Why Kenyans go bonkers on New Year

We are a superstitious people. We believe in ghosts, evil spirits and bad luck because we often live at the whims of nature, thugs, bugs and the police. In the old days, our forefathers would piga ramli before they set off for journeys and you sort of understand where they were coming from. Around here, anything can happen. You can be bitten by a snake, attacked by a baboon or collapse and die just like that because your neighbour hates your nose. Your house could be hit by a bolt of lightning, or even collapse if your landlord built it on a piece of land grabbed on a swamp. Every day is, therefore, a torturous grind. You have all manner of vermin – from roaches, to rats and mosquitoes -- to contend with. You are often at your wits’ end because you are always broke, stretching a non-existent shilling and wondering what you will smoke, drink and eat the next day. Paydays, if you are fortunate to have a job, end like a flash and the rest of the month seems to drag on forever as you try to pry loans from friends who are themselves hard up. By the time the year ends, you are tired like a donkey. Who then would blame you for borrowing a little quid from the Sacco and making merry over Christmas? Go on, enjoy your booze, travel to distant places, dance, even attempt to make a baby. Life is short. That is why on New Year’s Day, people will be high-fiving, hugging, crying with joy, dancing and praying. They will be telling each other, “Thank you for finishing the year.” In some places, life is taken for granted. So people plan 10 years ahead. They plan for retirement, even death. But why should you bother with that while barely crawling to the end of the year is such an achievement that folks deem it fit to congratulate you?