A lot has changed since the late hours
of Saturday morning. Life has needlessly gone to waste. Our inept
governance and disaster response reactions have once again come to
the fore. Even worse, our inhuman opportunism in moments of human
pain further sullied a bloody backdrop.
15 years ago today, we were heading
towards 50 days from our first involuntary encounter with Al Qaeda.
212 were dead, and countless lives scarred by a disaster I was too
young to fully comprehend.
The only thought on my mind, on August 7th
1998, was my 11th birthday the following day. Would they
cook chapatti at my grandma’s – where I was heading, seated in
the passenger seat of a matatu, as news of the bomb blast broke on
the dashboard dead ahead of me – or ugali?
4 months ago, Storymoja Africa asked me
to imagine the world with them. Gladly, I did. Imagination is the
stuff of dreams, you see, and boy do I love to dream. What I care for
more than dreams, however, is to see these dreams come true. I wait
patiently to make them be.
What happened on Saturday, while I had
imagined it before, is no dream. It is a nightmare, the easiest kind
of reality that comes from imagination. It was, however, no surprise
to me.
Last month, days before the August 7
memorial, I happened to be at Memorial Park. The park sits at what
would be our Ground Zero – the site of the ‘98 terror attack. Let
us now recap what we learnt then, and how we have applied it since.
I’ll save you the trouble with one statement:
A lot has not changed
since the late hours of Saturday morning.
As I learnt while talking to someone at
our Ground Zero cenotaph, only the direct victims of what is now a
fatefully insignificant tragic statistic in Kenya’s history
actually remember it. The park may be called a ‘memorial,’ but
beyond it simply being a commemorative plaque of one dreadful event
in Nairobi hiss stories, the monument is now a simple revenue
collection bin.
That some choose to piggy-back on the
park to fill their piggy-banks is hardly new. It is also, sadly, no
news. Your government is still inept. Your morality is still for sale
to the highest bidder. Your public utilities are still inutile. Your
health system still sucks.
You still don’t know who you are; still
can’t tell what you need from what you want.
You will still sit on
your arse and wait for the next tragedy – small or monumental,
natural or otherwise. You will wait only for you to react; to say, to
never think or act independently.
“Stupid is as stupid
does. Are you happy with your life today? Time is a blessing, that
ticking clock has been sent to remind you that your life is valuable.
It is also futile; it
has a beginning and it has an end.”
And so tomorrow you will wake up. It
may take longer than 24 hours, but tomorrow you will wake up. You
will shed your patriotism. You will lose your nationalism. You will
lose your leased ideals and leeched morality. Latch on to your good
old need to feed off your brother’s flesh.
Indeed you will accept, you will move
on, your choices will have no consequences.
Already you wonder what these tens of
lives lost, these disquieting tens of hours under siege have done to
your money. What they have done to Kenya’s economy, and if we can
recover.
Already you replace past silent tragedies with this latest
loud one.
Already you are marveling at the picturesque pictorials of
gore, talking about the effectiveness of their insensitivity. Already
you are rising up to defend your respective tribal leader’s squirms
or otherwise squeamish action during the skirmish.
Already you are
baying for blood.
Accusing your Eastleigh brother, that
Somali Arab-looking brother you don’t know, for the acts of terror
inspired not by race or place, but by creed. Already you are talking
of reactions to these terrifying actions of terror. You have killed –
if understandably so – every last gunman in that mall. Make no
mistake, dear KDF , for I applaud your patiently conclusive reaction.
It was, after all, in self-defense. You were, after all, doing a job that should only be yours as a last resort.
A job you did in defense of inhabitants – temporary
or permanent – of Westgate, who on the day became hostages and
victims. It is by no fault of your own that every possible trail –
it would seem – as to whom and the wherefores of the attack, runs
cold.
We are left in an all too familiar
position now, however: that of shooting in the dark.
People died in 80 odd hours from Saturday morning.
They died at a rate, perhaps, of 1 life per hour; a rate, more so, of
countless hungry, overall. Countless wept, overall, but few of these
weepers were conscious, sadly.
Nigh fell. Many prayed. They did the natural
thing when confronted by the unknown. They went for the unseen.
That is no critique, this atheist might
add, for the unseen comforted me too. I went for my music. And while
unlike any god this music could be heard, I had but my own
interpretations of this music to go by.
In this way I was similar to
some religious folk; but not to those who rely on what is interpreted
to them of what they believe to be their own script.
That kind is no different from the ilk
that shot to death unconfirmed denizens in the dozens of dozens.
But already, dear hustler, you have
returned to Kenya to help ‘calm the situation’ down… to "participate in security briefings."
To consult.
Because
these attackers chose a time when you were not here to strike. Of
course they did it in spite of you, not to spite you, dear hustler.
Don’t come chasing waterfalls, while your colleagues sit chasing
after doves in and outta parliament.
"We hope that some people will begin to contextualize what is going on and begin to appreciate the challenges that Kenya is going through, the region is going through, and the complications that are brought by what is going on here."
H.E. the VP of Kenya, W.S. Ruto, in "The Hustlers also Cry".
What does it matter? After all,
opportunity – bloody or otherwise – is for the strongest to reap
from.
"In light of the circumstances and the views heard during the hearing, the Chamber excuses Mr Ruto from the proceedings.
For the moment the excusal is permitted for one week only, subject to any further requests that Defence counsel may make if need be to extend it,"
Judge Chile Eboe-Osuji swallowed. Hook and line sunk.
This too shall pass. Not because we are
a strong nation. Not because we are unscarred; because we are
oblivious to our own bloodshed. At the least, this time around, we
have a common enemy. Who that enemy will be, however, remains to be
seen as the year closes down.
I am worried. Not slighted, for that
would imply – if only by similarity of sound – that it was
slight. Worried, you see, sounds to me like war. It sounds like all
out warfare unto the few in my town who think they know, while
knowing not. To those who forget to feel, because – and get this –
they have bills to pay.
We all have bills to pay. We all need
passion. Yet passion pays no bills. So ask yourself this:
“If you don’t like
what you are doing right now, if your [life and work don’t] wow
you…then why are you still doing [that]?”
- Seven Sentences
To paraphrase one of my favorite quotidian reads, quoted and attributed extensively through this post,
is it simply because family responsibilities? Or is it because
financial security? Perhaps it’s because some other lying,
cheating, stealing reason?
“A good dream won’t
make you poor, if you think it through, if you plan it well…”
- Seven Sentences
So if you’re doing what you don’t
mean to be, then every time you are asked why you’re still at it,
forget every other excuse, and give this reason:
I cannot
think my dream through. I cannot plan it well enough to follow it
through…
Only say you care about the world if
you care enough to suffer through doing something to impact it.
Regardless of what happens to you through it all.
The Riskiest Thing You Can
Do Right Now Is To Simply Keep Doing The Same Old Thing.
