Educate Kenyans and their sportsmen on doping.

A marathon has no half –times, no time outs and no substitutes. It must be must be the only true sport! Kenyan athletes have conquered the world by easily setting and breaking world records when it comes to long distance races. A combination of hard work, talent, mursik and the benefit of high altitude have favoured our athletes to win the races. We have now a number of high altitude training camp in Iten where athletes from all over the world train. Sadly, we have started reading about involvement by our athletes in this ‘’sports vice’’ called doping the other day.

 Doping did not start yesterday; it has been with us since the days of ancient Greece. Perhaps what has changed only is the level of sophistication as noted by Matthew Hard his paper titled Caught in the net: Athletes’ Rights and the World Anti-doping Agency. Where he states that ‘’...the evolution of doping substances and techniques has been tremendous. What began as “cocktails” comprised of heroin, cocaine, alcohol, and nitroglycerin, has evolved to designer steroids, gene therapy, and sophisticated masking techniques. The rise of doping coincided with pharmaceutical developments following the Second World War.52 Athletes soon discovered the physical benefits of substances originally intended for restorative medical purposes, such as human growth hormone (“HGH,” used to treat patients with deficient pituitary glands and lacking growth hormone) and erythropoetin (“EPO,” used to treat kidney disease and anaemia). Athletes weighed the potential impact a substance may have had on health against the impact it would have had on performance and made a calculated decision.’’

Though doping is as old the sports it is associated with, we remain ignorant about it as a nation. To begin with, most of our sports men and women do not even know what they are entitled to when they sign contracts with different clubs they play for or their sponsors. They always end up getting a raw deal. As a country we also do not care much about our sports heroes. A combination of these factors becomes a toxic mix when doping is thrown in. The implications of doping are far reaching. We have witnessed our athletes suffer the ban silently, forgotten. A red card in most sports is devastating enough for any sports man or woman. Being banned from any competition for two years because of doping for any sportsman or woman is a death sentence. It gets worse due to being branded a cheat especially if the sportsman or woman had no knowledge of what she ingested or was injected with. Things get even more difficult where millions of money is lost in sponsorship and endorsement deals. Most of the sponsors do not want to associate with such sportsmen or women.

Unfortunately, their agents, coaches or doctors who might have lured them to ingest or inject banned substances are let off the hook. This cannot be ruled our especially with the huge money the races attract nowadays. Yet the ministry of sports and the various sports federations who are supposed to work together to educate Kenyans about doping and its implications in sports are only interested in making a quick buck at the expense of the sportsmen and women. To date no robust attempts have been made especially by the concerned ministry to address this issue apart from forming a task force which came up with a report whose veracity has already been questioned in several forums. However, the Anti-doping task Force led by Prof Moni Wekesa is a good starting step in the right direction. Notably the bill it proposed to deal with doping is something I hope all the parties concerned will fine tune and ensure it is enacted into law soonest for the benefit of our sports  and the country at large.

TRAGEDY OF THE KENYAN NARRATIVE.

                     

We have been told on numerous occasions that we need a new Kenyan narrative. I agree. It is not in doubt that we need a new Kenyan story. What is in doubt is the sincerity of the different speakers who have told us this. Their candidness is in doubt because of the timing and their reasons for the call for a new story. The call is mostly made when we are undergoing a national crisis and the nation is perceived as divided between the tribes of the protagonists. The people calling for a narrative are usually supporting either of the two sides. The speakers never tell us what the old story is all about and why we need to discard it or edit it. The speakers also have never told us who is supposed to tell this narrative. The net effect then is that a very legitimate concern is left unaddressed and treated as useless political rhetoric.

 The argument has always been that we have heard the same false story as a nation for far too long. A false tale reminding us that we are one nation of peace, love and unity where we have equal opportunities. A false tale that diagnoses ethnicity as the disease that is killing us when in fact it is the diagnosis itself that is the disease. What is the true Kenyan story then? Who needs to tell it? Do we need a new story? These are simple questions and there is the risk of oversimplification when answering them in an article like this.

We had a Kenyan story before the colonialists arrived. They found us with our story and since they did not understand it, they recreated it and used it to subjugate us and see us through their colonial prejudices. Later when they went away, our forefathers forgot to tell us our story and told us what the colonialists had forced down our throats. We believed our forefathers and with the excitement because of the new found independence we were not vigilant enough to reread it and demand for our authentic story.

The story we have now is being narrated by bigoted politicians not wananchi.They have simply rewritten the fake story our forefathers told us.The plot and characters have changed and new themes included with the earlier ones being amplified and some deleted. The politicians tell the story depending on the prevailing political climate of the day. What we have is not even a story but ramblings which should excite the silly only.What we have is a tale of ‘’ us’’ versus ‘’them’’ when a story should only have us.We have ‘’us’’ and ‘’them’’ yet the story does not tell us who ‘’them’’ and ‘’us’’ are. The tragedy is that we have all swallowed the bait because we are a servile, unquestioning people like the characters in the fake story we are told. More tragic is that we are aware that the story is false and we need a new true story but we are not willing to write the new story.

However, after we get the true new story we must also ask if the audience will be ready to listen.We are need of a compelling story if we want the audience to listen. Compelling means all of us can share in its joy and sadness and can see ourselves in the story.Compelling because it connects with our emotions as a nation.Compelling because we can see our values in the story.Compelling because it is an authentic story that binds as even as it recognise our differences.Compelling because we know the story will be retold to our children without changing the plot and the themes to suit the story teller of the time.