origin in the Aramaic speaking Semitics in the Middle East . Jesus was a Jew .
When Europeans realized that Christianity was a powerful rallying point for achieving political ends , they adopted the religion and used it to unite Europe against the Moslem hordes from the Middle East .
Over millennia Europeans managed to white-wash the religion and from the nineth to the nineteenth century it characterized itself as a dominion for Christendom under the authority of the pope who was stylized as the titular head and infallible .
Christianity as we know it today is a European religion complete with a white blue-eyed Jesus who is celebrated during a pagan festival called Yule which conveniently became the birthdate of Jesus to cement the religious capture .
The callous behavior that is meted out to Kenyans by its leaders is indicative of the fact that what Kenyans needed was mental independence together with economic independence and not merely the political one they achieved sixty odd years ago .
identification cards bearing the national coat of arms . Being born in Kenya does not automatically confer to you citizenship as is the case in the USA and many people who were born and have lived in this country all their lives may find out they are not Kenyan when they wish to travel .
While a Kenyan is dying to exit Kenya for better pastures the white man is striving to come to a paradise called Kenya . How is it possible that someone living in Mount Kenya region can own thousands of acres at the coast where he does not reside and those who reside there are landless . When did Kenyans cede their rights to land to the government ?
Africans know Jesus through filtered lenses of Europeans who conveniently presented him as a savior but who did not confer equality to the conquered people . The white supremacy ideology was built into the religion hence to Europeans , apartheid is God ’ s will .
Unfortunately , when Africans eventually fought for their independence , they were fighting to be rid of the physical presence of a colonizing power that had reduced them into third-class citizens in their own country .
With pomp and ceremony , we celebrated his departure not realizing that we had used his language , religion and even administrative machinery to fight him . He left the country in the hands of black Europeans and in some cases they were worse than the white ones .
Ochieng has had periods of deep introspection on the real meaning of independence when Africans still pine to be educated abroad , meaning in the land of the former oppressors and being in their country is deemed an achievement .
Droves of Africans leave the motherland annually to go and do menial jobs abroad that they would not be seen dead doing in their own countries . They even accept the demeaning third-class treatment there which they fought against here .
Ochieng has often wondered what really defines a Kenyan , is it the fact that he is born within the imaginary boundary that is called Kenya and which has the administrative obligation to issue
Ochieng remembers with amusement that one Miguna Miguna , a lawyer to boot , was stranded out of the country as Kenya denied him . If your country can even have the temerity to deny its kith and kin , what defines a Kenyan ?
If you happen to have an Islamic sounding name in Kenya you are subject to profiling discrimination and especially if you are of Somali origin . This unfair practice goes on even though the government is aware that our borders are imaginary and illusory .
There is a quaint word in Swahili that calls a Kenyan a ‘ Mwanainchi ’ which translates as an owner of the land . But Kenyans certainly do not own the land , apparently it belongs to the government and a government is supposed to be a rule by the people .
It is very unclear to Ochieng why Kenya fought for independence primarily because of land issues and how the land did not revert to the people but to the government who then allocated it or sold it using the famous ‘ willing seller willing buyer ’ dictum .
It is unconscionable that a Kenyan has to buy land in Kenya while being called a Mwanainchi and even more ridiculous that he is sold the land on a lease hold while foreigners own large tracts of land , freehold . Who is the Mwanainchi ?
Were Kenyans so brainwashed that they have not realized that they got nothing at independence but a change of guards .
Occasionally Kenyans hear that land has been allocated to usually politically connected individuals who already have thousands of idle lands that are not commercially useful to either them or the country . What are the criteria for allocating land in Kenya ?
Kenya , which is blessed with vast lands , has made land so artificially scarce hence the Kenyan idiosyncrasy that every Kenyans is perpetually looking out to buy a portion of land he can call his own since Kenya is not his country , he just rents land temporarily .
The last word is that a Kenyan is just a sojourner in this country , which puts a lot of credence to the claim by the current administration that Kenya is a limited liability company and it has its shareholders whose private interests supersedes those of all Kenyans .
The callous behavior that is meted out to Kenyans by its leaders is indicative of the fact that what Kenyans needed was mental independence together with economic independence and not merely the political one they achieved sixty odd years ago .
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