The Passenger Who Squatted

Years ago, another lifetime it seems, I was preparing to drive to Machakos Technical Institute for the Blind when someone requested that I pass by that eternally chaotic country bus station called Machakos "airport" and kindly offer this stranger a ride.

We both had the same destination, Stranger and I. I said, Ok. I hadn't given any thought to how I would recognize a total stranger among a fluid crowd of countless beings who moved in and out and through each other, breathing each other's breath, disappearing in and out of buses belching black smoke ever so casually.

I had been to that "airport" without a car before, and I too never noticed the toxic fog that filled in one's lungs and nobody cared, nobody complained, nobody had any mind to fight because Right was an ideal too surreal, too removed from the chocking need for daily survival. Many in that fluid crowd woke up every day with a simple prayer- that they would race the day's sun and touch the edge of the coming night's frayed blanket and know they still had breath of life to race the next day.

I shifted the gears on my aunt’s Toyota DX and bullied my way through the bedlam of Nairobi city traffic and its maze of humanity like a pro, a thing I couldn’t do now, having gotten too used to a more orderly way of driving in another country where lanes matter, lights are obeyed, and metal gives way to mortals. 

I pulled over to a Machakos-bound bus and immediately saw my passenger. I knew it was him because he was the only one who had a blind cane. I came out of the car, we exchanged greetings, and I guided him to the back seat. I opened the door and asked him to get in. He felt the frame of the car door, felt the window, and felt the emptiness of the entrance. He paused, shot his sightless gaze upwards as if searching the heavens for something. 

I said to him- there's no one there, the seat is yours. He inched forward with trepidation. His cane was caught in the door frame and I folded it up for him. Then he felt the seat with his legs, lowered his head to fit into the frame, and squatted there with both his feet, complete with very dusty shoes, resting on the clean cushioning of the seat where his buttocks should have been. I was mortified! I quickly asked him to put his feet on the floor, silently hoping his shoes had not left a gunk of grime I would have to soap up and scrub clean. 

He sensed annoyance in my tone and mumbled something like an apology while touching his folded cane for familiar comfort. We were soon on our way, and with the soothing hum of the highway, the moment of mortification was forgotten, and we got talking. I learnt he was born without sight, and that he took the bus all the time to the Blind Institute. I could tell he was a poor man, which was inconsequential since so many in that city were poor. In a village of old people, creaking bones raise no eyebrows. 

Then it came to me. He had no idea how a saloon car is configured, never been in one. He had experienced a bus, and a bus allowed him to board upright and either stand or take a seat which was high enough from the floor of the bus, and all without the need to fold his cane. Having to enter a saloon car for the first time in his life, one he could not see, put him in a bind. The seat must have felt as if it was on the same level with the floor. After all, a Toyota DX is a pretty small car. I did a mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa. 

This memory comes visiting on a day I feel frustrated about our blindness to greater possibilities that we don’t see but deserve. Perhaps we fear to suffer shame for exposing our obvious poverty, we fear the loss of what is familiar when we decide to dare to demand another experience, one with greater comfort, one free from the pushing and shoving of a hustling humanity for whom being civil is a time-wasting luxury. Breaking the cycle of need and indignity demands we surrender the comforts of victimhood, feel our way around new ideas, and step into new spaces, even if we get it wrong the first, second or third time.

We got to the Institute, and my passenger was ever so grateful. I watched him happily greet his friends and disappear into a world whose acceptance was as warm as the light behind his eyes.

Artist Unknown

Sere

Ice Buckets and Pharisees: A Lesson in Gratitude

I have followed the work of Retina Foundation for years now, at one point accumulating binders of articles on potential cures that I printed off of online publications.

Until they got a Facebook presence which keeps followers very well updated. I never miss an update. With this latest one hitting my newsfeed, I feel particularly grateful to these unrelenting soldiers of research especially because the world knows little about their work.

They work to someday bring light to a darkened world, literally. Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP) is a rare genetic condition that progressively leads to total blindness. It has a very low profile because the % of those affected isn't that large.

I remember the Ice Bucket challenge that catapulted Lou Gehrig's disease into global limelight, providing much needed funds for research into a little-known disease. I wish every silent soldier in unknown battles had their ice bucket moment.

The latest gains made in RP are in gene therapy, a controversial area that also presents a lot of hope, reminding me that no cures come without controversy. An incident is recorded about the Pharisees plotting to kill Jesus for healing a man on a Sabbath.

Our present-day attempts to alleviate human suffering are equally rife with attacks from pharisaic authorities that benefit from the status quo. But we're grateful for those who dare to carry out "Sabbath healings" that involve confrontation with established powers.

We're grateful to those who choose to see the suffering of a minority as deserving of the greatest fight and inclusion into a world they're often locked out of.

We're grateful to those who refuse to say of a situation, "there is no cure", and instead march on through countless days, months, years... fueled by hope.

We're grateful to those who never see failure as a setback but as a block to build upon; and to those who keep funding struggles without counting the stumbles.

