The Struggle Within, The Struggle Without: #OccupyParliament [Part II]

"Assembly, demonstration, picketing and petition.

37. Every person has the right, peaceably and unarmed, to assemble, to demonstrate, to picket, and to present petitions to public authorities."

 Continued from part I

All well and swell, were it not for the fact that some overzealous protestor(s) went round, intimidating fellow protestors by threatening to ‘beat them down’ with their placards if they did not sit down. 

I walked across the road at this juncture; about 10 meters from where the protestors sat. The interpretation of peaceably and unarmed  seemed to be persistently tested by loose nuts in the crowd repeatedly. Not once, by the organizers, however.

By now, the show-of-force shock-and-awe campaign by the police forces was becoming more and more effective in its choreography; horsemen galloping past protestors and back again, trucks full of GSU - as well as Riot - policemen, cruising back and forth.

• I had been consistently expressing my reservations to Aficionado, and as I watched the Swine Truck back up towards Parliament, we mused at what was going on. As soon as I realized there were pigs in the truck, correlating the pigs to the chants on slaughter, I expressed my hope that it was not going to be slaughtered pigs on display.

One of the men next to me, apparently fed up with my bickering, turned on me with a barrage of bullets disguised as words. Questioning my ‘allegiance’ and basically giving me the ‘if you’re not for us you’re against us’ speech. 

Two things: 

I will never sit and watch in silence as something I believe is wrong goes down.

And, at the end of the day, symmetry is overrated. 

I was not there to join protestors, but there to protest. For Kenya, not for Occupy Parliament, so to speak. That is to say that some of the protestors could be wrong, and I wouldn't have had to join them in being wrong. 

But Kenya, whether wrong or right, I had to defend. 

This is the story of a girl, who cried a river and drowned the whole world. And while she looks so sad in photographs, I absolutely love her, when she smiles

-          Nine Days

• When the pigs were finally let out, the first thing I saw was the pighead held high, bloody where the neck had been cut. I have since come to learn that the pighead was not part of the protest. Not by the protest organization’s doing anyway. A madman in this market had thought it striking imagery to bring the head with him. 

And it was, striking imagery. 

An image that struck back.

Because, I maintain, this is what triggered the forceful dispersion of the otherwise largely peaceful protest. This head, added to the blood that was bought by organizers at a slaughterhouse in Dagoretti and poured on the pigs – which then went ahead to have their feel and fill of the macabre display of body fluid – only served to further aggravate the image.

That, right there, was strike 3.

Leave and Bicker

At which point, frustrated at yet another chance to shift perceptions, I left. The fact that this was a successful protest is not in contention here. That it was. Hugely successful, in getting the will of Kenyans across. More successful, in getting across the foot-down-on-them response by this government. 

But the few sour elements, elements that Bonnie and crew could not in truth be expected to control, sallied the display.

I got away, fast and furious, and by the time I got to the Hilton Hotel, the Fire Brigade was headed up Moi Avenue, in a series of beelines and turns, for the protestors.

Hear Jeer, and Sneer

On to Social Media for the due post-mortem then. There were those who sat back, heard others complain about the blood and ‘slaughter,’ and in turn sneered their responses at those who jeered. 

The most common criticism was that we who protested the sideshows in the protest had missed the big picture.

That those who had a problem with how things were done should get off their arses and do something that can be judged, not simply bitch about everything. True.

As you tell 'complainers' what to do, from within the confines of your Internet Security.

That the politicians’ pay rises were what we should have focused on. True.

Yet a sideshow was in fact created, in the way of the pighead. The pigs and blood alone would have been no major issue to me, turned off as I am by blood. The head, though, was overkill. And not the organizers’ fault.

But until Boniface Mwangi explained that yesterday morning, we whose sensibilities were so offended, had no way of knowing that it wasn't.

Like the legend of the phoenix, all ends with beginnings … We’ve, come too far, to give up, who we are. So let’s, raise the bar, and our cups, to the stars…

-          Daft Punk ft. Pharrell Williams & Nile Rodgers

Hear Jeer, Cheer at Jeer

Then came the pig jokes on Twitter. Which soon accepted and moved on to Facebook and Parliament. Some were admittedly hilarious, but once again, the big picture was missed by Kenyans eager for a Retweet based on the lowest form of wit; ridicule.

Hear Cheer, Jeer at Cheer

Soon enough the people who cheered on the protestors' bravery, in the face of being mauled by the hounds that are our Kenyan anti-riot forces, were subjected to sniggers; one particular tweet referred to protestors as being on the street for their own amusement. 

