Our issues are related, let’s think as one

Teachers attend the last day of training on the competency-based curriculum at Lake Primary School in Kisumu on April 26, 2019. PHOTO | FILE | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • The connection between the disruption that doctors were being subjected to with every other career was ignored.
  • We ought to begin collectively learning how to see one another as one thing and supporting each other.
  • It emerged that foreigners have set up shop in Gikomba, Kenya's largest market for second-hand items, with cheap goods that price out local traders.

I find it amusing — because it is pointless being angry — that many Kenyans still cannot see the interconnectedness of issues affecting us.

Be they governance, social or economic, they are deeply interconnected. None of us is immune to the collective consequences when leadership fails, meaning when the State comes for one of us, it is definitely coming for all of us.

INTERNATIONAL BIAS

That said, there is still an intentional bias and disconnect that many Kenyans have when approaching everyday issues.

For example, when Kenyan doctors rightfully complained about the entry of Cuban doctors, some people thought this was a refusal to expand medical expertise.

The connection between the disruption that doctors were being subjected to with every other career was ignored. Meanwhile, I remember the report on how the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) operations are solely in the hands of foreigners even though Kenya has engineers and other experts who had been trained but were later denied the opportunity to take charge.

Most recently, it emerged that foreigners have set up shop in Gikomba, Kenya's largest market for second-hand items, with cheap goods that price out local traders.

At the same time, Kenyan teachers are struggling with the realities of a competency-based curriculum that is both unrealistic in its implementation and outcomes.

INDIVIDUALISM

If there’s anything that we should have learnt by now, it is that the elite will always make decisions that enhance their control of power and resources. We, therefore, cannot go on believing that our individualism is going to protect us when it has already cost us so much.

The sense of collectiveness that is missing in our everyday lives is the reason we constantly adjust ourselves instead of demanding for lasting solutions to issues. It is the reason we disregard those complaining about how cruel Kenya is for anyone wanting to make a decent living.

We seriously need to stop idolising individual struggle caused by systemic failure. We ought to begin collectively learning how to see one another as one thing and supporting each other. Kenya is reminding us daily that it is for the wealthy minority who are against the poor majority.

VOTING

The dysfunction we are experiencing is because we believed that the individualism in the way we do things like voting for our tribes people among other narrow considerations was going to protect us.

Well, what we did was advance the disparities among us. We ended up making the already wide gap wider by allowing ourselves to forget that poverty, injustice, dignity, starvation and joblessness have no tribe.

What they do have is a tag so pricey that only the wealthy can afford, not common citizens.

Okore is a policy analyst; [email protected]