Dear Akamba, Kenya's destiny is in your hands, don't break it

I write this Open Letter to the Kamba Nation not because of my ethnicity. No – I do so because of my Kenyan nationality. But I write it knowing there are few Kenyans in the country called Kenya. Most Kenyans are paper citizens, and nothing more. That’s because most Kenyans are co-tribalists – they primarily and fundamentally identify with the tribe.

To them, Kenya is only a convenient political and legal fiction. They can’t even define a Kenyan really except to point to the country’s geographic location on the map. They don’t belong to a nation because they lack a national consciousness – a unique zeitgeist called Kenyan. I am afraid most Akamba, like other co-ethnics, are no different.