After last August’s Kenyan election results were contested I feared that violence would erupt as it had on several election cycles before. And then my memory played a trick on me — Jan. 6 in D.C. bubbled up in my brain. A comparison between the two elections lay juxtaposed in my mind as I prayed that peace would reign for my Kenyan family, and the violence of the 2020 American election would not be replicated in my part of Africa.

Kenya’s Supreme court ruled that the Kenyan elections had been conducted properly and that the voting machines had not been tampered with. Therefore Mr. William Ruto had won, albeit with just over 50% of the votes cast. His opponent, Raila Odinga — a frequent presidential candidate — was not happy with the court’s decision, but grudgingly accepted its ruling, the hallmark of a democratic system. Kenya was thus spared bloodshed.

I now breathe a sigh of relief — “my Black African brothers have outshined my American countrymen.”

Africans are learning democratic lessons as white nationalists dial back democratic advances won over time. It is quite bizarre to think that in the country where the American Constitution — a most unique document — was penned, it is now being trampled by some.

In the Gettysburg address Abraham Lincoln talks of “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” Today it unfortunately seems to fail in some Americans’ imagination. The new rendition? Government of some people, for some people and by some people.

But returning to Kenya, democratic self-rule has traveled a long journey, going from an English colony to now, an independent democratic nation. Until 1963, Kenya was a British colony where white settlers rode roughshod over my people.

We fought the British over the “White Highlands” — the name white settlers gave to the land expropriated from us. From 1952 to 1963, Britain waged a brutal war against Kikuyu Mau Mau fighters. Africans were tortured with many Nazi techniques — concentration camps for all Kikuyu, and true gulags for those suspected of taking the Mau Mau oath. The British imperial army tortured, raped and killed Africans and behaved in truly barbaric ways; destroying all documentation of that period as they exited Kenya.

Those of us who were born elsewhere may physically live here, in America, but our thoughts and minds live in many places, including where we were born. A continuous comparison and contrast of what we left behind to what and where we live now is a common occurrence.

It’s within that context that I viewed this latest African nation’s election. I am happy it turned out better than I had anticipated. Far too often Africa has been looked at by Americans with a jaundiced eye. This last election should silence the skeptics.

As an American, I have come to look at my country’s — America’s — politics with trepidation. I am not alone in fearing what tomorrow might bring; what fantastic imaginings grow in some of our fellow citizens’ hearts and minds.

If Kenya can have a relatively peaceful government transition, surely, we who have a 225-year history of government of the people, by the people and for the people can continue to follow some basic democratic tenets?

Democracy is like a seed. It grows if planted and watered on fertile ground. And like a plant in the ground, neglect leads to its withering away. Such is what is happening in Western democratic societies. The soil that nurtured democracy’s growth is tired and arid; the result is what we are all witnessing — a breaching of the democratic castle.

There are questions we ask ourselves, mystified by the spectacles that we witness every day — of people who have known prosperity beyond imagination; and have more than the rest of the world, and yet, have so little perspicacity.

I’m reminded that discord and violence in American politics are as old as the Republic itself.

Still, what the rest of the world has known of America was an ideal democratic system. Some continue attempting to copy the one-man/one-woman, one-vote system.

I keep choosing my impression of a “good America” that lived in my heart prior to my arrival here.

Pius Kamau, M.D., general surgery, is president of the Aurora-based Africa America Higher Education Partnerships; co-founder of the Africa Enterprise Group and president of the Consortium of African Diasporas in the U.S.A. He has been a National Public Radio commentator and a blogger, and is author of “The Doctor’s Date with Death.”