I assume a pose that I hope will alert my man to my displeasure with his tribal rant. He doesn't notice. I turn to leave the room, but mid-step I pause, as a thought seemingly irrelevant to the situation crosses my mind: pre-operational irreversibility. I hover for a moment lost and a little confused at my own thought processes, and Alan looks up at me from his position kneeling, where he had been looking under his bed trying to find a pair of socks that I am sure will turn up dirty and frustrate him even more. I can't help him, so I walk away and end up in the middle of the hallway, once again staring into space trying to make sense of that one flash of thought.

I am a kindergarten teacher so a large part of my course work towards my diploma was meant to prepare me to understand development stages in children. My studies have now been fortified by a few months working with 2-6 year old children. Among the things I have learnt is that human beings develop in cognitive processes at varying but generally similar rates. A four year old may or may not understand that two glasses of different shapes may hold the same volume of liquid. However by the time the same child is 8, he should be able to understand this abstract concept and not sulk when his friend gets some juice in a glass of a different shape than the one he gets his juice in. The difficulty he has when he is four is referred to as pre-operational irreversibility.

So I struggle to understand why my mind would bring this concept up while my man is busy recounting the ills the world metes on him. It comes to me just before Alan exclaims with relief when he finally finds a clean pair of socks, in the dirty clothes basket.

Human beings tend to find negative prejudice against them abhorrent, but will likely not even notice when they are displaying negative prejudice against someone else. Humans will justify their actions or way of thinking by presenting the prejudice they feel in an 'acceptable' form. It is acceptable, when they can say that they have known people from a certain group who fit the stereotype attributed to that group and also acceptable when they can find another reason to discriminate against someone, other than the fact that that person belongs to a certain group, even if that reason doesn't quite fit the frame.

Alan is angry because his boss has been exerting a lot of pressure on him, and not recognizing his efforts. Alan is convinced that this is because his boss belongs to the 'other' ethnicity. He says he has noticed that the boss quite openly favours another team member who just happens to belong to the boss' ethnicity. He even overheard the boss refer to Alan's ethnicity as a 'band of pretentious slackers'. Vaguely, I remember Alan saying of my ethnicity, (yes, we are sprung from different ethnic backgrounds), as a 'band of thieving, conniving, materialistic, individualistic something'. He was quick to turn to me and say, "Not you babe. I think you are ok."

Well, I will not completely disregard my man's fears. It has been a very difficult time for him lately. And it is possible, even likely that his boss is prejudiced. But could it also be that the boss is being influenced by something other than ethnicity. I want to ask Alan, could it be that your boss is under pressure too? It has been a pretty bad start to the first quarter. Most companies are under pressure to devise plans that will make up for the initial loss or lack of profit.

Or could it be, love forbid, that Alan himself has been so influenced by his own tribal prejudice that he has been performing at less than par? The favoured team member from the other ethnicity could, in all truth, be performing better and earning credit on merit.

I can't say that. Because even I know that whether it is admitted openly or not, workplaces and most communities in Kenya do function, nice and easy on the outside, but with a lot of bigotry further in. Alan may indeed be a sufferer of the negative and very painful side of this. He may have displayed his own bigotry at some other point in time. That doesn't matter now. What matters is that I am going to go back to him and tell him that I care about him and support him. He has after all chosen to be with me even though I come from the 'other' ethnicity'.

Still, we have to make a decision about how we are going to go forward as a community, as a nation, as Kenyans. Truth, Justice and Reconciliation programs will help to bring out all the murky mess that has been festering inside us all for long. Perhaps we might learn to forgive each other and live with each other with a measure of civility and tolerance. But we can never forget.

So we need to find some way to live with together without destroying each other. Worse would be if we decided to create/maintain economic systems that deliberately limit some community groups. These systems now influence workplaces, supported by nepotistic, ethnocentric favouritism. This systems influence all sectors right up to the top. Then they wreak their influence all the way down to the village level.

So then, now what? I would think about setting up systems of education that promote integration and tolerance. I would think about setting up legislative systems that offer freedom and opportunity to all Kenyans in a naked and transparent manner that serves to shame both the prejudiced and the false witness. I would promote that citizens are taught about the workings of their country, their rights and responsibilities and the legal and political processes that underpin them. And if someone heard me, I would hope that we would all allow these to help us to look at each other with understanding and hope rather than hate and anger.

In the meantime, we can only work to restrain ourselves, to pause and think before we launch into or take on board stereotypical prejudice against someone else, and ask ourselves, ‘Just how would we feel were we offered the same poison in a different glass?'