Our differences should make us better, stronger

Three days ago we hosted a Kenyan lady who has been living in Australia since 1999. Apparently she has settled in so well over there that she has been elected into their Senate.

She gave us a lecture about sharing life with others who are different from oneself. Her central theme was something like “disagreeing in an agreeable manner”. She communicated her message so well because in expounding her subject, she shared with us her life experiences over the years.

Listening to her I found myself thinking about the world we live in.

In the last two weeks, there has been a lot of noise made and questions asked regarding a statement that the president of the United States of America made about who should be welcome to the United States and who should not be welcome.

In his statement he seems to have used a rather negative word to describe African and some other nations of the world.

AMERICAN PEOPLE

As expected it does not seem to have gone in very well with people from those nations as well as with a good section of the American people. The question that this whole scenario brought to my mind is what God’s intention was when he created the world the way he did.

The various parts of the world are so different and so are the inhabitants of those portions of the larger globe.

However in spite of those differences between the various categories of people there are also many similarities between them.

At the base, all human beings are similar. This is why I ask myself the question: Was this whole wide world meant for all of us or were we all meant to live separately and never share the same space at any one time? Could there have been a possibility that in his creative wisdom, God had foreseen the reality that humanity from whichever corner of the world would share space with other members of the human race?

DIFFERENCES

If there was such a possibility then it is good news that Australians can elect a woman of purely Kenyan origin to their Senate. In the same breath, one may argue that it is wrong for any human being to decide that another member of the human race does not qualify to occupy a certain space on earth just because they are different. That difference is perhaps what makes humanity richer. It is unfortunate that even locally we often do not want to share space with people who are not from our community just because they are different and see things – particularly political ones – differently. This should provide serious food for thought to our political class for they are the main culprits.

 The writer is dean of students at the University of Nairobi [email protected]