Why we should protect and build on our hard-worn unity, liberties

“When the missionaries arrived, the Africans had the land and the Missionaries had the Bible. They taught us how to pray with our eyes closed. When we opened them, they had the land and we had the Bible”. These famous words were uttered by Kenya’s founding president Jomo Kenyatta.

Kenya is a blessed land. Though the rains were not as strong as we had hoped this year, the rolling hills of our land are rich with fertile soil. We are blessed with the blue waters of the Indian Ocean and the deep greens of the Rift Valley. But beyond being well endowed with beautiful landscapes and wildlife, we should praise the blessing of unity.

Unity is not an obvious feature of a country so diverse in speech and culture as Kenya. More than 40 tribes make up our nation, each one with distinctive languages, histories and traditions. For many adults here, the post-election violence of 2007-2008 is hard to forget. But a silver lining of the violence is the fact that national cohesion is now hard to take for granted.

We are truly a free nation, free from the shackles of colonialism and tyranny. We now possess an unprecedented ability to take part in the national decision making process. At the end of the day, it will be our choice whether or not to support bills that promote our diversity or hinder it, bills that are representative of wide swathes of the nation or only a select few individuals.

We have been bombarded with grandiose ideas about how to change the Kenyan constitution by handful of politicians who did not consider consulting the nation. This won't work.

On the other hand, however, the Building Bridges Initiative, which enjoys the support not only of President Uhuru but also opposition leader Raila and other leaders spanning the political spectrum, is based on almost a year and a half of meticulous interviews and consultations across the country. Making policy changes takes time, and we must be patient. The harmful outcome of a rash decision will emerge just as quickly as it was made.

In the Jamhuri Day speech of 1963, the old Jomo relayed a sagacious thought to the nation: “Many people may think that, now there is Uhuru, now I can see the sun of Freedom shining, richness will pour down like manna from Heaven. I tell you there will be nothing from Heaven. We must all work hard, with our hands, to save ourselves from poverty, ignorance, and disease”.

There truly is no such thing as a free lunch. Anything worthwhile takes time and hard work. That can be said of achieving excellence in a sport or foreign language, as well as getting democracy right. It is a lengthy but rewarding process, and there is always room for improvement.

We cannot be lazy when it comes to working towards unity. Manna will not simply fall from heaven if we are not deserving of it. When Moses guided the Israelites through the desert, they wandered for forty years as a punishment for their lack of trust in what the future would bring.

I do trust that Kenya is in an era of constant improvement for all of its citizens. The Big Four development agenda and Vision 2030 lay out the framework for progress, but it takes being proactive to get there. And the foundation for achieving these goals is centred on unity, in the belief that each and every one of us has a role in building our nation and helping our fellow citizens.