The Search for a Leader

 Sometimes I sit quietly and wonder just how little everything really matters.

They say it's all vanity. Yet every morning we wake up chasing it. Money. Status. Bigger cars. Bigger houses. Bigger titles. Strange creatures we are. We know we shall leave it all behind, yet we spend our entire lives collecting things we cannot carry.

Then again... maybe it makes sense.

Back in the day, owning a television was luxury. Today, internet bundles are a necessity. Yesterday's dream is today's basic need. Change is inevitable, whether we like it or not.

I've been sober for two straight days now. Not because the wallet is empty. No. I just needed clarity. Needed purpose. Needed to hear my own thoughts without Johnny Walker translating them into Kamba.

My liver deserves annual leave too.

Age has a funny way of teaching you things. It introduces you to disappointment until disappointment becomes an old drinking buddy. You stop expecting miracles and start looking for patterns.

Take politics.

This forest we call Kenya... no matter how many times we change the monkeys, they remain monkeys. The only prayer is that one day we elect a monkey that guards your maize instead of harvesting it before you do.

So far?

Hata hiyo bahati hatujapata.

Maybe it's an African problem.

Maybe we perfected an education system designed by colonial masters to produce clerks instead of visionaries. Men who can quote constitutions from memory but cannot build functioning hospitals. Women who speak beautiful English while villages still queue for dirty water.

Someone once told me that's why school boards are black and chalk is white.

I laughed.

To date, I still don't know whether it was wisdom or just someone who had skipped class.

As we head towards another election, I honestly think we need to adjust our political focus lenses.

Because if we can seriously endorse the same recycled names over and over again, expecting different results... then maybe the problem isn't State House.

Maybe it's us.

Take Riggy G.

Politics aside... if after everything we've witnessed, we still believe he is the answer to Kenya's future, then we haven't learnt much. Leadership leaves footprints. Good leaders don't need to remind us every five minutes what they did. We should be living it.

The Linda Mwananchi movement?

Beautiful slogan.

Necessary conversation.

But slogans don't govern countries.

People do.

And that is where my worry begins.

Kalonzo?

A seasoned politician, yes. But Kenya is asking for something different. Something steadier. Less predictable. Less transactional. The names dominating our politics have occupied our television screens for decades. Some have been in government. Some in opposition. Some have crossed the road so many times they no longer remember which side they started on.

Our politics has become an amusement park.

Today you're government.

Tomorrow you're opposition.

Next week you're cousins again.

Then election comes and suddenly everyone discovers wananchi.

Amazing.

The future cannot be built on tribes anymore.

Those days are dying.

Gen Z doesn't ask, "Which tribe?"

They ask, "Can you deliver?"

That's progress.

We need leaders who can walk into Kisumu, Eldoret, Wajir, Voi, Mombasa and Mandera and see Kenyans—not voting blocks.

We need leaders whose biggest language is competence.

Not noise.

Not insults.

Not handshakes.

Not betrayals.

Vision.

Integrity.

Courage.

The kind of leader who sleeps worrying about our children instead of opinion polls.

The kind who fears disappointing wananchi more than disappointing party bosses.

Because sending Wantam back to Sugoi...

That is the easy part.

The difficult question is the one very few of us are asking.

Who replaces him?

Removing a bad leader doesn't automatically produce a good one.

And perhaps...

That is the conversation Kenya should finally be having.

As Chávez once said, “Once you educate the people, you cannot make them unlearn.” We have seen the future, and the future is ours. They think we don’t see. But we are faceless, and yet, we see.

Gods of Taita Taveta, let’s make it in our own image. Next Saturday, stay tuned for our next episode. We are now on Facebook @Alve Mwaregha.

For any queries or information, reach out to us at Voice of Taita Taveta @doctalve or email doctalve@gmail.com.

— Voice of Taita Taveta