Quick! Get out of Africa before Ebola kills you! Trust me, if you are not African, you need to beat it and leave Africans alone with her damn-forsaken Ebola! And as you leave, please kindly also abandon the oil, the gold, the diamonds, the gas, the fresh waters, scenic serenity and millions of acres of arable land. Of course, as you get on to the planes to safety, carry along your over-rated so-called global policies and meaningless moral connotations of leadership and governance that may only apply in Africa well…only in the absence of Ebola!
We Africans are a god-forsaken lot. Our blood is extremely cheap so who cares how many of us die from Ebola or whatever. Our blood is worth a mere palm-full of sand but you my friend, your royal blood is worth the moon and if it is split here because of Ebola or anything then the heart of the world will surely stop!
You do not belong here. Africa is not safe for you. Ebola is real and it kills with a frenzy marched to none. Ask our kin from Liberia, Sierra Leona, Nigeria and Guinea. They know what it is like to have the devil dance on your back. It is the kind of devil that dances when Africa’s forlorn are in war, civil strife, epidemics, hunger or suffering the brunt of climate change – yes, the kind of devil you know because you understand just how such devils are nurtured, right?
Wait! Let me tell you something; a smart mind once said that the best way to kill a frog is to lock it in a bottle devoid of any air and let it kick and fight and choke in its own waste until it dies. With our Ebola wrecking havoc and the rest of the world “running away from us, closing its borders, suspending flights to this damn dungeon then surely the lid on this jar called Africa is tightened every minute as we suffocate in our own fate.
I heard this morning that a somber and compassionate statement had been rolled out. It said; “..the safety of our customers, crew and ground team is always on our top priority..”; Oh, and elsewhere, I read; “..we will do all we can to ensure that our citizen are safe and protected”. With these, flights were suspended and rumors have it that some borders have been closed and any incoming African marked as “dangerous” . I do not blame you. You are right – you protect your own.
Dense as it may seem, Africa is trying to protect its own but you just can’t let it, can you? What, with all the double-edged bi-lateral arrangements and Judas-puckered kisses in air-conditioned boardrooms and sugar-coated conniving summits, how on this forsaken hub of humanity are we ever going to make it! Of course I did not say you are fake, pretentious and utterly bigoted as you harvest what is only important to you materially, No! How could I when you are the world leaders in lectures on human rights, human dignity, human equalities and God knows what else! I surely could not dispute that, could I?
With Ebola in mind, all I am saying is that while signing billion-dollar contracts on foreign direct investments, resource excavation and exploration rights, trade agreements and treaties and feel-good global summits and symposiums with fancy names, please include in the package a humanitarian clause in case Ebola and his cousins strike!
Yes sir! You were right when you complained that the response to Ebola on the ground has been “Woefully inadequate”. We are guilty as charged. Our technical, medical, research and social mobilization resources and machinery can surely not match yours, especially when we are so loudly aware of that accidentally historic injustice of colonization (both past and present) that has ensured the ground will never ever be leveled.
I have one plea though. While we suffocate in our Ebola jar, we have seen that with a single shot of a concoction you have been cooking in some of your kitchens you are actually able to revive a dying Ebola patient! Pray tell me then, why are we still having this conversation if you have the answer to what could have prevented the deaths of over 900 people? Why are we not collectively intervening in this massive emergency crisis with the urgency it deserves? The number of the dying has just shot up as I finish this sentence yet that “magic concoction” is still lying there in your kitchen….
Oh, you must be busy running away from this strange African World of Ebola back to the safety of your own developed surreal world, right?
Look, I may arrive in one of your airports some day. As I disembark from the plane I anticipate the glares, snares and stares of “the Ebola carrier from Africa”. I am prepared for that. I will never apologize for my heritage, and neither should you. So while I will be going through the scrutiny and gloved quarantines in case I am carrying the Ebola virus, I will recall that tiny FACT that the world is only ONE and the air we breathe is the SAME, weather it is Ebola-infested or not.
Wednesday, August 6, 2014
Friday, March 8, 2013
And why should the Kenya media light the fire of post-election violence?
As I write this, I am not sure how the situation is going to be in Kenya in the next two hours. I write waiting alongside 40 million other Kenyans for the Chairman of the Independent Electoral & Boundaries Commission Issack Hassan to finally announce the winner of the Kenya Elections 2013.
I write in anticipation, I write in pent-up anxiety hoping for the best while expecting the worst, just like the next person who claims to be Kenyan.
