THANK YOU Dr. MARSHA HANEN - THANK YOU

Circa 2002: This is how I started my application letter; To whom it may concern: I may not have a PHD and neither do I reside in North America or Western Europe, however……and I went ahead and stated my capabilities for the Research Program at hand.
I was selected!
Shocking to me as it was, the clear qualifications hurdles appended to the call did not stop me from clinching the nomination. I learnt a tough lesson then about “shooting down my chances” but that is a story for another day.
17 years later today, I am staring at the smiling face of the Lady who was my contact point and clearly a guiding angel at the time: Dr. Marsha Hanen.
I never met her in person…and I never will. However, I am almost certain she was a definitive point in my life...because she came to me in my thoughts, two days ago, on Saturday the 27th. Through the night as I wrapped up the day, I said to myself; “I should look for Dr. Hanen’s email address and re-start conversations. It would be great to re-connect”. That was Saturday.
So today, I Google-searched her name, only to learn that Dr. Marsha Hanen, a highly acclaimed Canadian Academician, University Professor and Ethics Coach has passed on.
Dr. Hanen died on Saturday April 13th 2019… exactly two weeks ahead of the thoughts about her that invaded my mind many years since our first encounter! To my people, this kind of coincidence is not "ordinary". Those who have gone to rest do not just appear in your thoughts without meaning. There is always a reason. Now thinking about it, I know for a fact that Dr. Hanen was messaging me; urging me on; challenging me like she always used to but mostly, ENCOURAGING me. In reflection and because my Africanness captures the beauty of our communication with those who have slipped-away, I know that she is prompting me to look back – to reflect on the impact of human connections , even of chance connections such as what we had .
My novice research report of 2002/3; “The Injustices of Justice” – A case of Torture & Police Brutality in Kenya, is what I may call a milestone achievement. It was the key that opened for me the doors to inquisitive social transformation and inculcated in me the hunger for social justice. It changed my life. Dr.Hanen had so much to do with this change! Our email communications with her were heavy with Mentorship from her side; Her urge was always gentle but focused; she was available to a young erratic enthusiast thousands of kilometers away who should not even have gotten the chance in the first place! She believed I could do great things - I believed I could, because she believed i could! As a young upbeat journalist and human rights activist then, I wanted so desperately to court social transformation for Justice and equality - I still do. I wanted to change the world..even for one person - I still do. Dr. Hanen made me understand that I could. Now looking back, a lot of what i have done and continue to do is actually echoed in the Mentorship of that time in the past with Dr. Hanen. It is clear to me that this period of my life is when clarity of purpose set in.
Dr. Hanen gave me the gift of HOPE.
Today I pen these lines alongside the mournful odes from the communities of #Alberta #Calgary, and from the entire #Canada and beyond and know for a fact that I became who I am because Dr. Marsha Hanen had something to do with it ever since that time 17 years ago when I was selected for a research project against all stipulated qualifications.
To her daughters Amy and Sharon and the entire extended family, I stretch out my embrace of consolation and THANK YOU on behalf of those of us who benefited from interactions with your Mom. She was a great woman. Thank you for sharing her with the wide vast world in diverse aspects of her professional life. We are grateful for her time - we always will be. I urge you to understand as we do from this part of the world that Dr. Marsha Hanen is immortalized in our very lives! ; As long as we live, they too will live, for they are now a part of us as we remember them!

THANK YOU my mentor from so far away. THANK YOU for believing in my abilities even when I was not aware of them! THANK YOU simply for your humanity. THANK YOU.

Rest in Peace Dr. Masha Hanen.

To the weeping lady from the Western Cape

To the weeping lady from the Western Cape

Weeping Lady from the Western Cape,
You came to me through the words you spoke,
“I am tired of talking! I am tired of fighting! I am tired”
You came right through to my soul and so I went to seek you
Within the magic of 1000 women @AWIDafrica 2018
I went to seek you to tell you that I too was “tired”
I wanted you to know that “tired” was the oil that fuelled my fatigue

Weeping Lady from the Western Cape, you held on so tightly to my hands
“Children die here every day, women are killed no one seems to care”
Then the tears came. Fast. Scalding. Bold.. like water from an open wound
You cried.
You cried through the desperation of wanting me to understand
“You know we Coloreds are so misunderstood…so disregarded…”
You cried.
My hands as handkerchiefs I wiped the flow of bitterness & pain
The more I wiped, the more the tears fell – so boldly, so beautifully pure

