PEACE AT ANY PRICE?

PEACE AT ANY PRICE ?

When peace is taken away from us we realize how priceless it is. We can find ourselves willing to do almost anything in order to get it back again.

The Bible says in Psalm 133
"Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity."

Right now our Nation is being divided, cut up, and set against itself by differing political opinion; opinion that is also being used to re-awaken ethnic roots of bitterness. Those who yet being part and parcel of one Country, and who have also many times lived as neighbours, have now found themselves to be enemies, willing to dispossess, and even kill each other. From good neighbourliness we are descending back into the animosities and pride of a hundred years ago; into ugly, bitter, proud and arrogant cultural differences.

I have lived in Eldoret since 1972 as an expatriate. I was then 32 years of age. And I will be 68 in May this year. I am fairly well known across the community. I am a British Citizen. I am also a Christian of no particular denomination. I married a Kikuyu High School Teacher in 1971, and we have together shared our home with more than three hundred orphaned and destitute children over the years. Children from all over the Republic. Children of different tribes; Luhyia, Nandi, Luo, Kamba, Kikuyu and many many others. Our own children grew up together with them, we all sharing together home, and family totally integrated. In the beginning some fought each other, and drew attention to the fact that they despised each other’s origins. It took a long time for me to understand the reasons why. Without my wife I might never have done so, and without her I might never have believed for unity or been able to attain it.
The first few years were the most challenging. On one occasion coming from town, having been shopping, I arrived home to find two fifteen year old boys of opposing tribal backgrounds about to fight. The biggest had a long bread knife in his hand ready to use against the other. I jumped between them letting my shopping bags fall to the floor. “Get out of the way!” the knife bearer screamed at me, “I’m going to kill him”. I was even then a rather tall and thick set person and as I confronted the youth, the smaller boy behind me, I said “If you want to kill the boy you will have to put your knife in me first – and it is not long enough to reach the boy as well.”
“Why do you care?” he yelled “Why do you care for rubbish like him?”
“I care because I love him for the sake of God who loves him more than I do, and Who also loves you just the same. I cannot just love you without also loving him.” He flung the knife on the floor and turned away. We continued to live in the same house, and eventually these two boys became friends and constant companions.
My wife and I refused to make differences because of a child’s background or human origin. We treated them as if they were our very own children, and loved them all as well as we could. As one and other came to join us, they learnt to be a family regardless of their tribe.

BUT Kenya has not yet learnt – or should I say agreed – to see itself as one family – ONE NATION. Over the same period of time tribal differences have become even more pronounced.

And now we are told we cannot Elect a Government, a President, OR anyone else unless they are the right tribe. Can we only be permitted peace on CULTURAL conditions of separatism and racialism – Can WE only be allowed peace if we usher in our own brand of APARTHIED? This would be NO PEACE AT ALL. A peace not worth the cost. We cannot LIVE TOGETHER with one another, if we seek to keep different tribes at a distance, or treat them differently, from us. A Kenyan that cannot travel, work, or live ANYWHERE in Kenya is surely not being treated as a KENYAN.

No man or woman is or can be perfect. Mistakes will be made, errors of judgment and behaviour experienced. And if forgiveness and compassion are not allowed to heal the wounds and the rifts, then all we will have left is a dismembered Society, a fractured, broken and weak Nation.

I love Kenya. I mean I love Kenyans – all of them. None are perfect, just as I am not perfect. I cannot make exceptions in my loving. To do so I must hate God who made them in His Image, and loves each of them much better than I do.
I care nothing about politics or culture. I care about being able to live at peace with my fellow man.

I humbly beg our Leaders in Government, all the men and women elected to represent our Land, and all Kenyans of every Tribe, Political Persuasion and Religion, to dig up the roots of bitterness against each other which trouble, and dishonour us, and seek a lasting and sincere reconciliation which will cement and weld us into ONE NATION, for we will never STAND if we are not UNITED. Divided Kenya WILL fall.

John Alexander Green