Happy Thanksgiving!
Retinitis Pigmentosa

The Child With Two Places

Many years ago, I recall a man coming to mama early one morning while the smokey mist still clung to the hills. He said, "Dada, I'm taking the child to the hospital." Mama said, "Oh, is the child ill?" The man paused and said, "The child has two places." I've always wondered how the doctors resolved that child's "two-places" gender. Our culture is mute about these truths.
This distant memory comes to me because I'm reading an article on healing communities, and then the author says, "As a queer, non-binary trans human with white privilege..." I pause. I don't understand half of it; I understand the meaning of the words separately, but put together to describe one's identity, my mind goes blank.
So I open a separate window and go into research mode, and I find a community of people who deal with bodily non-conformity that keeps expanding. LG.. LGBT... LGBTQIA..... with all its attendant tension. I'm in curious awe again, at what nature, environment, and its human co-creators are up to, and what they do to resolve issues of "two-places".
I live in a time and age when I can consciously observe life shifting and shaping in real time. I also now live within a culture that is more conducive to learning and embracing the myriad shifting-and-shaping and born-this-way of earth's lifeforms, with wonder and awe rather than fear, judgement and rejection. Only the other day, two male lions caught mating in Kenya became the nightmare of that country's moral police.
I long rejected that punitive psychotic deity with an evil streak who hates part of creation and means to burn it in furious fires and watch it squirm in eternal torture because "the bible says so." The God of my mind is an unshackled non-conforming creator who sometimes gives ordinary folk in a Kenyan village a perfectly beautiful child with "two places."
Humans are not alone in this wondrous dynamic creation. But because our interaction is more often with fellow humans, we are bound to miss the same shifting and shaping and born-this-way discoveries with other earthly lifeforms, unless you catch it on National Geographics where those tireless observers of nature feed us with awesome knowledge.

Body art by Yoruba artist, Laolu Sebanjo who calls his style "nxgafromysterics - the mystery of the African thought-pattern". ["Yoruba tradition follows a unique cosmology and asserts that every individual has a specific destiny and fate, placing importance of self-understanding, religious nourishment and spiritual growth"] 

Finding Anchor in the Echoes of Biafran Storms

At the beginning of the year, in the throes of the US presidential election's woundedness, I borrowed these words penned by Rev. Frank Dunn, my former priest. Now I find myself needing to find anchor again as we go through the woundedness of Kenya's recent elections that have come with so much anger oozing out of unhealed scars, loss of life and malignant hate.
These words so perfectly reflect the storm brewing over a young nation struggling to hold itself together, but daily surrendering to the savage seduction of propaganda, the spread of malice, the rejection of what is true, and using God to stamp every prejudice and loath for fellow humans.
[Brackets mine]: I commit-
"I commit myself to telling the truth, as much as I have the light to see the truth. This is the age of lies, and it is getting worse. We are reaping what we have sewn: debased journalism; an internet where any assertion passes as fact; a disdain for education; the mockery of independent thinking, a pandering to anti-intellectualism; the ossifying of political opinions and letting them pass for "truth;" an embrace of racism [ethnic bigotry], xenophobia [othernizing], patriarchal privilege [political privilege], and brute force as a means of addressing conflict.
"There is no issue in the entire thesaurus of human activity that is not at some level a spiritual issue. That is to say that behind all our problems, including the suppression of truth, is a refusal to accept our own complicity in living falsehoods, and our reluctance to become conscious of our connection with everything--every single thing--in the universe. Instead, we imagine ourselves to be superior to other species, to be the gods of creation, the "stewards" of nature with which we can do whatever we please. Within our own species we view ourselves as locked in a contest to see who can amass the most power to manage and manipulate others.
"I commit myself especially to challenge religious falsehood where I see it. That opens me up to the criticism of being arrogant, self-righteous, judgmental, and guilty of the same ills which I would point out in others. I know that. I accept that. And if I should prey upon a brother for the speck he has in his eye while ignoring the log I have in my own, I should and must be called out. I submit myself to that criticism. Moreover I commit myself to an honest self-examination and an openness to accept my limitations and my errors to the extent I am able to do so. I pledge myself to be and remain in communities where I can be held in mutual accountability for facing and telling my own truth."
- Words by Rev. Frank Gasque Dunn | Dec 2016. With gratitude.

"Storm Over Biafra", a painting by Ben Enwonwu. A reminder of the storm of secession brewing over Kenya

Holy Hate

From the corner of my memory’s eye I catch this movie in which a community decides to collectively hate on this Jewish guy who always wears a hat. The kids are fed a belief that the guy has horns under his hat…. what’s the name of that movie… so a generation of youngsters is growing up hating a Jew (and therefore all other Jews they’ll ever know) because they believe he has horns growing out of his skull as a sign of his inherently evil nature. He’s the boogieman they dare not come near… darn it, what’s the name of that movie… There's a funny scene where two of the kids who know the truth decide to lure other kids to the Jewish guy's home so they can see his horns when he takes off his hat. The knowing kids laugh themselves silly when the other gullible kids take off in terror upon seeing the man with the horns approaching... what the devil's horn's the name of-- forget it.

