Other than being violent and tribal, Kenyans are professionally abusive

Kenya: When one of the KOT (Kenyans on twitter) soldiers @evangelinechao wrote this on her TL:

‘Insults (Matusi, in swahili). Is it something your mouth gets used to? That with time you can insult people till their last hair?

It got me thinking:

That Kenya is becoming or has become one of the most violent countries in the South of Sahara in recent times cannot be gainsaid. That this country is daily gaining notoriety as one of the countries where majority have lose mouths to abuse at every turn, is a fact that has just become one of our sovereign cultures. This unbecoming habit is now all too common both in public and social media; and we are defiantly unapologetic about it. In fact, more often we expect the recipient of our epithets to be the first to go on their knees in apology and even proceed to hug us for doing a good job!

Recently, I came across some children barely past 4 years, then as it is with children games, one of them shortchanged the other and a heated argument ensued,. Before the poor fellow knew what was happening, one of them uttered something that would make even Lucifer ashamed. She said in swahili something that losely translates to:

‘Your ear is large like a prostitute’s handbag.’

That’s what the seemingly innocent girl let out of her mouth. The Swahili version she spoke in is too vulgar that it cannot be typed here.

What started as a harmless mchongoano- Teasing, with school children, has mutated to a fully-fledged virulent vice tearing apart our relationships. Combined with the violent culture where we are ready to lay our hands on anyone whose views go against our own, the words like Kenya Hakuna matata starts to sound like imported phrases. It is therefore not shocking to hear Hon Afred Keter (I don’t know why we still waste our breath calling them Honorable) hurling nincompoops at Weighbride officers at Gilgil .

If you were to ask where the little girl heard that dirty word, you simply have to sit back and watch our politicians go near microphones. Faced with divergent opinions from their opponents, our leaders are quick to let it all out on the microphone. Type any view as harmless as it may be and post it on social media, you will have invited by all manner of abusive texts to both yourself and all your relatives dead or alive, even from those who if you were to meet them face to face, they would easily cow and coil their tails in shame.

Even though our top political leaders Raila Odinga, Uhuru Kenyatta, and William Ruto have been at the receiving end of such abuses, both on social media and verbally from political opponents and those faceless bloggers and facebook users, they are no better as they also lead in this field which is now becoming a side profession, that is when we are not clobbering each other and kicking everything on our path, literally.

The Legion, has below the top leaders the foot soldiers staring first, Senator Mike Mbuvi Sonko, a man who can say anything anywhere even in the presence of primary pupils. After Sonko we have Aden Duale, the man who has taken into shouting “si ya mama yako” (not your mother's) at every turn and he still thinks that is funny! Then there is one Moses Kuria and a host of others. If you were seated inside parliament on 18th of December, you would walk out of there wondering which country you live in. The horrible things that came from the mouth of the very person you lined up all day to elect so they can be called ’Honorable, is no honorable at all’, If anything, they are all the above except honorable.

Moses Kuria’s twitter wars on allegations that he punched Hon. Millie Odhiambo in parliament, makes one dizzy. Then Lieutenant Allan Wadi was jailed for the very offence of abusing the President, it is then that you realise that we are already past the rubicon of this game and perfected it.

Growing up, such dirty abuses were a preserve of sugar cane cutters in the slopes of Nandi hills, then I came to Nairobi and I found out that the nasty language was staple food for Matatu touts aka makangas.

Then you come to our villages and estates and realize you are right into the melting pots of abuses. The climax happens in the informal settlements come weekends and it is a free show for all and sundry. A couple who up until now have been known to be loving and peaceful wake up one Saturday morning, the woman then stands a stone throw away from her husband and hurls insults the kind that stink like rotten meat. But the irony is we the observers egg them on while some die with laughter.

Curiously the most commonly used words are related to the female gender of ‘your mother, prostitute and or a female dog and female pig-the swine respectively. Looking at the aforementioned examples, any student of literature will tell you that all this points to the societal view on their women folk. Aden Duale is leading the pack! Kenya being a patriarchal society has a very dim view of the female gender, but when you think our ladies are any better then you are wrong, they have some of the worst abuses. Mothers are not good examples to their children either. Just a small misunderstanding over a cloth line soon degenerates into who is more proficient to the best dirty words. No wonder we have witnessed an upward surge of court cases involving people charged with sending abusive texts to others. But do they learn?

To get out of this lunatic behavior which is taking us to hell, we need to look at where we went wrong in both our school and church teachings. Talking of church, many will agree with me that very few churches today have Sunday school departments and where they exist, the teachers are some wayward youth teaching the children while still suffering from Saturday’s hangovers from a night of bungee drinking.

Our abusive tendency is a threat to our peaceful coexistence and State stability in itself. But what beats me is why I have not seen Hon Rachel Shebesh, Milly Mabonna or Cecile Mbarire leading other women to undress after Duale’s remarks.