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{
    "id": 600400,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/600400/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 132,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Tong’i",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 2611,
        "legal_name": "Richard Nyagaka Tongi",
        "slug": "richard-nyagaka-tongi"
    },
    "content": "a country, we have a duty to bequeath our children some values which have worked well for the community. Last evening, I was sharing a conversation with my little boy who will be turning six years by the end of the year. Just because he knows how to turn on a computer and use it and change channels in a TV, he thinks he is cleverer than those of us who do not know how to use it. If we had these values, then they would know education without values and character is not enough. You do not succeed as an individual just because you know how to use a few technical gadgets. One needs to know what the community, the country and the culture needs. This Bill has come in handy; it is timely. We have lost it as a community and this can be seen in the way we handle our parents today. Even the good Bible says that we should respect our parents. It is the only commandment in the Bible with a blessing and a condition that when you respect your parents, your days on earth will be added. Our youth today handle their parents and seniors with total disrespect. We have failed to pass on the good values of our society which encouraged leaders and the youth to respect elders. It is a good thing to do. This Bill will come in handy to help us respect that. If you look at the traditional foods we are eating today, you will find that they are very good. If you visit America today, you will realise that the traditional food there is more expensive than the genetically modified foods we eat today. If you were to buy the original food grown in an organic way and prepared in a good way, you are very likely to pay a lot of money. I am told that in the White House they only serve organically grown food. Why is it that God gave us nature and good climate which enables us to grow organic foods effortlessly yet we are running away from it? The World Health Organization (WHO) in the last two weeks was very categorical by saying that if you want to live a little bit longer and avoid diseases like cancer and the emerging ones you should go traditional. The traditional food is what we have in abundance in Kenya. If you go back home, you can get that kind of food effortlessly. I like a book written by an author called “Hellen”. She talks very well about traditional foods. She states that if we embrace and eat it, we will become a lot healthier. It would be a good thing for the economy of the country today because we are using a lot of money to treat people who are suffering from conditions which they would have avoided had they embraced what God requires us to eat. In the Kisii tradition, we had traditional surgeons. There was Mzee Nyagoche who would perform an operation on people’s heads. His patients survived, recovered and would go back to work. There was also Pastor Abel Nyakundi who was a great “doctor”. He might not have gone to school, the way we understand it, but he could give medicine which worked very well. Today, if you give our children that kind of medicine which served the community very well, they would think you are bewitching them. It is the same message my colleague was passing on that some communities have embraced the witchcraft concept, which I think has been overtaken by events. Come to think of it, it is not witchcraft. If you are poor and live in a grass-thatched house and something happens which cannot be explained by science, then the next natural thing for people to do is to lynch you and set you ablaze. It is such a painful experience. I hope those things will be addressed once we have this Bill in place. In the Kisii community, we have set up Elders Council, whose main mandate is to pass on values of the society by writing books on what we stood for, how traditional days were 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."
}