Acute Shortage of Role Models in Kenya Hurting the Economy

Back in the day when I was growing up, we had people we used to call role models. These were the people that we wished to be like in our envisioned futures.

As a young lad, I remember dreaming of being an orator like Dr. P.L.O. Lumumba or as a great politician like Tom Mboya though I only read about him in books.

Those were the days. The days when teachers would tell us to work hard and be like so and so in the society and people often took heed of those words and worked hard.

That was then but now things have changed. Kenya is in dire need of role models. The current breed of role models are just social miscreants that are leading societies astray.

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Take a tour to our numerous learning institutions around the country and you will see for yourself. Try taking Dr. Lumumba to one of the secondary schools in Kenya and see how the kids, the so called ‘leaders of tomorrow’ will behave. First they will look at the good doctor like a scientist who has just discovered a strange creature from another planet and then embark on dozing off throughout the time that he would be talking to them.

Try and take one of the local musician whose lyrics are only composed of vulgarities and such things as ‘nakula kwa macho’ and see how the young lads and dames become excitedly attentive as they wait to shake their little behinds as their ‘role model’ regales them with songs laden with peer pressure to engage in promiscuity and drug abuse.

Politicians are no longer role models. The majority are thieves, looters, rapists and murderers. Some have only mastered the art of vomiting voluminous vocabularies of abuses against their opponents, speaking the unspeakable in broad daylight. What shocks me is the vigour and the intensity with which we clap and cheer them up.

There is an acute shortage of role models in Kenya. Where did the good role models of the good old days go? Where did those strong people who when they spoke people would jump up with excitement and punch the air? Where did the society go wrong?

For the past two months alone, more than ten secondary schools have gone up in flames. Up to this moment, no one can fathom the reasons why students had to burn down their own schools. Is there any role model out there? If there is, Kenya urgently needs you.