Leaders should build history Kenya will be proud to read

Many Kenyans think history is what dead stones remember. Greece recently taught me that history is what living leaders write every day. In 2025, Greece recorded nearly 38 million inbound visitors, many walking through preserved memories.

During the same period, Kenya welcomed about 2.5 million tourists. Standing at the Acropolis, near the Areopagus where the Apostle Paul spoke, I asked myself what Kenya is writing. Paul converted very few people in Athens. Many mocked him, some listened, and a few believed, including Dionysius and Damaris.

He then moved to Corinth, where he met Aquila and Priscilla, Jews forced from Rome by Emperor Claudius, and worked as a tentmaker while preaching and winning multitudes. He carried the truth without entitlement, accepted rejection without bitterness, and built community through labour, patience, and conviction.

Leaders should hear that. A public office without honest service becomes a monument to pride, but humble service becomes a road others can walk. Greece preserves stone, memory, and meaning so power can be judged after it has passed. Kenya must know that today’s decisions will become tomorrow’s tour, textbook, song, wound, or warning.

Greece also reminded me that distance carries memory. The marathon began with a messenger running 40km from Marathon, where I visited, to Athens. London 1908 stretched the race to 42.195 kilometres, which later became standard. When Sebastian Sawe ran 1:59:30 in London, Kenya saw that history favours those who prepare when nobody is clapping.

At the picturesque Corinth Canal, opened in 1893 by cutting 6.3 kilometres through rock, I saw what serious nations do. They do not only announce. They plan, dig, finance, correct, and maintain. Even the Acropolis survived because ancient builders respected stone, geometry, wind, and earth. Technology existed then because seriousness did.

Kenya is now writing under rain, fear, and hope. Along the Mwingi-Garissa border, communities clashed as insecurity paralysed the highway. Heavy rains turned roads, homes, and farms into rivers. Our contradiction is tearful and painful. We cry when drought comes and when floods come, because rain is not yet harvested, stored, and guided as wealth.

These are not passing incidents but warnings. Boundaries ignored today become graves tomorrow. Social challenges must be addressed before rumors become crowds. A leader who delays justice is not neutral. He is choosing the history that children will inherit.

Kenya remains in severe water stress, below the 1,000 cubic meters per person benchmark, as our water agencies seek an additional 148.6 million cubic meters of storage.

Athens receives far less rain than many parts of Kenya, yet it brings water from 217 kilometres away through reservoirs, tunnels, and aqueducts. Every dam, pan, roof tank, restored wetland, protected catchment, and unclogged drain can feed households, not conferences. A mother displaced by floods does not need speeches after the rain. She needs planning before the rain.

Yet hope still speaks. In Kaptagat, Hillary Kiplagat Kibiwott planted 23,326 trees in 24 hours, almost one seedling every four seconds. But seedlings need guardians, water, land security, and budgets, because planting without survival is an empty ceremony. Over 2.6 million Kenyans registered to vote. One seedling anchors soil. One ballot anchors dignity. Leadership must protect both.

As I have always insisted, leadership does not create value. It protects, enables, or destroys it. Citizens must reject hate, plant trees, clear drains, vote wisely, and keep the peace. Youth and women's groups must map grazing routes, water points, flood zones, and degraded hills.

Counties must settle boundaries, enforce land use, and fund dams, drainage, and early warning. National leaders must finance storage, police fairly, protect the vote, and punish corruption without regard to tribe, party, or friendship.

When Paul left Athens for Corinth, he did not carry bitterness. He carried purpose and laboured. Leaders must do the same: turn rejection into reform, fear into justice, rain into water, ballots into dignity, and promises into monuments worth visiting. History will not ask who shouted loudest. It will ask who did right when people were waiting. Think green. Act green.