Is corrupt Kenya finally in the throes of moral bankruptcy?

A RELATIVE OF A FRIEND died recently because no one at a leading public hospital bothered to treat him. The young man had been involved in a hit-and-run accident with a matatu. The police took him to the hospital where he lay dying for five days.

Even though he had in his possession his ID, no attempt was made on the part of the hospital staff or the police to find his kin. Worse, no attempt was made to save his life.

When the family eventually located him (through their own efforts), it was too late — he died the next day.

When my mother died three years ago, no one called me from the hospital where she had been lying in a coma to tell me that she had passed away. I only found out when I went to visit her the same afternoon.

If I hadn’t, she might have languished in the hospital morgue for days. It would have also meant that my mother would not have been cremated within 48 hours of death, as dictated by her Sikh religion.

When I sent a letter of complaint to the managing director — a beacon of Kenya’s business community — later, he never bothered writing back. Instead he asked a matron to call me to apologise.

If I lived in a litigious country like America, I might have sued him and his hospital, but in Kenya, we don’t sue — we just bear it. Besides, my case would have probably dragged in court, costing me money I can’t afford.

A few years ago, my sister was involved in a near-fatal car crash. At the time, passers-by were more interested in stealing her mobile phone than calling for help.

And as I write this, some greedy businessmen have allegedly been selling maize to southern Sudan and withholding it from the Kenyan public, even as 10 million Kenyans face starvation.

And a crook of the Anglo Leasing and Goldenberg variety has fled the country, leaving behind billions in unpaid debts, and causing a commotion in the energy sector.

Kenya, it seems, in on the verge of moral bankruptcy. Ethical behaviour has become a thing of the remote past.

At the height of the post-election violence in Kenya, for instance, bars continued to do booming business because their patrons were more interested in having a good time than empathising with the hundreds killed and the thousands displaced in their country.

New Year’s Eve parties were held. No one thought of holding a vigil for the dead or declaring a moratorium on all festivities.

MEANWHILE, IN GOVERNMENT OFFICES throughout the land, corrupt public officials are praying before the start of every meeting. Is this just a ploy to mask the evil that lurks inside their hearts? I wonder.

It is as if we Kenyans have no heart, no soul, no consciousness. We are a dead society. We cannot weep for another, we cannot feel another’s pain, we cannot find it in our hearts to think of the greater good rather than selfish interests.

A friend called to tell me that I should not lose faith — that Kenyans are essentially a good people and the few bad apples shouldn’t make me cynical.

But it is hard for me not to be.

I find myself encouraging people — friends, relatives, colleagues — to leave the country at the first chance they get, and to make a life for themselves in countries where they will have free access to health and education, regardless of their income, where their neighbours will not pick up a machete and kill them because some politician told them to do so, where the political elite will not rob ordinary people to enrich themselves, and where ethical behaviour is rewarded rather than punished.

I was not like this before. I believed that Kenyans who left the country should come back to contribute to this society to save it from itself; that if everyone fled, only the rot would be left behind.

But now, the rot has engulfed us all, we cannot escape it. Like an ugly scar, we cannot get rid of it, no matter how hard we try.

I have tried my best to be a good citizen. But it is clearly not enough. The country is lurching from crisis to crisis and all I can do is watch, wait and pray for a miracle.

It seems I will have to wait for a Gandhi, a Mandela or an Obama to whisk us away from this cesspit and show us a new vision, a more ethical and saner way of doing things.

My friend asked me to focus on the positive, and to not let cynicism get the better of me. I tried. But it didn’t last long. That night, five people in a slum in Nairobi were beheaded. The dark days, it seems, will be with us for a long time to come.

Ms Warah is an editor with the UN. The views expressed here are her own and do not necessarily reflect those of the United Nations.