For now, "the man with the horns" is the real-life movie playing out in the Kenyan diaspora among a group that believes the man from the shores of Nam Lolwe is indeed Mephistophelian in nature. He’s Kenya’s guy with the hat that hides something diabolical, and he is to be greatly feared by the godly and spiritually favored group that has decided there's only one man annointed to lead the country. You have to attend a prayer rally like the one I attended last night (and stay to the end) to know what I’m talking about. The prayer meeting, dubbed "UhuRuto Tano Tena Diaspora Peace Rally" was at the beginning filled with fun, educational talk, good food, dancing and good-natured community love. I ate a lot of maandazi and chicken and chai and was happy to see friends.

Then came the sermon and prayers at the end, by which time half the people and the media had left. Too bad they missed such an important segment. But I'll tell you about it. The most terrifying thing was to watch a congregation that collectively believed in the demonic nature of this man, Raila, so strongly that they feverishly, on bended knees and prostrate spines, cried out to God to deliver Kenya from this man’s diabolic dealings in witchcraft which is affecting his followers and the entire country. I do not come to judge your faith or to question the veracity of such bizarre claims - heck, I don't know if the man is hiding a chicken claw that can run all by itself under his hat - but as a human being who refuses to stay silent in the face of crimes against humanity, I will point to the chilling markings of a dangerous collective mindset clothed in holiness and humility.

It is the kind of mindset that will silently watch the extermination of an entire community in the belief that the God of their faith is ridding the land of a great evil. It is the kind of mindset that will see the police bludgeoning to death of babies like Samantha Pendo, and the ruthless murder of people like Chris Msando and Carol Ngumbu, and the obvious targeting of a specific community, as part of a holy war. Somewhere in this madness that has affected diaspora Kenyans, there’s a light, and I know that light well because I have bathed often in its unpretentious generosity. At a time like this, we must dare invade each other’s exclusive spaces even when we're not welcome, talk to each other long enough, heart to heart, across the divide, however difficult the conversations, and only then will we begin to find each other’s shared humanity.

The Mad Man and the Wicked Ruler

It's fascinating how smart and passionate the ordinary Kenyan can get when it comes to debating the Constitution and election laws, yet surrenders the same smarts and passion when it comes to the things that oppress them the most. I'm talking about the hoi-polloi ordinary Kenyan, not the intellectual pundit who eats three meals a day.
Poverty is the foremost biting injustice suffered by thousands of same ordinary Kenyans, many rising and retiring daily in unspeakable squalor, thousands with that constant fear of where to get the next meal or how to pay rent or what if that sick child won't survive the night or what will happen if people find out that my church-going wife is the same night-time sex worker at Aden Joint who feeds our family through prostitution. And a lot of same said ordinary Kenyans in squalor are graduates too.
This level of poverty is a crime is a crime is a crime. There's a class of people in charge of the instruments of political and economic power who have cultivated it, enabled it for their own benefit, and they know it. There's a greed virus in their minds that tells them there isn't enough for everyone, and a stupidity virus that makes them sit contentedly on the fat fruit-filled branch of the tree while the people at the bottom angrily saw off the trunk of the same tree so they can get to the fruit.
The greed and stupidity viruses make this class of rulers do bizarre things like steal billions from public coffers, meanwhile the people with the mtu-wetu virus still vote them back in. This class of rulers signs bad contracts through corporate gluttony and the people celebrate them for bringing development which they could never afford to enjoy. This class of rulers swats off smart thinkers who are trying to empower ordinary folk because these thinkers are like flies buzzing around their meat.
Deep inside you know there's something very wrong with the whole setup. So what do you do? You decide you're too powerless to do anything about it and you choose to claim spiritual superiority. You dish out bible verses everyday just to convince yourself that your situation is somehow willed by God herself and She will reward you with a mansion in heaven. Your shallow self-serving preacherman tells you not to question those God has put in power, however oppressive they are. You conveniently choose to believe this manipulative lie because it supports your pathetic prejudices.
Allow yourself to be smart for your own good for once; not for someone else's gain. If you're languishing in poverty, having worked hard to no avail, sent hundreds of resumes as a graduate and never found a job, lost everything you had, fell off the cliff of experimental capitalism and split your head because there was no welfare cushioning to catch you, wake up to the realization that you're both the victim and willing participant in the ongoing game of profits at any cost that results in the kind of sick society you live in.
If you're religious like most Kenyans, for show or for real, then start looking for those bible verses that talk about truth and justice and ridding the land of wicked leadership. You don't need to worship those in power when they are not giving you the opportunity to thrive; heck you don't need to worship them at all. Stop preaching Levitical verses about not uncovering your inebriate father's nakedness when said father sits on immoral wealth while thousands languish in abject poverty.
Instead, embrace those who open your eyes. Practice the religion that empowers you. Say aloud, "Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture!" / "When the righteous thrive, the people rejoice; when the wicked rule, the people groan". These are inconveniencing biblical truths that prick the comforts of your anemic tribal nationalism, but they are medicine.
You say- but the groans of the people are being caused by that mad man who wants power at any cost! You're getting mixed up over who the wicked ruler is "when the wicked rule, the people groan". The ruler is the person who has control of state machinery - military, legislative and economic instruments of power. The "mad man" who is zealously followed by many only has people power, which comes with the opportunity to shape history, but this person is not the ruler; he/she can be crucified in a minute.

