I wrote this piece many months ago. sorry, many weeks ago. i wrote it for a school newsletter then i felt it was too graphical for the newsletter. I edited it to fit and it got published. Then i kept the original for this blog but i have thought that i posted it a long time ago - i don't know where i got the idea. So am posting it now because it deserves to be posted, because you deserve to read it. It starts below.............
Kenya as a country has had its dark moments. Darker than this Al-shabaab war. Darker than a few grenade attacks on early morning revelers in a club and late evening travelers in a populated bus stop. But these dark moments have not brought the realities of a nation on the brink of destruction close home than the events of the past two weeks.
It’s only when you are in the thick of things that you realize how grave the situation is. You realize that a country can move from being a safe haven to skeletons decorating its streets, blood filling its potholes and faces caught by sudden death in total astonishment lying around its pavements.
When you are caught in a traffic jam pretty close to where a grenade is exploded, you fear for your life, you are terrified. The conversation in that bus is a combination of very frustrating efforts to sound assuring. Efforts to avoid showing fear, still, it is expressed in your voice and in every word you utter.
If you are not talking you are thinking. A lot of what ifs. What if they intentionally caused this diversion of traffic so that they create a richer crowd to bomb on the highway? In your head you hear a boom then you imagine people scrambling for the narrow bus door. Then you are scared more.
Why am I telling you that? You ask. In a documentary titled the ghosts of Rwanda, a United States general who was send by the UN on a peace mission to Rwanda during the genocide says that the faces of dead people are still vivid in his mind. He says that he is scared the most by the faces of those who were caught in total astonishment. Their eyes expressing pain and questions at the same time. Those people never expected it will get to them. Those who were asking ' what in the hell happened?'
Most African countries have had serious civil war. There has been serious bloodshed from independence up until now. Some like Rwanda have recovered while others like Somalia, the war laid them flat on their bellies. The truth is, most civilians don’t realize the gravity of a war situation until a gun is pointed in their face. People will still go to work, shop, swim, play golf, chew miraa on pavements or do whatever things they do with their life even after a few building are bombed.
But when your life is seriously on the line, you start questioning the wisdom in a country involving itself in such confrontations. You start asking yourself questions
Why would we follow alshabaab to Somalia if their leaders are in Kenya? Why did we wait until the sect has done all this harm – infiltrated our country, recruited our youths, hijacked a number of our ships and seriously harmed our tourism industry by kidnapping tourists – before we got this sworn dedication to destroy them?
On 29th of this month, I saw a picture in a daily newspaper, on the FrontPage. The face was shocking. He didn’t have vampire teeth, his eyes were not bloodshot and he did not have scars all over his face. Instead his face was smooth, he wore a pretty genuine smile and his name was Bwire.
Mr. Bwire was sentenced to life imprisonment in connection with the Nairobi grenade attacks, he was happy for it. He received it with a smile for the camera. This only happens in movies. A person would not be happy to receive a life sentence unless he is absolutely psycho, he is putting a show, he is convinced that there is nothing more to live for and bombing people is their right or he knows that he is not going anywhere near jail for life.
Whatever the situation with Mr. Bwire, I am afraid. First my stereotype Alshabaab face is gone, now it could be anyone and they are stocked with grenades. Two, these people are either protected or they are sycophants and you don’t want to be involved in a war with a sycophant who could be living with you.
Mr. Bwire confirmed one nagging thought in my mind. There are some Kenyans especially youths who are always ready and willing to grab arms and kill fellow Kenyans. If this is the case, whether it’s a matter of unemployment, brainwashing or whatever, Kenya is sitting on a very dangerous time bomb.
With very little financial motivation, youths killed fellow Kenyans with very crude weapons after the 2007 general elections. They burned women and children in churches and slashed heads of their fellow Kenyans in transit.
Some said that Kenya is over that, that we learned our lesson. We haven’t. If we did, our youths would not be enrolling for Alshabaab, they would not be happy to grenade bus stops and clubs, they would not participate in kidnapping tourists knowing how much harm that could cause to the country. If we are not careful, the lesson will be learned. The hard way.
