Never as usual

'It won't be business as usual...' In the face of political turmoil and civil instability, business is never as usual. Life's normalcy, often comes to a stanstill. Fear grips everyone from every point. Disorder is always the foot soldiers, training its hostility and defiance on poor chaps, caught on the run. The intensity of terror escalates like in no other period when peace reigned supreme.
Business is never as usual. Life is never the same. A whole new world of turmoil sets in like a blazing fire rolling into a bale of cotton.
Patriotic citizens face the ill fortune of being refugees in their own land. It is a sad history, which the vanquished never live to relive, in a better way.

And like William Butler Yeats put in his nostalgic poem

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the
world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of
innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are
full of passionate intensity.

There could least be other ways to describe this.

And in this, there could be a celebration of the history of the vanquished.

Joshua Masinde

Recollections of a turbulent mind (part II)

It came a time when a friend thought it wise to resign from social reality. He concluded he'd be better off without the company of the numerous sadists who surrounded him. Any time they met to discuss issues, everyone of them expressed their prejudices aggressively, expecting to be given an ear. But, none was listening. Reason? They'd let their differences guide their way of reasoning.
Now that everyone was opposed to his stereotypes, which everyone else was churning out, he felt disillusioned. A sledgehammer of silence fell upon the poor chap. Silence was a weapon to keep his cool and his temper.
But, an individual belongs to society. That individual, who consigns themselves to an existential state, would be better off inexistent. But that we are human beings, so are we prejudiced. Settling the scores on a rational basis, unguided by uncontrolled emotions and sharp stereotypes, is cheaper than enacting a tragic scene.
The wise bury the hatchet. They dread to bear the straw that broke the camel's back.

Recollections of a turbulent mind (part I)

I looked toward the East and, hell! There was no sunrise. The beautiful country was up in flames. Things had fallen apart. The centre was flames. Everybody felt the horrible pinch of the dirty game....

In a globalised world, human tragedy does not exist in isolation. No country, state or nation can claim to be in sole control of violence, bloodletting or genocide. As a member of the global community, intervention measures, many a time, serve as a convenient remedy to tragic events or situations that could otherwise turn tragic....

Human tragedy!? in a civilised world? It's something I never thought could happen just like that! It happens only in a nightmare.
...but there comes a time when the volcano of human emotions and fury erupts. Here's when reality is worse than fiction.
...such was the time... a time when the excesses of power inflamed the passions of the men on the streets, whose craving for change was long overdue.

Given long-standing frustration and disillusionment, there's always a way to vent it. The patient type would bury their heads in the sand and hope for better things...deo volente. The impatient change lovers will always find a way out at the most convenient time.
Such was the picture...

......indiscriminate bloodletting reigned supreme...
......there was weeping and great lamentation.....
......the earth became the theatre of the wretched....

Nevertheless, human tragedy is not perennial. There comes a time when the citizens would come to their senses, lay down their tools of destruction and violence and pull the curtains of peace to their consciences. They'd preach reconciliation and the need to co-exist once again as kindreds.....
........."And they will have to beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning shears. Nation will not lift up sword against Nation, neither will they learn war anymore."

Joshua Masinde.