I am glad to have passed through the University of Nairobi at some point in my life. It is in those days that the institution was held high as the best in the region. That is still true even now, but their demonstrations and the constant bickering dilutes everything. It is in this institution that I met people from every part of the country.
Being in the city, the language one speaks is English and Kiswahili. That is because one meets people from regions that do not speak his or her language. Every time one comes through a friend or fellow students of the same origin, they enjoy speaking their mother tongue. That’s is the main issue here.
There are a group of people who do not understand yet they know their origin. People whom their parents might have stayed in the city for long. They did not have the time to go home. They never interacted with the society and philosophized with their cultures. Mistake!
In one occasion I met a lady. The magnets were in the North-South. There was attraction. Attraction between a traditional man and a non-traditional man. Mistake two!
The lady was of a local origin. She knew that she came from the province A, District B, Village C. That was all she could say. In my mind, I considered all that situation and wondered at the kind of lifestyle she had been living. It was not her mistake this time round. The parents never took her to visit their home origin and know her roots. I pause in love to allow that sink in your head.
During the entire life in campus, most of my friends were from different areas. I loved to listen to stories of different culture. It was a good thing if the respondent knew it. That is where I realized that not all people were brought up in their cultures. Some were from their cultures by names alone. Grave mistake. Here is the reasons.
When our parents came to the city, and acquired some piece of land they loved to stay in this place. The city is addictive and nobody would want to leave. It all started here. They married some women who also did not want to go home. They then decided, without discussing that they would stay in town. Their children and grandchildren also got in the system.
Culture is an important thing. People are taught some farming, lifestyle issues and how they need to grow. It reaches a time they are to be independent. If they had a poor cultural origin, they will find it easy. It is in those cultures that women learnt how they would bring up their families. Today, cases of single parenthood is common in women. Reasons being divorce and separation. With some good culture these would be avoided. For men, they have failed to take their wives and families to their homes.
Some of these people get surprised when they visit their homes during Christmas. They cannot reduce themselves to the local ways of life. They speak English or Kiswahili. I am disgusted at a situation when somebody had to get a language translated for her while speaking to her grandmother whom she was named after. It is therefore wise to go back to our roots and learn some cultures.
