Captain, the ship is leaking; will you just watch it sink?

Think Migingo, aka Mijingo. Kenyans are still being tortured and bullied there by a “friendly” neighbour, even after the Ugandan president conceded that the island was ours.

We are the victims of our government’s laid-back and irresponsible approach to matters foreign. As our leaders spend their time trying to outwit each other in the perennial battle for State House, neighbours living along our porous borders must be having a good laugh at our expense.

But perhaps the most important lesson is that there is a significant number of Kenyans for whom patriotism is a relative term.

If the protestors put even half the energy of their sustained fight over Al Faisal into just one of the many problems that plague the place they call home, we would probably be out of the list of least developed nations.

This category of Kenyans is even more dangerous than the sleepy officials in Immigration. The Somali MPs who were rounded up in Nairobi did not sneak in.

They got here in comfort, and were totally at home in Eastleigh.

Mr Kajwang has dropped the boisterous singer-cum-comedian facade. If he is losing sleep over how to untie the knots at immigration, he richly deserves it – and we deserve better answers than we have heard so far.

But even if Mr Kajwang were to happen on the airfare to ferry one dreaded passenger home and sort out computer issues at all border posts, the patriotism thing is well beyond him.

And so I must ask: Captain, the ship is leaking. Are you just going to watch it sink?

oriang.lucy@gmail.com