Why I agree with Kiyiapi but reject the Kamatusa

  SHARE BOOKMARKPRINTEMAILRATING

By PHILIP OCHIENG
Posted  Saturday, April 21  2012 at  17:52

James ole Kiyiapi, Kipkoeech araap Sambu and I have many things in common. One is that we come from the same larger ethnic background.

James is a Maasai, Kipkoeech a Kalenjin and I a Luo – three clusters of what ethno-linguistic anthropologists call Nilotes.

Even more importantly, we three are dedicated to the study of our respective clusters. For, like charity, knowledge must begin at home. Only from self-discovery can one inspire others to study and discover themselves. As Socrates used to admonish, Know Thyself.

Of course, the Athenian magus was addressing only compatriots. But he probably knew that his Aryan Hellenes owed a heavy cultural, religious, linguistic and technological debt to the Pelasgic Danaans, the autochthonous Greeks who – like the Maasai, Kalenjin and Luo – had come from the lower reaches of the Nile.

If he didn’t know, he must have been the victim of the same disease that ails my modern siblings. For practically no Elmolo, Iljamus, Kalenjin, Luo, Maasai, Ndorobo, Ogiek, Samburu, Teso or Turkana has any conception that they are descendants of the same mother not too long ago.

It is instructive that, only in the pursuit of knowledge – only through books – have I discovered that Kalenjin, Maasai, Teso and Turkana are of my own blood.

It is to Kipkoeech, among others, that I owe this knowledge. I once drew Kenya’s attention to his book on Kalenjin history, culture and religion.

He has recently sent me a copy of the sequel – subtitled A Linguistic Inquiry into the Kalenjin People’s Oral Tradition of Ancient Egyptian Origin – which clinches the culturo-linguistic identity of not only the Kalenjin with the ancient Coptic Egyptians but also of them with such other Nilotes as the Luo.

Share This Story

9Share 

Extremely saddening

Yet this knowledge is always extremely saddening. For, by the time we acquire it, Euro-Protestant individualism has dredged such a Rift Valley between us as to make reunion seem impossible.

It is to that tutelage that we owe the extreme ignorance both of our ethnic histories and of the objective needs of our peoples, singly and together.

That is why it is now so easy for self-seeking politicians to drive a wedge between all these children of Myoot (the Kalenjin equivalent of mankind’s “Mitochondrial Eve”).

Wouldn’t she commit suicide if she woke up today to find that some of her children have formed themselves into something called “Kamatusa” to wage war on her other children?

That “Kamatusa” stands for the “Kalenjin, Maasai, Turkana and Samburu” raises a stark question: If the strategy is to bring together peoples of the same mother, why this selectiveness?

Why aren’t the Luo in it? Where are Elmolo, Iljamus, Ndorobo, Ogiek, Teso and other descendants of Dawa (the Luo equivalent of Myoot)?

The answer seems obvious. Being so large and with a paramount tribal chief of its own – whose ambition for State House is also vaulting – the Luo cannot fit into the political scheme of the Kamatusa fraudsters.

The other Nilotes – Elmolo, Iljamus, Ndorobo, Ogiek, Teso – are ignored because, in any election, they are numerically insignificant.

That is why I just cannot visualise Prof Kiyiapi – a longstanding educationist and top functionary of the Education ministry – having led his Maasai people into anything as jingoistic as Kamatusa.

For Kenya is not a monopoly of the Nilotes. Our Constitution welcomes all good human beings of all races, tribes and sectors.

That is why, though Prof Kiyiapi admits the necessity of Nilotic unity, he points out that, in the context of Kenya, Nilotic unity cannot be pursued at the expense of the higher unity of all Kenyans.

I support Prof Kiyiapi because I am convinced he believes that Kenya should be ruled by a good individual – not necessarily by a Nilote or a Bantu.

That is why I would reject Kamatusa even if it included my Luo people.

ochiengotani@gmail.com