Every Kenyan Should Read This.

kenyans, the desire for change, and the family system: the idea that private authority structures train people for public authority structures.

Kenyans are not going to change. Kenya might, but not Kenyans. At least not in the way people like to imagine. Change is always spoken about as if it is something waiting to happen, as if it is a natural evolution that will eventually arrive if we complain loudly enough. But that is not how systems work. And that is not how people work. We may change, but only if we understand something far more uncomfortable than corrupt leaders or failed institutions. We have to understand the system that trained us to behave the way we do long before we ever encountered the government.

Since the floods, I have noticed the familiar rise of frustrated Kenyans lamenting about how the government does not care about them, how the country is dwindling, how leaders are incompetent, corrupt, and heartless. The outrage is loud, emotional, and for a moment it feels collective. But this pattern is not new. It happened during the protests. It happened during the floods two years ago. It happened during previous elections. And it will happen again soon enough. Kenyans complain, then forget, then remember, and the cycle continues. Outrage rises like a wave and then quietly recedes back into daily life. Once you start recognizing these patterns, you begin to realize something unsettling: this rhythm is not accidental. The complaining followed by inaction, the momentary anger followed by return to normalcy: it is a cycle that sustains itself. Complain, cleanse, repeat.

The roots of this pattern are deeper than politics. They are embedded in the family system. I remember during the protests someone mentioning that authority structures in society often mirror the family unit. That the same dynamics we experience with parents are reproduced in schools, workplaces, and eventually in the state itself. That observation was correct, but it did not quite go far enough. Because it is not just the structure that is replicated; it is the psychological patterns that people learn inside the family that later become the blueprint for how they relate to power.

Most of us grow up in families. Not everyone, but enough people, that the family unit becomes the first institution we ever belong to. It is our first exposure to authority, loyalty, punishment, belonging, and shame. Within a family there are leaders, the parents, and there are citizens, the children. There are rules, spoken and unspoken. There are roles assigned to each person. There are goals the family claims to pursue. Everyone is expected to perform their role while respecting the rules so that the family can achieve those goals. And because this system is introduced to us when we are children, it becomes the emotional grammar through which we understand power for the rest of our lives.

Many people will tell you they experienced trauma within their families but that they have forgiven their parents and are now healing while still maintaining the family bond. That narrative is very common. But what people rarely acknowledge is that healing inside the very system that traumatized you is almost impossible unless the entire structure is disrupted and rewritten. Most families never allow that level of disruption. The collective unit resists it. The moment someone challenges the rules, the system moves to correct them: through guilt, shame, pressure, or emotional manipulation, until they fall back into their assigned role. Hence, maintaining the family unit becomes the priority, even if the unit itself is harmful.

So what exactly are these family “goals” that everyone is quietly working to protect? Most families pursue two things above all else: status and belonging. They want to be seen as respectable. They want to feel socially secure. And parents often orchestrate this pursuit in subtle but powerful ways: the neighborhoods they choose to live in, the schools they send their children to, the careers they encourage, the people they socialize with, the holidays they take, the image they present to outsiders. By the time a child grows up enough to question these expectations, the conditioning has already taken root. This is part of why classism in society is so difficult to dismantle; it was not learned in adulthood. It was quietly programmed into us inside the home.

The people who feel this pressure most intensely are those raised in enmeshed familie: homes where individuality is discouraged and the emotional boundaries between members barely exist. Sometimes this takes the form of helicopter parenting, where control is constant and suffocating. Other times it takes the form of emotional absence, where parents are distant and the children spend their lives chasing approval that rarely comes. Ironically, the latter often produces the most obedient participants in the system because the hunger for validation keeps people performing their assigned roles indefinitely. And this is important to remember when we look at our country: the same psychological dynamics are at play.

Inside many families, the reality is messy, tense, and often deeply dysfunctional. But externally, the family maintains a united front. Not because they have to, but because they have been conditioned to. Everyone knows the role they are expected to perform in public. That is why so many families feel strangely artificial. People complain about each other, talk behind each other’s backs, harbor resentment for years: yet they continue attending the same gatherings, smiling in the same photos, and maintaining the illusion that everything is fine. It becomes a kind of emotional pressure cooker where conflict exists but is never allowed to fundamentally change the structure. No, never.

I cannot count how many people I have spoken to who describe their families as manipulative, cruel, or emotionally abusive, only to watch them return to those same families and resume the same roles a few weeks later. The family system is incredibly sticky. It almost operates like a cult. Very few people truly know who they are outside the identity that their family constructed for them. And I mean very few. Yes, it is possible to discover yourself while still being connected to your family, but it requires something most people are not willing to do: refusing to play along with the roles and objectives that maintain the system. Most importantly, without shame or guilt. If you are still performing those roles in order to preserve the collective goals, then what you are maintaining is not authenticity. It is a facade, that will eventually fade if you ever decide to wake up.

Now imagine an entire society where millions of people have grown up inside systems like this: systems that reward obedience, punish disruption, and prioritize collective image over truth. When people raised in such environments encounter abuse in larger systems, like governments, they often fail to recognize it for what it is. Not because they are unintelligent, but because the pattern feels familiar. They have already been trained to survive inside manipulative authority structures.