"Lovely Greed 1st Timothy 6:10", a painting by Leighton Autrey

Soiled Underwear, Ogres and Warriors: Kenyans' Difficult Relationship With Protest

Come my fellow Kenyans, let us sing a song. "Rosa sat / So Martin could walk / Martin walked / So Barack could run / Barack ran / He ran and he won so that all our children could fly." Thanks for singing along, and thanks Amy Dixon-Kolar for music in revolution. Keywords: Sat, Walk, Run, Fly.
Now, let's talk. Some of you are flying, and looking down at those walking. You're completely blind to why and how you gained the freedoms that enable you to fly freely. You're saying- look at those silly people taking to the streets to protest, only uneducated people, idlers and criminals do that, and when they get tear-gassed they complain oo ati serikali...
Then you also notice that some of those taking to the streets are people in the flying category. They have good jobs, some are well-titled personalities in successful professions, and you say- look at them perfectly sensible people, engaging in time-wasting activism, what an indignity, totally embarrassing...
It's the same mentality that drove some people who thought they were being sensible to say- If Raila has grievances he should go to court like a lawful citizen! As if protesting is unlawful, beneath the dignity of a person who's been a Prime Minister, like seeing your father marching down a Nairobi street with a placard shouting "We-Want-Justice!" You cringe at the thought. You forget people's fathers and mothers did just that so you could fly. In your mind, you have placed protest in the same category as the hanging of your mother's soiled underwear in public, ergo, only a mentally unstable person or an extremely narcissistic person would do such a thing.
None of your freedoms ever came without someone's struggle and great sacrifice. None. And taking it to the streets has always been a part of that struggle, a relentless pursuit of a goal that shifts the earth beneath the feet of the ogres of our times. Be glad elevated philosophies gave us the weapons of nonviolent revolution. Struggles remain a never-ending process of Sat-Walk-Run-Fly no matter how civilized our societies become. We just hope that we don't have to "keep protesting the same shit."
Whatever you choose to do to contribute to a better society, do not look down on those who choose to walk as if they were idle scum of the earth. The best of them are good at it, they have mastered the art of movement leadership, organization and mobilization, and they have the guts and brains to manoeuvre the process. They are warriors. It's as lawful as going to court, and the law should protect them.
Now, don't point at hooligans who callously steal and destroy during protests and tell me that is what nonviolent protest are. I can point you to thugs and killers in suits sitting in swiveling chair in the same skyscrapers you have your office. Would it be fair to say you're one of them?

Kenya's Choices: Acceptance, War, Revolution

Today, I will be a peace ambassador for Kenya. However, to get to this peace, you must first endure this wading through the rot of a national wound too long in suppuration. No shortcuts. It's real peace you want, isn't it? Let's get to it then.

The rot is not with the people; it's systemic. It is solidly institutionalized so that anyone who gains access to power can choose to use it. The Kenyan power system is like a kitchen with a sewage system that spews out its filth into the pipes that are controlled by politicians so that the food cooked in it poisons all its consumers.

The rot is a glut of selfishness, insatiable greed, impunity and a deep dark fear that there will never be enough for everyone. It suppresses human kindness and makes for a perfect mushrooming of endless schemes against the weaker person.

The rot is not erased by footprints of bold infrastructure that earn us the middle-income country label, because right beneath all the brick and mortar are mounds of humanity wiggling like maggots on a carcass of poverty.

The rot is resilient, stamped into the country’s fractured birthing, and spews out constantly to poison and deny millions peace of mind. In the past few days, this rot broke its banks, and time will tell how many victims will drown before the flood is contained.

No matter how piously you pray, nothing will change until you act, and you will always suffer the effects of the rot, regardless of what ethnicity or social class you belong to. Some are staggering in drunken celebration for your candidate’s declared victory, yet you retire to this rot that welcomes you every night with its empty stench. Silently, you cry your tears of destitution and wait for tomorrow when you can vomit the poison in your heart onto another’s shoes. Perchance, that should give you some twisted relieve.

Some are calling for peace because you’ve got fortunes to protect, comforts you worked very hard for. But you know, as long as your fortunes can shift in a second, as long as you're easily the victim of robbery, carjacking and hospital strikes, as long as you feel you have to hide your houses behind prison-like barricades, as long as you pretend not to see the multitudes that stream in and out of neighboring slums daily, as long as you know an elections official and an innocent Kenyan got slaughtered in cold blood just before you voted and you don't care, you're infected by the rot.

I beg that you do not insult my intelligence by telling me that the "peace" I see so many struggling Kenyans waking up to is worth thanking God for. It is not peace; it is prolonged inner turmoil, a constant state of need, a place of squalid agitation, a position of indignity and beggartude, a condition of powerlessness, all of it too often bandaged with the balm of Kenyan humor and the opium of religiosity.