It’s hard not to lose your cannons when such bullshit flies across your timelines.

They forgot that as they cracked their jokes, deriding the protestors, we – those who were beaten and those who were missed alike – had managed to do something the idle armchair philosophers had not.

We were heard. We could not be ignored.

I had a dream, it was golden. There was a king, he sent soldiers. They had orders to tear us apart. So we ran and ran, and they chased and chased. We were huge, we were tall. They were weak, they were small. And at last we were free, we could save. Sound the horn, call the cavalry. Together we’re invincible.

-          Lemar

In Conclusion, I understand now, what Bonnie and crew, what we, did on Tuesday. They know, they must, that the pigs and blood will be a whip to sensibilities and sensitivities, and a harsher whip to those sprung off their hips. 

Yet, I can only imagine, they have a pragmatic approach to their protest and activism. Bonnie got ribbed by government security once again yesterday, center of focus that he is; but he understands that the good of the many overrides the good of the one.

Until you have done something for humanity, you should be ashamed to die.

-          Horace Mann

We need to end the heartbreak warfare. Lose the grey areas and pick a side. Either you are with the protest or against it. If you are for, then be for; express your opinions either way, but at the end of the day, remember the issues.

Are you still talking about the protest? Some, a good number, are. International and Local Media included. Discourse has been resurrected, a new kind of discourse. A passionate form of discourse, whether for or against, the revolutionary road. That, is victory. 

• On a sidenote, those who were arrested have been charged with animal rights abuse. Do we have animal rights' legislation in Kenya? Like my friend Michael asks here, was the case in which a porn director at the Coast was charged for engaging women in bestiality last week, also charged on animal rights' abuse?

• The police have said that they were forced to act with violence because the rights of Muslims were impinged upon by the use of pigs to symbolize MPs in the struggle. First off, I’m sure it would have made no difference if the pigs were actually vultures shot down and weighed down with stones, so as to not fly off.

And, are we really going to sit here and pretend, in this country, that we give that much of a damn about Muslim sensibilities, in justification of hosing down and tearing up peaceful protestors?

Excerpt from a post on Seven Sentences.

• We each only have 24 hours in a day, but greatness breaks time down, examining each action frame by frame, bringing forth much clarity. 

• The ability to see clearly, prioritize and make great decisions in a heated moment, marks greatness. 

• How can you learn to slow down time? 

• You must learn to relax and become the master of your emotions.

The Heartbreak Warfare - #OccupyParliament [Part I]

Anyone who takes a cursory glance at my Digital Timelines may already know that I suffer from an advanced case of foot on keypad syndrome. I think it... I tweet or update it. No forethought, and sometimes, if left to my own devices, no afterthought either.

Such was the case on Tuesday; a case that has taught me to question. To ask. To be patient in my resolve to neither ignore nor be ignored.

And upon some rather impressively mature – not so common in my book – reflection, some notions I expressed after leaving #OccupyParliament shamefully missed the big picture. I will now attempt to elucidate it. A swipe or two unavoidable ones will be taken at some ass-wipes, but otherwise, this time I quite fully agree with Bonnie's way. We're in a war, and it's about time we choose a side and stick with it.

Lightning strike… dreams of ways to understand my pain. Clouds of sulfur in the air, bombs are falling everywhere... it’s heartbreak warfare. Disappointment has a name [no one really ever wins] in heartbreak warfare… 

I swear to God we’re gonna get it right, if you lay your weapons down.

-          John Mayer

 Stop and Join

We left Freedom Corner at Uhuru Park, or as I call it, FC President Park, after about an hour of morale boosting chants and speeches from the likes of the revolutionary Reverend Timothy Njoya. It was quite an honour meeting the man, by which I mean being within 5 feet of him. 

His arrival, with the stripes he earned from the Nyayo regime’s boots, added more ‘legitimacy’ to the protest for me. In that there was a certain intangible euphoric patriotism his presence evoked for me; and, I’m sure, for many more.

As we left the corner, with press cars holding up traffic behind the procession and policemen walking by us, it was hard to ignore their palpable show of nuanced intimidation. They did, after all, while ‘protecting us,’ have tear gas canister guns in hand, and full riot gear to boot.

Yet, I was impressed to find some Kenyans joining the procession, one they seemed to have no idea was planned to happen. They read the placards. They agreed with the message. They joined. Idle Kenyans, some who sit on benches in the day, others who sleep on these benches in the night; but not idle of their own doing, I would posit. If anything, they embodied the very injustice we were there to protest.

