Kenyan news is bad for your health

A doctor in Kenya checks a patient’s vital signs. She asks several questions to establish the cause of the worrisome results. Quarrel with wife? No. Stress at work? No. Money issues? No.

To every question, the patient shakes his head and answers ‘No.’ Then the doctor’s face lights up.

Do you, she asks the patient, studying his face carefully, watch Kenyan news? With a puzzled look, the patient nods his head in affirmation.

“I watch the evening news every day,” he says. The doctor scribbles a prescription on a paper, and as she hands it to the patient, says, “Please limit watching of news to once a week.”

The scenario above is imagined. However, watching the evening news in Kenya is highly aggravating, and it is, therefore, not farfetched to think that continued watching of it could lead to stress and associated medical disorders. There is hardly uplifting news in Kenya.

Every day, the lead items are about the latest heist of public money, not by scar-faced hoodlums in cheap jeans and dirty sneakers, but by educated, church-going people, dressed in foreign-tailored clothes.

Worse, these genteel folks are the ones entrusted with overseeing the proper use of the money.

One evening, there is news of highly-placed government officials waging war on efforts to fight runaway theft of public funds.

The next day, the cameras bring us close-ups of angry politicians using coded-language to intimidate and profile people of other communities in order to protect corruption cartels in their midst.

Then follows two days of news of politically-instigated ethnic killings in this or that county, and so on ad nauseam.

Take the past couple of days, for instance. First, there was news of deaths and suffering in a number of Counties related to drought.

This was followed by denials from government officials who had not bothered to go and ascertain the truth from the affected regions.

In a poor developing country, the national debate became whether or not emaciated people, bones showing through their skin, had died of famine.

China is launching the spectacularly ambitious ‘Silk Road’ initiative that will link Europe, Asia and Africa to China, thereby shaping world trade and the geopolitical order for the next millennia while our government splits hairs about the actual cause of death of impoverished and famished people!

Then came news of a plot by Members of Parliament to increase their benefits to enable them to stay in Five Star hotels in Nairobi while the National Assembly is in session. This proposal resulted from a bench-marking trip to New Zealand, among other parts of the world.

Now, New Zealand, a country of five million people, has a GDP almost thrice that of Kenya whose population is 45 million.

The Island’s per capita income is one of the highest in the world, while Kenya’s remains one of the lowest. For Kenyan MPs to, therefore, want to be given the same benefits as their Kiwi counterparts just goes to show you how criminally irresponsible our MPs have become.

But thank God for small mercies, because amidst all the anguishing news were two uplifting items. World Boxing Champion women bantamweight world champion Zarika Fatuma retained her belt in Nairobi.

Raised in untold squalor in a Nairobi slum, she rose to the top of the boxing world through sheer determination and courage.

And yet despite her hardships and her success she exudes a magnanimity and kindness that reminds us how far into the wilderness our national culture has strayed, but also give us hope that maybe all is not lost.

About the same time, Peter Tabichi, a teacher belonging to the Fransiscan Catholic order from a lowly but proud Keriko Secondary School in Nakuru County won the 2019 Global Teacher Award in Dubai.

He was cited for being an exemplary teacher but also for his empathy towards his pupils. He gives 80 per cent of his salary to needy students.

Unlike our political class, his sense of personal success is linked to success of others. He, like Zarika, also gives us hope that we might be able to salvage this country from the culture of greed and narcissism foisted on us by the political class.

It is telling that these two inspirational items are not from the political arena. From that arena, only news that degrade us as a country and people can emanate.

Unfortunately, it is the dominant news, day in, day out, for months on end. So should our evening news have an advisory? Something like: Watching Kenyan news continuously can lead to serious medical conditions.

Tee Ngugi is a Nairobi-based political commentator.