KCB, the Media Owners Association and the Safaricom Foundation this past week launched “Kenyans for Kenya” – an appeal to ordinary Kenyans to raise half a billion shillings to help mitigate the effects of the drought in northern Kenya.

It’s not clear whether they were aware that “Kenyans for Kenya” was originally a campaign launched by Kikuyus for Change to create a sense of national purpose and solidarity in the polarised aftermath of the 2007 general election and the violence that followed. But it is clear their motivation comes from the same place – a sense of outrage that Kenyans are dying (this time from starvation) and a sense of moral duty to help stop those deaths.

But beyond acknowledging the effort we should also ask ourselves some harder questions: What does it take to move us? And why does it take so long to be moved? It is not like the urgency of the situation was unclear. Our meteorological department had told us that this was the worst drought in 60 years. The humanitarian and relief organisations – international and national – had been ringing the bells for at least a couple of months. The media – again, both international and national – had been sharing those so familiar and yet so terrible images of people reduced to skin and bone.

Maybe that was the problem – the familiarity of those terrible images. They are not new to us. They are like an almost ever-present backdrop to our lives to which we have become so accustomed that we ignore it. That is why our own government’s response seems so ploddingly, routinely unbothered. There is drought. People are dying of hunger up north. Send them some maize. Discuss where to get the maize. Make the deals (and the inevitable profits from the deals for big brokers and middlemen). Expect that some of it will end up off the supply route, being sold instead of distributed. Profess shock. Produce the figures to show that, regardless, the government has done what it can.

Life is cheap. And so we are lethargic – until the numbers become too large to ignore.

This too explains the otherwise incomprehensible situation at our border with Somalia. Kenyans are dying of hunger – that fact is unremarkable. So why would the fact that Somalis are also dying of hunger be remarkable to us? And why would that allow Somalis special dispensation to cross over into our territory? They can do what we are doing here on their side of the border. Anyone who does find their deaths remarkable can do what they want to do about it on the other side of the border. Why here?

It seems callous – but that is the basic and underlying perception of the problem. We are unmoved – why would we be otherwise? Compound that perception with other facts. Refugees, particularly those of Somali extraction, are a security problem, all carrying with them the noxious whiff of Al Shaabab. Conveniently ignoring the fact that the majority of Somali refugees are seeking refuge because of Al Shaabab and the huge mess that is the so-called Somali state. And that we are obligated to receive asylum-seekers.

“Kenyans for Kenya” has forced us to do so with respect to our own deaths by starvation. What will do so with respect to our neighbours’ deaths by starvation? “Kenyans for Somalia?” “Kenyans for Africa?” What?

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* Muthoni Wanyeki is the outgoing executive director of the Kenya Human Rights Commission.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.