You can tell the reverence, or obsession of one country about another by the way citizens of one emote about the other. They may express feelings of admiration, fear, awe, disdain, disgust, or even hate.
We all recall with horror when then President Donald Trump of the US referred to Black and African states in derogatory terms.
No country can be sunk lower than be smeared with the epithet of the most disreputable part of the human anatomy.
In contrast, I’ve often heard Americans express great admiration for Kenya, especially the hospitality of Kenyans, its wildlife, and great African safaris they enjoy here.
But I am flummoxed by the slavish, self-denigrating worship by Kenyan visitors to America.
It’s normal to be curious, and to even marvel, at another civilisation. However, it’s quite a different matter to grovel and supplicate oneself to another country.
And to do so in a manner that clearly suggests a complex of inferiority and sub-humanity. To prostrate oneself shamelessly before another culture is the lowest form of self-humiliation. This complex of the inferior to the superior, of the subordinate to the master, of the intelligent to the stupid, is one that I see our people often practice when they arrive in the US.
It’s the saddest thing to watch, as one who have lived in America for over four decades, having even partially gone to high school there. It’s my other home.
Recently, I started to interrogate the nomenclature that Kenyans use to describe the United States. The most prevalent term I heard was “majuu” — sheng, or street “hustler” Kiswahili loosely translates to “up there” or “heavens, the “skies.”
Apparently, although one can get to America by boat, the term was coined to indicate the use of an airplane to get there. There’s a reason for the airplane metaphor. To most Kenyans who have never seen the inside of a plane, let alone fly in it, the big bird is a thing technological wonder. That adds to the mystery of America as the place you can only reach by flying in some outlandish mechanical eagle.
Recently, Transport Cabinet Secretary Kipchumba Murkomen was caught up in a spat with CNN journalist Larry Madowo over the deplorable state of Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. Mr Madowo is no ordinary mortal, and when he speaks the world listens. He has a huge megaphone at CNN, the one wielded at one point by Citizen TV’s Jeff Koinange.
Mr Murkomen was nonplussed about Mr Madowo’s constant digs at the substandard facilities at JKIA. He erupted at the scribe and told him not to badmouth his native Kenya simply because now he lives in “majuu.” I found myself on the floor in uproarious laughter. So, even a Cabinet minister recognises the “superiority” of “majuu” over, I suppose, “machini”?
We have a huge problem of externalising our ambitions in Kenya. We believe nothing good comes out of Kenya. That’s why we even buy/import fake goods. We venerate the West, even when we know very little about those countries. We worship whiteness. Look at how we betrayed Kenyan football. Even the illiterate Kenyan village roots for an English Premier League team. We are traitors to that which is native Kenyan. We call our Kenyan African languages “vernacular.” What the heck is vernacular? Why is Kikamba not a language instead of “vernacular?” That’s akin to calling me a nigger!
We can never grow local football so long as we are shamelessly addicted to the EPL.
I recall a slogan “Najivunia Kuwa Mkenya” promoted by Alfred Mutua, now minister for Tourism. It fell on deaf ears because it was artificial. Pride isn’t simply drummed into your noggin through slogans. Our schools need to teach our history and culture as our proud heritage.
When iconic writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o writes in Gikuyu most Kenyans castigate him because they are damned fools. Do the Chinese write in English or Russian, or the French in Amharic? No. They write in their native languages.
See how Tanzanians are prouder of their country than Kenyans? Julius Nyerere, unlike our Jomo Kenyatta, built a nation, not an incongruously inchoate “tribal” society.
Finally, let me address an aspect of Kenya’s obsession with America that’s deeply disconcerting. Kenyan visitors to the US engage in what I call visitor-picture pornography. It’s not uncommon to see a Kenyan posting pictures of themselves with huge smiles arriving at some random airport in America. They want to show folks back home they’ve arrived in “heaven.”
Or you will see a nurse or nurse’s aide with a stethoscope and medical gown posting pictures to hoodwink hapless hommies he is a doctor in America. It’s criminal to impersonate any professional. This picture pornography needs to end. Let’s stop being coconuts – black on the outside but white inside.
- Makau Mutua is SUNY Distinguished Professor and Margaret W. Wong Professor at Buffalo Law School, The State University of New York. @makaumutua.
