The depression in a politician following an election loss in 2022 has led to the creation of a new happiness club in Kenya — and a happiness course at a local university.
Mr Kiraitu Murungi did not see his loss coming in the Meru governorship race in the last General Election.
As he told Nation, he had “no Plan B because I thought I was winning”.
But Ms Kawira Mwangaza garnered a commanding win and Mr Murungi, who was eyeing a second and final term, came third after Mwangaza and Mithika Linturi, now the Agriculture Cabinet Secretary.
Mr Murungi spent days brooding. Putting two and two together. Wondering how it all went wrong.
As he said last year, “for the first time in 30 years, I had lost an election”.
“I went into a state of depression. I was very, very unhappy,” he told Nation on Thursday.
It was during that time, he says, that he did an online search and found an American institution that offers studies on happiness.
“In that period when there was a lot of emptiness, I spent a lot of time searching the internet, basically wasting time. Then I landed into this organisation called the Happiness Studies Academy in the US, so I took an interest," Mr Murungi said.
"I listened to their podcasts, I googled information about them, I contacted them, then I registered for a course. The course took me nine months,” he said, explaining that the course was on positive psychology.
Now the chairman of the board of the National Oil Corporation of Kenya, Mr Murungi graduated in November last year at an event held in Colombia.
“This is an international course, so students from all over the world come to graduate there. Now, I have become a certified happiness trainer. I am the only one in the country,” said Mr Murungi in a phone interview.
He has since formed the Happiness Resource Centre where he is the chief happiness officer, and released the first edition of The Happiness Journal via the centre. The second edition is in the works.
Wednesday fell on a day the United Nations set aside in 2012 as the International Day of Happiness. On that very day in Nairobi, the Happiness Club of Kenya was unveiled with Mr Murungi as the chair and Ms Irene Njoroge, a mental health professional, as the vice chair.
Other officials of the club include lawyer Mutuma Kibanga (secretary), Linda Kiraithe (treasurer), and Magerer Langat (organising secretary).
“In a world full of financial and social pressures, stress, anxiety, deadlines, traffic jams, noise, bad news, distress, disease, gloom and death, the pursuit of happiness has become the new paramount global concern,” Mr Murungi told the gathering.
“We have become too busy. We have even forgotten ourselves. We have forgotten how to be happy. We no longer laugh loudly from the depths of our hearts, the way I used to hear women laughing in our village in the old days.
"We are carrying too heavy financial, social and emotional burdens. Even when we say we are friends, we are merely tiptoeing around each other. There is no deep urge towards emotional friendship. I think time has come for us to reflect and to re-centre ourselves,” he added.
Mr Murungi also told the gathering — which had come in African-themed dressing as per the pre-shared dress code — that the Kenya Methodist University (Kemu) will soon start teaching about happiness.
“We are partnering with Kemu who will soon start giving diplomas and certificates in the science of happiness; (like) leadership in happiness. I’ve seen schools in the West teach leadership and happiness, business and happiness, etcetera. We want to introduce that course in Kenya,” he said.
The Happiness Club of Kenya, said Mr Murungi, will be a “safe psychological space to experience happiness in action.”
Celebrated orator and scholar PLO Lumumba was the guest speaker at the event. He told the gathering of the importance of communing.
