The land that flows with milk and honey

Our flight is scheduled for the next half an hour at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. We sit and wait in one of the lounges as we chat ecstatically with my fellow students with whom we were awarded scholarships owing to our excellent performance and our relentless love for Chinese culture and language.

Everyone is delighted and looks forward to take a step into the fairyland that our Chinese teachers have talked about and we ourselves checked on the internet, a land laden with all sophistication of the twenty first century. From a tech savvy population to bustling mega cities flowered with breathtaking sky scrappers dotting almost every street within the cities, a population of diligent and hardworking people always seeming content yet ambitious in their pursuit of even achieving more glory for their nation.

Our tour guide emerges from one of the departing terminals at the airport and gestures to us that our flight is ready and we should for it in a couple of minutes. We are zealous yet full of anxiety as we pass through the check-in-desk and onto the departure lounge. The guide takes us through the basic instructions that we are supposed to adhere to once in the plane as few or none of us has ever boarded a plane even for local bound destinations.

Eventually we are ushered onto the gate that leads to the departing plane and much to our felicitousness a 787 Dream liner awaits us. It is the new plane at the airport that boasts of numerous sophisticated features that only the high and mighty people with deep pockets can afford its state of the art luxuries but alas fate had brought us together. We climb up the ramp and those before me enter but before I could step on the gangway to join the rest of my friends, I feel someone tap my back and when I turn around to see who it is, it is my fellow course mate who had come over to borrow my practical Chinese reader textbook in my room. I was filled with much brouhaha at that moment in time only to realize that I had had a nap after having had multiple classes during the day. It is a dream that I intended to relive once again in the future of reality.

China's relationship with Kenya has grown steadily over the years to the mutual benefit of both countries on different fronts especially education, trade and commerce and financial services especially funding to key infrastructural projects for example, road construction, hospitals, schools, sports facilities and power generation. While landmarks such as Moi International Sports Centre and the Thika Superhighway are the beaming indicators of our fruitful cooperation over the last fifty years, new grand projects initiated recently represent a new dimension of continued cooperation structured to elevate the standards of living of ordinary Kenyans.

Social interaction between these two countries has increased exponentially with respect to cooperation in culture, education, media, health and non-governmental organizations leading to mutual understanding between Kenyans and their Chinese counterparts. It was only last year that we got the honor and privilege as Confucius institute's students to attend a Chinese cultural and arts showcasing at the Kenyatta International Conference Center in Nairobi with all expenses catered for by our Confucius institute's coordinators. Additionally, media organizations like Xinhua, China Central Television, China Radio International and China Daily have established their African headquarters in Nairobi. This has further dented the barrier in information sharing between the two countries.

China has also partnered with local universities to further integrate Chinese culture and language into Kenyan people with currently three Confucius institutes which is remarkably the highest number of such institutes in the region and with the student population skyrocketing every academic year as students rush to grab the olive extended to by the Chinese government through Hanban the Confucius institute headquarters in China. Moreover, the number of annual Chinese government scholarships has ballooned in recent years thereby enabling needy but disadvantaged students the opportunity of a lifetime by enrolling them at ivy league universities in China which could have only remained a pipe dream.

China and Kenya international relations have soared owing to the fact that they have supported each other on many fronts. China supported Kenya's political outcome ahead of the 2012 general election against the other major international leaders who approached the issue with threats and caution rather than based on the democratic decision of Kenyans. Kenya has also had China as a friend in need and in deeds other than political rhetoric on the ICC issue and has pledged to continue to provide relentless support to Kenya on the issue.

Although China is much developed than Kenya, which intends to become a middle income country by the year 2030, both countries have a shared dream of prosperity in the long run with china striving to realize the ‘Chinese Dream' of national rejuvenation and Kenya exponentially advancing towards its year 2030 goal whose hallmarks are prosperity, self-reliance and national development hence both dreams are greatly intertwined and their burgeoning cooperation would not have come at a better time.

As students of Confucius institutes we intend to further deepen the Sino Kenyan bilateral relationship onto another remarkable level that will see the ties of both countries further enhanced. Particularly as byproducts of this china Kenya relationship, we stand at a better historical juncture at inculcating Chinese language and culture to our fellow countrymen as well as serving as a bridge between china and Kenya. Furthermore as the author of the Book of Changes put it, "as heaven maintains vigor through movements, a gentle man should constantly strive for self perfection".