40 million, held at ransom by a mere 4 hundred.

Stop and Stare

We beat a path through Kenyatta Avenue, into Moi Avenue; drumline a-timed, heading up the drumlin towards the symbols of impunity erected on Harambee Avenue, percussions a-costumed, lungs a-wailing as we headed on to Parliament Road.

Kenyans stopped; and stared. Being my first proper protest march, I mused, almost amused. Were they stopping, standing by the side of the roads in their droves, sitting in the various Coffee stalls that litter the CBD, Central Business District, because they were scared? Afraid to join us? 

Or were they giving us a guard of honour? 

If so, were we dignitaries? Or heroes fallen in war?

Perhaps, however, they were just disgusted enough not to join us, but still curious enough to stay and watch; hoping to witness the battle go down, when, inevitably, the long whip of the law cracked on our hides.

Standing to gaze or seated to watch us, they personified the struggle within our ranks. Passive passengers in the accident we call a justice system. I mean, you can watch. But you can’t join?

There is no failure. There is only feedback.

Hear and Jeer

The windows in every building the procession went by served as big screen reality TVs, connected real-time to a world just within reach, not quite within touch. We do love our reality shows, our Kard- and jubilated CORD-ashians. 

The voyeurs filled up every space on every opening, to watch the world beneath them. On rooftops. On illegal ‘smoking zones’ in the way of mezzanines.

Some seemed overly bemused, somewhat appalled in their disagreement. Particularly those employed on the government’s Avenue, Harambee. The same kind of people who 24 hours later, upon hearing that I was at the protest, sneered and asked, ‘Kufanya nini? - Doing what?’

Fighting for MY and mine's rights. YOURS too, by extension, but mine and mine's first.

Hear and Cheer

Then there were those who heard us, and took an early lunch break to ‘join us,’ waving and cheering us on from within their offices. 

I salute you all. 

I understand that unlike me – unemployed to some, self-employed to me – you could not join the struggle. Your thoughts mattered, as did those of the many Kenyans not working within the CBD or Nairobi, or Kenya even, who resonate with our slight forbearance on Kenya’s loan, owed to the justice sector.

Stay and Bicker

I may be alone on this one. I enjoyed my participation in the ‘democratic right’ to protest. 

I chanted. 

I also could not help but note. Note that we focused a little too much on the negatives. Chants of ‘wasaliti – traitors,’ and ‘mapambano – conflict (in the context used)’ as well as ‘Kanyaga – crush them’ echoed through the city. I have little qualm with that.

I do, however, believe that we should not ALWAYS protest against…it’s an easy ride to get on board, a bandwagon that focuses on the problem. Protest, chant, let us, for something. I did manage, with a certain degree of success, to pass this message across to some of my fellow protestors. The chant I asked for, was ‘Kenya yetu – Our Kenya.’

Simple. Effective. We rocked Harambee Avenue, reminding the Treasury, the Central Bank, Judiciary and the KICC among other buildings who cared notice, that it is, is Kenya – ours.

Just as we went past the Office of the Deputy President, a sobering moment came to pass, and in quick succession precipitated a chain of events that teed me off; saw me leave the protest livid and seething fire through my pacifist nostrils. This was where the poetry ended, and the dull prose began.

•  Two General Service Unit (GSU) trucks came cruising at break leg speed, pummeling a hole straight through our stand against the system, as we scattered to avoid being barreled down.

• Then, as we approached the roundabout onto Parliament Road off Harambee Avenue, the chant turned from the constant against mindset to a for mindset. What was the chant for, you ask? ‘Manguruwe, chinja. Manguruwe, chinja chinja! – Slaughter the pigs!’ 

I began to ask myself if that, really, was what we were for. Slaughtering.

MPs are only symbolically pigs, meaning a symbolic slaughter. 

But yelling that Pigs should be slaughtered, in a nation that has yet to heal from the 3 months of slaughter we went through post-2007 elections, was a message that could be easily misconstrued. I quickly noted the same to my friend Aficionado (who, incidentally, had taken the black and white dress code and run with it in true style); she too had noticed it and stopped chanting.

• When we got outside parliament, things went south relatively fast. There was a vuta nikuvute (tag of war) between the protestors at the frontline and the riot police, about putting banners up on Parliament’s perimeter fence. The protestors made their first mistake. Perhaps for the aesthetic value the banners would have in the evening News, they persisted. 

And won.

Strike 1. You do not win, against the riot police and their battle-reinforced egos.

