I said the pledge. Two days a week I said the pledge, and later, in a different time and place, I taught the pledge. Right hand on my breast, my heart, face lifted in a pose of perfect patriotism and inside, intensely glowing with the demonstration of national pride, I said the pledge.

Read more from L. Akitelek Papakemus here.

It is clear that the time has come for us to stop taking Kenya for granted, that instead we must make a passionate and compelling case for it.

We now have to argue ourselves and our compatriots into the idea of Kenya; to persuade ourselves of, and to think about, more deeply and with more clarity than we have ever had to summon before, the merits of this nebulous entity that we call home.

We now have to fight for it; the honeymoon, such as it was, is over. Before we do that, we had better know what we are talking about. It is important to remember that no identity is fixed, no way of being oneself immortalised in stone. Every morning, when we wake up, each one of us has to remember who we are, and act accordingly, gathering our recollection of self from memories, and dreams, from half-forgotten quarrels and recollections of things overheard, from our yearnings and loves and dislikes. We piece these little shards of reflected, refracted and remembered things together again every morning, to become ourselves.