DO YOU NEED IT? OR YOU’RE JUST OBSESSED WITH SCRAMBLING.

By Brian Nzomo

There is something endemic in the Kenyan psyche which I erroneously assumes in the past as being a result of genuine poverty. The culture of scrambling for scanty resources and accumulating more than what one needs. Initially, I perceived it as a consequence of lack. But I was wrong. It is a sick mentality ingrained in some of us; a cruel disregard for other people’s plight and a pointless bid for egotistical accretion.

I saw this smut incubate itself in high school. Before order was introduced in the distribution of bread to students, prefects after sorting themselves out with some loaves, allowed us to ravage the crates like animals. The aftermath was sheer wastage. Many loaves ended up squashed on the ground, hundreds of students complained bitterly about missing bread, and the unfortunate like me ended up spending our ten shillings buying one from the canteen. Sometimes you got lucky and managed to slash off a half-piece from some guy’s hands without his knowledge.

Understandably, many guys with muscular advantage and vicious sensibilities prospered under this anarchy. They would harvest five loaves or more. And they would brag about it. And rarely would they care about the deprivation they were causing.

But six loaves of bread was more than enough. Two loaves were normally enough for anybody with an insatiable appetite. Imagine stuffing five or six wheat-laden packs into your body on a hot mid-morning. In ten minutes time, you’ll be walking into a Mathematics class, then a Chemistry class. You woke up at 4 am despite sleeping late. Terrible.

You see, at first I thought these guys loved eating. That’s all. They weren’t getting enough you know. But another layer of reality was unfurled before me. There was a vestige of pride that was so luresome in this practice. And that is what the adult population celebrates mostly out here.

During the fledgling stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, bourgeoisie Kenyans literally aped what they saw on CNN or FOX news. Fat Americans were filmed dramatically filling their shopping trolleys with all kinds of stuff as they prepared for an Armageddon that never was. Almost immediately, our shoppers were causing tissue paper shortages in Supermarkets. I swear to whoever sits on the clouds, I was hollering. Kenya was never going into a lockdown. But these people were prepared bana. Tissue papers and sanitizers were being hoarded. Come on! Proletariat Kenyans like me barely purchase tissue papers from supermarkets. What were they scared of except that every Kenyan knows another Kenyan wants to outdo them in accumulating even the most inutile stuff.

We are a society bred with an unhealthy obsession over ‘surmounting our suffering’. The media loves telling us stories about people who became insanely rich despite being born poor, and we just loooveee celebrating our students getting good grades after brutalizing with sleep deprivation for much of their school life. Success stories are not originally damaging, but there is something we are overlooking. We are focusing more on the ‘suffering-cum-luxury’ template, ignoring the consequences this luxury has posed, or even the origins of this suffering.

A colossal chunk of Kenyan problems right now are systemically interwoven. But a gross fascination with individual success stories deceives us into thinking that somehow each one of us will work his way out of this mire of poverty and succeed collectively. But that is a grand subterfuge. Your success is not guaranteed. And for you to achieve it, you’ll be compelled to step on very many heads and get stepped on in the process. It is from this realization that accumulation emanates. And the realization that you’re fairly privileged to take as much as possible from a stockpile of depletables. In short, your need does not drive your greed. But the recognition that ‘even if I don’t need this thing, or even this much, I have the ability to take. And so I will take it, fuck the consequences”.

Look at those billions politicians steal. Certainly this cannot be out of need. What then drives this need? The realization that they can steal as much as they can. They have the ability to do so. And they can derive pride in accumulation. Over-accumulation we are witnessing is steered by a morose form of greed. “I am here. I can do it. I don’t need it. But why not? Nothing will happen to me anyway.”