Blood is in my hands…and yours too!

Blood is in my hands as I write, for I have just taken supper from the comfort of my house while attending a burial. Blood is in my hands and it is bothering me that I am still sitting in the comfort of my house, not angry enough to storm State
House, parliament or vigilante house on behalf of the people of Tana River.

The burial I attended while sitting in my cozy living room was sad and piercing. There was this woman in a black dress, seated on the ground; she was crying so wretchedly but no tears fell from her eyes; she was crying a cry much deeper than tears could express. I know you saw her too; her and the other woman, whom overcome by grief attempted to throw herself into the burning house which probably was smoldering to the ground with her family and kin.

I am shocked that I am still sitting up banging this piece with blood in my hands. I should be out there; running mad, running stark-naked mad for the banefullness of our so called government, duty bearers and politicians. Tana River burns with a vengeance and it is not burning on its own – someone struck the match and that someone is not the fighters who invaded the villages in the cover of darkness or at the break of dawn – no. Those who struck the match are powerful and connected, slimy and conniving, using their stature and positions. The match was struck by a bunch cowards, so bigoted by the own selfishness and evil depths, they would slay the innocent and cause mayhem and pain.

Blood is in my hands because in less than forty days, I will give the same fools a clean pass to the helm to hold the power to strike more matches and sanction more bloodshed. I am angry. I am raw inside. I wonder why I bottle it all in; I wonder why I join the band-wagon of the sympathetic bystanders, only lamenting about it and going back to business as usual. You and I read, watch and listen to yet another shocking killing from the Tana Delta and elsewhere in the country. We shake our heads and gesticulate. Sometimes we hung our shoulders in shame for a second – just for a second and then we erase the memory from our minds and get on with our lives because after all, Tana River is too far away from our radar.

At the burial that I attended from the safety of my living room, I watched a grown man cry out in mournful anguish. He mourned like a baby. He asked rhetorical questions; he pleaded for answers from you and I who were attending the burial from our living rooms. He implored us to stand-up for Tana Delta. He was desperate for you and me to do something – anything! But then, we are too far from Tana, Tana is unattainable. We are too busy with our lives in Nairobi and God-knows where else! We look at him with momentary sympathy and because his pain is too much to bear, we click the remote to a channel pumping up some comedy show! Yes, we are laughing right in the middle of a burial, we are laughing in our silence, we are laughing in our nonchalant detachment.

Tomorrow when you wake up, Nduru and Kibisu village in Tana Delta may be counting yet some more burnt houses. The grave diggers will have yet another long day. It will be too early for them to put down their shovels and jembes. They must be busy in Tana; there is an insatiable demand for graves here. Since July, they have had to dig over 200 graves. Tana Delta needs them. Sadly the reality for them is that they may be digging a grave for a slain son, a wife or a mother and that can never be lucrative for with every mound of soil they scoop for their dear ones, they too die a little.

You and I are dying too and we do not know it. We think we are living as human beings but we are chipping away, wilting in our silence. We are marching on with our lives with dirges and wails tucked somewhere in the pending files of our minds. We save the files and retrieve for later when we are ready to play the sympathetic by-stander card. Sometimes we quickly erase the files to clean our minds for what we consider happy and fulfilling but in all we do, we lose. We never win.

Look at your hands now, firm and strong meant for loving? Are they spotless clean, neatly manicured and polished? You don’t see any blood on them, right? Wrong! Unless you are ready to face the reality on your hands and actually see the blood in your silence and inaction, you will continue attending burials from your living room kidding yourself that the event you are watching are from a far away planet. Unless we are angry enough to revolt against these killings, then we are dancing stupid with the devil basking on our backs! The thing about killings such as those experienced in Tana Delta is that they come as a warning spewing out like an erupted volcano. The warning does not choose to whom the message hits. You and I are targets. Today it is Tana Delta; tomorrow it may be right at the comfort of your living room where you enjoy attending burials courtesy of your remote.

I write in anger and grief. I write in frustration and self condemnation. I write in disgust over this blood on my hands because as human beings, every single senseless killing diminishes us – especially when we do nothing about it.