Our past affects us in a very big way. What your father, grandfather and great grandfather (whom you never met) did, affects you directly today and will affect your children too. The good book talks about a curse being visited unto a third and fourth generation. Many of us see familiar bad habits in our children which we have been struggling with ourselves for years and wonder how they picked them up.
By extension your community’s past cannot be ignored either. No matter how well educated and sophisticated you become, your roots will always shape you and who you become.
For example the Akamba people from where my father originates suffer from a very strong spirit of mockery. That is why despite their resources and so many things they have going for them, it is always the Kamba being mocked for eating dead dogs and starvation is rampant despite their best efforts in their shambas (but that is a story for another day).
Let me tell you a very simple true story to illustrate my point here.
There was this guy I was told about once who used to work for a certain government department. He was a very qualified chap but a bizarre trend had emerged in his life. He would go for a job interview and emerge the top candidate and would verbally be informed to report to work the next day. However the minute he turned up complications would start developing. He would be told to wait and one thing led to another and he would never actually take up his appointment. After he had been rejected for reasons that were never clear, somebody else would take up the appointment. This happened several times.
Then every woman he fell in love with would end up abandoning him. Many times it happened in a very hurtful way where once or twice his wife then, would end up in bed with one of his best friends and that is how the marriage would end.
It was clear that there was a certain powerful jinx over this guy’s life but nobody seemed to know what it was or where it had come from.
To cut a long story short the man is a classic example of a person suffering from rejection. You may already know of people who suffer from rejection. Maybe somebody in the office that people just don’t like for no particular good reason. Or it could be you. Maybe you have been wondering why you cannot seem to get a life partner.
Now I need to dive a little deeper so that you understand this more clearly. It is very important that you understand this basic fact so that my point about the forthcoming presidential elections is clear in your mind.
There are many ways in which rejection enters a person’s life. For example many people who suffer rejection are first-borns in their family. Their mother got pregnant with them when the status with the father-to-be was still not clear. Meaning that the mother was angry, frightened and confused when she discovered she was pregnant. She may even have attempted to carry out an abortion. When that child is born he will be carrying rejection planted in them by their mother through thoughts utterances and emotions expressed when they were still in the womb. This will affect him/her for the rest of their life unless they come to the knowledge of what has happened and do something about it or by some miracle of divine intervention the manufacturer himself (God) rescues them from it.
So what was affecting this very frustrated man over 40 years after he was born could have been “planted” before he was even born.
Rejection is the most devastating thing anybody can suffer and often leads to suicide. Women carrying rejection will sometimes get engaged to be married and then at the 11th hour the man will break the engagement without a valid explanation. Other times despite their beauty, they will be completely unable to attract a spouse. In some cases such women will indulge heavily in sex and take refuge in being needed and wanted during sex with men, but it always ends up in terrible disaster because the men they have sex with will always use them and dump them and no matter how good they are none will ever marry them.
My sincere apologies because this post is not about marriage and relationships so let’s get back on topic.
Let me conclude this post by saying that there are a number of other characteristics that commonly accompany rejection. They are bitterness, self-pity and sometimes jealousy and envy even for each other. There are also a number of defensive mechanisms people suffering from rejection usually employ. Sometimes they will seem to be very proud and conceited, other times they will end up being very violent people in society. Just take a close look at African-Americans and you will begin to understand what I am saying here. These Black Americans carry rejection which dates back to the days of slavery.
The other point I want to emphasize is that when a person suffers rejection the people to blame are not those rejecting them and doing bad things to them. Rather the problem is within them.
I talk about rejection here because my dear brothers the Luo community suffer from it. My research of many weeks has been to try and find out where it came from in the first place, which I talk about in my next post.
But for now let me conclude by saying this is the reason behind the statements we were hearing about early this year about certain characters being “Unelectable.” The good news for Raila supporters is that something that I do not quite understand yet has happened to this candidate who most people (including this blogger) used to believe was unelectable. I suspect it may be divine intervention but I cannot say for sure until after December 27th.
Read Final Part
