Under the Starless Waters of My Mind: A Sob Story

I haven't taken a shower in a month; haven't had a hot meal in two. I live on a patch of sponge I never leave, that has seen better creatures than I; pathogens I fear are more authentic than my pathological self-deception has felt in ages.

I haven't worn clean clothes in months, couldn't be bothered to wash any this past half year.

And no I am not. At least in the sense that I live in a house, I am not homeless. Not any more.

The same cannot be said for my homeless heart. It cannot be said for the war raging in my mind-fields, the running battles of my sanity. It cannot be said for this crippling feeling creeping through my bloodstream from all the cold side-glances and death stares; all the stink eyes I feel these imagined stinkers training on my back.


I used to love writing. Reading brought me joys like no other form of pastime ever could. 


Literature was the one tonic I had on standby to defuse the toxic mines that often waylay my mind.

"[N]ow my heart stumbles on things I don't know. My weakness I feel I must finally show..."

                                                         Mumford & Sons, Awake My Soul.


Lately, and lately is perhaps a safe word, I find myself at a loss. It's not so much what to read or write; I have at my disposal more books than I could ever make it through in a lifetime, and a few more lifetimes worth of writing I could put my quill to.


It's the whys and wherefores that escape me. Reading, and indeed writing, has lost its taste in me.



Am I saying anything different from what's out there? Is anyone? Better yet, is any of what's already out here, what's sensible and sensitive at least -- be it my own or otherwise -- proving at all effective?


Yet there's always more to it. It's never quite as simple as that. It's not that I am never happy even at my most depressed. The real challenge is always in staying happy. Not finding a reason to smile, but finding reason in a smile. 


At my most manic, the conflict that becomes of the contradictions we come to naturalize into our convictions barely fazes me. My days are spent vigorously moving forward, sailing over depressive interlude after the next. 


These contradictions are relentless, though. 


With every mile I run the steeplechase, they hoist the barrier a notch higher, and I begin to sense that I will eventually land face first into the water jump passage.

"Under the water you scream so loud but the silence surrounds you..."

                                  Justin Timberlake, Blue Ocean Floor.

Yet that knowledge, knowing how close my hand is to the self-destruct buzzer, does little to stop its eventuality. 


Gradually it becomes inevitable. Pretty soon my revolving door of hobbies hinges on sleeping and disappointing everyone close to me. 


Disappointing myself is the only job I seem to excel at.


For a few days I will try, in vain appreciation of what's coming, to steady the ship. Or at least, to not rock the boat. Guilt-riddled days turn into seeking nights, finding precious if short-lived pleasures in the escape of silent apathy a good Series provides. 


And then another. Just one more episode...


Night turns to day as avoidance becomes an effortless art. My tethered mind is now vast uncharted territory, fast emptying of all hope. It's such a big place; spacious rooms infinitely supplied with shame and regret. I tell myself that if I can hold fast to my steadfast passions then we won't get lost.


Only the colour fades off them too, and they no longer stand unwavering in deep seated support of my sundered soul. Questions replace certainties in my resolve of who I am; doubt clouds my conviction in what I believe; deep down I feel broken, disconnected, defective - surrounded by the happy continuous illusory perfection of friend and foe.


Ridiculous, I should know, these thoughts. I have known. I want to get back to knowing, for the life of me. Perhaps it's time to take that pill, lull the good with the bad altogether and just be 'normal.' Just perhaps, I need it more than I need my personality untamed. 


Independently shackled. 


Untainted. 


Blemished. 


Or do I?

" I need freedom now, I need to know how to live my life as it's meant to be..."

                                           Mumford & Sons, The Cave.

Robot Hugs: What If People Treated Physical Illness Like Mental Illness?

The Lover || by @MarunduMuturi

Every whisper is heart-breaking beauty,

Each tear a waterfall of raging emotion.




No wrong can she do,


No imperfection in his eyes.




She is the angel that makes gods green,


The maiden men only see yet cannot fathom.




Her sway is the very pulse of the universe,


Her voice is god's own song.




She births dreams in her bosom





And in her breast they are brought to life.

She is the saint and the savior.

And in his enrapturement he is trapped.




Enslaved in his incomprehension,


He basks in his fulfillment of her caprices.




The lover...


