Yes, our cultural values are greatly diminished

Joyce Wanjala patiently waited her turn in a line of cars on Waiyaki Way. Intending to turn into Chiromo Lane, she joined the weekday rush hour traffic. Minutes later, as she eventually negotiated a corner towards her desired direction, a huge fuel-guzzler driven by an arrogant looking youth cut in ahead of her. Barely avoiding a fender-bender, the youth responded to Joyce’s startled hoot with a one-finger salute, adding insult to near-injury. Curious on-lookers sympathetically responded to a visibly shaken Joyce with a phrase that is increasingly becoming the quintessential expression of helpless stoicism in Kenya: “Bora uhai”, literally, nothing else matters if one is alive.

If good manners are indicative of the state of well-being of a country, then Kenya, where a good number of the populace is degenerating into boorish behaviour, is headed for tough times. Common courtesies such as “excuse me” or “please” or “thank you” are becoming alien in our national culture. That much touted ability to make orderly queues for buses or supermarket check-out counters, as a mark of progressive societies, is clearly losing sway. And it has not helped that the political class has propagated a culture of “me first” over all others, an elevation of “the self” over other selves. Nor that national resources are lining the pockets of a few at the expense of the clear majority.