Skip to main content

Drums of war, silenced

 

A cry rents the air… anguished, pitiful, piercing… A woman whose breasts have been cut… a breastfeeding mother. The infant already dead, grabbed by the ankle and smashed against the concrete wall. Before they chopped off her breasts, they ravaged her in turns, deaf to her cries of pain, cries unheard to the world. Outside, dead bodies… some charred, some with a head or limb missing, are randomly scattered. In an hour’s time, a feast for the slum dogs.

Baba tembea, tembea nami
Usiku wa kiza, tembea nami
Jua lichomozapo, lituapo
Kusini, kaskazini, magharibi, mashariki
Katika misimu yote Baba
Elohi nakusihi, tembea nami.

(Father walk with me
In the dark of night, walk with me
As the sun shines and sets
In the South and North, West to East
In all seasons Father
Elohim I beseech, walk with me)

In Geneva, far, far, far away, diplomats gather, a press conference, one not given much attention or airtime on TV. After all, it’s Africans. That’s their nature, always fighting, else, Ebola and AIDS. Anyway, they should stick to their bloody country… to them, Africa is a country… except when Kipchoge wins a marathon, or Salah scores a goal… Here in Europe, these illegal migrants are a problem everywhere. Lazy. Terrorists. Uncultured… and they don’t speak proper English or French for that matter. After they have burned down their country, they want to deflower ours… On social media, the error of political correctness, of polite society, is over.

Baba tembea, tembea nami
Usiku wa kiza, tembea nami
Jua lichomozapo, lituapo
Kusini, kaskazini, magharibi, mashariki
Katika misimu yote Baba
Elohi nakusihi, tembea nami.

(Father walk with me
In the dark of night, walk with me
As the sun shines and sets
In the South and North, West to East
In all seasons Father
Elohim I beseech, walk with me)

Yesterday, the sun was out. Neighbour A’s child had lunch at Neighbour’s B house, for her mum was late in coming back from their ‘chama’ meeting. Yesterday, these neighbours belonged to tribes, ethnic groupings, but today, no one wants to be tagged as this tribe or the other, for war has visited the land.

Baba tembea, tembea nami
Usiku wa kiza, tembea nami
Jua lichomozapo, lituapo
Kusini, kaskazini, magharibi, mashariki
Katika misimu yote Baba
Elohi nakusihi, tembea nami.

(Father walk with me
In the dark of night, walk with me
As the sun shines and sets
In the South and North, West to East
In all seasons Father
Elohim I beseech, walk with me)

How did we get here? In the background, the lulling sound of war drums was always present, lending the nation a sense of false security… despotism, ethnic bigotry, corruption, political injustices, suppression of human rights, high cost of living, interference from foreign nations… always about someone’s else interests, except the poor citizens who are a majority… now, the war is come and the young people have to die.

Baba tembea, tembea nami
Usiku wa kiza, tembea nami
Jua lichomozapo, lituapo
Kusini, kaskazini, magharibi, mashariki
Katika misimu yote Baba
Elohi nakusihi, tembea nami.

(Father walk with me
In the dark of night, walk with me
As the sun shines and sets
In the South and North, West to East
In all seasons Father
Elohim I beseech, walk with me)

The alarm goes off, waking me up with a jolt, the dream too vivid. War, for me, has always been a movie… ‘Hotel Rwanda’, ‘Escape from Sobibor’… but now, the war drums sound in my beloved nation, the country on the edge, the poor citizenry pawns on other concerns’ mind games. I am too hungry to start running should the country erupt into war. So, I get down on my knees, pray for the country’s leadership, that they might embrace this refrain in the decisions they make in the next few hours, days, weeks…

Baba tembea, tembea nami
Usiku wa kiza, tembea nami
Jua lichomozapo, lituapo
Kusini, kaskazini, magharibi, mashariki
Katika misimu yote Baba
Elohi nakusihi, tembea nami.

(Father walk with me
In the dark of night, walk with me
As the sun shines and sets
In the South and North, West to East
In all seasons Father
Elohim I beseech, walk with me)

I pray for my Motherland, Kenya. That the drums of war are silenced. That sanity prevails. That the nation is saved… for I am too hungry… too disillusioned… too tired to run should the country erupt in war. I am ignorant on where to start applying for political asylum in Europe. As someone famous said, ‘War doesn’t determine who is right, but who is left.’

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My Once-Molly (Political versus Business Ethics),

  Dear Molly. How are you? As always, I hope you are well. You know, there is something about you, something that made me inspire for better. Was it that rich smokers’ laughter of yours? The daring twinkle that flashed in your eyes when you were angry? The tight curl in your lips when you were about to lash out? Anyway, Molly, I continue with my business training. I am now thinking of business as warfare – the honourable kind of warfare; chivalry, observing the rules… not the Machiavellian 48-Laws-of-Power warfare where there is no honour, but only winning. Politics of deceit, our president calls it. Well, these past couple of days have been chilly… a precursor to June’s biting cold? Anyway, I am more often sad than happy during the cold months of June and July. I totally blame this on Sam Kahiga’s short story, ‘The Last Breath’ – if my memory serves me right. Off the ‘Encounters from Africa’ anthology. There is a way he made June and July sad. Pretty much like you wouldn’t tai...
Post a Comment
Read more

My Once-Molly (The Job To Be Done),

My dear Molly, how are you? I hope you are good. I am well as well can be, with the flooding, the inflation, and all. Anyway, grapevine (or maybe, I am a stalker) has it that you are nowadays into the beauty business. Very soon, I too will be emulating you. We may be compatible at all, conquer the world together as business icons. My dear Molly, it may interest you to know that I am doing business training – my bank, UBA, and its founder, Tony Elumelu, is that special. Always seeking to empower African entrepreneurs. The excellent thing about the training is that it is very practical to today’s and the coming future business needs. As a matter of course, we also are directed to additional reading to widen our entrepreneurial minds. The Job To Be Done. Clayton M. Christensen. In the words of Johnny Nash, ‘I can see clearly now that the rain is gone. I can see all obstacles on my way…’ What a beauty this is! It is something you should look up, understand what is it you are selling to...
Post a Comment
Read more

My-Once Molly (Praying for a Rainbow),

Dear Molly, I hope you are ok and are keeping safe in these floods. As for me, I am heartbroken. I am in pain. My mind, my body, my spirit aches. I am numb with grief. As is the nation of Kenya. The picture just won’t get out of our minds – the father, trudging stoically, his dead, muddy son slung over his shoulder. It’s a devastating image… the screams, elsewhere, as a boat capsizes, the swollen river swallows a lorry… Izrael has visited the land. Dear Molly, a while back, the nation faced drought. Then, images of dead livestock, emaciated men, women and children, parched, cracked earth, haunted our screens. Elsewhere where there was a glut in food production, the farmers cried for their fellow starving countrymen. They demanded for lorries to traverse the rutted roads and take the produce to their brethren… collectively, we prayed for rain. Dear Molly... will we ever catch a break as Kenya? The Covid-19 pandemic that paralysed lives and livelihoods in 2020 as we recovered from th...
Post a Comment
Read more