Image from Kiss Kulture

The Smoker || by @MarunduMuturi

She brought the cigarette to her lips,

Boldly, delicately,

Like a first kiss promised and ready for delivery.

The grey turned to red,

Her cheeks drawn in in anticipation,

Slowly squeezing life out of the dead stark stick.

Image from DreamsTime

Her hand moved contemplatively to the ash tray

And her finger tips tap-tap-tap-danced for a fleeting.

A fervent romance.

Shaking off the past,

And out of her orifice of riches

Smoke ephemeral, ethereal.

I sat transfixed,

Doubting that the innocuous deviltry before me

Could turn me into a child.

Beautiful in her arrogance,

Smug, assured,

She turned away slightly in half-smile sardonic.

Poised in thought

For a moment she remained,

Soon the fire was back to her lips.

Dark, intense,

Mysterious, alluring,

She looks at nothing and sees everything.

Aloof.

She seeks herself out in darkness,

With red-tipped pen between her fingers,

Her secrets written in smoke.

Nothing said, all said.

I dare not approach her.

The light we shared has ebbed out,

Her cigarette a bitter metaphor.

Apt.

She glances,

Amused and mocking.

Before her sits liquid fire.

To cauterize the wounds within?

I am still drawn to her,

The ashes in my heart potent,

Their smokes bliding me.

I stumble in her wake.

She is smoke,

The present winds cannot her stand.

Is she real?

I don't dream of her, I don't hold her.

The smoker has become

What she sought in refuge, in coolness.

Another passing, fickle.

Beautiful tragedy.

Finished, the butt's tossed aside.

She tosses things aside.

Unself-consciously,

Used to tosssing things aside.

I take one more look.

I walk away.

A Giant Vibrator, the Ultimate Elephant, and a Global Room

“Hey. I think I left my pencil at the office… *Sad* Any chance you kept it? X”

I received this text message yesterday evening by mistake. By which I mean that I was not the intended recipient. Happens every day, doesn’t it? I’m no expert, I don’t work at a Telecommunications company, but I’m pretty certain that unsolicited communiqués are an everyday occurrence.

They could be from over-eager marketers or from Caesar – in this case the Higher Education Loans Board. They could also be from conmen of the 419 kind, or just simply from honest Kenyans with no agenda behind sending the message.

This text message was of the last kind: an honest mistake. However, it did not come from any other Kenyan. It did not travel miles and miles to reach my phone. The extraordinary young Kenyan it came from was seated right next to me. She has been a good-turned-great friend to me since she up and quit her job as an intern in my department, 2 years ago, and 3 weeks into a job I had interviewed her for. I up and quit mine less than a fortnight later.

This remarkable young-mind-turned-globetrotter, I learnt yesterday, also now happens to work at Storymoja Africa.

For the entirety of this past month, I have been on a journey into the unknown; quite literally. It all began in May, sometime in the midriff of the month. Having worked with Storymoja briefly before, and interacted regularly with Storymoja and the people thus, I was asked if I could blog for the Hay Festival. I said yes, without hesitation.

Why? I love Storymoja. The people who have worked, still work, have interned or are interning there, are some of the warmest human beings I know. The projects they run have the altogether quite lacking combination of heart, ambition and realism necessary to achieve and blaze trails. So that’s why I said yes in a heartbeat, to work with them again.

How I ended up writing an article a week is an altogether different Storymoja. I mentioned earlier that I have worked briefly at Storymoja. Well, let’s make that very briefly, and make this the reason why I’m writing a piece every week. The most I will add to qualify that is this: moral debts, in my experience, are those of the absolute most compelling kind to repay.

I stumbled onto the first story I did for Storymoja about a fortnight before I got to write it, courtesy of a Rotary meeting. The second piece was not quite as lucky, having been discovered in the darnedest of fashions; and as for the third, it had been a long time cumming. The overall theme, as per Storymoja, is to Imagine Our World, to Waza Dunia, in preparation for the Storymoja Hay Festival in September.

My interpretation of the theme is ‘the challenge of perceptions’. It is an interpretation, here, of two meanings for the word challenge: the problem, and loosely, the seeking of a solution. Given that I chose literacy, sex and homosexuality as the themes for the first 3 pieces, I decided to further let them take a life of their own over the next 3 months, making my contribution to Storymoja essentially 4 drawn-out stories, when you add this one to the mix.