That’s why every other day when the government harms us we ask “Are we just going to wake up and go to work like nothing happened?” Well, yes Wanja, Kenyans will, because they are used to it.

Kenyans claim they want change. But most Kenyans have never fundamentally challenged the authority structures within their own families. If you cannot challenge the smallest system of power you belong to, how do you challenge the largest one? It becomes almost impossible. Instead, people do exactly what they were trained to do in the family unit: complain, get angry, release the frustration, take bare minimum, and then return to playing their role. Cleanse. Repeat.

Think about what happens when someone in a family refuses their assigned role. The “kind one” stops being kind. The peacemaker stops mediating. The obedient child stops obeying. The family system reacts almost immediately. That person is labeled difficult, disrespectful, rebellious. Suddenly they are treated like an outsider. The collective punishes them because their refusal threatens the stability of the system. And we all know how harshly society judges people who break away from their families. Think about the reaction people have when someone says they no longer speak to their parents. Notice the discomfort on people’s faces. Notice the immediate advice: “But it’s family.” Most people cannot even imagine separating themselves from that structure, so when someone else does it, it unsettles them deeply.

And remember, the family system is highly rewarding if you play along, that is why most people would rather shut up and survive in it. You get support from your parents, your siblings validate you, your uncles and aunts do favors for you etc., So most of us stay in it with the least resistance, hoping that some day, things change. Well, I am here to tell you today, things will never change if you do not do what needs to be done.

Here is the uncomfortable truth: the people capable of dismantling oppressive systems are usually the ones who have already broken away from these family rules. They have already faced the terror of rejection. They have already survived being the outcast. Once you have endured that, the fear of challenging larger systems becomes much smaller. They are the ones who have stepped outside the cult.

And you can see the same dynamic play out nationally. Anyone advocating for a complete overhaul of the political system is dismissed as extreme or unrealistic. Anyone who steps outside the role of the “good, law-abiding citizen” is quickly labeled dangerous. This is why even ideas like tax strikes or radical protest strategies are quickly flagged, silenced, or ridiculed. The public itself participates in maintaining the system.

So Kenyans say they want change, but only the kind of change that does not disrupt their comfort.

Because ultimately the same incentives in the family system are at play. If you continue playing along, you get access to stability: your job, your salary, your house, your car, the possibility of travel, electricity in your home, and money safely sitting in the bank. Breaking the rules threatens all of that. And just like in the family system, stepping out of line can leave you isolated. Alone. And most people are far more afraid of isolation than they are of injustice.

That is why the people who stand alone with placards outside embassies, protesting when nobody else shows up, are often the real fighters. Those are the individuals who have already learned how to exist outside the safety of collective approval. I would not be surprised if many of them were also the rule-breakers in their families.

So yes, Kenyans are heavily manipulated. But manipulation only works when people have been conditioned to accept it. We were trained inside families that normalized obedience to authority, tolerance of dysfunction, and loyalty to systems that harm us. It is not entirely our fault that we inherited these patterns. But we still have a choice about whether we continue repeating them.

Because the alternative is uncomfortable. It requires people to break rules, reject the assigned goals, and pursue justice even when it threatens their sense of belonging or security. Otherwise, we will continue shouting at the top of our lungs every few months while nothing fundamentally changes.

Sometimes I open X and see people loudly calling for protests and I laugh, not because protest is pointless, but because real uprisings rarely begin with announcements. Real change is acted, not declared. Lately we have become a nation that speaks about change endlessly while doing very little to embody it.

Everyday you want to remind people how the government doesn’t care about them, like we know. We have eyes, we can tell. The real question is what are you planning to do about that?

You can insult politicians all you want. You can rage about corruption all you want. But deep down many people already know the truth: they are not planning to disrupt the system that benefits them. The anger will eventually cool. Life will resume. And sorry to burst your bubble but the government knows this and that is why they are moving the way they are moving. They know that Kenyans are too obedient to the system and they will wait for a far away 2027 to challenge the system in a way that doesn’t disrupt their comfort zones. They know this! They do.

Because people still care about the goals within this system: status, comfort, security, and upward mobility. And how do you dismantle a system whose rewards you still desire? How do you overthrow a structure you are still participating in?

Most people do not truly want change. They simply want things to not become so bad that they personally suffer.

And if you have never learned how to stand up to manipulation within your own family system, then standing up to manipulation from the state becomes almost unimaginable. The training happened early. The obedience was rehearsed for years.

That is why the pattern continues.

And that is why it feels so perfectly designed.

So the next time you feel the urge to complain about the government, please don’t. Honestly, don’t. Especially if deep down you already know you are not planning to do anything to change the situation. You can lie to everyone but yourself. Outrage without intention is just performance, and we already have an abundance of that.

In fact, I have more respect for the people who simply do not talk about politics at all. Most of them understand something many of us refuse to admit: they know they are not planning to disrupt the system, and they do not pretend otherwise. There is a strange honesty in that silence. Because performative anger does nothing except add more noise to an already noisy room. Sometimes it is better to remain quiet than to become one more voice shouting into the air while nothing actually moves.

Yours Truly, lettersbyjoy.

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