Kenyans, it seems, have drunk the cup of anger, frustration and sadism.
Beneath the veneer, people are seething with anger. The problem is no one knows the cause of the anger. And without a diagnosis, there can be no cure.
I read about the killing of the top KCSE candidate nationally in 2012, a Yale graduate. Just recently, two brothers in Embu died needlessly, victims of an angry and frustrated system.
But what stung even more was the killing of four young boys, enjoying their racing bikes somewhere in Isinya. Herdsmen saw them, suspected them to be cattle rustlers, and lynched them.
You wonder how cattle rustlers look like, and whether four young boys appear like them. You also wonder how rife cattle rustling is in the part of the country.
But what you wonder most is that not one among that mob was the voice of reason. No one could listen to their pleas.
This is a classic case of shooting first and aiming later.
These are symptoms of anger. The cause, no one knows.
But the cure must be decisive action. These murders must be investigated and perpetrators punished promptly. Unfortunately, 'ongoing investigations' is a synonym for 'we shall never know the culprits.' And because these crimes are never really decisively punished, we get the impression that nothing works. This feeds into anger, and more destruction.
At a personal level, whenever I feel angry and frustrated, I take a deep breath and shift my mind to more positive things.
Because if I keep looking at the negatives, I will never live in the moment. There's no better time to be alive than today. The future we so hard work for is never guaranteed.
May God grant us peace, and take our anger from our midst.
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