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

Fuck Mass Suffererz: your Government is killing you

Chuku chuku, Tchoo! Tchoo!

The cheap, rickety, sway-with-me-now surreal orderliness of the morning train through 'Eastlando' is a disaster begging to happen. Feeling a bit dazed by this apparent contradiction? Let's break it down.

Rickety

Sure. That's not the part that dazed you. I hope. And quite frankly, the fact that the train creaks like a spring bed on a cold winter evening - connect that to bedminton - is not the disaster. Given the train charges 40 bob when the cheapest next best thing at the same hour charges double that, I think you'll agree with a fellow sufferer when I say " 'rickety' on Looney Train!'

Sway-with-me-now

Riding the Githurai 44 route train to town can get you sea-sick. Assuming you have the time - or money - to be sick, Sufferer. Forget that the nearest respectable body of water is at least an hour or two north or south of the railway route's radius.The side-to-side front-to-back journey through the motions, intermitted by incessant screams and wails (not from passengers, unfortunately, but the engine) would make your stomach rumble. Would, but doesn't:; why? Coz:

a) You wouldn't find a toilet to cure that rumble, till you get to Nairobi at least; and

b) You don't have the time - or money, as discussed above - to have a stomach rumble. So you rebuke that demon of the stomach rumble before he challenges you. In the name of Cheezaaz!

c) The train costs, once again, 40 bob. Hiyo ni bargain major sana. Deal with the shakes!

Surreal Orderliness

I sometimes live somewhere in the throes of Eastlando. Sasa, I will sometimes take the morning train to work as a result. [For reasons, see #BudgetYaMasufferer]. Usually, at around 5:30 to 6:30, or 6:30 to 7:30 in the am, that the train passes by my doorstep. In the area I sometimes live. 

That train's NEVER late. 

The train has never been late. Unless it breaks down. Which usually SUCKS!! Imagine being stuck in a veritable jungle somewhere in the Serengeti that Eastlamdo sometimes is. At that unGodly un'Allah'like 5 am. 'Yawa' is the only response your vocabulary should throw at that imagined scenario.

Back to order, the train is never late. Always within the same 5 minute bracket of time. It arrives, passengers have 30 or so seconds to board, et voila...the train tchoo tchoos on to the next Gare/ Stage. Inside the train, the couches, old though they may be, accommodate amply well, leaving you space to stretch your legs out. If you so dare. Seeing as they have never heard of Safety Belts at Kenya Railways, you'd probably fall off faster than it takes to say Yohana Mtembezi [Johnnie Walker]. Or maybe just faster than it takes that cry baby at Tusker Project Fame to break an eyelash sweat.

The order in that train reminds of Okoiti Omtata's words at POWOJune2012; indeed, Kenyans are willing to queue, wait in lines longer than Uhuru Highway, if they know that something awaits them at the end of that queue.

Disaster waiting to Happen 

This country's idea of Disaster Management and Preparedness is in preparing to manage the disaster's after effects. We, captained by chest-thumping tomfoolery, chose to walk KDF {Kenya Defence Forces - defending who? what? where?) into a running battle with Guerilla war lightweight champs in Somali. End result of poor forethought? Bombs left right and centre, above, below and within. Now a gang of maniacs storm a church in Garissa; their tithe, their offering...a spray bullets on the innocent crowd. 

Enter the train from Eastlando. No safety precautions whatsoever. No metal detectors, no sniffer dogs, zilch. nada, niet, nein...zut alors! This, despite the fact that passengers board and alight, bags and all, practically at every stop.

Does the scenario seem dire enough yet?

Enter the train station, at the Arrivals in 'Railways'. Policemen. General Service Unit. AK47s and all that other 'shock and awe' show of force. Not least, an actual Rottweiler that darn near bit off a young lady's head this morning. Literally. As in despite its handler, it jumped all the way 2 or so metres up into the air, going for her head  as she passed by.

At the exit, you find metal detectors and armed guards. Even at 6:30 am in the morning. Impressive, aye?

Well, it is; but only if you miss the fact that the powers that be would much rather cure than prevent attacks on the citizenry who board such a train everyday. Only if the irony in having so much security at the mouth of the CBD - Central Business District - while none goes into securing the people traveling into it, does not stand out to you.

Kenya ni Kwetu; lakini jichungeni Mass Sufferers.

In Other News:

[i] Are you a Kiss 100 fan? Do you feel like your earphones (assuming you use them) are constantly trying to 'Make you Dance'?

Am gonna make you dance

Am gonna am gonna make you dance

[ii] Why you need to know what the US, British, Saudi and Israeli interests in Kenya (Nairobi particularly) are? Because they could KILL you...that's why. At least if Iran is to be feared; and Israel, believed. See today's headlines for more.

[iii] Does anyone else feel the Mass Media sometimes acts like a Public Toilet? A regular dose of 10 bob opinions going down the sewage pipe. In case you missed it, that's an insult. To the Media. And more so to the public.

Siku njemani!

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