Why Kenyans Celebrate Pain Of Their Fellow Countrymen

Prevailing evidence on the social and conventional media showing a section of some Kenyans Jubilating overtly over the death of the former IEBC chairperson, Wafula Chebukati and others celebrating Kenya’s loss at the recently concluded African Union election in Addis Ababa makes me to remember the motif of strive and inter-ethnic hatred in Elechi Amadi’s Great Ponds and also reflect about an academic paper Presented in 2015 at an International Conference on Culture and Literary Studies in Senegal, questioning; Why Kenyans derive joy, fun, theatrics and public happiness from the voice of an ill-fated woman. The climate change victim woman that had her house and family washed away by the floods and waters that had broken the banks of Lake Victoria making the woman to cry; SERIKAALI SAYIIIIITIIIIIYA! (government please help me!).

This is also the question that Professor Peter Anyang Nyong’o posed four years ago by asking that ‘’why do Kenyans gossip and discuss sickness of other people. Is it not bad manners? ‘’ And of course, yes, it is bad manners, especially, when we can borrow from logic of extension, connotation or denotation to shout this question in this platform, WHY DO KENYANS LIKE CELEBTATING PROBLEMS OF THEIR FELLOW KENYANS?

Answers are many, some are historical, but one can blame acute ethnicity, selfish political culture , poor system of education , low quality religion and system of worship must be some of other reasons making Kenyans to shamelessly celebrate problems of their fellow Kenyans. A collection of all these factors can be described as a cocktail of un-nationalism or a syndrome of negative ethnicity. This kind of negative ethnicity can possibly go beyond the state of being source for public celebration only to cement itself as the key influences on literature, theatre, comedy, music and even average public thinking.

Thus, families, schools, churches, mosques and other institutions in Kenya have moral obligation to carry out some social engineering to modify public behaviour of the people of Kenya, Otherwise, it is some kind of mis-civilization to see family or a community celebrating because another Kenyan has die or has suffered public loss.

Alexander Opicho writes from, Nairobi, Kenya