Kenya is a nation of hustlers, and it hurts

 Ours is a country of shortcuts and self-competition, a society breathing hot and cold with traces of things working and failing at the same time Photo: Courtesy

I couldn’t agree more with columnist article, The Impunity on Kenyan Roads Reflects Our National Thinking.

In the article, Iraki concludes that there is no need to spend time learning how the citizens of a country think, just observe how they drive. This trend, however, is not only seen on our roads, it is reflected in many aspects of our lives as a citizenry. I call it the hustler mentality.

In this mentality, the end justifies the means. Hustling is now an officially accepted response among many Kenyans upon enquiry on what they do for a living. Vague as it may sound, many young Kenyans may mean well, hoping that the contextual vagueness best explains their informal side trade ventures of making ends meet.

According to the Oxford Dictionary, the word ‘hustle’ has the following synonyms — jostle, push, rough, bump, knock, sell aggressively, etcetera.

In Kenya, over and above the negative synonymy, the word is underpinned with impunity and self-entitlement mentality, ‘me first,’ which is interwoven with the thread of the end justifying the means. Besides the driving culture mentioned by Iraki, this culture manifests itself wherever queues, order or need for distinct procedures is required of us.

Take a connecting flight from any part of the world heading to Kenya and you will quickly sample who we are; you will notice a marked difference as you connect flights towards home. You will experience a calmer and orderly boarding experience in the first legs of your journey to other destinations.

As you connect direct flights to Nairobi where most of the travellers are Kenyans, you will notice a contrasting sense of competitive jostling and pushing to and along the ramp.

While everyone has a guaranteed seat and a hand luggage slot, there is an imaginary concern of missing out, so some Kenyans rush to be ‘me first.’

We are a country in competition with itself. The tendencies may seem overly normal in our part of the world, but they are not the standards against which a progressive society ought to benchmark its value system that can guarantee a dependable future generation.

The results? A country of shortcuts and self-competition; a society breathing hot and cold with traces of things working and failing at the same time; hard-working and resilient people with visible development growth records sandwiched within the tag of the third most corrupt country in the world (World Bank/TI CPI,2015); new road commissioned this month with pockets of potholes due for repair the following month; streetlights erected and functional this week, but the same vandalised and rendered good for nothing two weeks later; leaders who incite and abuse in the week and flock the church over the weekend, first in establishing progressive laws and institutions in the region, but applying even more rigour in circumventing the same.

Perhaps the evident signal of the hustler mentality is the fast depletion of our stock of role models - the decreasing number of men and women that this generation can look up to. We are endowed with inconsistent leaders principled and consistent by the day, hustlers by the night. One time viewed as accomplished professionals and leaders, next time in the deepest waters of sour public deals and self-interest narrative-me first.

There is no doubt that Kenyans are proud of the true Brand Kenya, and who we are as a people, our pride transcends tribes and social class. When Kenyans were proud of a leader, parents named their children after such leaders, some named their favourite bulls and dogs after them - such leaders had a glimpse of the future they wished to leave behind - a future bigger than themselves.

Ben Omollo is a Public Financial Governance consultant based in Lusaka, Zambia

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