YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW ABOUT YOURSELF

 I recently visited one of the well known pediatric hospitals in Nairobi to see a friend who had been admitted with her baby. As I made my way from the reception area to their ward, I could not help but notice a dozen of toddlers playing happily in one of the rooms, littered with toys and baby paraphernalia. Then a thought came to my mind; did the children know each others' names? Were they aware of the fact that probably none of them came from the same tribe as the other?

My friend, Rachel, appeared from the ward carrying her four months old baby; this triggered a thought in my mind. Rachel is a Taita from the Coast and her husband Henry hails from the Lake side. I was extremely curious to know which language she would prefer her baby speaks as mother tongue, between Luo and Taita. The response I got from Rachel was astounding to say the least. ‘’I don’t really have much control over which language becomes his first, it might as well be none of the two,’’ she uttered. ‘’Nowadays they grow very fast and soon I will be dropping him off at some kindergarten,’’ she added, ‘’He might never learn any of his parents mother tongue languages because of the environment he will grow up in,’’ she concluded.

From the brief conversation I had with her, Rachel made me realize just how much the environment in which children are brought up, contributes immensely to who they become in adult life. I learnt that a child born to Luo parents can grow up to speak Kikuyu and vice versa. If a baby is born in a hospital at the heart of Luhya land but two days later gets adopted by Kisii parents, who constantly speak the Kisii language, wouldn’t the Luhya baby pick that same language as it grows up? Seventeen years later, if at all nobody tells him that he was adopted from Luhya land, wouldn’t the boy believe that he is a Kisii?

As Kenyans, we have attached too much importance to tribe and creed. So much that life revolves around ethnic identity at the expense of many other aspects of our existence. Would you disown your current ethnic identity if the people you have known as your parents all along told you that they adopted you from parents of a different tribe? Would you frown upon the news or would you gladly embrace the other culture?

The community that you call primitive, the men that you call womanizers, the people that you call thieves and con artists, the culture that you call archaic and barbaric, or the people you swear you, your children and your grandchildren will never get married to, might just be the people you truly belong to. What if today you found out that you are not who you always thought you were? It is safer to be a Kenyan than to identify yourself with a tribe. Remember, you never know what you don’t know about yourself!

An article by Jesse Ongiare
Founder Ukabila Zi Society