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{
    "id": 600344,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/600344/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 76,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Korir",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 1356,
        "legal_name": "Wesley Kipchumba Korir",
        "slug": "wesley-kipchumba-korir"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Hon. Deputy Speaker for giving me a chance to contribute to this Bill that has a constitutional timeline. I thank the people who made the Constitution and realised the importance of protecting our cultures and making sure that they become part of us and live with us for generations to come. The first thing that we need to start with is to encourage the county governments to build cultural centres. Many speakers have talked about having cultural days in our counties where people can showcase their cultures. Hon. Deputy Speaker, the best part about it is creating those cultural centres which most of us will think that we are creating for foreign tourists. Those will be good for our children. Many people are moving away from the rural areas to cities. You have children in the city who do not know anything about where you came from or about your culture, but when we create those cultural centres in our counties, children from the cities can go back to the countryside and learn about their cultures. That is the best way to raise the next generation. I know young men will say that we are in the 21st Century and we have to move with the trend. When I was young, we used to be told that: “ Muacha mila ni mtumwa ”. If you leave your traditions, you become a servant. That is what we have become. We have become people who do not know where they came from. We need continuity, but our children will never learn our cultures if we do not have a place for them to see their parents’ culture. Some of us grew up in grass-thatched houses. Nowadays, it is difficult to see those grass- thatched houses and they are disappearing. But we want to tell our children where we came from, how we grew up and how we got where to we are. If we do not have those cultural centres, it will be very difficult to do that. We need to protect our culture and traditions, so that they are not used even at international courts of law. We have the International Criminal Court (ICC) case, for example. I was sad when I was listening to the ICC case using the Kalenjin culture of circumcision as a way of incriminating our Deputy President. They said that he is the one who was organizing those events and it was criminal. That is not a criminal offence. It is something that we, as the Kalenjin Community, are proud of. It is a way of becoming a man. It is not a way of becoming warriors or fighters. We need to put a clause in this Bill that provides that our cultures cannot be used against us in any court of law in this world. Our Deputy President should not be accused about such things. That should not be used anywhere in the world. That is our culture. The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}