There’s nothing better I can do for you this Friday than let you click the arrow above. At a time of poisonous tribal discord that’s disturbing my sleep with apocalyptic futures, I give you REFUGE!
How perfectly named! Nairobi’s new Kid Band. Not a Boy Band because the inspirational lead singer isn’t. Actually it should be called the UN Band. All call Nairobi home, but only one, Ike, was born in Kenya. The others hail from Belgium, Eritrea, the US, Ethiopia and Bolivia. Nairobi? Are you kidding me?
I’m way too old to recognize this. When I was these kids’ age, I walked out of the Bruner’s Hotel in the sleepy little town of Nairobi trying not to return the angry looks from every pair of eyes I passed, all staring me down as the white face of a presumed colonial.
Although the foundations were radically different the sting of poisonous tribalism that divides America today was something as a twenty-year old white man I sorely felt when I dared to walk the streets of Nairobi.
And I was smart enough not to blame them. The colonial era was still fresh. The British killings and subjugation still haunted every memory. That, of course, makes it different from today’s division which is caused by competing social policies and death-throe struggles to retain power.
But it’s still tribalism. And this collection of mostly but not all young expats who embrace Nairobi as their home is the type of explosive innocence that we so desparately now need from youth to wash our ugly prejudices away.
Sing, kids, but vote, too.