• Some loose cannon then decided to hurl a bullhorn (megaphone) into parliament. There were parliament personnel standing near where the speaking-horn fell.

Strike 2. You do not give the riot police any excuse to attack you.

• The organizers, Bonnie and Gaceke among others, to avoid provoking the riot police any further, requested the protestors to sit down, on the tarmac. 

They read out Article 37 of the Kenyan constitution:

"Assembly, demonstration, picketing and petition.

37. Every person has the right, peaceably and unarmed, to assemble, to demonstrate, to picket, and to present petitions to public authorities."

All well and swell, were it not for the fact that some overzealous protestor(s) went round, intimidating fellow protestors by threatening to ‘beat them down’ with their placards if they did not sit down. 

Continued in Part II

Dear Bonnie: Double Standards Beget Double Standards #OccupyParliament

Hello @bonifacemwangi. I’m a fan of your revolutionary spirit. I believe that if more Kenyans had the guts to stand up for their rights in much the same way you have in the past stood, fallen, been stoned and handcuffed for theirs, we would be talking of a Vision 2014. The next 16 years would be spent, instead, working towards hitting the elusive first class of world societies and economies alike. Notice how I put society before economy there, something Vision 2030 seems to have forgotten.

"There is no person so severely punished, as those who subject themselves to the whip of their own remorse. ~ Seneca"

I come from a long line of activists. There’s my paternal grandfather, an 85 year old man now, who was imprisoned and gulag’d by the Imperial Guard during the State of Mau Mau obliteration. He still, amazingly so, given his age, spends up to 4 hours nonstop on his feet grazing his goats. Even with his flailing eardrums and failing eyesight. Did I mention my paternal grandmother, who defied the Brits and fed the Mau Mau, much to her own chagrin when the guards caught up with her? An iron lady, my grandma. My maternal uncles, who seem to have the gift of both gab and quill, two having written for the Daily Nation, one having worked a long career in the legal scenes and the other currently running a Diaspora News agency based in Washington DC, for and about Kenya.

In the interests of trapping some more of your attention, I will allow myself one name drop. Al-Amin Kimathi, my mother’s brother, and one of the four brothers above. One of the two still left alive, illogically and unbelievably so. He should be dead. Like Dedan before him, Kimathi is a terrorist. A man who orchestrated the bombing of innocent football fans during the screening of a soccer match in 2010, over the World Cup. A man who had set up a sham operation in Westlands, claiming to be a Muslim Human Rights’ defender, but working his own Jihad against Kenya and the West in said disguise. A man who, after years as a Daily Nation writer, simply got fed up with reason, dropped his quill and decided to pick up the religion that nurtures and natures indiscriminate violence.

That’s if you’ll believe the three Musketeers of poor justice masquerading as pure – the American, Kenyan and Ugandan governments, in descending order of importance and soft power of justice.

Why else was a man on a mission to Uganda in defense of Kenyan Muslims extradited extrajudicially, himself extrajudicially bound and gagged for over a year in a Ugandan prison? Luzira – East Africa’s very own Château d’If. A Kenyan. His only fault being that he was a thorn in the Kenya government’s ribs, and since he wears a kanzu and has a bushy beard, he is without doubt Osama bin Laden’s cousin by camel exchange. A Kenyan. One who is yet to be compensated in whatsoever form for his wrongful mental and physical torture? Very nearly a wrongful death, I must add.

Renewed faith or peace, @imanmpya, he calls himself on Twitter, now that he’s finally seen the light of Kenyan suns for over a year since his return. Or perhaps it’s a short form of his surname, Imanene? A new Imanene? Yet, sadly, one who has become, in some eyes, the laughing stock of our society, or worse still, the terrorist that got away.

Would it, I wonder, have been better for the Kenyan activist scene if he had been martyred?

If I do not have your attention now, Boniface Mwangi, then perhaps you may be a lost cause tracing the wrong course already. If I do, however, then please wipe the discontent that little no so quippy quip above may have inspired, and for once, brother – listen!

"The masses are ignorant... They lost their voice and we want to help them discover that voice,"

                  - Boniface Mwangi.

I fear that you’re on a path of destruction, comrade in alms. Your own, and by extension, Kenya’s. You and your brethren have failed in some of the most fundamental aspects of any idea worth having, and in the long run, keeping. Here’s how.

