The common man is holding his breath waiting for the announcement of the next regime after the recent general elections and I am just hoping that whomever the rot of Westernized democracy points as our next punisher, doesn't allow this feigned sovereignty sink into post-election violence.
Before my citizenship lies my motherhood and humanity.
And I am sure the low voter turnout has already sent a message to these political warlords but I also have an understanding that they don't take such as signs and the possibility of there being the loss of lives is there. I mean, it is already happening but because this time majority of the youth they've used in the past are recanting so they have acquired a taste of guns for hire.
I feel like as a country that has a long way to decolonise, we are still aping foreign cultures.
My ancestors would be pissed I am sure, they resolved their differences like warriors, not like cowards. And sadly my people are diluting that with every hit that takes life for leadership yet they believed that such tasks came with honour and accountability. I wonder what they are doing about the spirit of the man who began all this chaos.
And to think that I once worshipped him, sigh.
If this nation didn't find itself with the con that was the first President of Kenya, we would be doing better than we are as we are made of a resourceful community but the British had better ideas after seeing they couldn't subdue the Mau Mau rebellion.
They wanted a piece of the fertile highlands and a piece of what has now become a hub for the East African countries and so they collaborated with the first greedy man who could form a few English sentences and gave my forefathers a show of his arrest before they handed him the presidency in 1963.
This was achieved after he silenced a few bold men and women who knew who he was and what he had done.
Since then, we have enjoyed the drama that comes with elections after every five years but there are times we have almost annihilated each other -nothing close to the Rwandan genocide in 1994 but we have also outdone ourselves- over who has the deepest pockets, the larger following and yes they have to be from our respective tribes as that's the only time we stop being Kenyans and became a village with close to 50M in the population who speak more than 50 different mother tongues.
I find us hard to believe sometimes. Sighs!
And because 2017 left unattended wounds, the fear of what could go wrong is there as the reality of hiked food prices. Farmers might have retreated to their farms to keep their produce safe as food destruction is among the ways we naively utilize during these times. Imagine that!
Though I haven't heard or seen this kinda lunacy sprouting even in slums this time yet, I have come to understand how crippling the idea of the past being revisited is. And I would rather bear the agony of not having enough food than that of not having peace.
wambuku w.