That is the much I can say in terms of post-election turmoil. Am I disappointing the Western media by this calm sobriety? Apparently, because the western media it seems has been twiddling its fingers since Monday the 4th of March when Kenyans went to the polls waiting for when they could strike a match and set Kenya aflame.
The Washington Post, one of the most respected and celebrated Media in the globe has just lost my respect. Listen to this; Kenya Media Outlets Practice Censorship to keep election tensions down; Washington Post; March 7th 2013.
I am flabbergasted and on the same breath, I must admit that I am delighted. Yes! Flabbergasted by the audacity of the Washington Post to even imagine that calming tensions is a negative thing and delighted because having gone through the piece, I now realize that we the Kenya media need to shift base to the West to TRAIN THEM on what responsible reporting is!
I am a journalist. I seek to re-define the role of the media in conflict prone situations and therefore, from the above accusations of “calming tensions”, I plead guilty as charged.
I however have no apology to make and neither should the Kenya media. Tonight I celebrate the impressive performance by the media in Kenya. I affirm them for going out of their way to veer of sensationalism, inflammatory reporting and biased coverage. I raise their profile for finally understanding the two ethos of journalism; MEDIA SENSIBILITY and MEDIA SENSITIVITY. I commend them for embracing both and infusing them so reasonably in the coverage of the pre and post voting period.
You need to have been here in 2007 and 2008 to understand just how crucial these two aspects are. We were here. We saw the profession sink into polarization and commit the ultimate misconduct of sensationalism, inflammatory coverage and biased reporting.
We were present as journalists when society could not distinguish between our code of conduct and that of the ordinary hooligan in the streets. We ran amok just as the whole country lost its sanity. We stood accused - we still stand accused since one member of the profession actually remains a suspect before the International Criminal Court for having fueled the conflict. Today, five years later, the Kenya media has learned its lesson. It has matured and understands the call to media sensitivity and media sensibility.
Curiously, I realize that international media such as the Washington Post are yet to grasp this new reality that basically outlines the need for positive change through the media. They are alarmed by the calmness of the Kenya media, they wonder why television screens and newspaper pages are not bleeding. It is probably why in its skewed perception of the role of media in covering political processes, the Post and other internationals think coverage by the Kenya media is “dull and boring”.
As a journalist, I have keenly observed the pre and post voting climate within media houses. As authority calls, they have instructions to relay only results as conveyed by the IEBC. While they wait for results, they are conducting calm and sober analysis with intelligent guests within shows while on the other hand relaying messages of peace and urging for calm. They are reporting and updating Kenyans in a sensible and almost synchronized manner which I must say has contributed a lot to the sense of calm despite the hitches and prolonged wait over the final announcement for results. The Kenya Media has been sober and sensitive. It is obvious that they are so aware of what is at stake. Most importantly, they are aware that they hold the match that can easily flare up a fire. They understand just how delicate the situation is.
It is a matter of life and death. Literally. The media understands this. It is invoking its responsibility and sensibility lest they repeat the mistakes of 2007/2008. The Kenya media is mature enough to infuse sensibility and sensitivity in coverage and still remain professional in disseminating information to the public. Now, I know, this is the kind of professionalism the Washington Post or other international media outlets may not understand. It seems they are yet to grasp this new world order of journalism that deliberately seeks to make the world a better place.
We know the old journalism adage on the definition of news - it is when a man bites a dog and not when a dog bites a man. Well, to the international media, I have news for you; in Kenya right now, there are no men biting dogs and the Kenya media has no intention whatsoever to invent that scenario!
Despite this, the Kenya media, ranked as one of the best in this region is practicing as you read this and is doing it as professionally as it possibly can. Unlike yourselves living in the old-school mentality of stroking fires to create News, the media here has realized and redefined its role to help keep the peace and avert conflict and yes, this kind of approach does crown the bylines and pays the bills!
I sympathize with capitals of the world where parachute journalists flying in from western territories have landed and struck matches with their insensitive coverage and left the people worse than they were. I sympathize with the collateral damage of innocent civilians in areas of conflict across the world whom the western media in their skewed ideology dance on their corpses in the name of chasing big stories of conflict that are not “dull and boring”.
In my reflections as a journalist and a writer, I sympathize with a media that reneges from its responsibility to create and sustain harmony and peace through coverage in the pretext of exercising a people’s right to know. I condemn journalists who deliberately set out to strike matches and light fires that they can never control or put out.
