Scintilla #8: My Tribes

Throughout my young life, I have belonged to several tribes which I have often used to describe myself. This post explicates these tribes.

Prompt:
List the tribes you belong to: cultural, personal, literary, you get the drift. Talk about the experience of being in your element with your tribes.

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Culturally, I belong to the Kikuyu tribe in Kenya. In our country, there are more that 42 tribes which are actually small groupings of people depending on the language they speak, their culture and where they came from historically. I love my tribe, no argument. However, in our country, politics have become a tribal affair. People hate each other just because one comes from a different tribe. In 2007, we had a general election and when a person from my tribe won, other tribes ganged up against the Kikuyu and this caused a lot of civil unrest. Meaning that people fought and people died. With such happenings, it has become more and more difficult to identify with my tribe. It is not that I am not proud of it, it is just that I do not want to be labelled as tribal. It has become very difficult to draw the line between identifying oneself and being tribal. Anyway, I was born a Kikuyu and always will be.

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Personally, I like to attach myself to the optimism tribe. The tribe that looks at the glass half full instead of half empty. I have always known I belonged to this tribe but it has not always been easy attaching to my group. At times, I have been stressed, tearful, sad, lonely and abandoned my tribe. Let me tell you, it is like leaving you family and walking away. When these feelings attack me and all I can see is the negative, it is like am down with the flu. I feel suffocated, I cannot breathe. I know that I have to find my way back to my tribe. 

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There was a time in my life (not too long ago), that I belonged to the brokenhearted tribe. Then I joined the feel sorry for myself tribe. I have also at some point joined the loner tribe. But I always go back home. All these seem foreign to me and I can only pass through them as I find my way to my family. I love my tribe and I am proud to be a member of the optimism tribe.