Borrowed from the Kenya ni Kwetu (Kenya is our home) Facebook page

Having been a supporter of your work – madd love on the graffiti by the way – I quickly came to Pawa254, the creativity and artistry hub we were endowed for your effort as an activist. It remains, and always will be, my most at ease venue for anything. A testament to your own genius. I hope you will still allow me in tomorrow, after all’s said and done.

Genius and madness have been said to be like black and white, yet there exists a fine blurry grey line that symbolizes the tripwire you are currently treading on. For if crashing May Day celebrations, a function ‘chaired’ by a president indicted for crimes against humanity, so as to chide and deride a small – yet fat – man over a mundane yet bloody important issue is not madness, then we will never see madness. Kibaki at Madaraka was one thing, but Atwoli at Labour Day?

I attended the Love Protest last year, and I’ll be quick to say I marveled at the organization of the ‘event’.

There were the banners, the placards, the T-shirts, the coffins; all, as one might expect of a man who runs a creative hub, so tastefully done. The ideas expressed by this artistry in motion were pretty darn good.

The ideas expressed by the mob you and your brethren managed to bring together, however, leave a whole fucking lot to be desired. I considered writing a rebuttal to your protest right after it was over, and aired my discontent with some of it right at the preparations to the Love march at Freedom Corner. A lady who was part of the gathered few, listened, and when I said I was not going to blog about my reservations, she was quick to ask me to desist from self-censorship. A year later, I heed her call, having thought better of my pussyfooting around the way you do things simply because you are Boniface Mwangi.

To an Associated Press reporter in the crowd with him, he said: "There is fire in my belly, but my feet are trembling."

While I have kept away from all street protest initiatives you, the Unga Revolution and Wanjiku Revolution have organized, I intend to come for the Occupation of Parliament. Makes it sound like the August House is a job, doesn’t it, despite the fact that we all know how truly it is not?

Anyway, since I am coming, and you – like it or not – have the capacity to chart a course for Kenya, answering the ‘where to?’ that emerges with our ‘accept and move on’ situation, I feel duty-bound to nitpick on the Love Protest.

I left before the protestors left Freedom Corner, and here is why:

a)      Simply banking on numbers is a mistake. Rather, it's the quality of the protestors that should matter i.e. ‘do they understand and believe in the cause?’ As a Social Media strategist, I can attest to the fact that for Social Media to have a Return on Investment, focus on how many followers or Facebook friends we have should not be what Corporate Social Media eyes, but rather the relationships and shared values created. Which is where your flawed presumption, expressed last year at the Poets and Writers’ Online (POWO)in June, springs from. Just because you have them thousands of followers does not imply that when you tweet about your being arrested will spring a riot. 

Expecting the reenactment of a scene from The Illusionist where Edward Norton’s Eisenheim is arrested and the Viennese Wanjiku come to his rescue, dear brother, requires a better Kenya first and better idea from you. @itsBuddhaBlaze, for instance, came because he believs in your cause, and is your friend. How, perhaps you should be thinking, can you make more Buddha fires of ordinary wananchi?

Lotsa idlers at Freedom Corner joined the protest last year, mainly for the free merchandise, and it's no wonder violence ensued at Parliament. The irony in that photo of you reeling in the dogs that your ill-considered mass action unleashed was not lost on me either. 

b)      The focus on merchandise, I felt, was also appalling, particularly given the distribution. People queued for T-shirts, and like Omtatah once said, if people queue, they do so only because they believe there'll be something at the end of that queue, otherwise chaos ensues. Ironically, you were seated right next to him while he said these words, at the same POWO meeting I referenced earlier. Last year June at the love protest, T-shirts ishad. 

Boniface Mwangi and Ndanu

Panelists (L to R): Room Thinker, Okoiti Omtata, Maddo and Muki Garang.

c)       Let's also not be the architects of the very same crap status quo dishes out. I remember watching as my dear brother Boni came to the front of the line, picking T-shirts for his friends, who couldn't be bothered to queue, while protesters who'd arrived earlier queued. Double standards reap double standards. I understand, as was pointed out to me by one of the organizers when I asked how much you were selling the T-shirts upon my arrival, that ‘you do not need my money’. 

Because of course this was your money, your funds raised, spent to buy this merchandise. But when you put on such a show, then bitch loudly – as do I – when the parliamentarians go easy on their cronies, it belies belief in your sincerity as a change agent, and beggars questions about your own integrity. That is not the way, dear brother, we are going to take down Crown Prince Leopold. I know it’s hard to ignore our friends, but we cannot eat our integrity and still have it.