In this space, I salute my colleagues in the media in Kenya for deliberately going out of the comfort zones of outdated journalistic practice to deliberately hold together the sanity of a nation on the brink of conflict.
I celebrate the Media Council of Kenya, the Media Owners Association, the Kenya Editors Guild and all professional Journalism bodies that have deliberately chosen the path of sanity in reporting to the detriment of cheapening the profession through inflammatory and sensational propaganda.
Thank you the media in Kenya for finally understanding your calling!
Thursday, January 10, 2013
Penning for change with Mildred Ngesa: Blood is in my hands…and yours too!
Penning for change with Mildred Ngesa: 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 a...
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.
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.
Monday, December 10, 2012
I cry for Sabra, Shatila and Lebanon
I cry for Sabra, Shatila and Lebanon Places I have never been. People I have never known.
I cry for heinous human stupidity and the audacity of evil edged on nonsensical justification. Shabra, Shatila and Lebanon…far away places that settled in my heart long ago when clarity came in the form of a young fiery Palestinian journalists called Samaa who made me understand the reality of what the other side of the power-world would rather we do not see. Samaa said to me; “ they come with their tankers and machine guns, our brave boys fight with stones and sticks yet they call us terrorists!
Just who is your god who declares your supremacy over the other? Who is your god who summons you to flatten thousands of innocent souls in the name of whatever rubbish you want to call it? Just who is your god? That child who died under your hail of bombs would be 30 today. That child would have been great; that child would today be teaching you how to love, you who is a malnourished of what makes one human! That child never died; that child will continue to slash the thorny fields of your conscious even when you think you are safe.
That child will re-humanize you one day. I swear by these tears that I shed! Thousands of kilometers far away from Sabra, Shatila & Lebanon, our minds were trained to believe the lies of the aggressor – where hate & violation came camouflaged in fake boardroom jargons. Still, we know, I know, that once upon a time, on the map of the world, there was a country called Palestine.
Today the map has changed. Where did Palestine go? I have just read about Sabra, Shatila and Lebanon and that time back in 1982 when the cowards marched into the refugee camps and exposed their rotten, twisted, darkened souls. And now it is so clear to me, just who the real terrorists are. Now I know that a terrorist is one who fears the sting of TRUTH because truth can never be silenced by a gun-shot. Truth is like a growing pregnancy, you cannot hide it with a damn bandage!! Sabra, Shatila and Lebanon, I cry for you. M.N.
I cry for heinous human stupidity and the audacity of evil edged on nonsensical justification. Shabra, Shatila and Lebanon…far away places that settled in my heart long ago when clarity came in the form of a young fiery Palestinian journalists called Samaa who made me understand the reality of what the other side of the power-world would rather we do not see. Samaa said to me; “ they come with their tankers and machine guns, our brave boys fight with stones and sticks yet they call us terrorists!
Just who is your god who declares your supremacy over the other? Who is your god who summons you to flatten thousands of innocent souls in the name of whatever rubbish you want to call it? Just who is your god? That child who died under your hail of bombs would be 30 today. That child would have been great; that child would today be teaching you how to love, you who is a malnourished of what makes one human! That child never died; that child will continue to slash the thorny fields of your conscious even when you think you are safe.
That child will re-humanize you one day. I swear by these tears that I shed! Thousands of kilometers far away from Sabra, Shatila & Lebanon, our minds were trained to believe the lies of the aggressor – where hate & violation came camouflaged in fake boardroom jargons. Still, we know, I know, that once upon a time, on the map of the world, there was a country called Palestine.
Today the map has changed. Where did Palestine go? I have just read about Sabra, Shatila and Lebanon and that time back in 1982 when the cowards marched into the refugee camps and exposed their rotten, twisted, darkened souls. And now it is so clear to me, just who the real terrorists are. Now I know that a terrorist is one who fears the sting of TRUTH because truth can never be silenced by a gun-shot. Truth is like a growing pregnancy, you cannot hide it with a damn bandage!! Sabra, Shatila and Lebanon, I cry for you. M.N.
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Men do love
In the cold streets of Addis Ababa, I watched the rain play ping-pong with our sanity. The cold was stinging, the wind was biting, but the rain was determined to unsettle our comfort.
It is the cold season but life never stops because the weather is hot or cold, life goes on regardless. And so i peer outside the window of the van and bump into expressionless faces of hard-working Ethiopians, rushing to outsmart the rain.
