The New Kenya

I have been thinking about the New Kenya, the Kenya with a Grand Coalition Government and trying to be happy, but my heart has completely refused to celebrate this New Kenya. In fact, as far as I know my heart, it is still in deep, excruciating mourning. My heart is still bleeding with those who bled; it is still mourning with those who lost their kin and kith; it is still dying with those who died. I want to be allowed to mourn, and nobody should cross my path, as I mourn, lest I crash you in my ire; I refuse to have my tears wiped; let my tears flow; let my sobs flow.

I am still mourning, because the New Kenya has forgotten the tradition of mourning; the New Kenya has abandoned the tradition of funeral and bidding farewell to the departed. Indeed, the New Kenya has forgotten that the spirits of the dead, if not send off well to the ancestral land, will never rest in peace. In fact, they will return to haunt the living in the future.

My beloved country, how can forty precious people be burnt to ashes, in the holy of holies, in the very sanctuary of the Almighty at Eldoret, and the so called New Nation does not even pause to mourn them? How can another 30 plus lives be gutted in a tiny house in Naivasha and this nation does not stop to mourn its precious children? How can we claim to be moral, when what we are doing shortly after these gruesome murders, is clamouring for power, material property, bickering, politickying about 2012 and indulging in the endless historical rivalry as though nothing ever happened? So, tell me why I should not mourn my brothers and sisters? Tell me how my heart will heal, if I have not mourned enough? Tell me why my tears should not be let to flow?

I am mourning, and I have not yet mourned enough. In fact, I want to find out how to mourn properly, loudly and in style. We always do this when a single one of our folks passes on, don't we? In Bungoma where I come from we usually take an average of three days to mourn a beloved one. How long should we take to mourn the more than 80 lives? Multiply this by 3. You get 240 days. This is the least time we can dedicate to mourning the victims who were burnt. We will then minus 80 from 1200, the total number of those killed during the bloodletting that it took to bring the New Kenya to birth; this is the ultimate price paid in cash by sons and daughters of this nation for the New Kenya. I will demand that I be allowed to multiply 1220 by 3 to get the total number of mourning days the New Kenya is supposed to take to mourn its fallen sons and daughters. My brother, sister, you will get a minimum of 10 years mourning period! This is the period I want to be allowed to mourn.

To my style of mourning: first, I want there to be proper naming and listing of my brothers and sisters who died. In our culture, we do not hold a funeral if we have not verified the name and body of the deceased. Then the burial will follow; I want to bury them ceremoniously, as this is my last respect to them. If I do not do this, my memory will not be convinced that he/she died, and therefore, I live in a state of denial all my life. To achieve this, please let me go to the church at Eldoret and erect a plaque or a tall pillar and have all their names curved on it, permanently. Let this church compound be surrendered to me for a memorial park, like the August 7th Nairobi Bomb Blast Memorial, where I will be going annually, during the month of January to commemorate their death, albeit by putting a wreath of red roses at the foot of the plaque, and letting my tears and sobs flow, for ten years. I want this pillar to be there to remind generations to come, of our folly of tribalism and paganism; like in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, we have paid for our feudalism with the blood of our sons and daughters. Yes, let this message be written on the plaque like this: "We paid for our folly of tribalism with the blood of our sons and daughters. Oh, ye generations, learn from this."

I demand to be allowed to errect another pillar at Naivasha and have the names of the 30 plus brothers and sisters of mine who perished there curved on it; oh, not only those 30 plus, but also those of the remaining, and almost forgotten 1220 fallen sons and daughters of this great nation, curved there. Here, because it is closer to the capital City of Kenya and let whoever is in power always take a short ride to Naivasha to have a look at the pillar before making any decision in their offices.

My brother, the New Kenya should be allowed to mourn.

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This year, I moved into a new a shanty house in the heart of Soweto Slums, in Embakasi. People said I had gone bonkers to move to a worse house with no water and electricity, and farther away from the best infrastructure. Soon after I occupied this new mabati house, I discovered that I had moved to the best place ever. In front, across the fence, there is a small morass and the grass there is tall and ever green; the morass is about 60 square feet. At night bull frogs croak, but in the morning, robins, weaverbirds and sunbirds wake me up. This is beautiful. But that is not all.

There was a lot of rubbish and dumping having been done around the morass. I fenced the part of the morass right in front of my house and added alot of black cotton soil on the dumping and allowed it to decay into a fertile place. I then started planting kales, onions, tomatoes and maize on it. See (above) how they are green, fresh and healthy. Nowadays, I do not buy vegetables from Soweto Market. My neighbours too, who were once sceptical, do sometimes come for a handful of fresh kales.