Our Country Is We; We Are Our Country

By Gabriel Kucdit Kachuol, Nairobi, Kenya

Our country is we

We are our country;

Whatever our country is today,

Whether it is in chaos or in peace,

It is a mirror-image reflecting our own faces;

Can each one of us ask self:

If my country were like me, what kind of country’s it be?

A country is as peaceful as the citizens in it.

A country bleeds because the people stab it.

Our country is crying because we hurt it,

Our youth are dying because we use them as weapons in war.

One thing is certain: our country needs peace.

War, disease, poverty, ignorance afflicts our country,

They afflict and torment us,

Our country is we,

We are our country

Our country is questing for peace and Oneness;

This quest is a quest for national integrity and philosophy,

It is a struggle and quest for our humanity;

It is a struggle and quest for our purpose of life.

It is a quest for freedom and dignity,

It is a quest for identity and values.

–

Our country’s struggle and quest for peace is right and just

But we must pause and think about our methodology.

What is our approach to peace?

How are we searching for peace?

Our methodology must be guided by the nature of peace.

What our conception of peace?

Is peace a thing?

Is peace an entity to be sensed by our five external cognitive senses?

In our search for peace, 

Do we expect to find peace and 

When we have found it touch, smell, hear, taste, see it?

Do we really believe peace is something to be found somewhere?

Can peace be forced or imposed?

Is peace about mere paper-agreements-and-signatures?

Is peace about slogans: One People, One Nation; Unity In Diversity

Or it is about dutiful-respect and constancy in respect of what we mean by these

Because of the conviction that we are our country,

–

If we search for peace and we don’t find it,

We search for it in the wrong places, 

We expect it from the wrong people,

We delude ourselves about the nature of peace.

Let me tell you what I think peace is NOT;

Peace is not a thing.

It is not a being of its own.

Peace is nothing without us.

Peace is not something somewhere.

We can’t perceive it with our external cognitive senses;

For it’s not a corporeal entity;

It is not a thing outside of us.

No one can give us peace:

Neither AU, IGAD, TROIKA, US, UN, EAC,

Nor KiiRiek, CiriLong or Lam Akol or Bakosoro, can us peace give.

Can lambs and sheep expect peace from jackals and hyenas?

Peace is not apart from us,

If our country is mired in intractable throes,

It is because we have let selfish-ego replace peace within us.

–

We delude ourselves when we think of peace as external reality.

Let me tell you what peace IS;

Peace is an inner attitude;

It is a state of the mind that helps us decide ‘to be or not to be.’

We have the gift of the mind,

The power of reasoning in order that we become something more;

When we have no peace of mind, we only exist but we don’t truly live.

Peace is internal energy that glows in our relationships,

Peace is tolerance of those who hurt us,

Peace is a medicine to the wounds

Peace is forgiveness and acceptance of others as they are

And not as we expect or want them to be.

Peace is love that begins where our ego ends.

Peace is water that quenches the fire of hate and violence.

Peace rejoice in diversity, not in adversity

For in our diversity, we enrich each other with our uniqueness.

Peace is faith that gives us certitude and patience with each other,

Peace is a fidelity to the promises and commitment to the demands of service

For our country and people.

Peace is a social value realised only in sharing with others.

Life in the society, our natural necessity, is impossible without peace;

–

We think discriminatively of each other

That is why we don’t have peace in our country

To have peace in our country starts with us.

The most precious gift we can gift our country is peace,

Which inside of us is as limited as to the limit of our being.

We are neither going to find peace in the hotels in Addis Ababa or Khartoum,

Nor are we not going to pray our country into peace in Vatican

But we can have it by a change in our attitudes and mindset.

There is no amount of prayer that can substitute for right thinking.

We are what we think NOT what we think we are.

We are today where our thinking about each other has brought us.

We will be tomorrow where our thinking about each other takes us;

For we are thinking things (Descartes’ Cogito ergo Sum)!

Whose thoughts are invisible power that governs us

And to which we all pay ready submission.

Those about whom we hold prejudices,

To them do we emote rancour;

And those about whom we think positively,

So will positivity radiate in our relationship;

So will peace in our country.

Peace in a diverse country is not just absence of war

But a result of constructive thinking and living,

It is a result of intelligent effort to resolve issues with love

For the people and country.

–

Our country yearns and longs for peace days and nights

But there seems to be no connection and relation with peace.

To have peace back in our country,

Let us love our country;

He loves his country best who strives to make it best,

Ask we not what our country can do to us

But what to our country can us do, 

For its growth in peace and democracy?

Let us be optimistic about our country,

For which many of our great men and women have laid down their precious lives;

Let us read with enthusiasm the many amazing stories

Of our veterans, lost boys and lost girls, and retell them with equal verve.

–

Our country is our home,

And home is always home,

There is no place like home.

However well we may pay the rent, tuition fees,

We may from our neighbours never get the respect we deserve.

Thus, the need to build our home.

Building our home is a big task;

The home must be a comfortable place for everyone to dwell and find rest;

Home is a nook where we take refuge after toil and moil of the day outside.

There is no shortcut to building a beautiful and cosy home.

Building it requires vision,

Prepared as a project by an architect

And the mission to accomplish it,

It needs our cooperation as workers;

Each of us must love and accept the other;

Each one of us must know his capacity and limits;

Each of us must have trust in himself and play his own role.

This way, we will our country build,

To be our abode of intimacy and peace;

To be the shield not only from hurt,

But from fear, doubt and insecurity.

Let us be revolutionaries of love and peace

And take our humanity and country back.

Let us be the change we want to see;

We are the ones we have been waiting for.

We can our country transform to be what we want it to be.

Our country is a reflection of what we now are;

We are our country, our country is we

Our country is our home 

Home is always home.

There is no place like home.

–

You can reach the poet via his email address: Kucdid Gabriel <kucdidgab@gmail.com>

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