In order to get to peace, we must change this rotten system, and we can do it in three ways:

1) Accepting the results that a rotten system spews out and hope that we will forget the injustice;

2) Use the institutional tools available - courts, civil society and movements - to change the system;

3) A civil war.

In 1861, a divided America chose #3, a bloody war which ended that country’s rotten system of slavery from which many benefited. After the war, a new united nation emerged. It cost them over 600,000 lives.

Kenya cannot choose this option, not because it cannot afford the blood sacrifice, but because it may not survive the aftermath. Not without the kind of leader who will inspire a million Kenyans to take up that valiant "give me freedom or give me death" option. Many a powerful and prosperous nation have been founded on #3. I mention this NOT to justify war but as an objective observation of history.

Kenya should not choose #3 unless it can identity a leader who can steer a country from a bloodbath and onto a new united identity. The US had Abraham Lincoln. Rwanda discovered Paul Kagame after a slaughter that cost the country over 800,000 lives. Both leaders shaped a better nation in the aftermath of conflict that forced them to deal with the depths of their national decay.

Kenya should not choose #3 until it has exhausted all diplomatic and nonviolent options, and because we’re a wiser and smarter world that knows the cost of war is too great. It is practically impossible to exhaust diplomatic options as long as we’re willing to do the hard work. But diplomacy must never again be compromises that simply sooth the egos of political opponents in power-sharing deals that ignore the gaping national wound of forgotten injustices.

In 2007 and 2013, Kenya chose #1, and it must not become the case again. It's the wrong choice. It only allows the rot to increase and provides the next power center with a decayed system with which to poison their opponents. There is nothing smart about accept-and-move-on; it's only fear and suppression of justified anger.

That leaves #2, which is the best option. Kenya still has a capacity for powerful movements, a history of people-driven transformations. The Second Liberation that ended the era of dictatorship, the Orange movement that ushered in a new constitution. We need a revolution with twice the combined potency of those two movements. A Velvet Revolution solution is what is needed to rid the country of its institutionalized gangrene. No, Kenyans, revolution is NOT a dirty word. It's a dance against systemic rot and brutality. It might cost you life and limb. After the dance comes peace.

"Dancers and the Dictator", by Wissam Al Jazairy

Sere

Becoming

So what's the connection between theatre arts and diplomacy? This question has been sitting unanswered in an old email from a friend for well over a year. A note of appreciation I received the other day finally gets me to blog a public response.

I've done graduate studies (Masters) in both Theatre Arts and Diplomacy, and found that my knowledge of one discipline thoroughly enhanced my understanding of the other. They are two sides of the same coin. Both are scripts performed on a stage with actors playing different roles. In Diplomacy Studies, the stage is the World Affairs, the actors are States and non-State entities, and the script is driven by the players' interests.

With both Theatre and Diplomacy, every character/player's entrance and exit comes with a motive, and the drama erupts during the struggle to achieve this motive. It is no surprise that the greatest playwright had his greatest dramas woven around politics; or that some of the most influential statesmen were also performing artists (Ronald Reagan the actor, Vaclav Havel - my favorite - the playwright/director).

It's not always a smooth connection between things one knows how to do. Sometimes, there's a brick wall of exclusiveness around things you want to become. For example, getting into that institution of diplomatic corps can be as difficult as getting the password to an Eyes Wide Shut masked ball. I don't have the password either. Just don't kill for it.

A lot about what we do so well is multi-sided and can be interwoven or competently done on parallel tracks. Society punishes you for not having a title to your name, yet most people secretly despise the confines of singular-profession definitions. There’s an imaginary Million Humans March against the question “What do you do?” It’s a pigeonholing question that makes a whole lot of us squirm, as if one can only be one thing that’s disconnected from everything else.

There’s something true to Karl Marx’s view that a world where “each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape,” is superficial. I agree with him in toto that one should be able to “hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, and rear cattle in the evening.” We’re constantly, and covertly, trying to tear away from the rigidity of our forced mono-occupational existence. We just want the fluidity of becoming.

In the process of "becoming", the path of possibilities multiplies, especially when the mind is not stifled. This is why it's so important to live in and fight for a free society in which anyone’s desire to become is unencumbered. In my years of self-discovery, I've found that I can teach very well; that I could even make a great priest; heck, I could become President. But alas, I'm 3 lifetimes too short. Right now, being a theatre artist, a writer, a teacher, a documentarist and a diplomacy wonk is about all I can squeeze in.

How to avoid becoming a Jane of All Trades? Establish a connectedness between the things you do so well so that you have opportunity to excel. If the things you do so well remain disconnected, you run the risk of having scattered bits of unnoticed achievements, like little lamps shinning under the table all by their lonely selves, and you feel frustrated. The world is an eager audience, and it awaits an outstanding act so it can applaud. Being appreciated is priceless. Take your bow. Exit stage left.

Sere

A Soprano for Sale: The "Yalio Ndwele" Hustles

One artist to another. It's the season of side-kicks and sell-outs for hire. This brother, MC Njagi, is a great entertainer, extremely talented. I thoroughly enjoyed his "Yalio Ndwele Sipite" parody. But it looks like someone at Jubilee Party noticed him and asked him to do a hit job with it. He sold out! The crossroads where easy money becomes a big piece of steamy cassava for many a hungry artists who later find themselves used up and scrounging for relevance.

