Poor Kenyans, you can’t even ‘hold’ the glass in beer contest

Bamburi Beach Hotel waiter Getrude Abadelo serves Madafu welcome drinks to Belgium nationals Jean Krings, 75 (left) and her daughter on arrival at the hotel for one week holiday. Jean, a repeat guest visited the country for the first time 35 years ago. PHOTO: FILE

Oh poor Kenyans. So you have lowered the bar so much that you can't even qualify for the title of a drinking nation, decades after you were declared the best?

Let's break it down. Generations after a regional leader purportedly said Nairobi is better than some Western capital, Kenyans, including those who have never left their villages have never dismounted their high horse to see the reality on the ground.

Ever since that statement was made (and that is debatable), Kenyans, including those who do not even know who Mwalimu Julius Nyerere was, continue to think themselves the best and the most privileged worldwide.

Ask Kenyans what they think about other countries in the region and the response is vituperative arguments even as studies and researches on social matters continue to show that Kenya is on a downward slide towards an abyss of a failing state, and that is worse than being a failed state.

In a sentence Kenyans, you are not that good even as yours is the biggest economy in the region, and while you are living in your own heads, these countries that you so much despise care less about you or what you are doing as they are busy lowering the cost of living and improving standards of living.

Ideally, you have failed to keep up, and you are tripping even in bad areas that you were once good at, so much so that you have started trailing even in your national pastime which is consuming copious amounts of alcoholic beverages.

Numerous reasons can be advanced for Kenyans' bad mannerisms which are legendary or why some of their men opt for the tipple and then fail to discharge their conjugal duties forcing their worse off companions to protest on village paths. But before those are investigated, it is imperative to look at areas where Kenya has been tripping over the years.

Mention tourism and East Africa, and the first country that comes to mind is Kenya, and, yes its grammatically wrong sandy beaches, the over-sold Maasai Mara, the Big Five which more than half of its adult population cannot name and the only city in the world with a national park which is hemmed in by a concrete architectural Tower of Babel.

Nowadays, there are new kids on the safari circuit whose names are on the lips of those cherished foreign tourists which Kenyan traders see as a people who should be conned at the slightest opportunity, not be welcomed.

Dealing a further blow to the tourism sector is insecurity, in a country that has always considered itself the safest and the best of all. Apart from reducing those foreign dollars from foreign idlers as tourists are thought of along these shores, insecurity has brought with it massive unemployment.

It is safe to write that as Kenya suffers under a surfeit of colossal underemployment due to low tourist numbers, tourists are trooping to and off-loading their foreign currencies in countries Kenyans once considered not worth writing home about.

Looking at the bright side of this sad story, we can write that some jobs have been created in the form of a task force which is supposed to sit, deliberate, find out what is wrong then get paid heftily for writing a report on what everyone already knows but does not want to talk about because it might scare away tourists.

Above all, they will write a report which will not be acted upon because in Kenya action has a different meaning and is always considered a time-wasting exercise when talk — and globetrotting to other countries to look for tourists and then come back and declare "the trip was successful" without explaining how — is cheaper.

There is hope though for tourism. Kenya might get the chance of showcasing new tourist attractions such as femurs, tibias, fibula, collar bones, bare ribs, metatarsals, sunken cheeks and sternums of its malnourished citizens for whom food is a luxury while the government is acting as if it won an international tender to supply rhetoric instead of relief food.

Then there is sports. Many years ago, Kenya was the vibrant arena of team sports in the region. In cricket, Kenyans bowled everyone out of the crease back to the pavilion. They ran them out, stumped them, took catches, wickets and frustrated the opponents.

When it was time for Kenyans' innings, they would hit every bowler for six — boundary after boundary with their heroics being felt in all cricketing countries from Australia to Zimbabwe, England, New Zealand, West Indies, Pakistan, India and every country in between.

Well, that was then. Nowadays, the only cricket that can be associated with Kenya is the insect while neighbouring countries are building international standard cricket grounds, not because they are rewarding politically-correct business folk, but are playing more cricket, better, and are focusing on the future.

That is not even all for Kenya. According to the State of the World Mothers 2013, a report by Save the Children, Kenya ranks lower than most of its plebeian neighbours, with the report's Global Mothers' Index concluding that the egoistic Kenya is doing better than Somalia only.

That index ranks Rwanda at 117 out of 176 countries with the last spot going to the Democratic Republic of Congo. Uganda is ranked at position 132, while Tanzania, Kenya's whipping boy is ranked at 135.

Burundi is at 137, Ethiopia is at 141 and Omar al Bashir's Sudan is at position 143. South Sudan, whose leaders spend more time in Kenya than in their own country, ties with Eritrea at position 147.

Kenya, the region's superpower, is ranked at 156, and is only better than Somalia, which is the second last on the global list at 175.

If you thought that is bad news, then brace yourself for worse news concerning Kenya: The Global Status on Alcohol and Health 2014 ranks Kenya fourth in alcohol consumption among the five members of East Africa Cooperation.

Poor Kenyans cannot even bend their elbows better than Uganda which staggers to the lead with 23.7 litres of pure alcohol being consumed per capita annually. Rwanda and Burundi get tipsy with 22 litres and Kenya is nursing a hangover at 18.9 litres, just half a litre more than Tanzania.

Kenyans can do better, but it is tragic that they are busy burying those who have died from consuming illicit poisonous brews!