Philip Ochieng: I am a patriot and that's why I won't leave the Luo alone Posted By : Philip Ochieng
My education did not prepare me to swim with the current, to dance with the mob, to wallow in ethnic thought incest. Among my earliest teachers in the values of independent thinking was a Luo called Bethwell Alan Ogot, Kenya's most eminent historian today. In his recent book, "A History of the Luo-speaking Peoples of Eastern Africa ," Prof Ogot shows that, in tradition, the Luo were never bogged down in the intellectual in-breeding which today afflicts even the most "degreed" Luo mind and prohibits even the most innocuous criticism of the paramount chief. In his letter (Sunday Nation, January 31), William Ochieng of Maseno epitomises this incestuous ethnic self-righteousness. ( READ: Philip Ochieng should leave the Luo alone) If this is the same William Ochieng we know as a professor of history, his ethnic bigotry is as sad as Ernest Renan's ? a French historian notorious for his insolence on the Jews. For it deems that the Ruoth (king) or Daker Madit ? t...