Back to the text message: how do we normally react to unsolicited communication when we know it to be precisely that?

If it’s a phone call, we will be curtly courteous, or courteously curt, depending on who we think it is, and what sort of intentions we have. Are we looking for a job? “Hello? … Yes this is he…” Are we bored and uninterested? “Boss, wrong number… Hapana… Nkt!”Or are we hangover and hardly there? “Eh? .. Hmm… Mmmhh…”

Written word, however, is very damning. It presents the information all in one complete relay, as per the intentions, ability and choices of the sender.

How we react to such communiqués, however, is very subjective. I personally know of a businessman of considerable repute and success, who started his motor sales company as a result of a misdirected text… from someone who wanted to buy a car.

This says a lot about our perceptions. He perceived opportunity where some would have found ennui. His business instinct kicked into gear, and for a man who has never been employed a day in his life, an entrepreneurial career so sprung. In this last statement, you will find the perception that one needs to have worked in the corporate scene to make it as a businessman. Let’s also call it my misconception.

That’s the funny thing, I have found: that perceptions and misconceptions are a couple, in love with themselves and each other, publicly displaying their affections as they walk and portraying biblically epic dramas every so often.

Someday I will look back and sigh at this attempt to introduce Mental Health Awareness, and possibly find it too subtle. I should probably have started the Alcoholics Anonymous way, saying:

‘Hi, my name is Freddy, and I’m an epileptic.’

But that would only be true if I really was an epileptic. I am not. I do, however, have epilepsy.

I can almost hear a coupla gob-smacks, and a collective “Big difference!”

To answer the perceived interjection, yes. Very. Big. Difference.

The mind is a powerful place; a place where stories become, lives are made and broken. A place where imagination rules the day, subjects the night. If you believe it enough, you can allow it to become you. This is precisely what I have come to learn, living for the past 10 years with Epilepsy. He has been a good crutch to lean on to get out of trouble, yet She has also been wily enough to draw me into trouble. Notice the perception that when my Epilepsy is male he’s a support system, albeit misguided, but when female, she’s a fox dragging me down to the loins of danger: and possible oblivion.

Saying that I am epileptic makes me the problem, makes me the disease. Saying that I have epilepsy, means that I own the problem, I’m its solution; but only in my mind. With some medication and guidance from a qualified neurologist, the first part is what got me back to persistent levels of sanity.

For the next three months, every fourth week, I intend to talk about Mental Health. How I have noticed certain trends, and with a little research, can make a case as to why ‘creative’ people are ‘crazy’. How I have met a lady who has all her life lived with Epilepsy, a man who has all his life lived with Polio, and what effect, if any, this has had on their Mental Health.

What is the giant vibrator? An epileptic, of course. The ultimate elephant is in your mind.

**********

Animals and children tell the truth. They never lie. Which one is more human? There’s a thought, now you decide. Compassion in the jungle, compassion in your hands, would you like to make a run for it? Would you like to take my hand?

I want to live, like animal, careless and free, like animal, I want to live, I want to run through the jungle the wind in my head and the sand at my feet.

- The Animal Song, by Savage Garden.

                                                                                            

Fred Wambugu, preferably known as Freddy, is a writer/ entrepreneur with a liking for agro ways. Both the loud-mouthed, angry “for no reason” and the arable kinds.
When not farming or talking, Freddy owns of a hard-hitting anything-goes blog, the Diary of a Serial Schizo, is an Industry and Market Researcher with Eronia Inc Ltd. and is the founder of inThync Kenya. 
For more details on the writer, he has suggested that we tell you to scream at him on @french_freddy or Yule Mbois Mndialala. 
                                                                                            
Disclaimer: He will holler right back. Loudly. Or lovably.
                                                                                            
In other News, does a bio need to have an ‘I’? 

Error IN Connection

: By my good friend and oga from another mother, Shittu Fowora ~

With fortitude in solitude

Free world of quietude

E-friends in multitudes

Find friends

Suggested;

People you may know

Added

Looking

Smiling

To no one but the PC screen

Hug your new friend(s)

The net, O error in connection

Reception lost

Perception forced

Chatting pursed

No hugs yet

No kisses sent

You blush

With a smiley rush

Click, click – silence resumes.

