Fear, Freedom and Fences

When a generation of youth is blind to the sacrifices of the shoulders they stand on, they become a boot on other shoulders and start a new cycle of oppression.

Back in 2015, I had many personal conversations with the youth of Kenya that left me numb. The collected layers of calloused tragedies from insecurity, hunger, poverty... had become their wretched norm. 

This is going to be a rip-off-the-bandaid reflection. No time to blow on your wounds. Bite on something.

Kenya has a massive population of youth, bigger than any time in history. But they will not rise as a united force to support those who stand up against their oppression. They are old enough to understand that this is a responsibility they cannot shirk.

But they are filled with fear, primal survival and self-preservation. Kill or be killed. They flock to churches to share in the warmth of desperation and pray for miracles. They lament pitifully, sarcastically, laughingly.

They post nice pictures and pretend all is well. They surrender to the intoxicating mtu-wetu syndrome one election cycle after another. Like a street child and his bottle of sniffing glue. 

They become thugs in poor neighborhoods and steal and kill other poor Kenyans. In the cities, they have perfected methods of manipulating, maiming and robbing unsuspecting people.

They line up for new shiny things like Huduma Namba thrown at them by the government like chaff thrown at chickens to keep them off the good feed.

They scoff at the words "revolution" "fight" "stand up"... because they feel judged for not answering to the collective. They shout back with "You don't understand my suffering..." Tell that to all those whose shoulders you stand on.

Praying for the country is NOT a revolutionary act unless millions of you are gathering to pray against the oppressor. But Kenyan oppressors join their oppressed at prayer rallies. "Tuombe!" They say. What an orgy.

You'd rather believe that a benevolent force beyond you put the oppressor in office and you had nothing to do with it. You have refused to question this lazy, ruthless and illogical belief. So you become the boot of oppression on your children's shoulders by consciously upholding and spiritually legitimizing oppressive forces.

The greatest minds that ever changed the world, including those you have turned into gods and messiahs, were revolutionaries who refused to comply with oppressive forces. Noncooperation is at the core of nonviolent revolution. Revolutionary moral change is not about guns and goons.

Cooperation with governments that have sponsored killings, disappearances, betrayals, sustained poverty, theft and hoarding is the farthest thing from godliness. Fear and only fear keeps you waking up at the crack of dawn to line up for the next shiny thing that a rogue government throws at you when all around you are the festering sores of a nation. 

But for many, their attitude is - what do I care if those festering sores are not on my body? I'm an individual, not a people. Some say, “I’m doing just fine, better than Americans, I’m thriving in Africa...”

For the nouveau riche, you need to shake off that comfortable individualism that makes you think you’re ok if you can just protect your success with the tallest barbed wire, steel gate, electric edge, glass-shards top, thick brick fence. There's no freedom where there are prison-like fences of middle-class trauma. 

For the poor and oppressed, you need to shake off that cowardly individualism that makes you think you can change things on your own if you just pray hard enough, work hard enough, beg enough, manipulate enough. 

Kenya is a population of 50 million manipulated by a paltry few because the majority have chosen the foolish and cowardly comforts of individualism and all its hidden trauma. 

Just remember, evolution is a heartless scalpel. It will scalp off willful cowardice and reduce to unmemorable extinction those who refuse to rise. If you must die, die with some dignity. Die with your fist up.

(Photo by Hana Jakrlova | www.hanajakrlovaphoto.com)

The Girl Who said Today Is Today

Story Story! - Story come!

In one of the high schools I went to (those were the days one graduated from secondary school to high school), we were not allowed to speak Swahili. Only English.

The reason given was because since the language of instruction was English, and the national exams were set in English, we needed to get used to understanding English. Every Sunday the Christian girls held a loud service singing praise to Jesus and getting saved. But to tell you the truth, we needed Ngugi wa Thiong'o to save us from our colonized minds far more than we needed Jesus to save our souls.

If you were heard speaking Swahili, you would be handed a disk which you would wear around your neck until you passed it on to the next Swahili-speaking victim. At the end of the day, all those who had touched the disk would be punished. You did not want to be the last one with it because you would be punished the next day too until you passed it on.

So one day... eh? I tell you, I have no idea how it happened. I spoke Swahili. Mimi! As far as the Queen's language is concerned, I had maringo mingi sana in that particular school. Kwanza I had come from a Nairobi school, so there. Fake Us-guys airs.

Then I enjoyed twisting that Queen's language in my tongue from daybreak to light-out as if I was being paid per word. Uncommon words that I discovered in Naipaul's A House for Mr. Biswas, Anand's Coolie, Shakespeare's King Lear... were retained in my head like a shoal of fish caught by a diction net. When I spoke them, I was simply enjoying my catch of the day. I never feared that disk.

Until this one day- pap! The damn disk was slapped on me. I was marked. Like Hester Prynne and her scarlet letter. So I went hunting for a Swahili-speaking criminal to dispose of the disk. It was hard! But no way I was going to bed with this thing.

Then I saw these two girls in deep conversation, just the kind of intensity that could not be communicated in a third language. I could smell Swahili! When they saw me approach, they went quiet. But one of the girls just needed to say something to me. She knew me. Seeing me wearing that disk deserved a fitting comment. She should have laughed at me and let it go. But nooo!

A snide remark was burning her up but her mind refused to translate it to English. She blurted it out with complete uswahili -- a waving of the hand with its middle finger arched forward just so -- "Haaa! Today is today, if you say tomorrow you are chitngi!" Pap! I slapped that disk on her right away.

She protested angrily, still struggling to balance between her mind thinking in Swahili and her tongue being forced to speak in English. "Hee! I didi noti!... I didin'ti noti!"

I argued back, "You did, you did! You said Chitngi!"

She wasn't having it. She shouted back, "Aa youuu! Chitngi izi an Englishi word sure!"

I wasn't keeping that disk. I fought back., "No! The word is Cheating!"

She was trying to say something you just cannot translate to English: "Leo ni leo, msema kesho ni mwongo" (direct translation, "Today is today, if you say tomorrow you lie..." or as the Brits taught us, "...you cheat"). She was trying to say that today was my day, and if I ever thought tomorrow would never come for me, well, here it was. I was at last a criminal for speaking Kiswahili just like the rest. She clicked her tongue and took the disk in defeat.