Weeping Lady from the Western Cape, my words were insufficient
Your pain is unmatched but the purity of your tears struck my long buried demons
“I wish that my tears would fall; so freely & pure like your own”
Beautiful Lady from the Western Cape, I know my words startled you but..
“Sometimes for some of us, the depths of pain denies us even the pleasure
of crying. Our eyes have since forgotten how to cry”

Weeping Lady from the Western Cape, I felt your power
In your tears
In the grips of your hands
In the trembling smile as you cried
In the deep breaths you took
In the beating of your heart as we embraced
I felt your power!

Weeping Lady from the Western Cape, I do not know your name
But I do know your pain
Today I write again because I am re-born by the power of your tears!
Today I think of you again my sister far away,
I think of you & I smile & I hold you tight in my heart once more
One day, I too will be bold enough to cry
Weeping Lady from the Western Cape? You are NOT alone
.Mildred Ngesa 2018

DAVOS might want to consider selling expensive socks to fight inequalities

This is the wisdom of a pair of expensive socks that the World Economic Forum currently meeting in DAVOS might want to consider.
Who would have thought that one pair of socks could feed a school of 500 children for 42 days! Only one pair of socks and school children somewhere in Africa would have a decent meal for over a month and save some change to offset some electricity or water bill.
To the rich club of 42 and Co. sitting in Davos right now pretending to espouse the world’s poverty and inequality woes over a toast of exotic cognac and munching caviar, the solution could be in the socks you wear – sell your socks and feed the world!
Please hold on to that socks thread for a moment;
An Oxfam report says they are about 42 Billionaires, who hold as much wealth as the world’s poorest 3.7 billion people – only 42 whose wealth combined is much more than over an entire half of the world’s worth. It is in itself astounding to comprehend. However for all 7 Billion of us in planet earth to be able to understand Davos and to ultimately create a shared future in a fractured world, we must seek this wisdom from a pair of expensive socks.
Yes, you got me right – a pair of socks.
As the glitz and “feigned guilt” of DAVOS dazzles us and blinds us from focusing on the realities of the inequalities of our fractured world, I stumbled on to this gem that blew my mind and gave me new insight. So apparently sometime in 2013, globally acclaimed brand FALKE produced the world’s most expensive socks. Mmmh…a pair, it was reported retailed at 726 GBP…ok...that could be around USD1023…or to bring it closer home, a whooping 105,000 KSH! Yep! That much for a pair of socks…yes, those that you wear without re-use and sometimes gain an unpleasant smell for that much money!
Just let that sink in.
In 2013, the world’s richest individuals were about 4 or 5, three years later as Oxfam tells us, the club of the world’s richest has grown to 42 and 42 is the number that is poking us today through this narrative of the world’s most expensive pair of socks.
Work with me here.
You see in the expansive ironic- circus that is Davos, 42 of the world’s riches men, all white, probably all men, could all be wearing the world’s most expensive pair of socks.
Even though I read then that FALKE produced only 10 pairs of socks and were sold out in a jiffy, it so could be that specifically for the club of 42, more pairs have been produced elsewhere for them to wear and walk the meticulous corridors of Davos with over 700 GBP on their feet. How luxuriously to afford such opulence beneath your feet!
Let us fantasize for a moment on what could happen if the Davos 42 had the consciousness to do something “drastically ridiculous” as abandon their expensive socks for just one day, sell the proceeds charter one of their private jets to some remote continent called Africa and declare they want to offload all socks proceeds in a massive school project. Two things; first the people will die of chocked laughter to imagine that someone in their right mind would spend that much on a pair of socks and then secondly, lives could actually be changed, literally.
Back here in the “so-called shithole” that is the global compass for poverty and deprivation, a simple school in one of Nairobi’s down-town shanty areas could well benefit from the sale of the world’s most expensive pair of socks. They could build a school; stock their libraries, pay the teachers, and literally run the institution from a damn pair of expensive socks!
Seriously, with over $700, a school of 500 children with their teachers could comfortably have access to lunch for 42 days and if the plan was to feed more schools in one day out of one pair of socks, then guess what? Over 21,000 children in some of the world’s poorest corners would have a meal, all from one pair of expensive socks!
Okay so maybe we forget the food angle and instead look at just how many children could benefit from school fees were they to be targeted oh by the “philanthropic sale” of a pair of expensive socks at DAVOS. Very important to keep focused on this.
So in some of Africa’s poorest, school fees and requirements could amount to about $80 a term, peanuts, right? Wrong! Because growing inequalities which the Davos 42 must be privy to prevents even the poorest of the poor from accessing quality education even at the paltry cost of $80 term! So then, if one pair of expensive socks was to be sold by one of the Club of 42, then about 131 children somewhere in Africa would have their school fees settled for an entire month! How about then, if by a stroke of sheer luck or divine intervention all the rich club of 42 did the unthinkable and all of them decide to sell their pairs of socks and instead pay school fees for some bright but deprived kids in parts of the world’s most disadvantaged areas? Believe it or not, then we would have 5,502 children in school all from the glorious sale of a pair of socks!!
So the World Economic Forum in Davos is apparently dripping with bold tidings of “peace and prosperity” but why the heck not, the global billionaires’ index has more than tripled over the past few years, and suddenly, the term “billionaires boom” does not sound so offensive to anyone. Things are look up, this choreographed annual week of elitist theatrics much to the chagrin of global inequalities is greatly appreciated and very “Successful” so far.
Reality can be as harsh as the blistering cold in Davos right now but it can also be the flagellation that dulls the “nagging nuisance” that is the wealth gap exacerbated by tax evasion, illicit financial flows especially from poor countries, exploitation of workers’ rights and the plain refusal to bridge the gaps of inequality. This is the kind of elitist reality that places a hallow over the heads of the club of 42 & Co assuring them that tax evasion, neo-economic imperialism and flawed economic partnership agreements are actually part of the accepted norm in the game of wealth accumulation.
Today in Davos, the above terminologies will definitely not feature as agenda for concern and neither will the price of a pair of expensive socks.
However, somewhere in the trenches of the world’s poorest of the poor, the astonishing enormity of just what the price of one pair of socks can do will continue to inspire dreams of a more equal future some day.