This equally entertaining song, Mbele Iko Sawa employs the cheapest tactic of lumping a people into a cheap tribe-baiting stereotype-- says the Kamba have always been pro-establishment and opposition is new to them-- "upinzani ni ugeni kwetu sisi wakamba", so goes the song. Asi!

Has this guy never heard of the great anti-colonization female dancer/warrior, Syotune wa Kathake; Muindi Mbingu and the Ukamba Members Association? There's a long list of independent thinkers from that region. It's a sad day when an artist chooses to become a tool for stereotyping a people for someone else's political gain.

You may say- he has a right to take sides. True, not just a right, but a responsibility. But when artists take sides in politics, they should take the third side-- the side of justice, the side of the underdog in the streets who simply demands a better life because they pay their share in taxes and toil.

The third side is one that rarely pays, mostly leaves an artist sidelined by both political sides, but when that artist maintains a solid stand against selfish opportunistic politics, they become the voice that people listen for.

Lucky Dube. Nina Simone. Bob Dylan. Miriam Makeba, Fela Kuti... They took the third side, they paid a price, they are legendary. I'd like to add Eric Wainaina, whose "Sawa Sawa" album put him on the artist-the-warrior path, although still has ways to go before earning the legendary title.

But I get it, it's political bimborization time when people say or sing silly soundbites that win quick points for the side that is paying you. Maybe the other side wasn't quick enough to lure MC Njagi with a better deal, otherwise instead of "vitendawili sitaki" he'd be singing "ulevi na wizi sitaki". Both sides have used artists equally as creative hitmen (yes, hitmen includes women.)

Now, there are artists who become politicians, and that is absolutely necessary sometimes; but it takes a highly woke kind of artist to take that path. My favorite by far is the late Vaclav Havel, a playwright & stage director who became the revolutionary leader of the non-violent Velvet Revolution, brought down a repressive regime, and became the President of the Czech Republic. That's how woke you need to be!

Sere

Memento Mori: A Reminder to Kenyans of Your Unnatural Mortality

"For the Love of God", a sculpture made with flawless diamonds, by artist, Damien Hirst. A 'Memento mori' - a genre of works done as a reminder of human mortality.

You do not have the simple luxury of accepting the death of a political personality as natural, even if it may be so. If you have your eyes anywhere near half-open, your ears unclogged enough to hear just a whisper, your soul live enough to feel the faintest heartbeat, then you cannot pretend you live in a normal environment.

If you’re getting up every morning with a happy yawn of middle-class contentedness, then you’re probably among thousands in Kenyans who probably see the darkness of despair every day, but you’d rather pretend it’s only the dark shadow of a passing cloud. You probably hear the muffled cries of forgotten citizens every day, but you’d rather pretend it’s the passing sniffles of seasonal poverty. You probably feel the sighs of a people weighed down with dead dreams, but you’d rather pretend it’s the passing sag of temporary weariness.

The environment you pretend not to see breeds a fog of apathy that with time becomes a jungle of heartless survival for the class that is ruled. Robbery, killings, kidnappings, car-jackings, rapes and silent victims are a daily staple in poor neighborhoods and in the dark city inferno where a dense cloud of humanity rises with the night. I’ve seen it, I know it, I’ve walked in it, I’ve been snatched by it, I’ve survived it. So have thousands of others. Daily. It’s not a secret world, but we’d rather pretend it is so that we can wake up in the morning and post a smiling selfie that is thankful to God for the blessing of life. The artificial world of social media is the newest, most potent opium of a broken people.

Meanwhile, the rulers haggle for power in the ruthless markets of cartel politics. When one of them dies, there’s nothing normal about it, simply because the environment he or she lived in is not normal. Remember, they leave behind a long stretch of unresolved assassinations; a pile-up of stolen elections and bitterness packaged into neat boxes of meaningless prayer; a valley of silenced voices and forgotten victims; an endless echo of troubled heartbeats that are always a beat away from eviction, starvation and joblessness. We must stop piling up pretentious prudery and demand a normal environment fit for all citizens; an environment where living in simple dignity allows us all the luxury of dying naturally. 

*Reflections following the death of Kenya's Cabinet Secretary, Gen. Joseph ole Nkaissery, one month before the country's general election.

Sere

Writer, the Engineer

Attention Kenyan creative writers// We need to talk:

If you ever went on strike, would anyone ever notice? What is your worth? Perspective: Today the writers' guild in the US just averted a writer's strike. In 2007 creative writers in the US went on strike for 100 days. It cost the industry $200 billion in losses. The studios probably thought they could bring in other lean & hungry writers to replace the professionals. After all, the industry always has struggling artists willing to intern for free. But you can't have an intern pilot a commercial flight.

