Against all odds, I still have hope for Kenya, and I shall cling to it

“What are the chances that Kenya will slide into anarchy in 2017?” Marta, a European diplomat living in Nairobi, asked me during a lunch meeting.

I had met Marta at an embassy function a few years earlier and we had since become friends.

Her term in Nairobi was coming to an end and I had invited her to have a final lunch before she left for her next assignment.

Her rather abrupt question threw me off balance and, for a moment, I looked blankly at her, not sure where to begin.

I could see that she was expecting a measured, well-thought-out answer to her loaded question.

“I don’t know,” I replied with a slight hesitation in my voice.

“I do have some concerns about the coming elections, but I don’t see us sliding into anarchy.”

Marta looked at me with a question on her face. “What do you mean?” she asked quietly.

I did not quite understand her question, but I decided to answer it anyway.

“I believe that we are going to have a very challenging year, but I have no doubt that the country will hold together and we will emerge the better and stronger for it.”

PAST VIOLENCE
I am not sure where my sudden optimism came from, but I knew I had spoken from the heart.

I took a sip of my ice tea and waited for her follow-up question.

“You are not serious,” Marta said. It was a statement, not a question.

She leaned forward and, in a scolding voice, began to tell me off about how naïve I sounded.

She knew very well that I could see the warning signs that we all saw in the lead-up to the 2007 elections.

“Please don’t get me wrong,” she said almost angrily, “but the problem with you Africans is that you live in a fantasy world. You believe that if you bury your heads in the sand long enough, things will somehow work out and everything will be OK in the end”.

I was stunned. Marta was touching a raw nerve and I was tempted to turn the tables on her and take a swipe at her “Western ignorance” and patronising generalisations about African people. But I kept my cool.

The waiter arrived with our food and I thought that maybe this would allow us to shift to another subject.

But Marta was not finished. She was on a roll.

“Your problem, Pete, is that you people are always hoping for some magic to come from the sky. I’m not religious, but doesn’t it say somewhere in the Bible that what you sow is what you reap?” she asked.

HOPE FOR THE BETTER
I remained silent and allowed her to finish her rant.

She went on and on about our distorted perception of hope.

“We all need hope,” she said. “But there is nothing worse than false hope.”

False hope, she explained, is built entirely around a fantasy. It is a hope that has no basis and no chance of coming to fruition.

“Let me give you some examples,” she continued.

“Your politicians cut down your forests, and then you hope that somehow the rains will continue coming.

"You allow a few rich people to flood your markets with cheap Chinese products and used clothes from Europe, and you still hope that your country will somehow still become an industrialised nation."

It was a one-way conversation. At the end of the lunch, I felt battered and exhausted.

I walked Marta out of the restaurant to her car and bade her farewell.

I did not have the energy or the time to start defending “my people”.

I could not begin to explain to her the complexities of being an African in a white-dominated world.

There were so many variables: historical, cultural, ethnic, political, religious…

I stood there at the entrance of the restaurant for a few minutes, mulling over the question that had triggered all this.

What are the chances that Kenya will slide into anarchy in 2017?

I felt as if I was going to cry. I shook my head as I turned and walked back into the restaurant.

My answer was still the same. I do not know. But I have hope. And I will cling to that hope. So help me God!

Mr Ondeng is a leadership consultant, author and speaker. [email protected]