Our casualness to critical issues will be our ruin

Just last Sunday I was talking about the fact that we must focus on matters of safety as we aim at accomplishing and implementing what must be done to achieve our president’s very noble four item agenda.

As this was still going on in my mind I happened to bump into the Dean of my teaching faculty some day last week and whatever we were talking about he said something about how we Kenyans need to change our attitude.

That revived my thinking about what may become a problem with the implementation of the good four item agenda.

Even when we talk about corruption and all that, it is important that we accept that a culture did evolve in this country – many years ago or more recently – that introduced a mentality of a casual approach to matters critical to humanity.

I am talking about matters of life and death. Each one of us – wherever we grew up - was introduced by his or her parents and the community they grew up in to know what values to respect and carry forward and those were always mainly centred on what is good for humanity.

SURVIVE

Of course during the “primitive” days of our existence we were not exposed to the idea of being one.

Every community had to protect itself from any outsider in order to survive as a community. Anthropologists can tell us about all that.

Whether all that is relevant now or not, the people that are now running the show do not belong to that “primitive” generation. They have all gone to school and have been exposed to how humanity as a whole can protect itself against all evil.

As it is now, the rest of us have entrusted them with the duty of leading this country to where all of us must go in order to experience genuine and honourable humanity.

Questions arise as to whether our observation of what is going on is in tandem with what the Kenyan human being who wants to remain human would want.

BASIC NEED

Talk about housing – a very basic need - and think about all the high rise buildings that have been collapsing every other day everywhere in town.

The work of very casual architects, engineers and other professionals supported by some government operatives each wanting to make some easy money.

All this is of course without any consideration for humanity.

The other day we were told about a baby who was taken to Kiambu hospital and was declared dead. When the parents got home the baby coughed.

He was not dead. The medical profession is about human life and so even doctors going on strike is questionable.

Our country must go back to the drawing board.

The writer is dean of students and sociology lecturer at the University of Nairobi; [email protected]