The moment at which Kenya started ‘dying’

Long ago as children, we used to be warned of a three-eyed scary monster trawling the night ready to snatch those who defy parents’ order to either stop crying or sleep. The ogre ominously had the one extra eye at the back of the head to browse what was happening behind. The conscientious characters that many have today are rooted in the fear of consequences of breaking societal norms instilled by parents. The enduring effect lay in the fact that there was the belief that a force in the outer space, beyond human comprehension, would strike when we defied what was considered good and appropriate behaviour.

These ‘fears’ were instilled to regulate relationships with parents, those older than us, those in positions of authority and those that we related to through the wide web of communal bloodline or even marriage. But above all, they regulated not only our appetite at the fire side as we shared meals, but also sharing and distribution of wealth and checked the excesses of some. It was, for example, untenable that brothers would dispossess their widowed in-laws, or that one in a vantage position would let unbridled appetite kill his conscience and steal from the poor, or even from the community.