At a bus-stop corner where commuters stood impatiently for the next bus, I caught the trembling look of a man who had just bid his girlfriend goodbye. She moved a little closer to his cheek - he planted a quick shy kiss, took a step back and looked at her with a look that apologized for letting his weaknesses show. We zoomed past.
At the parking bay of the hotel, the gate-man in a dark green uniform is momentarily swayed by the beauty of a woman who suddenly appears in front of the bus to ask him for directions. We are forgotten in the bay as he stares perplexed at the magnificent shock of creation that had just stolen his attention. I sense his longing in the steps he attempts, torn between duty and human need.
There's a guy in the lobby with his family; a wife and two little girls.The revolving door swings and he quickly grabs his little one to his arm while his other arm reaches our to gently push his wife out of harm's way as she carries her other daughter to her bosom. The guy has two suitcases by his feet and a traveling back-pack still on his back. He is talking to the receptionist, filling some forms but all the while his attention goes back to his wife and his kids - he has living in his mind and love in his heart - the love that watches his wife and kids.
It is cold in my room and the potato chips and chicken sandwich now taste like a really bad idea. Sleep has vanished and so I log in and stumble into a YouTube clip; "the reluctant outlaw" and I mellow at the protagonist who talks his way into my heart. He is a young matatu driver, a father of two, hardened in the streets of Nairobi,held hostage by the corruption, violence, and dangers of navigating through the city in the face of so much adversity.
I am stunned by his sincerity and his dream to become a great writer one day. I dream along with him as I enter his world of early mornings, noisy, sweaty days of bribing the police and breaking traffic rules as well as the lurking dangers of car-jacking and accidents. He goes home in the cover of darkness seeking his wife's embrace, wakes his sleepy kids for a cuddle and a kiss and closes his eyes to try and forget his crazy job - all he wants is to buy his three year old son a pair of shoe tomorrow which he really cannot afford!
And so in this chilly Addis Ababa night, i think of my love who rolls up his sleeves every morning and works through unspeakable circumstances and comes back home to open his arms for his family to snuggle in. I think of him and suddenly it dawns on me that he does that so passionately regardless of the ugliness of the challenges to his manliness - he does it because in his heart, we, his family have something he desperately needs, something that he gives us with selfless abandon - something called love.
It is the cold season but life never stops because the weather is hot or cold, life goes on regardless. And so i peer outside the window of the van and bump into expressionless faces of hard-working Ethiopians, rushing to outsmart the rain.
At a bus-stop corner where commuters stood impatiently for the next bus, I caught the trembling look of a man who had just bid his girlfriend goodbye. She moved a little closer to his cheek - he planted a quick shy kiss, took a step back and looked at her with a look that apologized for letting his weaknesses show. We zoomed past.
At the parking bay of the hotel, the gate-man in a dark green uniform is momentarily swayed by the beauty of a woman who suddenly appears in front of the bus to ask him for directions. We are forgotten in the bay as he stares perplexed at the magnificent shock of creation that had just stolen his attention. I sense his longing in the steps he attempts, torn between duty and human need.
There's a guy in the lobby with his family; a wife and two little girls.The revolving door swings and he quickly grabs his little one to his arm while his other arm reaches our to gently push his wife out of harm's way as she carries her other daughter to her bosom. The guy has two suitcases by his feet and a traveling back-pack still on his back. He is talking to the receptionist, filling some forms but all the while his attention goes back to his wife and his kids - he has living in his mind and love in his heart - the love that watches his wife and kids.
It is cold in my room and the potato chips and chicken sandwich now taste like a really bad idea. Sleep has vanished and so I log in and stumble into a YouTube clip; "the reluctant outlaw" and I mellow at the protagonist who talks his way into my heart. He is a young matatu driver, a father of two, hardened in the streets of Nairobi,held hostage by the corruption, violence, and dangers of navigating through the city in the face of so much adversity.
I am stunned by his sincerity and his dream to become a great writer one day. I dream along with him as I enter his world of early mornings, noisy, sweaty days of bribing the police and breaking traffic rules as well as the lurking dangers of car-jacking and accidents. He goes home in the cover of darkness seeking his wife's embrace, wakes his sleepy kids for a cuddle and a kiss and closes his eyes to try and forget his crazy job - all he wants is to buy his three year old son a pair of shoe tomorrow which he really cannot afford!
And so in this chilly Addis Ababa night, i think of my love who rolls up his sleeves every morning and works through unspeakable circumstances and comes back home to open his arms for his family to snuggle in. I think of him and suddenly it dawns on me that he does that so passionately regardless of the ugliness of the challenges to his manliness - he does it because in his heart, we, his family have something he desperately needs, something that he gives us with selfless abandon - something called love.
