By Alberto Nyakundi Amenya aka The Banana Peddler
No logically valid human can gainsay the fact that the Gusii community is one of the most hardworking communities in Kenya. Being a Gusii, I can buttress with unassailable evidence that we are the most aggressive business community after the Kikuyus. The Kisii community has produced the most overserious professionals. Our women have given birth the most excellent lawyers, the finest “horse” (according to women) riders and the most prolific journalists cum writers.
In fact, it is also in Gusii land where a woman got heavy and birthed the first African man who grew the balls of steel that enabled him to nullify a Presidential election.
But we are a shithole community nevertheless.
However, as far as leadership is concerned, we are the most bankrupt of intelligent leaders. We have the most primitive leaders in Kenya today. Other communities have their leaders who they look up to for direction and unity but Kisiis have none. Luos have Raila Odinga. Kambas have Kalonzo Musyoka. Kalenjins have William Ruto. Kikuyus have Uhuru Kenyatta, Luhyas have Musalia Mudavadi. Merus Kiraitu Murungi. Coastarians have Hassan Joho. Kisiis have a very serious leader called nobody. That is why we are powerless when it comes to political bargaining.
Our current members of parliament are qualified hammerheads. They are elected to earn salaries and not to serve the people. If I try to recall any Member of Parliament elected in Gusiiland contributing on the floor of the house for the last five years, I can say none. Oh! I beg your pardon, I remember Borabu MP Hon Ben Momanyi speaking once though with a heavy Kisii accent.
Since former Kitutu Masaba MP Hon George Moseti Anyona gave up the ghost, Gusiiland has never seen a hyperactive MP. We have sponsored meatheads to parliament. While the likes of Mbadi are voted the most active Member of Parliament of the year, Kisii MPs are in their villages stuffing their fuel guzzlers with bananas and sweet potatoes. South Mugirango MP Hon Omingo Magara also tried.
The weirdest this about these Kisii MPs is that the same way they don’t perform in parliament, is the same way they don’t perform back at home. Were it that they were performing at their constituencies and fail in parliament, we would excuse them. But this is the case of “none of the above” thanks to our foolish way of thinking. We choose mediocre over great leaders.
We seriously need change in Gusiiland. Abagusii baminto, obochinga mbore tobwate boke boke boburukaine noborogi, nemoko/endamwamu, tobwenerete gotiga pi onye totagete kogenderera. We need to reform and change our way of thinking. Amangana yabanyamesira totige pi.
One of the biting diseases eating Omogusii is jealous. However good a leader may be, he will not be elected if he comes from the minority clan. The difference between Kikuyus and us is that Kikuyus are envious and Kisiis are jealous. A Kikuyu will envies to posses what his brother has and will do everything possible to acquire it by working to achieve it or even by stealing. A Kisii will feel jealous of what his brother has and will make sure he loses it so that they remain the same.
Look at our very own pulchritudinous sister Senator Millicent Omanga for instance. When her star started shining, it is her same own brothers and sisters from Kisiis that were pulling her back. Fellow Kisiis, even if she slept her way up as a few of you alleged, WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM ESPECIALLY YOU MEN? Why display the stupidity primitiveness by branding the good girl with ugly adjectives because she has achieved what you can’t achieve? Why can’t we afford the girl some easy time to enable her count her money in peace? When are we going to get our very own Johnson Sakaja fro Gusiiland if we carry ourselves indecorously? What an undisciplined community we’ve become?
I am a Kisii man but if my daughter is blessedly ‘hawkeyed’ and has set an eye on a Collymore, so be it. I will support her. Nonetheless, I am not encouraging prostitution here.
To confirm our foolishness as a community, get a chance and steal NYS billions like Waiguru did then go and try to run for any elective post back in Gusiiland using the same money. That is when you will see our real backwardness as a community. They will rechristen you a million names. Everyone including children will avoid you as if you are suffering from Ebola. To put you away, they will purport to bring in some stupid morality stories instead of welcoming you back home and encouraging you to invest the cash at home and boost the economy. Your political competitors will use it against you during campaigns and call you all types of names.
In Kikuyu-Land, nobody cares as long as you were not caught stealing. Your opponent will never call you a thief during campaigns so as to undermine your candidature. In fact, people will elect you immediately so that the money remains within the locality. Wakisii Jameni, instead of training your daughters how to use their eyes well and hunt billionaires, you are teaching them some stupid biblical stories until they end up with some tea-plucking Ninjas in Kericho.
Instead of teaching the girls how to aim and shoot without missing the target, yours is to load sacks full of Managus and Bananas in Otange Bus and ask them to go pick them from Machakos Coutry-Bus. Why the hell is all this mediocrity exuding from you? Why force your daughter to dress like a nun and cover her beautiful legs that would have attracted a ‘heavier’ eligible suitor? Why ask her to attire in a curtain-like dress yet “behind” her, she is well blessed? Let them explore. After all, money does not care who owns it. Even Hitler said “The victor will not be asked how they did it”
You see, the problem with Kisiis is this, if you visit a lady in his rural home, you saunter around with her in her backyard, you’ll be doing it at your own risk. Pray that you don’t bump into his father or brothers. The kind of beating you’ll get is second to none. His father will reach the next sharpest panga/machete and have you slashed. You safety will depend on your prowess in athletics.
There’s enough reason, therefore, to fear that, if we carry on like this, we will have no future as a community. Without unity, the calamity we envisage is already uncomfortably close. Every event has a climax. We have reached that point where something must give. We should elect leaders who possess the credentials of readiness to do what is right at all times.
We need leaders who will talk when other men are talking in parliament. We have leaders who have stayed in parliament for 20 years yet they have never contributed a word on the floor of the house. Simon Ogari and Zebedeyo Opore are a good example.
Perhaps, we have been beating about the bush because we don’t value what we have – braveness and talents. As the birds of this country, we must learn to fly without perching on a tree branch because the sons of other men have learnt to shoot without missing. Otherwise, Shakespeare got it right: “When beggars die, there are no comets seen/The heavens itself blaze forth the death of princes.”
If asked, I can say the only leader who Omogusii can look up to is Interior CS Fred Matiangi. Oh! Senator Millicent Omanga too. Hate him or love him, Matiangi is the only current Kisii leader who has proved he is worthy his onions.
Matiangi has been growing victorious and successful by the day. It is apparent the gates of hell cannot prevail against him because the ancestors that nursed and nurtured the idea in him have not lost their vision. Rather, they keep injecting new ideas in him that keep the flames of his star shining brightly. He portrays the real character of Omogusii. He has confirmed that he spent all the nine solid months in his mother’s womb.
Just like me the Banana Peddler, Matiangi has confirmed that he never drugs bees when harvesting honey from the. He faces them in broad daylight, they sting as he harvests. Fellow Kisiis, if we want to succeed, let us all rally behind Matiangi.
albertamenya@yahoo.com
(The writer sells Bananas in the streets of Kisii Town)
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