By Peter Wanyonyi
When reporters first visited the home of the late Vice President Wamalwa Kijana, they were astonished to hear soft classical music wafting in the background.
Wamalwa was a man of fine tastes, and the music was just one bit of the man. But he was also a personification of the divisions that your typical Kenyan has running in their veins in all matters.
Note, a week later, Wamalwa was pictured at a rally in Bungoma wearing a monkey headdress and chanting something or other in his mother tongue.
And so we eat â no, dine- â with the finest of British mannerisms at corporate launches and lunches. We, however, still find time over the weekend to indulge in boilo and half-cooked nyama choma.
We read glossy magazines dishing out all manner of advice on civilised sexual behaviour (like, "how to get him to buy you flowers") while supporting a booming underground blue-movie industry centred, naturally, in Kiberaâs naughty busaa dens.
We aspire to send our kids to posh Nairobi schools, while at the same time lampooning those who went to such schools for their fake accents.
It is the sort of thing Wamalwa would describe as cultural schizophrenia â a mental disorder that makes us unable to distinguish between the real and imagined.
Rigged poll survey
Itâs music that lays us bare. When pretty girls wave down cars on Uhuru Highway to hand out leaflets or ask one rigged poll survey question or the other, motorists instinctively turn down their radios.
This might be innocent but still, who wants people to know what they really listen to when the car windows are wound up?
If you are caught listening to classical music, like the late Wamalwa, youâd better have the trappings to match.