*Mildred Ngesa is a Kenyan-based Journalist and a #FightInequality Alliance member

A Father with shattered loins

We were both on the run – seeking refuge for survival from the dangers that our work had brought us.
I was a human rights journalist, he was a controversial freedom fighter, agitating for the liberation of his Kurdish people from the oppression by the Turkish regime. Getting into the nitty-gritty of these historical hostilities between the Turkish and the people of Kurdistan would take forever to unravel. But he, alongside many of his ilk – brave Kurdish human rights activists had defiantly risen against the Establishment.
In a small wooden cottage tucked in the belly of a quiet traditional Northern German village, we sat around the dinner table, just him and I eating some sweet and sour soup which he had prepared and he was good at it.
“One day, you are going to make a woman very happy with your soup-making skills” I teased him.
With his cigarette between his fingers, he puffed and blew up smoke on the side, his thick moustache getting obscured by the smoke, his eyes assuming a distant gaze.
“Yes, the soup is all I will give her, right from my loins through my bleeding soul – only the soup”.
His response to my quizzical look was as painful as the reality of his fate. In the hands of the Turkish soldiers, in yet another detention that he had endured, they had almost smashed his entire manhood as they tortured him to a submission he never succumbed to.
“They shattered my entire generation. They finished me while I was still alive”. He lamented.
The bizarreness of this night was not yet over.
Somewhere as our conversations lingered I looked directly at him and suddenly realized that his front tooth which had been there just moments ago when we started our dinner was now missing!
“Damn!” He exclaimed. His reaction was forlorn, frustrated, resigned.
We brushed the table napkins and moved over the bowls and plates and sure enough, there was his tooth. It had slipped off without us noticing.
I was baffled.
“It is the effects of the torture – the electric torture. The impact manifests long after you think you have survived and then you realize just how much they have literally broken you”. He explained.
That night by my cottage door as he embraced me goodnight, he repeated his deep torture-inflicted loss; “The very worst is to claim to be a man living inside a shell that can never sustain that title”.
Many days later we went for a walk down the lush sprawling cornfields, through silent peaceful forest along a lonely country road. Once as we walked, we bumped onto a family of squirrels sneaking in and out of burrows and my friend suddenly stiffened at their appearance.
“You know, back then, when we ran through the fields with the police dogs hot in pursuit; it was a matter of life and death. Sometimes, we could run into mine-fields and many of our comrades were blown up in the process. We devised ways of detecting the mines. We trained monkeys and squirrels to go ahead of us as mine detectors. We survived.”
I nodded speechless because the sheer enormity of their ordeal was beyond my comprehension.
As we picked up on our walk, he murmured to himself; “But we survived and lost our manhood – no heritage to carry fourth our name”.
Many years later, I received a post card. The news was great. He had finally married a long-time friend and comrade in the struggle - a single mother whom he used to tell me about. They tied the note and he earned a six year old daughter.
“These days I have a new name – Papa” He wrote.
Today I salute my friend and all the broken men walking the face of the earth, bearing both visible and invisible scars - with or without the ability to conceive but still deeply committed to the callings of fatherhood. Not even electric torture should deny you that right!
Happy fathers’ day my friend.
Happy Father’s day to you all ardent fathers with numerous scars!

