Why history remains one of the easier assets to sell

Last week, a 97-year-old former soldier parachuted from a plane to celebrate 75 years since the battle of Arnhem in the Netherlands.

In World War II, Allied forces which included British, Americans and other nationalities dropped troops behind enemy lines - Germany - to cut off their supplies by blowing bridges and highways.

It was not successful at the beginning, but later the Netherlands was liberated, an extension of Normandy D-day landing.

Why should we celebrate such an event 75 years later? In Kenya, we only get time for our birthdays. They used to be for children; now adults have joined the fray, including golf sponsorships.

It’s not clear why individual celebrations are becoming more common and spiced up while our national celebrations are muted or forgotten. Does anyone remember any celebration over Nairobi‘s 100th birthday in 1999?

Is anyone celebrating 100 years since the first settler soldiers got land in Kenya? If we dig into our history, we can’t miss something that happened, 50, 75 or 100 years ago.

But in Kenya, we have no time for that. The present has too much to get time for the past.

Paradoxically, we spend lots of time peering into a distant past in school. We teach our kids about Zinjanthropus or Neanderthal man. But very little about the recent and more relevant past.

Let me give an extreme example. We were taught about Jan Van Riebeck, a Dutch who came to South Africa in 1652.

We even heard about him on a radio broadcast. We were taught about the Boer wars between British and Afrikaans (Boers). But no one told us that the same Boers came to Kenya and even built a Jan Van Riebeck (Ndururumo) school near Nyahururu, taught in Afrikaans and had a Dutch reformed church adjacent to it.

An epitaph on a graveyard 30km away in Shamata village leaves no doubt Boers once lived in this place. It’s written “Anna Maria Cornelia Crous, born 1884 - died 1940.” A 1955 map shows a certain De Wet lived around there.

It never occurred to us that the Great Trek ended in Kenya!

A school not far from the location of this tombstone is named Warukira, a nickname for another Boer widow, Johanna Elizabeth Crous. She appears on Kenya Gazette of December 6, 1938 voters register. Why does our history ignore Boers and concentrate on Britons? Did Boers have MPs in the colonial parliament?

Anniversaries remind the next generation of where we came from and where we are going. The same way our birthday celebrations remind us of where we came from and where we are going. Our obsession with the present, particularly politics, denies us a chance to learn about the past and improve on the present.

One big difference between developed and developing countries is how they treat their history, their past. In developed countries, history or the past inspires the next generation.

Though it’s often “packaged,” it serves the purpose well, whipping patriotism and national pride.

It is unlikely that Japanese children learn about Japanese exploits in Manchuria, China in 1937. American children are unlikely to be taught that the US lost in the Vietnam war.

It is unlikely that Britons are told their country lost in the Mau Mau war. I’m not advocating that we bury the past or distort it but history can be a source of inspiration with tangible economic returns.

Economic returns

In developing countries like Kenya, history is a dustbin; we mine it for grudges instead of inspiration. Who has been inspired by Kenyans who fought in WWI and II? One thought that with devolution, counties would look into history for inspiration.

Think of the potential economic returns from the historical connection between Boers who lived in Nyandarua and Uasin Gichu in Kenya and present-day South Africans. Would that not mute xenophobia? Think of Taita Taveta and Germans in WW1?

What of Italians in WW 2? Each county has some history of its own people or visitors like the Arabs or even Iranians along the coast.

How much has Nyeri leveraged on Queen Elizabeth II being in Kenya when her father died?

We have tried to leverage on the Obama presidency but not enough. Will his inauguration date become an anniversary? How many counties have a hall of fame? How many have a list of their veterans who fought in world wars in various countries?

Historical records show that Kenya has always been a magnet of nationalities. Did anyone celebrate 600 years since Chinese landed in Malindi in 1418, 80 years before Vasco da Gama?

How did Britons, Boers and other nationalities leave the comfort of their homes to come and make fortunes in Kenya? Are we inspired by their boldness?

History is one of the easier assets to sell. The costs are almost zero, just our memory. Think of tourists and their dollars if we created those emotional connections to their mother countries.

-The writer teaches at the University of Nairobi