My hopes for the year 2019 as we look forward to new beginnings

The beginning of the year is an opportunity for a reset, a chance to believe in new beginnings.

In that spirit, I wish to record my hopes for a renewed Kenya in 2019.

Firstly, I pray that we will be a country that values human life. The snuffing off of the life of 22-year-old Carilton Maina (pictured) in Kibera at the end of the year through what is believed to be police action is symptomatic of a country which doesn’t value human life, especially if that life does not belong to the leafy suburbs.

I know for a fact that the number of extra-judicial killings that occur in the informal settlements are mind boggling, and had Maina not had a chequred life after surviving the slums, we would never have heard of him. The new IPOA team must tackle this issue with the seriousness it demands and ensure not only that culprits are punished, but that this does not continue to be the norm.

The second set of wishes comes from observations I made while at the village for Christmas. I was dismayed to find that the brews that we had “evicted” a while back with great pomp have returned. While I have no problem with the occasional tipple for the rich and poor equally, I worry that we are killing our most precious human resource, the young men, through excessive and irresponsible drinking.

The truth is that while alcohol abuse for the poor in the village is clearly evident, in the suburbs, many families have agonising stories, hidden from public view, of young men they are losing to drinks and drugs. While I laud what Wa Iria and Babayao and others have been doing to get young men rehabilitated, this is just a drop in the bucket. We must try a multipronged approach that addresses the core reasons why the commitment to drinking has reached this level for our young.

Ill fed and neglected

While at the village I also noted the large number of octogenarians who look ill fed and generally neglected. Unlike the past where there was always a child left in the village to look after ageing parents. I was amazed by the many families where parents in their 70s and 80s have no one to look after them. The only time many of us swoop into the village is over Christmas.

In the other times, the poor folk are left to struggle with the basics of life. Can we please try be a little kinder this year and remember ones we owe our lives to?

Fourthly, my prayer is that our leadership will refocus from daily doses of unhelpful politics to concentrating on issues that make a difference to the public. Honestly, only the Kenyan political elite and their hangers on care about 2022! Like Benjamin the donkey in Orwell’s Animal Farm, the public knows whoever takes the mantle, their own lives will continue to go on as they have always gone; badly.

Even worse is that some of the utterances being peddled with abandon are raising unnecessary tensions in parts of Kenya where political fractures have not fully healed. Please spare us the incendiary rhetoric and for the next one year seek to invest in making Kenya a better place for the millions who woke up early in 2017 to elect you into office. And while at it, this trend where we routinely abuse our leadership because it gets a minute in the news is irresponsible and unnecessary. My good friend MK had a point about development programmes in central Kenya, but does it have to be delivered with insults to the Head of State?

Finally, my prayer is that this is the year we will raise a new leadership within the religious sector, civil society or the media that can continue to push the fulfillment of the dream of our forefathers, a land free of poverty, disease and illiteracy. May they rise up and stand for the people, many of whom feel forgotten by our political leadership. And to my readership, I pray for you blessed and fruitful 2019.

- The writer is an Advocate of the High Court of Kenya