How I fell in love with my country...

One word - Patriotic - is what you become once you leave the Kenyan shores and fly away to yonder lands of opportunities. Fiercely loyal to the land you left behind!.

Before I went to the UK, all I wanted was to leave Kenya and never come back. Warped, don't you think? Everything around seemed to frustrate me; the leadership (especially), the cops, the roads (goodness were they bad those days, just before 2002), corruption (well...) unemployment, Matatu mania... Everything screamed get out, get out, get out! So I did.

It never takes long though for reality to set in and you realize opportunities in the 'lands of opportunity' only come at the price of a pound of your flesh... literally! You also begin to realize these lands too have their frustrations, pet subjects that are ever on the news; bad education system, errant youths whose path you'd rather not cross, meagre pension, airport/train strikes etc.

Soon you begin to miss the things you so took for granted back home. Easy jobs that didn't demand you stand or carry all day, the guaranteed sense of identity - I mean you didn't have to prove you were Kenyan with some document, it was taken for granted, only providing proof of identity on very official matters. We take for granted the right to belong, the right to work, the right to travel. But I can assure you until you've been abroad and suffered the acute identity crisis, you'll never know how crucial these are. Acquiring the necessary documents while out there helps a bit with logistics, but still doesn't grant the deep sense of belonging that God-given identity provides.

I fell deeply in love with my country over the five years I was in the UK. I never thought roots could be so deep. Anything that reminded me of home was highly welcome, like the potholes on a small section of a road at the Colnbrook Industrial park, or the potholes on a section of a residential road that I took while driving to Woking High where I taught for a year.

My, I'd never thought a pothole could look so attractive. 'Oh mama,' I said, 'just like home!' And I genuinely enjoyed using these routes to catch a glimpse of home. Well, don't judge me, it looked amazingly like the section of Ngong Rd from around the show ground all the way to Ngong town. By the way, what's up with that at a time when all roads in Kenya are being recarpetted, even those in the villages? I'm glad to be home but I want better memories than potholes next time I catch the travel bug...

So I can confidently say I'm now a die-hard Kenyan loyal and pray that my country forever holds together so when we go out we can always return when homesickness sets in. Trust me, many Kenyans out there would hop back home just like that if logistics allowed.... but that has to be experienced to be understood...

Najivunia kuwa mkenya, I'm deeply in love with this land and just wanna see it transform into a land of opportunity so we won't see the need to ever leave, except for holiday....