I do hope, sincerely so, that you or some of your inner circle of friends gets to read this, and pass the message on to you. I fear that the photo-activist empery walks naked amongst us mere mortals, and his court remains silent; or is else totally ignored and overruled whence it raises objections to his Uchi Revolution!

I so hope that my tyranny of words will suppress your tyranny of the wrong numbers. I honestly believe you capable of so much better. Not more. Just better; so as you change Kenya, I hope to change you.

The dude in between Lorna and the other lady? With the head turned away? That's me. I turned away on purpose, not to be associated with this protest. Yule Mbois Mndialala of Facebook, and @French_Freddy on Twitter

Update:

All credit to Bonnie, and in the true fashion of one so used to courting controversy in pursuit for his cause, he responded to this post immediately after I put it up. Here's what he had to say:

Further, on 18th May at Pawa254, he went on to explain in person that when I saw him getting a T-shirt, it was one he had promised to keep for Lorna Irungu, as she had contributed money for the printing of T-shirts. While this response drew a 'you should really have kept it aside from the pile for her' shrug from me, it's an acceptable rebuttal to this piece, given it was premised primarily on the one assumption that Bonnie went hypocrite on the cause. 

My apologies for the misrepresentation of a not too tactful picture I misread for more than it was. Meanwhile, see my new post on the explosive Occupy Parliament 'revolution' here. I was one of the thousand or so strong protestors on the day (14th May, 2013). 

Here's a sneak preview to how it ended...

Jogoo ama Kwetu...Kenya ni ya nani? #WLL6 #KenyaNiKwetu

Cockerel, if you must, but let's prefer cocks, innuendos notwithsitting. Or shitting. Jogoo. The cock. Yes you, Jogoo. The cock that never crows. The crow that cawed but never clawed; worked it's beak without ever getting it's talons dirty.

"...I have always considered it dangerous to underestimate the influence of both institutions amongst the people, and for this reason i have repeatedly urged caution in dealing with them."

                                            Nelson Mandela, on The Church and The Government

    Conversations with Myself

                                        

 
Let's prefer, next, because we must, a time when the cock that is comradeship was big, with thick virile pumping veins, and a penetrative artery. When the cock was mature, and comrade, the word, meant something. Something that had value...added value...was value...and was valued.

Borrowed from Sodahead

Something anathema to student politics of stones thrown and land burned. When 'Comraaaaaade.....Pawaaaaah!' felt like a call to arms; a call to rally against the vast machinery of oppression in a pan-African sense; not a call to simplistic pugilist 'activism', hell-bent on little but the self-serving interests of a set of institutions that thrive on double-talking brouhaha and thousand yard stares into the muck that is their own bloody modus oper-fucking-anus.

Borrowed from Mutuamatheka

Something anathema to per cent ages, and per shilling billing pages. Something that did not defend political anachronisms in the August House, or condone - fend for, even - the KANU cockerel's impunity excessively.

The cock that laid insight everywhere in sight, without incite in their foresight.

The cock that thought guided by forethought independence, fueled by hind-thought brought on by nostalgia.

A nostalgia for freedom. Not only from shackles...but also, simply, the freedom to be. To exist, existentially in coexistence. To live, within and without...

Kuku Pono

Something that would never allow murderous scheming kuku ponos to just be, in cahoots with capitalistic heist moguls; these lip service under-serving bastards with no room for conscience in their bloated undeserving egos. Something, that would fight despots, tyrants and sanctioned killers with the very brimstone buffet they served up to a nation tender-breasted...our motherland.

Not simply sit back. Not watch simply, and simply watch. It was something of an arising...an awakening of brawn and bone...a renaissance of intellect; the rebirth of cocky balls so long dormant that they'd become recessive.

Today, jogoo is in premature ejaculations of initiative; it is in burnt out tread-less wheels of justice and civil inertia masquerading as activism; it is in the thread-less cogs of cognition that is the Union of Neanderthals, quick to scream bloody murder for a quick looting cloaked as Right To Protest. It is in pointless, shamelessly pantless, cruelly misplaced violence; it is in watching, silently on a bar stool - or worse still, not so silently - as the Mozarts of a battle so fresh in our minds parade their ignorance on our silver and white screens.

Kenya Believes...IN WHAT EXACTLY?!! 
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From In Love with The Slave Master

It is, in essence, playing along to the very symphony that cost use mere statistic in lives and displaced lodging...in hushing our tones - nay, our thoughts and action too! - to avoid persecutions and prosecutions in the dungeons of a tired system fertilizing our lives with regular dose of in vitro bullshit.

