THE PARADOX OF THE KENYA COMMUNITY ABROAD: ARE THEY KENYANS LIVING ABROAD OR ARE THEY FOREIGNERS OF KENYAN ORIGIN?

Lately I have been following some interesting events that have been taking place in Kenya which have a direct impact on Kenyans like Senator Barrack Obama of Illinois, USA and a host of other foreigners who claim to be Kenyans and living in foreign lands across the globe, notably in Western Europe and North America.

The other day there was an important summit in Nairobi that was purportedly organized by a group in foreign lands known as Kenya Community Abroad in conjunction with the Kenya government. This summit, which was eventually opened by the Vice President of Kenya, Hon. Moody Awori, was apparently organized by the Ministry of Planning and National development. As high profile as the great gathering was, this most important event that was convened by, among others, our respected scholar, Ali Mazrui, all the way from New York, never got any meaningful pre publicity or open invitation so that our prodigal sons and daughters from the Diaspora could meaningfully engage their distant cousins back home on the all important subject of brain drain.

I am reliably informed that the organizers, those foot soldier functionaries of the Ministry of Planning and National Development wanted to avoid involving locals as much as possible because some chapas were involved! When one of the organizers was confronted at a local pub afterwards to explain why he declined to invite home grown intellectuals, academicians and entrepreneurs that had braved poverty, political torture, intimidation and dehumanizing Kanu regime over the years without the option of bolting out into economic exile like their cousins who were now gathering in Nairobi and being feted by the Narc government, the official hurriedly swallowed his last beer and vanished from the scene.

For starters, let me state some common facts about the so-called Kenya Community Abroad. This group was formed with all the good intentions any group of people, having alienated themselves from their roots would do for no other purpose except to satisfy their guilt, nostalgia and sentimentalism. And there are good grounds to argue this point.

Right now there are three types of Kenyans living abroad. The first group consists of those who left Kenya between 1960s and 1990s with all the good intentions of going abroad for further studies.

This group went to foreign lands at the expense of their poor parents and villagers who sacrificed every thing, chickens, goats and all to raise enough money to buy them tickets and initial tuition fees to go and study in various colleges in Australia, Canada, India, Germany, Russia, South Africa, United Kingdom, and United States among other destinations.

But as they landed in these hostile and foreign lands, culture shock and economic hardships both at home and in their new countries of abode made life extremely difficult for them. A number dropped out of college due to lack of fees, others opted to look for odd jobs to survive. As years turned into decades, with no papers or savings to talk of, their chances of returning home empty handed to face poor villagers back home became more and more remote. In the end, as they grappled with their new status as illegal immigrants and faced with possible repatriation to their homes, a number decided to look for partners of convenience to marry in order to legitimize their continued stay in their new countries. Marriage to foreigners demanded further concessions. Some of them would denounce their Kenyan citizenships to take up European and American naturalization citizenships.

Now, in all fairness to this group that left our shores at the tender age of 18, 19, 20 or 21 and are now in their 40s, 50s and 60s, how would we expect them to come and fit in the culture of turbulent and jobless Kenya? If anything, Kenya today is more foreign to them than their adopted countries. These are the people who have had more than a share of their marriages, have grown up families and in quite a number of cases are grand mothers and fathers. In my opinion this group has nothing to offer Kenya and neither does Kenya have anything to give them. The best option to deal with this group is to treat them as our distant relatives while at the same time we allow them to live in peace in their new found lands. They stopped being Kenyans along time ago.

The second group consists of those Kenyans who, having been educated locally and abroad at the tax payer's expense, found it difficult to realize their lifetime dreams of creating wealth and living better lives. They looked at the Kenyan economy, salary structures in the civil service and private sector. They compared their earnings with those of their counterparts in Botswana, South Africa, Namibia, United Kingdom, USA, Canada, Australia, Sweden, Norway, Geneva and Germany. They found that the society back home had shortchanged them for their long sacrifices in the education system.

They bolted to look for greener pastures in these foreign lands and sooner, rather than later, relocated their entire families to the first world.

In my opinion, this lot belongs to the category of economic refugees that left the country voluntarily when Kenya needed them most. In their own words, they had to choose between country and cash. They chose cash. Among this group, a number have retired in their countries of adoption and have no intention of coming back home because their young families that left Kenya thirty or forty years ago now know no other home except New York, Geneva, London, Gaberone, Cape Town or Toronto.

The only reason some of them can come like they did recently or like when Ngugi wa Thiongo and Njeri returned home is when some one other than themselves is ready to bring them home for endless seminars to come and pontificate about their vast knowledge and contacts around the world.

And they return simply because some one is footing their first class ticket, a five star accommodation and a possible irresistible daily allowance in dollars that meets their newly acquired international seminar and conference circuits.

The last group consists of those Kenyans who fled political persecution, intimidation, discrimination and general frustration. These are the people one must accord the prestigious title of "political exiles" because circumstances forced them to flee their mother country and seek refuge elsewhere. But there is something curiously interesting about this group. When they fled, they didn’t move to neighboring Uganda, Ethiopia, Sudan, Tanzania, Nigeria, Ghana, Burundi or Rwanda. They chose New York, London, Bonn, Stockholm, Toronto, Oslo and Washington. And the reason was simple. These were the cities with economic and political clout to help them re-assert themselves so that their activism and continued support funds from their new masters of change in Africa could continue to flow. And this, they have done with a certain amount of success not for the rest of Kenyans but for themselves and their immediate families.

And as the struggle for reforms gained momentum back home, they remained conspicuously indifferent to the struggle for liberation claiming rightly or wrongly that the regime still targeted them for persecution. Ten years after the first multiparty elections and with Moi and Kanu, their most preferred persecutors out of power, some of them are still to find reason to relocate to Kenya.

Let us face it, the Mazruis and the Ngugis of this world have been out of this country for more than three decades. If they were in their thirties when they left Kenya, now they are in their sixties. If they were in their forties, now they are in their seventies. Some of their students like Prof. Chris Wanjala have retired. Very soon, the Ngugis and Mazruis of this world will be asked to hang their boots by their new masters due to old age. The law of natural attrition is also not on their side. How then, under the circumstances can we look up to them to influence the world on our behalf and help change our condition when in their prime, thirty years ago they never did it?

With due respect to the good intentions of the brainpower that gathered in Nairobi recently, with due respect to the founders of Kenya Community Abroad, there is not much that you can do to help Kenya as Kenyans because you are not Kenyans. But we are ready to welcome you home as our distant cousins, foreigners on our shores and benefactors to our poor villages just like any missionary white American from Nebraska, Alaska, Maine and Buffalo Bills in Colorado would. Welcome home!

The writer is executive director of Infotrack, marketing and media consultants, Kenya. Discuss this article in Club Afrika Forums and/or comment below.

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