JOWAL JONES: Your holiness, this is our confession

His Holiness Pope Francis, If you have been observant in the past two days, you must have noticed that Kenya is a country with low collective self-esteem.

It may seem that but don’t be fooled, we have got no self-esteem at all. That is why we keep embarrassing and shooting ourselves on the foot; we are the authors of our own misfortunes.

Instead, our self-esteem has all been replaced with guilt, which has weighed heavily upon us like our tax regime. On a normal day, each one of us behaves as though they’ve smoked some unholy herb.

Our misdemeanours run the entire gamut from religious perversion to matters that are so amoral that they would shock the devil himself. That’s why we humbly (you must note that humility is a scarce commodity in this country) come to you to confess our sins in supplication.

Shrinks, the local bartender and the shoe-shiner must have whispered to you that we are a sex-crazed nation. This is true your Holiness, denying the obvious is simply futile.

Celebrities use their spare-time to record bedroom acts that make the clergy puke in disgust. Social media platforms, especially Whatsapp, have become a portal for the perverse.

SEX-CRAZED MORAL PUTRIDITY

The sex-crazed moral putridity spills over to corruption where procurement officers purchase condom dispensers and sex-toys at astronomical figures that would crash a small calculator.

Whoever said success does not happen overnight has obviously never sold a wheelbarrow or a biro pen to our government.

We are spiritually fractured, too. Don’t be fooled by the masses that have come out to meet you. My comrades, especially, only see the inside of worship centre through the window. But you cannot entirely fault them for we are in a digital era.

Facebook religions are the in-thing, and forwarding a spiritual Whatsapp message is considered the ultimate good deed.

Pray for our healing, Holy Father, for we have been afflicted with a terminal mouth disease.

Perhaps the gods aren’t happy with us because our leaders are busy telling us to hack each other with machetes and spinning yarns about foreskins. Despite being hailed as the cradle of mankind, these politicians make it hard for the rest of the world to believe that we ever evolved at all.

Driving from the airport you probably saw a billboard proclaiming shamelessly that we are a drinking nation. It breaks my heart, but that’s true too. Your average high school student can down an entire brewery.

Too bad drinking isn’t a paying job, we’d all be millionaires.

Today you’ll pass through the streets of Kawangware. Kenya being a nation of optical deceptions, I feel like it is my duty to warn you that these are not the streets that you’d happily walk down, alone, after dark.

Even with your experience as a nightclub bouncer, the things that happen in those streets at night will not end with you keeping all your teeth.

Even though this is just page one of our 987-page confessions, we hope that admitting the sins will set us on the right path to forgiveness.

Yours,

The People of Kenya.