© Shittu Fowora 2013

Previously published on http://www.bluelotusmuse.com/guest-poets/, 

Now publishing here with author's assent 

The Diss Missive: A Rebuke of Dance Masquerades in #Kenya

 ~ by Anon E., Mass of Wandrous Wonder.


My immediate reaction, upon receiving a response from my good friend Anon E., to my publishing her thoughts recently, were:

"Chicca has a brilliant mind; but does she know that?"

When I told her this, she responded ever so, erm, shall we call it subtly proud? 

"Brilliant mind - so I've been told. I choose to NEVER compliment myself. Especially after too many people have been telling me about my big dendai."

Then she proceeded to make my morning. As I hope she may yours:

The Diss Missive

Hey Freddy,

This is one of those moments where I'm sending an e-mail using my
phone, crossing my fingers, hoping it'll go through.

Random thought this evening - it's been ages since I danced. 

In
public, with other people, up there, on a dance floor.

Only problem is, I DON'T miss that type of dancing that takes place on
Kenyan floors. 

You know, coitus erectus - damn; that pun.

I miss the 'innocent' dance moves where little touch was required;

 like the dance-offs, amongst Michael Jackson aficionados. 

Plus the
tension accompanied by the transition from upbeat to mellow; 

the
summons to the slow dance.

Now it's all bump-and-grind; come-hither then cum at your-place-or-mine.

Art by l'Artista Kenita

As a
courtship ritual it's too easy; just as are the subsequent hook-ups. 

And...
too plain... too;

 boring.

I miss the intricacies of the dance, the kind that starts first;

fast

 with a
meeting of the eyes. 

Then a mutual appreciation of a beat, leading to
a set of gyrations 

whose dialectics portray the individuality of the
persons involved. 

Unlike now where the dance floor is nothing more
than a place for the id to let loose.

...okay I can't seem to find an appropriate ending to this set of
words. Probably because it's past 10 pm, and my body is wired to shut
down after this hour.

Over and out!

Anon E. Mass of Wandrous Wonder.

Omnia - A poem by The Sun's Roof

One of my brothers from another father, possibly mother too, has been beaten by about as many bugs as have infested the blog owner, yours truly Yule.

I recently read a piece that talks about how an artist - which to me is a way of thinking, of living, of doing - invests his best writing in his/ her truths

 

Because at the end of it all, if as an artist you cannot make them feel, think or do -

not as you felt, thought or did - but as they themselves felt, thought and did in similar situations, then you fail before you take off.

Today, my brother, has failed not one bit.Here's an email I received from him early yesterday morning, about what one can only assume is the art of experience. Or is it the experience of art, drawn from experience?

 

And now, my brother Roof-sun. A poet, a writer, an artist. He also works as an engineer.

                                                                            ****

Her fragrance was Omnia. 

inThync Kenya

For an instance in time she engulfed me in its essence, her essence. 
And I, like many men before me, faltered...but only just so.
Days of hope and heartbreak culminated in one moment of resistance, 

the ultimate stand,
that I be the seducer and she the tempted one.  

At the edge, we danced, of fate, of life, of bliss and torture.
She side-stepped, I pirouetted, dizzy with the fantasies of youth and adulthood but caressed lightly.  

The night wore on, and so did we, languidly teasing each other, a sparring of hearts and wits.
Was it fear, or favour or what lesser men call common sense, that she whispered herself away into the cold night, 
leaving me with memories of longing and ponderings of time: past, present and future? 

Alas, as 'tis said, 'twas not but to be, that this perfect stranger, rakish and unsated, took flight on wings of sobriety, 
forgetting me in the twilight of our shared sins.
My heart now belts a steady nocturne, soulful and sombre, yet exhilirated at the taste of heaven seduced, 
the taste of hell's pleasures on my tongue.

She smelled beautiful.

She smelled like the promise of sex: feral and desperate,
yet barely contained.
A promise that was never made and somehow still broken.

Surrounded by a halo of electricity,
we were attracted to her danger: suicidal moths.
I spent an eternity with her in one night,
the one chosen from many...... Or was I?
Her kisses were dry and her skin cold.
Her smiles seemed empty, practiced and plastic.
Warmth I only found in whole women.
She was a trophy.

My pride was short-lived, a reflection of our shared insanity.
Yet, was she less because I could not claim her, conquer her?
Was she no more a woman, a lover, a friend,
because my pride was thwarted?