Thursday, October 27, 2011
We have not yet gone to war!
We have not gone to war yet.
We think we are already at war but we are fooling ourselves. Yes, our soldiers are out there in the frontline, heaving away precious years under the slippery jaunts of a faceless enemy, but before we claim victory over this battle then we must look down and see that we still have the guns in our hands – uncorked, unused.
No, we haven’t gone to war.
Journalists know when they go to war because when they do, something happens, the earth moves and the terrain is never the same again. They know very well that war comes deep, passionate and unrelenting to journalists who believe in a just cause – war comes with a somber warning to unpack the looming gaps and loop-holes within a system that has knowingly or unknowingly let down its people.
Let me explain.
Kenya is at war with Somalia. We all saw it coming. All journalists saw it coming, infarct we knew it so well that to paraphrase the words of poet/author Toni Kan in Don’t go home, he knows, we flirted with the idea of war for a long time. We were like a woman teasing a bad tooth with her tongue, waiting for when it would sire real pain. Well, the pain is here and suddenly we are bewildered by just what a little flirting can do!
Kenya is at war with Somali. Words with such gloomy finality it almost makes the opposite of war seem like something we dreamt up. Just how did we get here? How did we replace the regular first news items with jungle fatigue, tankers, guns, rifles and a people bewildered by the uncertainty of when or where grenades will explode next?
Let me tell you how we did it. If journalists had fought the “journalistic war” the moment we let in the first Somali refugee past the Kenya border-line many years ago then maybe this current war need not have happened. But we were not smart enough then to read between the fine prints to know that as a nation, we had sold ourselves to the devil by inviting him to our backyard.
The Refugee is and always will be a big story anywhere in the world. However, the story dies just as soon as the paper rolls out of the press. The Refugee story is the one story that a good (Kenyan) journalist ear-marks as one of the must-do’s before she takes the final bow. Like the urge to scratch an irritating itch before swiftly moving on with life, we hurriedly scratched the surface of the refugee story over the years and hoped that we could move on without a hitch. But that hope has dumped us. Today we are in the middle of a war and as journalists, we stand bewildered, stupefied like a man who has woken up on a strange bed, wondering how we got here in the first place.
We got here when we were too busy to dig deeper into unraveling the implications of the expanding refugee camps in Dadaab and elsewhere. We were busy invoking international laws and treaties to justify the humanitarian character of the government of Kenya showering its neighbors with compassion.
When pockets of bad news started emerging that arms and armed militia were invading camps, we hurriedly reported the News aspect of the invasions and moved on to the next story in the docket. Then we got excited with the political spin into the whole Somalia question that poised Kenya as the don of conflict mitigation and peace-maker..we even gave them ‘permanent residency’ to lay their heads and chew khat while sorting out their squabbles! Now, pray tell me why are we stunned by this war even when as journalists we are yet to grab our fighting gear and hit the battle fields? Why do we wonder just when this neighboring community became such a substantial part of the Kenya population when we stood aside and watched them troop in?
Numbers do not lie. The Somali population is humongous here. Ask a monstrous jungle named Eastleigh Estate. This is where journalists should have created their combat base and sustained the battle of duty until change came. This is where they should have pitched tent long before our men and women in green crossed the borders under the shattering of machine guns and droves. Eastleigh is where we should have fought with all our journalistic might to ensure the enemy does not gain root and flourish. But just as that tiny space in the North where we allowed the first bunch of refugees to trot in, so did the snake that is Eastleigh grab a life-line from our very own hospitality. Before we could blink, Eastleigh was “small Somali”.
And so we specialized on feeding this snake that is Eastleigh. We sporadically spoke of an influx of small arms and foreign exchange scams there then hurriedly moved on to the next story. We weakly lamented the lawlessness of foreigners who had invaded our sovereign space but secretly pocketed the wads of dirty cash pinched into our palms to keep us quiet. And the Eastleigh snake continued to thrive.
When international terror lists pointed directly at Eastleigh, we rushed to clean up our image lest the allegations damaged our reputation and messed up our precious tourism industry. But then, you cannot hide a bulging live snake under your shirt, can you? So here we are – journalists shocked to the war frontline, covering each gun-shot and still wondering how we got here in the first place.
Wonder no more comrades for we got here long before this ‘here’ was conceived.
