Last year we spent much energies brainstorming about the different approaches development stakeholders ought to adopt to inject a dose of progress in the populace. We condemned all those we believed carried the greatest responsibilities vis-à-vis people's welfare (or lack of it).
We spent an insignificant fraction of our time and energies in revisiting the practical component of these development approaches. We forgot the very central component that embodies the ideas we espouse.
We did not act on our brainstormings!
This year, therefore, must not pass as another year of talking and yapping. It is time to change tack.
I elect to confront the cancer of school-lessness this year as our focus issue. There is this school in Turkana County that is crying for our attention.
You can read much about it here: http://lemukolwords.blogspot.com/2014/11/mr-governor-build-your-name-by-building.html
Reading through political contracting, one interesting point characterizing political marriages - the interaction between the people and their leaders - anywhere in the world pops up.
That service delivery is a key component in the pursuit of legitimacy. That authorities become legitimate 'only' when they heed the calls of the governed and respond to their pleas accordingly.
After two years of consistent writing I have come to understand the realities in which many of our folks - who for reasons they cannot openly state - have been subjected to accept as 'normal and the way to go'. I have come to internalise the pain of many of our poor people who (rightly) know the cause of their condition but feel suppressed to demand action from their leaders.
I have received a great deal of e-mails coloured by tears and sorrows from a people touched by the emptiness in our econo-socio-political makeup. Their moral conviction is evident in their description of powerlessness in the people and the absence of will in the souls and minds of the ruling class.
This lengthy preamble is informed by the push to put into perspective the many faces of subjugation and material and mental poverty that has confined many of my people into a perpetual fight to beat man-made odds to survive.
Many of us still believe absence of education among Kenya's bottom-of-the-scale people is the chief culprit to blame for the void and glaring inequalities we see around. I personally hold that absence of education is the philosophy over which banditry and endless bloodbath reported in Turkana, West-Pokot, Samburu and elsewhere in the 'troubled northern Kenya' is built on.
That to put the masses of these regions on the path of self-identification and empowerment, we must cure the malady of absence of education - particularly the absence of school infrastructure in a region teaming with school-less children and illiterate adults.
For no amount of food rationing shall restore the dignity of these people.
Only education - albeit after a long time - shall create a population proud of its identity, bold enough to confront its challenges and one with the courage to face head-on the hypocrisy and double standards of its leadership.
My people, it's time we confronted our past with clean hearts and with clear conscience in order to lay down a permanent foundation over which happiness and progress must be anchored.
For there is no much happiness than seeing a school-less kid in the jungles of Turkana County getting into a class built by you and me.
We must get it right this year. We the people hold the key to our progress. Our collective effort is the needed spirit to materialize our resolve.
Let it be remembered that we built schools for the school-less and restored hope to the hopeless. Let it be known that before the beautiful words of people's empowerment are pronounced we will be ready at work actualising that empowerment.
It is my prayer that as 2015 matures school-lessness among my people will be disappearing. I need your support in building this Turkana School.
Remember it is only through the robustness of our minds and hands that smiles are planted on our faces. Join us in building this school. We must confine school-lessness to the museums of history.
Bring forth thy support! https://secure.changa.co.ke/myweb/share/3602
Lemukol Ng'asike is an Architect. E-mail: lemoseh89@gmail.com. Twitter: @mlemukol.
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