Much like the annoying moth?

In my weak moments, I wonder, what could have been?
What would have come out of our sinful union?
Green eyes watched us, as we danced and laughed
and made a mockery of friendship.
I lit that green fire and basked in its glow,
its radiance massaging this fragile heart.

Her fragrance was Omnia.

And, in a twist of longing and fate,
I seduced the green fire and turned it red.

Is this what it is to be a man,
to hold and to hurt and to promise to hold again yet only hurt again?
In the cold of early morning, my demons took flight,
Leaving me scarred and scared.

I saw my self for what I was: crooked and conceited.

This lust is a tantrum,

A mortal's obsession with the one considered angelic.
And angels are but demons and demons angels.

The dust cleanses with its settling and reality burns away the fantasies.
Yet, here I remain, watching, waiting for her return.

****

Middle Finger to The Facebook: A White Lights & Black Holes Missive

I received an email from a friend recently. She claims, with an emphasis on the "claims," and not on the claim, that she cannot write. I have long known this to be a totally skewed perception of her self. And so, in today's brand of Social Experiment gone ham, I decided to shock her system with a response. Not a public response to her missive, but a public display of it, edited as and where necessary.

Sorry love, if you're reading this; but I think you need a wake-up call. And the call is this. Woman! Wake up! You. can. right. 

Thank me after the noose is off my neck, will you? :)

If you feel the urge to, reader, do leave her a comment. I insist that she needs to give her brilliant mind a platform. Also, dear reader, if we are that friendly, you and I, that you happen to by some miracle figure out who I'm talking about, you had better learn the word.

The word is mum. Silencio. Silence. To the graves with it! Closed source. Shut up. Gob-smacked! As in I will smack your gob if you tattle. Like the hood, there shall be no snitching, contrary to which more force will be applied to your tender regions than can be physically borne. 

With love. And...now:

The Letter 

[Editor's edit:
To:          @french_freddy 

From:      Anone, Mass of Wandrous Wonder

Dear Freddy,]

I'm in one of those rare moods where my thoughts and fingers are in sync, so just in case I never get a chance to express this, either because I've forgotten or because I don't want to talk about it, here goes...

*switches off the radio just to write this; hmm ... this must be some sweet serious stuff these fingers want to convey*:

Item #1:

My initial reason for leaving Facebook was to test how long I can go without it. I'd initially made that promise to myself during Lent, but broke it; shattered it, rather. And it made me contemplate upon my ability to keep my word, because I've disappointed myself so many times lately - I'm not comfortable divulging the details right now, s'il vous plait - that I decided to not make any promises that I can't keep.

With reference to my Christian upbringing there is a verse in Ecclesiastes about it being better to not make a vow at all, than to make one and not keep it.

So I went cold turkey on Zuckerberg's bouncer baby on the morning of 4th April, partly motivated by a nightmare I had the night before. I can't remember what it was about right now; when I do I'll tell you. Plus my mind's propensity to over-interpret things saw that date as...special.

Special. It being 4/4. 

So I deactivated my account, and save for this one time I got a text from a friend asking me to check out some event or other, I have never looked back.

You should've seen me that day - I. was. RESTLESS!! I had cultivated this habit of checking my Facebook Timeline after every 5 minutes, seeking indulgence. 

From someone's status update, or a funny video. Or, when using my laptop, from chatting with whoever will be online at the time. 

I could feel the undercurrents of something being wrong with me, I just didn't know what. Logging off from Facebook, and living to see the next day, opened my eyes to my reality:

I was addicted to Facebook. 

It was my link to the outside world - to news, to events. To friends. To anything that will take me further from the inner truth that is inherent in my introverted nature; my propensity to NEVER tell anyone about my problems because I DON'T TRUST EASILY.

Granted, there aren't any Facebook Anonymous groups (yet), so I was faced with the task of looking for alternative means of mwenjoyo.

I turned to my e-books.

While reading a bunch of articles from the truckload of newsletters I've subscribed to, I bumped into so many books about personality - including the "Quiet..." one I e-mailed you [editor's note: which I am yet to read, tsk tsk tsk!] - that I decided to get lost in reading them. 

To this day I still haven't finished reading "Quiet..." [editor's note: pheeew!] yet I've finished reading 3 novels to date; a slow target, considering in Uni we were made to read that same number of books per WEEK. 

