Kwanini Wakenya Wanapenda Kujilinganisha na Kuibeza Tanzania Kwa Kila kitu?

In Summary

• Kenyans are so infatuated with Tanzania that when you tell a Kenyan sports personality that Harambee Stars have never beaten Nigeria’s Super Eagles in 14 encounters, the two-word response will have Tanzania in it.

Some events that happened early last week left me in a bit of a dilemma. Those events altered my line of thought and the subject matter I had planned to write changed, thus, I now have to write about Kenya’s national football team, the dim Harambee Stars whose performance is nothing to write home about.

They have no luck in hell of qualifying for next year’s FIFA World Cup, or the next ten others.



All through I had planned on writing that Kenyans need to stop talking about the things that are wrong in, or with Tanzania, the country who they derogatorily think about so much they forget they have a country.


If you want Kenyans to feel good themselves or if you want to know how “patriotic” they are, just mention Tanzania and you will be met with slew of we are-better-than-them nuances that make you cast aspersions on Kenya’s education system.


At times, you do not even have to mention Tanzania to get a Kenyan — who does not even know whether Dar-es-Salaam is a country or a city — foaming at the mouth.


Just crack a real joke insinuating Kenya is a failing state and instead of a Kenyan laughing or trying to convince you otherwise, you will be told all the “bad” things you never wanted to know about Tanzania.


Ask a Kenyan business journalist about Kenya’s rate of economic growth or the rate of inflation and instead you will be told about Tanzania’s legendary power outages and how Kenya Power is more efficient than Tanzania Electric Supply Company (TANESCO) in disconnecting defaulters.


Tell a Kenyan corporate boss about his company’s poor customer relations and he will instead start whining about Tanzania, and how it is hard for Kenyans to get work permits there.


And even before he is done rambling about work permits, he jumps to Kenyans’ newest hobby: bad-mouthing the port the Chinese are building in Bagamoyo which Sunday Nation’s Murithi Mutiga reckons will be 33 times bigger than the one in Mombasa.


The funny thing about Kenya’s extremely patriotic corporate bosses is that when they want to show their social responsible side, they take their staff to climb Mount Kilimanjaro yet they have never attempted to scale Mount Kenya or even Ngong Hills.


Kenyans are so infatuated with Tanzania that when you tell a Kenyan sports personality that Harambee Stars have never beaten Nigeria’s Super Eagles in 14 encounters, the two-word response will have Tanzania in it.


However, there is a flipside to this mésaliance between Kenya and Tanzania. When you are tired of the company of Kenyan women and their weaves, just use Tanzania, women and nice in the same sentence — and you will be drenched with the alcohol you spent your money on.


Since I had changed my subject and was not supposed to be writing about Tanzania, I should stop and head to my new subject, the dim Harambee Stars who lost to Nigeria early last week and who have two points from four World Cup Qualifiers with a little likelihood of the points tally increasing tomorrow in Malawi.


It is simple. Teams that prepare the way Harambee Stars do never win no matter how patriotic their fans are. As a matter of fact, teams whose federations forget about them until the last minute rarely win and that is what happened when Kenya played against Nigeria.

A few weeks before the Nigerians landed, Football Kenya Federation was out with a begging bowl, launching a fund-raising initiative through Friends of Harambee Stars in order to help the national team prepare for its fixtures. It was as if they had just told about the match and now had to hurry and put their finances in order.

There are many Kenyans who keep hoping against hope that one day, just one bright day, by some stroke of good luck, Harambee stars will win a match and probably qualify for a regional tournament. Personally, I am very realistic, and I am sure that is not likely to happen, and two columns ago, I argued as much.

You can shout yourself hoarse that I am not an expert on matters football, but this is common sense and the poor results are there for the whole world to see.



To make matters worse, there will be no improvement as long as the federation sits back for months on end then wakes up a few days before match days, to start looking for funds to meet the team’s financial needs.


Oh, if Kenyans are wondering how worse off Tanzania is in the World Cup qualifiers, it is second in its group with six points from four matches — and Tanzanians neither care nor worry about you as much as you do about them because they have numerous problems, and you are not one of them.