Open letter to Kenya

By Nkwazi Mhango

May I, with sadness and shame, pen this letter to Kenya as I try to clear the air? I don’t intend to support or oppose, calm and engage but not to enrage. I seek to educate but not to abuse or debase. May I be the voice of reasoning as I pen this open letter. Contextually, we recently evidenced how blinkered, cantankerous, different, and duplicitous some of us can be as a people and countries. Again, those who forlornly involved themselves in this saga wrongly thought that they represented us. They’re ours and look like us whether we like it or not. Unfortunately, as it is, they’re our collective drawback. Thanks to them, we evidenced uncalled-for volley of abuses, accusations (false and farfetched of course), lies, condemnations, slanders, defamations, and all sorts of horrid and eldritch stuff sent from both sides of a subsequent redundant conflict, namely Kenya and Tanzania in the name of defending themselves. Essentially, after Tanzania expelled some Kenya Human Rights Activists including alas my elder brother and friend Willy Mutunga (PhD)–––who treated me cordially when I lived in Kenya–––many Kenyans, blindly, boorishly, and spitefully fabricated and fanned all sorts of abuses and barbs.