It is, this jogooism of the day, pussy blogging brought offline. It is, without one doubt, the art of lending capital punishment to the emancipated few, and enhancing the penetration of deep penetration, into a shit hole too deep to claw out of.

Yet the very same fattened crows we have feeding off our eyeballs now, we will see then. At the ballot. Ignorance will then vote in arrogance...and more ignorance. Greed, for a simple dollar bill, votes in greed...for a couple billion pocket change more. Graduated arrogance turned goon-for-hire, serves and votes in ingratiated arrogance. And the very same murderous village villains from a war gone freshly by...voting in the very same stately stench that conspired to prick our women, steal an election, and kill a people. In the couple thousands...

Some of them, proudly Eye-'E'-Be-Seen into your voting booth, belong in the guillotines of our A4-sized justice department. Yet now, on the eve of these evil clowns' constitutional 'beheading', we hand them a lifeline. Call it a 'last request'. They choose the Presidency, right at the eleventh hour pending a lethal injection of Right, and we - apparently unperturbed by the rectal diphtheria of our own bull shit, lend them our ears. Our years. Sling them plaudits, and not pleas for rope around their necks of impunity.

Kenya ni Kwetu ama ni kwa hawa kuku pono?

Kenya ni kwa Jogoo halisi...

wala sio Jogoo mhandisi

wa kifo.

Borrowed from this Flickr

I will LOVE PROTEST | Reblog: as posted by @Vancemuriu

Posted on June 26, 2012 by Vance

On  21^st June 2012, I attended the Acumen East African Fellows Innovation conference  at a Nairobi hotel. The event happened on day Kenyans woke up to the shocking news that our members of parliament had amended the constitution illegally. The amendments were made to favour the selfish interest of current members of parliament and goes against the spirit of the constitution .In progressive societies laws are amended to favour the citizenry not a few bloated egos.

At the Acumen East African Fellows event Kenya Wildlife services Director Mr Julius Kipngetich spoke on leadership. Mr Kipngetich is a man who has reformed KWS and we can all attest to that. He has transformed KWS. He is one of the few parastatal heads who do their work. All others do is ‘eat’. Mr Kipngetich presentation got me thinking after he gave examples of some countries. Singapore is approximately 824 times smaller than Kenya and it is doing MUCH better than Kenya mainly because of bad leadership. Democratic Republic of Congo, which is endowed with all types of mineral resources is dirt poor because of incompetent leadership. Singapore had GDP $208.77 billion in 2010 compared to $31.41 billion of Kenya in the same year and $11.9 billion in Congo.  The GDP of the mentioned countries in 2011 and the years to follow will attest that it is leadership that makes or breaks an organisation… a country.

Back home, as a citizen, ARE YOU satisfied with the direction our ‘leaders’ are steering our nation? Are we headed in the direction which will ensure all is well for us and the generations that will follow? I am not happy and there is no way we will get to the Promised Land as Kenya if those leading us are headed nowhere. Our members of parliaments are self centered and they have made themselves a priority in every decision they make in parliament.  This coming election we must get the right people for the job. Servant Leader who will strive to improve the lives of ordinary citizens and that of our children and generations  to come comfortable.

On 28^th June 2012, I join Boniface Mwangi, his family, the Kenya Ni Kwetu team and other Kenyans for a PEACEFUL PROCESSION to parliament grounds.  Check out the facebook event page and twitter handle for more details. The police and other relevant authorities have been duly informed of the procession and have no objections.

I hope you will join me in securing the future of our kids. It’s the beginning of a journey of making this country a better than nation where leaders serve the people who elect them to power. You can support the cause in cash (Mpesa 0716956552) or in kind to help make the procession successful. Kenya Ni Kwetu is raising funds to buy flags, print placards and t-shirts to be distributed at the event. All funds will be accounted for and as of 25^th June 5pm. So far, Ksh 8,000/- had been raised.

We must walk the talk. See you on Thursday fellow patriots.  Kenya Ni Kwetu!

About Vance Muriu

C.E.O | Entrepreneur | Accountant | Business analyst and Strategist | Project Manager | Mentor | Blogger | Ideas HUB | View all posts by Vance

POWOJune 2012: Lessons in Kenyan Timing

For a long time, any time keepers in Kenya will find themselves having to waste the very time they keep in an attempt to help others keep theirs. It's a sacrifice many an agent of change finds themselves having to make. Greater good and all.

