Listening to Kasmwel McOure’s talk on Engage left me raw. I’m so sorry kid. I’m so sorry for the assault and soul mutilation a generation goes through– our generation choosing silence, the present youngest generation choosing revolt.
I do not wish to diminish this charismatic young man’s personal trauma by applying it to an entire group called a generation. But I wish to borrow it to highlight what we all know to be true: that the unspeakable acts of violence and violation that many have suffered have now burst the banks of silence.
Those silent parents who have raised a so-tagged fearless generation sacrificed revolt for what they hoped would be a normal family they can show off to society. Our generation buried our traumas in order to work and get that house with a picket fence in the suburbs of Kenya’s cities, to build that home in the breezy countryside, and if there’s some change left, to fly our kids abroad to college.
We did this also because we were trying to fulfil the demands and expectations of our own parents’ generation, a generation that had no time for the examination of their own colonial trauma.
What society thought about us was more important than embodying the values of being humane. The genZ kids my friends raised saw your pain, your struggle, and most significantly, your strange silence, and for some, they saw the abuse you occasionally passed on to domestic workers. Cliche alert– hurt people hurt people.
I hear a lot of my generation talk surprisingly about their kids, that they don’t have a filter, they don’t hesitate to call you out. A global exposure has emboldened them and normalized the idea of a child giving feedback to a parent. In our time? We dared not! They see no reason to shut up in the face of abuse and neglect. They question you and expect you to give honest answers.
This boldness can go either way. It can inspire psychopathic inclinations even in a kid who gets off inflicting pain on others, or it can inspire heroic inclinations in a kid who wishes for a more humane world. I watch this young man talk of a sickening experience of sexual assault and bullying by other kids when he was only 11. Eleven! I shudder. Then I wonder what became of those psychopathic kids. And to make peace with this story, I choose to be lifted by his courage. He refused to stay silent.
God knows, many of my generation wish they could find a soft place to unburden the weight of their unspoken wounding. Sometime I think of stories I know personally, pick any circle of friends, and I hold my head to stop it from falling with the weight of sighs.
On the outside, many in my generation are polished, smart, accomplished and will increase the wealth of any city in the world. On the inside, it’s a different story. My generation normalized their pain in order to succeed, to show off their position, and to gain applause for raising good kids.
But here’s what you really need to know: My generation chose to disconnect from the political reality that ordered their society. We came of age in the years of the dictatorship, very confusing years about a leader who loved children and gave us milk, parents who damn near worshipped him, a center that couldn’t hold any more, The growing injustice of poverty and its attendant ills was blamed on devil worshipping. There was even a presidential commission set to investigate devil worshipping. You can’t make this sh*t up. So my generation went to church more, feared the devil, booked salvation tickets to heaven, and shut up about the economy. Maandamano were beneath Nairobi’s young professionals and uppity Christians.
Now you, my generation, you hear your kids speak freely of their trauma, you watch them confront the politics you left to Jesus to fix, you watch your kids take to the streets and fill up the jails, and you wonder who the heck raised them. You did. And for this, my generation stands redeemed. Inadvertently, you raised the heroes who are free to say what you couldn’t say.