ICC rules but I still do not know who killed me!

Dear God,
I thought today I would know who and I would understand why.
I thought today, after seven years of waiting here and my spirit hovering around the life I once had I would at least witness the start of a justice process that would bring my killers to book, vindicate my innocence and start a healing process which my people badly need.
Dear God, today I have immersed my entire hope in the dead bucket of aborted justice, I have washed my face with the blood of my slain villagers and rinsed my hands in the boiling rivulets of victims of an orchestrated violence. I have bowed my head, heaved my shoulders and curled into a resigned ball of death.
I have succumbed here in purgatory where my executioners sent me; I have died with no ounce of justice to my name. Today my looming spirit fades for eternity to the place where I belong – the place where those who do not matter reside.
Dear God, when they came for me, they never told me that my sin was engraved in the community of my birth; that my heritage vexed them; that my people supported a party they detested. They never told me that my second name was my bane that because of the power struggle in a State House I would never ever see my blood was to be spilled. God, I had never even met them in person save for snippets in the news but I was killed in their name. I was slain and delivered to my doomsday in the name of people I have never known!
Today with the other 1200 victims, we are hurdled here at the final gates of purgatory lost in the depths of blinding deflation. Actually, it is I and the scattered pieces of the others who were killed with me. They do not want the country to remember us. We are fragments of a memory of a bad a past – a past haphazardly being pushed into the grave of forgetfulness but a past whose conscious is screaming for immortality.
It is difficult to rest in Peace God. How can we when we were delivered here in pieces? My neighbor, a guy from my village came here the same way I did – killed by several machete cuts from head to toe. He says he can never rest because some of his body parts are still missing since he died. “How can I ever be at peace when I do not have all the pieces that should allow me to die a wholesome death?” He poses. It is a question we have asked ourselves repeatedly, all the 1,200 of us who were brutally torn apart by rape, hacked, bludgeoned, set ablaze, shot and beaten to a pulp to our deaths. God where are the pieces that can make us whole again so we can rest in Peace?
Today, they said the case had no weight. They blamed a bungled prosecution, political interference and a raid onto the witness stand that heavily jumbled the process. They gave warnings which I did not understand and they said something about inviting us witnesses to express views and concerns in relation to reparations or assistance in lieu of reparations. They confuse me God. I am a victim but I am dead. My spirit looms over a fake normalcy but I am dead. I surely cannot appeal for reparations. Who will speak for me? Who will champion my justice?
I think of my mother whose tears have fallen every single day for the last seven years. From my spirit world I witness her torturous life after myself, my father; two brothers and one sister were dispatched here during the violence. For seven years, she has never spoken a word. For seven years, she has never taken a bath. For seven years they say her mind stopped and refused to re-start. She has joined the movement of the walking dead, for seven years since the violence. She lost herself. She lost everything. What then would she tell that reparations team? Will they replace her mind give her back her family?
Dear God, there is celebrations in the country today. It is a happy day. Yes, I can feel the singing and the dancing right on top of my grave. It is loud and unsettling just like the last seven years when politicking ensured that our names and faces are never recalled. The singing and dancing over my grave today is much more painful than the slash of the pangas that killed me God. The jubilation pierces my heart and signals the end of justice for the down-trodden; Kweli maskini hana haki!
They walk free today because the process has declared them blameless. How can I blame them when the highest court has exonerated them? The list had been longer but one by one they dropped off the list in the same way we were felled from the earth one by one as pangas slit our throats. Today the list has zero names. No one stands accused of our deaths. No one has been convicted. I am baffled God. How did I get here? Who brought me here? Please absolve my desperation to know. History tells me that this may never be over, because God? 2017 is here again and this place is too small for anymore guests to come in. Please tell me before it is too late.

