The cruelty of our civil service is a logic that was built by Lord Cromer, grandfather to Sir Evelyne Baring, the governor of Kenya who oversaw the Mau Mau concentration camps during the 1950s.

The sadism of the civil service and bureaucracy in Kenya has a long history.

Lord Cromer is considered the guru of civil service bureaucracy. He was so instrumental that even the Americans took lessons from him.

LC indirectly argued that civil servants must have no compassion or connection to the people who live where they are sent.

LC said that London must be the center of empire and must dictate how the empire runs. However, civil servants sent to far areas of the world would adopt the "defect" of seeing issues in their local context and forgetting London's interests.

The other thing LC instituted was profile of the hollow, colorless and inhuman bureaucrat. Because the British empire was the appointed incarnation of the Roman Empire, civil servants had to forget their own humanity and lay it at the service of empire.

Another cruelty LC introduced was secrecy and silence. Civil servants were never to reveal their real intentions. They were to avoid being noticed, and they were to avoid putting anything in writing. They were to operate under the radar as much as they could.

We can't speak symbolically because that makes us inaccurate

We can't lament because we're not providing solutions

We can't provide solutions because they will not work

We can't refer to society or trends because that means we're generalizing

We can't speak without providing facts and evidence

We can't be expressive because someone will be offended

How then can we talk in this Kenya?

To get any conversation going in this Kenya, you must be limit yourself to a vary narrow topic, you must present the facts from confirmed sources, you must stick to dictionary and literal meanings, you must not betray any emotion, and everyone must agree with you.

The point of conversation in Kenya is not truth or knowledge.

It's consensus.