Having had enough of keeping time, especially with morning events in Kenya, I try to be logically late. If it says 9 am, then any time before noon 9:10 to 9:20 am is usually a safe bet. When you have no idea how to get to Pawa254, however, and your only connection of State House and anything YMCA is the men's hostels next to the University of Nairobi hostels, things obviously begin to get a little interesting.

Add to that mix a free-spirited pal of the femininely wily kind - whose idea of 'am awake and ready' is 'give me 90 more minutes to act out the entire season of America's Next Top Model.' Just like that, 9:20 becomes 10:45.

Google maps, anecdotes and lack thereof them later, we check into Pawa254...

The Pawa254 Ubuntu space where the #POWOJune2012 was held, Saturday 16th

The colourful warmth of the space hits you first, then you turn left and accost a life-size Obama staring you down. The draperies let in ample light onto the bright polished linoleum, as an undergrowth of graffiti and fancy hair about yay high begins to materialize. Creatives, Simon says...

On stage sits a gathering of bravado and brainpower so intense it could stoke up an atomic bomb. For the sake of clarity, NSIS, that was a joke. An explosive one, I might add.

Panelists (L to R): Room Thinker, Okoiti Omtata, Maddo and Muki Garang.

Seeing as Inspector Bauer is now possibly on his way from the NSIS HQ, I'll try avoid the tickling time bombs and get down to the lessons POWOJune delivered...and, I might add, leave the cyber before they track me down.

Kenyan Timing Lesson 1:

Thinker would probably reiterate the above comment, and add that if you're going to blog anonymously, you might as well forget about telling your friend that 'I am Yule Mbois...na usishow msee...!'

So if you're gonna use art to protest, remember that there are certain risks that come with it, risks that you must be prepared to deal with. Online, it's easier to protect your trail, but as Boni put it, offline you need to be street savvy and realize that while 'we need more offline protests than online protests', ukishikwa, 'co-operate. The police can beat you to a pulp when there are  no cameras'.

Cartoonist Maddo, had his own taste of the safety stick, or lack thereof it, with an email from one ataq'kenya430@gmail.com (AK43), stating, among other things, that 'your termination is imminent.' The contract AK43 was referring to here being life. Notice the lack of insurance after life.

Kenyan Timing Lesson 2:

Okoiti Omtata is one wise and passionately driven patriot. You could sense the conviction he had in a better Kenya, endlessly oozing the sort of ideology that justifies the phrase 'Science is organized knowledge, wisdom is organized life.' Just off the top of my head, here's a couple:

• The right to choose [leadership] implies the right to reject it.

• They [Kenyan leaders] have the cake and the knife. It's about time we took back one.

• We do not fight [for a better Kenya] so that we can become the oppressors. Emancipation, and not liberation, is what

• You can become Kenyan by losing direction...

• We are spectators in our own tragedy. They say that it will take a certain degree of madness to change the world.

• Only a hungry Kikuyu will fight a hungry Luo.

• When spider webs unite they can tie a lion

• Carpet bomb every heart in every hut [until change 'devastates' us all]

• Why take the people of Bondo to Nyeri for cultural weeks and vice versa? Who will get on a bus [in a state of election violence] from Bondo to take the war to Nyeri?

The list, clearly, is endless. Omtata also spoke of a newly formed party, the Justice and Development Party. There's a more exhaustive piece on POWO's site.

Kenyan Timing Lesson 3:

Let me, in the interest of your time, now explain why these are Kenyan Timing lessons. Because this was a FREE forum. State of the art facilities. FREE food...ok one of the three is a lie, but the point is, I thought the event was to start at 9am...and got there at 10:50. I was lucky, judging by this piece, to realize that the event had only just started when I got in, what with Muki Garang's Maisha Yetu being on screen when I got there.

Moral of this lesson? I got there, in my mind, one and a half hours late for the event. The last time I attended POWO, in May of last year, it was at the iHub, and started at 9 am, hence my confusion. Notice 3 things, though.

• Kenyan timing is all about a lack of initiative. To be on time. To do more than simplistic slacktivism from the safety of our keyboards/ pads. To quote Muhammad Ali (or the right-side wall of the Pawa254 conference hall, not sure which) 'he who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life...'
• I still showed. Why? Because I simply could not afford not to.
• You could have shown. Question is, why did you not? Next POWO's on August 18th. 

Clear that space. The amount of insight that simultaneously pours into you at POWO is worth the 2 or so hours. It's exactly the sorta environ creativity demands...and so does change.

Above and below: Powerful shots from Pichamtaani

Raya Wambui captures the audience with her affective poetry...

Boniface Mwangi and Ndanu