Kenya: Going Home Early Today To Be Counted

It's national census day in Kenya today. And I'm going home early to be counted. Me and my family. We will answer all the questions: including the vexed one of ethnic background -- still called tribe in official circles here.

We are all proud of our ethnic diversity, I believe -- even as we try to build a larger country, Kenya. We shouldn't be afraid of what the politicians might do with the numbers that come up. They cannot do any worse than they already have. And I suspect some are pertified of the figures that will come out -- as petrified as they were ten years ago (and, even more so, twenty years ago). Remember, the census figures of 1999 were never fully released. The 1989 figures were doctored, as many people in the know claimed to know. And whose respective dockets were those then, pray tell? Hypocrisy -- hypocrisy -- is the name of the game for the politicians. But it shouldn't appear to be sonfor ordinary citizens, or for the leaderships of our civil society. Hypocrisy and contradition. The 2009 figures might not be fully released either -- till after the 2012 elections.

I can think of several ways in which the new census numbers that will come will represent an opportunity we can creatively leverage for a stronger, more prosperous, more assertive, more changeful Kenya; a Kenya more attuned to and more ready for critical mass of all sorts. For one, the new numbers are certain to sharpen the equity debate across the country -- and that will be a good thing. Emergent changes in the social structure will be more sharply in focus. There will be new narratives about the nation's changing use of technology, about its innovativeness, about its world of work -- and, mor broadly, about changes in its culture. Much more will be known about the evolution of our physical, technical and intellectual assets at the household level, across different strata or segments of our changing social structure. A clearer picture should emerge about the distribution of absolute and relative poverty across the country. And likewise about the consumerist middle class.

In one of this morning's daily papers it was boldly estimated that we Kenyans now number 40 million. So be it! A watershed of sorts this. Worth taking a note of. And I can't deny I was abstractly sort of pleased by the numbers!