I choose to speak out
rather than bury my head in the sand and assume that all is well....
I cry for Kiaritha....
Yesterday in the evening,
I found myself facing a young stubborn drunk man from our village who was
really hard on me. His complaint was that I owe him some debt. When I incurred
the debt was not clear but after a lot of his insistence that I need to honor
my part of the bargain, I was able to know that now that am in formal
employment, I am supposed to buy a lot of beer every time I visit the village
like other men and women do once they visit the same village but I have
ignorantly failed to live to his and others expectations. This young man went
ahead and did an analysis of the beer buying patterns of other village mates
and to him, I am very mean hence he proposed that I need to change lest I lose
relevance amongst my village mates and also those who know me.
This encounter provoked
me to write this piece as I have in the past restrained myself from doing this
for a quite considerable length of time. My mind took me back some years after
I left the village on 28/12/2004 for GSU Training school for initial police
training course. I also remembered Retired major General Hussein Ali saying
that he never went on leave not even in a single year when he was at the helm
of the police service. What he was doing there to a point of not going on leave,
I leave it to analysts but I realized that am no better than him since I joined
University in September 2008. I spent
not even a single week in the village when I was on off duty and during my
annual leave as I was busy studying and when not studying trying to fix
semester fees deficits that I always had during my studies.This journey ended well....
After six years in the University and now for the first time in Ten years, I
have continuously been in the village for a second week and frankly speaking,
the personal experience is amazing now that am having my time free from the
hustles of the city and from books that marked the last six years of my life.
This joy ends when I leave my home stead to a walk in the village as the first
encounter with my village mates is characterized by a demand for some coins
either to buy a bottle of Njuki Special, a cheap liquor that is the order of
the day or to smoke Marijuana that is currently being practically hawked by very
young men here with no intervention from
those in authority as they are also beneficiaries of these drug selling
cartels.
Someone may be quick to
ask me why I am concerned about others whereas I have a stable job and I thank
God I have been able to access higher education amidst struggles here and
there. Hold your horses dear friend, one
sole reason is that there is an emerging or existing but now maturing trend in
the village where there are small gods from almost every sector, in different colors
and in varying tastes. The first god that is properly worshiped is a politician
who has perfected in the art of giving out handouts to the old men, women and
even the young men and women in the village. Once they are sported, every age group
immediately gets in groups of tens ready for handouts both in the election
period and also out of election period.
This joke has gone further to see our
Current MP build what was supposed to be dispensaries just
before the last election year that up to date have never been operational but
continue to get dilapidated with no one showing interest on the same. There are
so many theories explaining the situation but I chose not to buy into any of
them. No theory can justify misuse of public resources in the name of
devolution and poor planning for selfish political gains! Here is a case sample
of the dispensary.
Next to this dispensary
is a water tank that is supposed to be fed from an underground well that was
also built at the cost of the taxpayer. It’s state is sorry and no one seems to
care. Just have a look at it below.
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The handout joke has
been decentralized and in return it has given in to a second class of gods.
These are successful business men
(According to the standards of the world) who sit at very vantage positions in
the churches and call the shots not only in the church but also in almost all
functions as the flex their financial muscle on request. Their ego is always
massaged in church, harambees, funerals and other events as they must be given
an opportunity to speak and if not, their presence must always be recognized
using the public address system. These are out of reach from the common
mwananchi but are easily accessed by a group of sycophants who are either
politically connected to those in power or are political brokers to a point of
even politicizing church leadership! This is an example of all our leaders can do for ease of transport.....
The third class of gods
is that of young men and women who work far from the village, in the neighboring
counties, in the capital city or elsewhere. These are the men and women who
visit the village from time to time but must ensure that their pockets are well
oiled for them to be able to make their presence recognized. They are well
known for buying beer, moving like a pride of lions in company of beer thirsty
men and boys who they command like military generals in exchange of a glass of
Keg or a bottle of a cheap brand called Njuki Special. This is the class that
has ‘raised the bar very high’ in that if you work far from the village and you don’t do like they do,
then you are termed as proud, a miser and someone who is not thankful as you
don’t subscribe to the standards of your peers. They appear in various ‘tastes
and preferences’ too. From the young pot bellied men who are currently driving
sporty cars and always moving in motorcades over the weekends as they go out on
drinking sprees to the sun glasses wielding ladies in tights, flashy mobile
phones and tablets, weaves, heavy make up and ‘a lot’ of stylish walking not
forgetting the long ‘Natural’ hair on their heads…(Prosecute me not for being
mean with info… right?
Without exhausting the
list of the gods, this has reduced my village to a mere replica of what an
ideal village should be like. Young boys and girls rarely go past form two in
their secondary school education but call it off at that level to either get
engaged in the construction sites, to be boda boda riders and the young girls
are reduced to mere sex toys and ‘beauty pageants ‘ as they compete to out do
each other in buying the trending fashion (Chinese in nature of course) but
highly regarded here. The state is sorry and no sane man and woman can be very
comfortable now that his/her children were lucky to go past form four, got to a
college or even a University and lastly secured a job in the capital city or
elsewhere or even got assisted to set up a business venture.
We have continued to ignore
this situation and now, any young man is out asking for what is rightfully his
from the father ( Inheritance of course) and after this very fast dispose it to the
lowest bidder. Some have sold their shambas
together with their houses to a point of not even being left with a
place to even get buried as we will
eventually die. Won’t we..? What is now hovering over this village and am sure
this is a replica of what is happening in other villages is a dark cloud of
frustrations, desperation, a youthful workforce that is idle and worn out not
out of overworking but over drinking and over smoking marijuana and a new breed
of wazee’s who no longer shower, brush their teeth and who are shocked once
they see a set of white teeth now that the liquor and smoking long ago tainted
their teeth and they accepted it as normal. I however respect if not pity the women who cook for these men, who share
the same beds with them (If they do) These are men who can no longer rise to
the occasion as I listen to complains via local Fm stations of men who long ago
absconded their marital duties thanks to their ‘new lifestyle’.
I recently experienced
a scuffle in my own family when my cousins whose mother long passed on and they
were lucky to get a plot as my uncles, aunties and daddie were getting their
share from gradpa. All they did amidst resistance from a good number of family
members was to dispose it and share the loot. What gave me a slight headache
was that where this plot is, there is piped water for irrigation, farming
patterns are rarely dictated by the period of the year as all is required is a
horse pipe and a sprinkler and one is able to farm all year round. The hard bit
is that farming is no longer attractive and cool among the young people hence
telling this to them may earn one a proper stoning session for hate speech….
(Will say it though, one dies once and he/she is a forgotten story…..
.jpg)
Below is just an
example of what those who have dared to defy the odds are enjoying this
January. Am sure they are not finding it difficult to navigate this Month of January
like most of other village folks are going through as they look up to the sky
waiting for maana to start falling, a visit by a politician or a man/woman from
the City cotton for a handout spree.
This is not and individual problem and al I call for as a
concerned village boy is a sober dialogue on where we went wrong and where we
need to fix things and set the ship sailing. Either way, this remains wishful
thinking as long as I continue sitting behind my laptop and updating my blog
and doing nothing on the ground. May be am already doing something but alone, I
can do nothing much…..It starts with me and you. We are created to rule and
subdue the world, not to be mere spectators. Lets rise to the occasion and
rectify things before we have a ‘Bokom Haram’ that no amount of gun fire and artillery
will silence.
I walk away, bare
footed, hands in my pocket whistling a song that goes like this…Ewe Kenya Nchi
yangu, Ewe Kenya mama yangu ohhhhhh, sitakuacha milele….
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