly, the context of prisoner of concepts, reveals how the majority have refused to celebrate their place and people without the approval of the masters of separation. We have also undermined our languages and cultural heritage with the fear of being judged naïve, backward, or unfit for the global games. As much as we are still embracing the master’s tools to appear clever and clean enough to beg for crumbs from the dinner table of civilization. This article is an invitation for a meaningful discussion on how we can move from here into co-creating a world of systems designed to support life as part of the whole, following nature’s principles and respecting the uniqueness of place.
The journey to discover Ocha kwetu helps us to understand the cultural roots of the current crisis facing Kenya nested within the African context and suggests frameworks of leadership that create new pathways towards regenerative potential as co-creators and co-evolutionary partners in place and its people.
A shift in perception from the awareness of being to beingness in place can solve Africa’s cries. We must remember to be inhabitants in place rather than just residents in place. How can we rediscover our humanity before we become Africans? It’s time to transform your ways of seeing, thinking, and being by joining the journey to discover Ocha kwetu-Kenya. It’s time to rediscover the potential of your place and your people as we transform the world one place at a time.
About the author:
Nomadic Shmoof is a Kenyan indigenous-led regenerative practitioner and progressive educator, a consultant on place-based system transformation focusing on helping struggling rural communities to navigate the challenges of today using regenerative frameworks as co-creators with their place.