Because I'm reading that book intensely. Plus my laptop's dead, so I'm on a break :-)

I've learned a lot about myself from what I've read. Granted, I don't resonate with EVERYTHING that's in these e-books, but if I've not seen bits of myself in them I've seen elements of others' personalities described with such accuracy it's almost scary. 

I'm at the nadir in my life where fear's a non-issue - I've embraced a "Fuck it, bring it on" approach [editor's note: again, pheeeew! You're gonna love what I have hereby "brought on", no?] to the nuggets of knowledge inherent in these texts I've been reading. 

It's opened my eyes, and helped me understand the ideologies behind some of my actions, and others' responses to them. With regard to the latter, it's enabled me to tolerate my immediate family alongside members of my extended family, most of whom have been quick to talk shit about me without getting to know why I am the way I am, and why I do what I do. 

Telling me "I need prayers" doesn't move me any more - I'm losing my religion, a la REM. If you want to pray for me then PRAY FOR ME. Telling me "I need counselling" doesn't help either.

If you knew the amount of anger that's welled up inside when I hear these statements and the like, that has led, to the extreme, of harboring thoughts bordering homicide towards those who spew them from their buccal cavities. I came to understand, later on, why I've been having these thoughts:

I've been watching too many episodes of "Criminal Minds" 

:-)

So "Fuck it..." moves on to "Que sera, sera - whatever will be, will be". 

Live and let live. 

Not everyone is wired to have family as a support system, so I've accepted it and I'm moving on to seeking (psychological) support from a group of people I interact with on a regular basis: my friends.

Plus I'm glad I redirected my energies towards Twitter - my handle's been dormant, it was in need of some TLC.

In "Quiet..." Susan Cain talks extensively about introverts not necessarily being socially inept, but simply being overly sensitive to...stimulation. 

• Verbally, it explains why I can talk a lot at one time then go silent the next.  

• Visually, it helped me understand why I'm liking Twitter right now more than Facebook.  

• Tactile, it made me appreciate why I have issues with being touched unnecessarily.

Which brings me to: 

Item #2:

There are things I have seen friends do that surprised me. No, shocked me, really. I would stare at them like I'm looking at the sky or a photo of a Picasso painting - blankly. How some of them are my friends to this day is a humbling point for me, because I've said really cold things and they still have my back.

I have heard the "Oh you would both make such a cute couple" narrative, by the way [editor's note: haven't we all? No? Maybe just me then]. "You're both so smart, and have so much in common." 

I am telling you all this to get it off my chest, lest it festers into a pneumatic infection. And because you seem to be branching away from the romantic optimists - good for them by the way, and me, because my realistic nature needs such when I need to get away mentally. 

2013 is the year I'm focusing on me - Quality over Quantity:

1. I lost weight because I significantly reduced my intake of junk food (I last had your favourite snack in September 2012).
2. Switching off my phone when I'm reading or before I go to bed helps me concentrate on the content and on getting sufficient rest, respectively.
3. Getting off Facebook has diverted my focus from the need to attend to 800 odd people because they're in my Friends List, to those I regard as my bosom friends who I communicate with via e-mail, Skype, call or SMS. 

So...so far Freddy I can say that I feel the slow but steady inflow of peace in my being. And I'm loving it!! Being alive rocks! 

Item #3:

You know I love you like I love myself - and you know that I love myself A LOT [editor's note: I'm counting on you remembering those words when you see these words published].  

So I was quite concerned when I saw you smoking again [editor's note: shit. now everybody knows] and especially when you said you're smoking again A LOT. Wallahi I can hunt down that Irrationality Switch I lost in some section of my brain, and start going HAM on you and yours like those chicks on Gossip Girl. 

If nicotine is what gets your juices flowing, then...do what you must. 

*shrugs shoulders* 

But let no one, NO ONE, even me, ever influence your decisions to give up on stuff that's going to mess up your health, physically and mentally. 

While I'm on a mothering note please note that I need God-papa to stay on this earth for more years, to tell my children good things about me. Though we will NEVER tell them about the things that went down in their grandfather's car in 2012 - we shall DIE with that info! [editor's note: especially how I lost my phone that night...]

[editor's note:

 Signed,

Anone, Mass of Wandrous Wonder]

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...