Kevin Mutuku Mutiso
6 November 2009
opinion
Those Jaluos..." Ugandan President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni remarked the other day in reference to our Kenyan brothers and sisters over the disputed Migingo Island. Shocking as it was, it got me thinking.
Why the animosity between certain tribes on this day and in this age? What does "tribe" mean, and why did it cause post-election violence? It got me worried, and I started planning to run away to Tanzania come the 2012 General Election. Besides, I decided to find out what tribe I was before I came up with such drastic solutions. My name is Kevin Mutuku Mutiso. On paper, fully Kamba, right? Well not exactly. My brothers' names are Giachuka and Theuri.
Those are not Kamba names, are they? In the quest for my true identity, I began by asking relatives about our past. A lot did not know, but one uncle in Kilimambogo did. The first question I asked him was who my grandfather was (he died in 1969). I never knew him, but was especially interested because I was named after him.
He was the first-born of 11 children, and was, according to my late great grandfather, as stubborn as a mule, because he decided to go to school instead of looking after the big herd of cattle. My late grandfather's parents caused all the confusion. It turns out that my great grandfather was not even a Kamba. He was a Maasai by birth, or so explains my grandfather's stubbornness.
He had no Kamba blood, and was assimilated by them upon his marriage to one of the two Kamba women he married. According to my uncle, no-one really knows anything more than that. More questions then came to my mind. For instance, why did he have other Maasai wives? Any rumours?
Do I have distant cousins that are chubby like me and, most importantly, what tribe does that make me? My conclusion was that "tribe" is nothing more than the innate desire by any human being to feel like he or she belongs somewhere. Belonging is the issue, and not tribe necessarily, as it was the only thing to fall back on.
All of us, except a few lucky ones, had no family history more than three generations. For this reason, we have a feeling of lacking identity. Tribe gives us an identity. We humans love to belong -- to clubs, churches and even countries. So the question is: why don't we decide to belong to this great country and, together, fight corruption, poverty and all the other negatives we see as the portrait of Africa?
Which brings me to another very important aspect of belonging; somebody has to be outside this category to make belonging even sweeter. The question really is: do you know what tribe you belong to, and does it really matter? And is belonging to your country and fighting the negatives a bad idea, after all?
Personally, the answer to these questions is that my tribe is irrelevant today because my wife to be is a mix of Kikuyu and Chagga. And our daughter is going to be even more confused; I'll spare her the headache! I belong to Kenya and I don't mind at all because I admire our runners, love the rugby sevens team, adore our beautiful women and enjoy the good old cold Tusker.
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