We got here when we refused to pick up the fight with our mighty pens and microphones to report the enemy back to hell the very first time it reared its head.
And still, we are yet to go to war!
We think we are already at war but we are fooling ourselves. Yes, our soldiers are out there in the frontline, heaving away precious years under the slippery jaunts of a faceless enemy, but before we claim victory over this battle then we must look down and see that we still have the guns in our hands – uncorked, unused.
No, we haven’t gone to war.
Journalists know when they go to war because when they do, something happens, the earth moves and the terrain is never the same again. They know very well that war comes deep, passionate and unrelenting to journalists who believe in a just cause – war comes with a somber warning to unpack the looming gaps and loop-holes within a system that has knowingly or unknowingly let down its people.
Let me explain.
Kenya is at war with Somalia. We all saw it coming. All journalists saw it coming, infarct we knew it so well that to paraphrase the words of poet/author Toni Kan in Don’t go home, he knows, we flirted with the idea of war for a long time. We were like a woman teasing a bad tooth with her tongue, waiting for when it would sire real pain. Well, the pain is here and suddenly we are bewildered by just what a little flirting can do!
Kenya is at war with Somali. Words with such gloomy finality it almost makes the opposite of war seem like something we dreamt up. Just how did we get here? How did we replace the regular first news items with jungle fatigue, tankers, guns, rifles and a people bewildered by the uncertainty of when or where grenades will explode next?
Let me tell you how we did it. If journalists had fought the “journalistic war” the moment we let in the first Somali refugee past the Kenya border-line many years ago then maybe this current war need not have happened. But we were not smart enough then to read between the fine prints to know that as a nation, we had sold ourselves to the devil by inviting him to our backyard.
The Refugee is and always will be a big story anywhere in the world. However, the story dies just as soon as the paper rolls out of the press. The Refugee story is the one story that a good (Kenyan) journalist ear-marks as one of the must-do’s before she takes the final bow. Like the urge to scratch an irritating itch before swiftly moving on with life, we hurriedly scratched the surface of the refugee story over the years and hoped that we could move on without a hitch. But that hope has dumped us. Today we are in the middle of a war and as journalists, we stand bewildered, stupefied like a man who has woken up on a strange bed, wondering how we got here in the first place.
We got here when we were too busy to dig deeper into unraveling the implications of the expanding refugee camps in Dadaab and elsewhere. We were busy invoking international laws and treaties to justify the humanitarian character of the government of Kenya showering its neighbors with compassion.
When pockets of bad news started emerging that arms and armed militia were invading camps, we hurriedly reported the News aspect of the invasions and moved on to the next story in the docket. Then we got excited with the political spin into the whole Somalia question that poised Kenya as the don of conflict mitigation and peace-maker..we even gave them ‘permanent residency’ to lay their heads and chew khat while sorting out their squabbles! Now, pray tell me why are we stunned by this war even when as journalists we are yet to grab our fighting gear and hit the battle fields? Why do we wonder just when this neighboring community became such a substantial part of the Kenya population when we stood aside and watched them troop in?
Numbers do not lie. The Somali population is humongous here. Ask a monstrous jungle named Eastleigh Estate. This is where journalists should have created their combat base and sustained the battle of duty until change came. This is where they should have pitched tent long before our men and women in green crossed the borders under the shattering of machine guns and droves. Eastleigh is where we should have fought with all our journalistic might to ensure the enemy does not gain root and flourish. But just as that tiny space in the North where we allowed the first bunch of refugees to trot in, so did the snake that is Eastleigh grab a life-line from our very own hospitality. Before we could blink, Eastleigh was “small Somali”.
And so we specialized on feeding this snake that is Eastleigh. We sporadically spoke of an influx of small arms and foreign exchange scams there then hurriedly moved on to the next story. We weakly lamented the lawlessness of foreigners who had invaded our sovereign space but secretly pocketed the wads of dirty cash pinched into our palms to keep us quiet. And the Eastleigh snake continued to thrive.
When international terror lists pointed directly at Eastleigh, we rushed to clean up our image lest the allegations damaged our reputation and messed up our precious tourism industry. But then, you cannot hide a bulging live snake under your shirt, can you? So here we are – journalists shocked to the war frontline, covering each gun-shot and still wondering how we got here in the first place.
Wonder no more comrades for we got here long before this ‘here’ was conceived.
We got here when we refused to pick up the fight with our mighty pens and microphones to report the enemy back to hell the very first time it reared its head.
And still, we are yet to go to war!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)