#MyBetterKenya: Part I

Yesterday, I had the great opportunity of having a chat with one of the lost boys of Sudan.

According to Wikipedia: Lost Boys of Sudan were over 20,000 boys of the Nuer and Dinka ethnic groups who were displaced or orphaned during the Second Sudanese Civil War (1983–2005); about 2.5 million were killed and millions were displaced.[1] The name "Lost Boys of Sudan" was colloquially used by aid workers in the refugee camps where the boys resided in Africa. The term was revived, as children fled the post-independence violence of South Sudan with Sudan during 2011–13[2][3]

The gory stories of uncommon war, taxed by the troglodyte whims of warlords upon a 'bleeding nation', mixed with the wild truths of how the international community took their sweet time deliberating on political actions and stands upon a matter that they could only solve and debate on its true nature obligating their participation.

And thus, in the words of the wild (no pun intended); Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, 1895, Act I Irish dramatist, novelist, & poet (1854 - 1900) : “The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”

"I come from one of the largest ethnic groups in Sudan.

In retrospect, when the war begun, we thought we were part of the greatest revolution in the country. A preserve of a species that would end up defining and representing the best of the country's loins. Some of my friends (since not all of them were considered 'worthy') and I were collectively set apart by the warlords and taken to the borders of Ethiopia and neverwhere to continue the revolution that they already initiated. Days on end we just lived and moved through the savannah with no exact idea nor inkling of where we were going. For all of us, this would end up being a harrowing journey of psychological trauma and internal writhing for years to come."

He narrated with some tears unawarely falling down his chin, his countenance in a haunting ashy oxymoron and his eyes transfixed in a steely gaze to beyond.

"The nights were colder than usual, the days a sweltering inferno of merciless treks and ghoulish chuckles in the wilderness. But, we survived.

A few months after, we were the media game of the international community. From white burly men and women who were wondering if our skin colour was too 'rich' to resettle us in white supremacist nations or the pot-bellied African diplomats that would make a 'killing' for being the conduits of our salvation to our imperialists. All in all, my country was burning while we were on 'display'.

Then in his steel gaze, he looked at me and asked, "Isn't Kenya soon going down that god forsaken path? Aren't you all already split within tribal lines insisting on purity of a nation that contrary to volatile poll-centered beliefs, lies in the beauty of its diversity?"

And in that instant, my heart was broken.

#MyBetterKenya is an awareness campaign for all to for all to participate in propagating and sharing ideas and thoughts on what would be your ideal state, for a better Kenya.

So what would be your idea of a better Kenya?

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