I know for sure that we, Kenyans, have always lived in a constant survival mode. Things seem to get worse during the election years. Currently the cost of living is going up, so is inflation yet our salaries are not changing. Well, it is also only applicable to those who have jobs. Of course joblessness is one of the biggest challenge a majority of Kenyan youths struggle with daily.
Our environment has always been more hostile especially around elections season. The biggest nightmare being tribalism, tribal hate and politically charged violence. All these are things that set us off and we would rather isolate than deal with people in general. I truly hope that no post election violence erupts this year. So that we can stand a chance at getting short breaks from the current stresses.
On the other hand, I would like to acknowledge that we lost the sense of community that we once had. This means we are not able to trust that a group of people would be able to love or take care of us when we need it the most. Yet we have witnessed people help with medical fundraisers, finding lost children and sharing helpful information when we put out calls of distress.
Wentworth Miller describes survival mode very well. He expresses his struggle. More so he explains how deeply isolated he felt to the point that community was actually a foreign word to him. Read the whole blog here
The following excerpt is a great prompt for your own self reflection. Have a restful weekend.
"When you’re in survival mode, your focus is on getting through the day in one piece
, and when you’re in that mode at 5, at 10, at 15, there isn’t a lot of space for
words like ‘community,’ for words like ‘us’ and ‘we.’
There’s only space for ‘I’ and ‘me.’ In fact, words like ‘us’ and ‘we’ not only
sounded foreign to me at 5 and 10 and 15, they sounded like a lie."
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