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Kenya’s Boldest Voice
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Kenyans are selfish, insensitive to other people's presence and needs

Loss of the ability to feel ashamed is the loss of everything. It is the loss of the self, the ultimate loss. You are dead. It does not matter that you can eat, walk, laugh, and do all the things that the living do.

Moral laryngitis and ethical paralysis is death. This is what Wole Soyinka talks o f in the treatise The Man Died. There are a lot of walking dead persons out there. Zombies, you would say. Ken Njiru of Ungwana Foundation is in the habit of making a dichotomy between what he calls Ungwana and Ushenzi. Ungwana is the ability to feel ashamed. It is the capacity to be sensitive and sensible to other people’s presence and needs. Ushenzi is quite the opposite. The mshenzi is a dead fellow. It doesn’t matter that he drives in the latest Lamborghini, dresses in purple and feasts copiously. He is dead if he is insensitive. Could anything be more obvious?

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