Yours,
The Dead of the PEV

Waiting for Aylan

Waiting for Aylan

Waiting to embrace you
And cuddle you to my frozen heart
Waiting to accept you
So my heart may melt and doors may open
Waiting to hold you close
And tear down indifference and disdain
Waiting to shut your eyes
So your silence may silence the guns
Waiting….
Just waiting for you Aylan
Waiting to lay you to rest
So we may know no rest without love
Waiting to honour you Aylan
For as you came to shore, our humanity diminished.
Waiting for your rising
To soften our hearts of stone.
Waiting for Aylan.

©Mildred Ngesa Poetry – August 2015

Shame on you #XenophobicSouthAfrica!

Shame on you!
This is the song that we now sing to you – until you re-think this madness of xenophobia.
Shame on you!
Shame on you for fueling the stereotype that within the blood of Africans lies the unrelenting urge to kill one’s kin and eat his liver,
Shame on you #XenophobicSouthAfrica!
While the continent is struggling and grappling with fixing leaking holes,
You are drilling even further, senselessly spilling the blood of your innocent kin,
Shame on you!
Should we crush the Al shabaab, eradicate the Boko Haram, eliminate the Anti-BalaKa or now purge #XenophobicSouthAfrica?
#XenophobicSouthAfrica, for many decades we stood with you and wept with you, and sang with you and hoped with you,
For many decades, we refused to be totally free, until you too were free,
For a long time, we looked at you and searched our souls to learn resilience,
For a long time, we sat by the feet of the father of your Nation and learnt forgiveness,
Shame on you for killing the hopes and dreams of a continent seeking renaissance
Seeking true freedom that has never truly been our preserve,
#XenophobicSouthAfrica you disgust me!
Poverty? Unemployment? Since when did killing a neighbor, burning down his house and slashing down a defenseless child solve your poverty and grant you a job?
Since when did your rubbish mob psychology of sinking your anger and frustrations on defenseless neighbors solve your problems?
There you are South Africa, giving the world no option but to sing to you a song of horrific disgust,
From what we are seeing about the real you – the xenophobic you, what song do you possibly wish us to sing for you?
“Tula tula , tula mama, tula” no longer seems to suit you, yet we sang it for you right through our childhood until you were free,
What do we tell the God of South Africa who granted you the freedom you so desperately yearned for from generation to generation?
What do we say?
Does “Nkosi sikelel'iAfrica” mean anything to you any more? Does it matter to you that your kin laid down their all so that you may rise?
#XenophobicSouthAfrica you spilled so much blood to wash away the brutality of Apartheid but now you split the blood of the same brother who fought alongside you so that you may be free?
I mean, what kind of twisted sickness is that??
The Marikana Killings shocked us all and you, SouthAfrica, said the blood of the African is cheap – we mourned with you,
But now, you have cheapened it further by your senseless brutality against your own blood – what utter infamy!
Shame on you for tainting the blood of the children of the cradle of humanity out of misplaced anger orchestrated by selfish bigotry,
Shame on you for the audacity to claim that the plight you suffer in the game of survival is because of the visitors who came to your backyard to celebrate the victory of liberty that we all share,
Don’t blame it on the balding guy in the statehouse, he has no control over your arm when you raise it to strike a defenceless man,
Don’t blame it on your empty pockets, the wise will tell you that if you do not work, you do not eat – it doesn’t matter how small the pay is!
Please do not blame it on inner turmoil for he who walks the face of the earth carries with him turmoil to the grave - be he a pauper or a prince,
Turmoil and life are twins and turmoil does not justify violence against a brother,
So shame on you #XenophopicSouthAfrica for blood is in your hands and a continent’s stature intimates you even when your madness provokes so much anger and disgust,
#XenophobicSouthAfrica, every xenophobic attack dehumanizes you,
How will you ever look us in the eye again?
Yes, go ahead and clean it up, do whatever it takes to forever bury this madness,
But even as you do, once again;
Shame on you #XenophobicSouthAfrica!