Serious creative writing is complex and demanding and time-consuming. Anything short of that will produce a shabby and mediocre industry plagued with silliness and theft of other people's creative material. In Kenya, we need to move away from this mediocrity, one interrupted by very few bursts of genius. Not because we lack genius writers, but that they are underdeveloped. Kenyan creative writers need to understand this:

1. Know how to write on demand (work when the industry demands a product).

2. Master the different structures and genres of storytelling (know your engine models).

3. Research your content as intensely as an engineer runs experiments in their lab. Writers in vibrant industries spend grueling hours in research and consultation in order to write the medical, court or political dramas that keep our adrenaline pumping (enjoy the intense process of discovery).

4. Understand the history and philosophy storytelling so you can reinvent it-- dithyrambic hymns to script, passion plays to Shakespeare, orature to Soyinka... (go to school and learn how quality engines were made).

5. Understand audience psyche by doing productions over and over. Great writers' stories fail many times in pilot runs and stage premieres before the product becomes a hit (test the engine many times over).

PS: Those of you that do the comedy improvs assume it does not need writing (reason they get silly). In fact, the art of improvisation requires the most intense on-demand form of scripting where the writer makes changes on the spot everyday 24-7 during the creative process till opening night, and the actors roll with the punches adapting to every new change. Now you know.

Remember, as creative artists, you are the conscience of the nation. If you put out mediocrity and borrowed art, that's what the world sees of Kenya- a people with a mediocre and borrowed mind.

How I Became an Angel

A couple of days ago, I was putting groceries in my trunk when this lady comes hobbling about with bags and all.

Can you help me please- she says. I've got both my eyes stuck in the trunk so I don't look at her in the eye and catch sympathy. I play that internal monologue that gets me a ticket out of guiltsville-- "there are shelters for the homeless, services for the destitute, soup kitchens for the hungry, and if I spare some change she'll just buy the next drink to self-destruction..."

A lot of times that monologue never works anyway and I end up sparing a dime. But as she speaks, I recognize she's from somewhere in Africa. She also asks for something very specific. "I need $9.47 to get my medicine from the pharmacy because my insurance card has not arrived and my friend cannot pay for it and..." The story was stitched together desperately, tearfully, with shame written all over her face.

I was now looking at her, because what beggar asks for $9.47? I'm used to "gimme a quarter." I ask her what pharmacy. We walk together right across. At the counter, sure enough, the pharmacist tells me her meds are there. She went out begging only for enough to cover the pain meds. I could tell she was in a lot of pain by how she was walking. It cost exactly what she said.

I asked them what the total for all her meds were and I paid for them. I ask her if she had food in her house, she says yes, she had a little rice left that she's been eating for three weeks. We did food shopping, even went to an African store where they sold something called kenkey that she was truly grateful for. Having your people’s food in exile is always the next best thing to being home.

I ask her where she lived and as I drive her there, she tells me her sob story. A US legal resident who had completed her nursing course and soon after suffered a stroke, worked briefly at a food store and got laid off on account of her inability to stand for long hours. She was now surviving hand-to-mouth, sometimes simply went out to beg. Her two housemates were tired of bailing her out, and deep depression had become her daily companion.

What about family? I asked. She said she had five grown children, land and a husband back home in Ghana where she had been a teacher before winning the Green Card lottery. Yes, she was free to go back any day, but she dared not think about it because they had lovingly nailed her to the cross of expectations and placed on her a thorny crown of American dreams that pierced her flesh. The blood of festered hopes, desolation and failure dripped down her mahogany face and caked up at her tired feet. Over the years that she had spent crucified on that cross, it had become extremely painful to bring herself down from it as the nails of a clan’s misplaced needs had burrowed deeper and deeper.

Painting by Karni-Bain Bai, Carl (Nude).
The bottom of life's travails lays you bear.

She was a mother bearing an impossible burden on her broken shoulders, for a family thousands of miles away. Yet she still wanted to hang on to the hope that her Jesus will work it out and she’ll be able to bring two of her kids to college so they may have a brighter future. I believed those kids had a better shot right where they were in Ghana, unless they ventured out into the world without depending on her.

I told her she must find the strength to go back home, no matter how broken she was. I tried to assure her that those who love her will forgive her and take care of her. But she was still too terrified of her perceived failure, of being a source of great disappointment.

She said to me, “You must understand this is no ordinary encounter. This morning, I had reached my wit’s end. I prayed for three straight hours with great anguish. Then I decided to just go out like an animal in the wild. I needed my pain medication desperately. When the pharmacy would not give it to me, I cried and cried, and that’s when I went out and saw you putting in your groceries. I took courage, carried my shame with me and approached you. Don’t you see, you’re the angel my Jesus sent. May God abundantly bless you and your house.” She wept saying this.

I forced the water heaving from my bosom back inward so it wouldn’t spill out from my eyes. It got caught in my throat and made a painful knot there. I turned away, because I knew the only reason I had upgraded this particular do-gooder opportunity from the careless sparing of a dime to taking care of a broken soul was out of bias: that she was African. I was no one’s angel. We all make false claims on our resumes.

Once I was Young Too

I'm preparing some youth mentorship material, and a memory comes visiting. Some years back at a youth camp I had agreed to run, I lost a young man. Lost him to a more interesting world.

