TRIBE!? C'MON!!

Walking back to my room late into the night, I meet a young man who forgets what he was doing and starts walking with me. Initially I had made a stop at one of the male hostels to purchase airtime and he was there frantically saying hello. I could not ignore the greetings and said hi back minding my own business as I was waiting to be served. I took an effort to ignore his further remarks because I was in no mood to entertain anyone or vice versa. I started walking towards my hostels and there he was walking beside me talking continuously as if he was sent to present a speech to me. To cut the story short, he quickly asks me in his broken English, “Are you Luo?” I look back at him and just smile. He continues talking about how he is convinced that I come from that community simply because of my skin colour. The rest of the words that he said escaped me as I entered deep into my mind to analyze his words.

This is not the first time that someone had voluntarily placed me in a certain community because of one or two characteristics that I possess. However, this usually does not bother me because I like the confusion that people have about my ethnic group. It always leaves me amazed despite hearing it so many times before. I have been placed to fit certain communities that I wonder if this people  are serious. Some have gone further and tried to communicate with me in their dialect that I just look at them and smile. This does not annoy me at all. On the contrary, it is the mindset that most people have about placing an individual to a certain tribe that ticks me off. 

I prefer to be Kenyan by nature and by my tribe. I do not like when I met someone from my tribe and forgets every other language he/she knows and talks to me in my tribal language. I find it annoying and irritable because I wonder if by identifying myself as belonging to his/her tribe will make them like or hate me. My last name may indicate that i come from a certain tribe, but does that conclude that i fully belong to that tribe?  It further annoys me when I meet up with new people and they start conversing through their dialect the whole time I am around. They may have been the ones who invited me to spend time with them and again embark in torturing me in their tribal conversations.  

I look around me and I have to admit that people from various tribes surround me as friends. Honestly, most of my friends come from a certain tribe that I do not consider while becoming friends with them. It is later that I come to learn of their tribe and ignore it as if I do not know it. The other day, Kariuki confessed to me that his grandmother forbade him from marrying a Luo or Luhya woman. He is following the conditions of his grandmother and he has never dated women from both tribes. My God! Why should someone’s tribe be a determinant in finding love? I know there are many people reading this right now and relate through their own experience or from the experience of other people. It made me wonder why does tribe matter with whom you choose to spend your life with? Why should it determine the friends that you keep? Do you look at the tribe and relate with it in every conversation that you have with your friend? Is it not the characteristics and personality that matters?

Politics is brewing in campus right now and in every corner, there are flyers of the candidates. Alongside these flyers, there are white printed sheets of papers calling people from certain tribe to come interact with one another (i have always wondered what is the essence of all this hustle). In the next few weeks, there will political alliances that will form to cater for people of certain tribes. This will cause mayhem if one alliance fails to win the elections. Disaster will befall around campus for a few hours and things will return to normalcy.

Many old people would say that through our severe political clashes there are reasons not to mingle with other communities. There have been dire consequences from our post election violence. However, let us all try to live in a “tribe-less” nation. The reason we have these tribal clashes in the first place is that we allow ourselves to categorize ourselves according to a certain tribe. Interacting and mingling only with people from your tribe is the major cause of the these tribal clashes. Right now am sounding like an optimistic fellow who does not understand the depth of tribal issues in her country. let me put on that face for now because as much as there are changes that can  take place, only people like you can make it happen. Maybe we can overcome this vice and live like a tribe-less nation. Until then, let me hold onto my breath and hope that one day this will become possible in our tribal nation.