He was the most different in the group-- loud-talking, a bit of an angry edge, attention seeking and pants almost all the way to his knees. He was not interested in the other activities which got everyone else's attention. So I came at him with rules. I wasn't having his bluster. And he wasn't having me either. He quit. All of his 16 year-old self.

His mother came by the next day to talk to me. One of the students came up to me, said Anthony’s mother here. I thought- I'm in trouble with an American mama now. This is not Africa where a teacher is a teacher is a teacher. Here people's kids can be little terrorists if they want, call you all kinds of names and you just have to take it because "they gat rights" and they know it and it's their word against yours.

In my past I've taught inner-city schools long enough to speak knowingly on this. And I have seen a mother tear into a classroom like a tornado to confront her son over last night's family affairs, something about the mama's boyfriend. That's the memory that was playing in my mind as the boy's mama approached me at the camp.

By the time she was in my face I had dug my nails into my palms ready for war, forget diplomacy. If she was going to break my bones I needed to gouge out an eye-ball for a souvenir. She opened her mouth, and the angels sang- "Ms. Hall, I'm sorry about my son. Please forgive him and give him another chance." What! Not making this up.

First, I clearly recognized her accent as somewhere from Africa. I learnt the boy's parents were Ugandan immigrants and their son was born in the US. First-generation Ugandan American, caught between identities and the trauma of fitting in. This knowing gave me a completely different understanding, and a regret that I had not taken time to isolate the boy and listen to his story. I’d been overwhelmed with too many teenagers each demanding attention, so I blurred out the individuals that made the whole.

Anthony came back. It was in talking with him that I gained an understanding of his style which I had judged as obnoxious. I’d also told him I knew the style’s prison origin and what it meant and how ignorant he was to ape it blindly. He said he knew all about that but it was irrelevant. Contexts change.

This boy was educating me! He said the girls liked it, and if we adults wanted it to stop, we have to make the girls not like it. He was a peacock showing off its feathers to the peahens because he was at that stage in life. Who was I to argue with his reality? How he dressed became inconsequential, and we talked about more important things in life. 

I decided wasn't going to lose him again at this camp, because selfishly, I wanted him to remember me when he accepted his achievement awards later in life. I realized too that at his age, I was not a conformist either, and in fact, a relative had once come to school because I'd been suspended. How did I forget that I was once young too?

Who Moved My Meatball?

The Meatballs:

I remember the meatballs at UoN mess. Massive chunks of spiced ground beef with a whole boiled egg buried in the middle. I don't know what the recipe was but those were the best meatballs I ever had, to date. They dominated the plate, rising upwards like the Dome of the Rock, with an accompanying chapati sitting nicely at the side.

You need to understand that meatball days were a weekly celebration of life that made student life on campus truly special. When structural adjustment programs hit, with their accompanying corruption and bad policies, the meatballs were the first to go.

Stealing one's meatball can lead to a revolution

We weren't having it. The male comrades poured out from Hall 11 and led a campus-wide strike while we cheered them on as they went down towards Uhuru Highway with twigs and chants- "nyama nyama nyama-- nyama! Ya meatballs-- nyama!"

Before you know it, boom was gone too- that allowance that equalized all students, making the DF and the Ozone all equal opportunity boom-box owners; water was heavily rationed at the halls of residence which caused serious unsanitary conditions; janitors who cleaned our rooms were laid off; new students had lots of upfront expenses...

Things have never been right since. Ours was the end of the age of paradise. We had it good, better than those who were scurried off straight from high school to colleges in London, NY and Paris, courtesy of able relatives. They never had meatball heaven and boom and Visions and late night chips at Exotica. They had loneliness and broke-assness and cruel winters. They missed the meatballs.

The Revolution:

The road to rotten institutions starts when they take away your meatball. I'm sorry, Kenyan doctors, that your meatball was snatched off of your plate so long ago, and you've had to scrape the bottom of sufurias to survive, and strike after strike you got played, and you've let go the crumbling pillars because your arms are too weak to hold up the roof, arms which they have now shackled in handcuffs, and the whole ugly mess has collapsed on patients...

There's a beautiful Kenya that we love to hold up as a poster of success whenever we're faced with our ugly side. The glitter of the cities and malls, the new infrastructure, booming businesses, middle-class estates, sunsets on peaceful countrysides... This is what we want the world to see and story about us. I want that too, because there are hard-working descent successful Kenyans living their lives just fine, and I abhor the pitiful singular stories that American TVs tell about my people. But that successful and happy Kenyan bled out and died waiting on a doctor at the maternity ward.

Things have been falling apart a long time. Kenyans had their Trump moment when they voted in the duo of ICC suspects. Whatever your politics, this was a deplorable moment. Kenyans still genuinely gave them a chance. The duo has had 4 years to prove skeptics wrong. But the President has lacked the balls to do a lot of things he had the power to do to set the country right. Now thugs and drug kingpins and greedy politicians have taken away the meatballs and stuffed themselves and vomited on our plates.

I'll say what I said soon after the last elections- that only a revolution will fix that country. It's coming. Let's hope an MLK arises so it won't be bloody.

Sere