A commet on Salim Lone's commentary, 'Beheadings in Kenya much more than security threats' (DN27thMay07)

Hello Mr. Salim Lone! That is a remarkable story! I think the government, especially the security minister is kind of 'delaying' to deal with them since they happen to exist in a homogenous socio-political and cultural setting. This is an issue they need to address with acute intolerence.

I think the blame game between the security minister (executive) and the judiciary is a sort of scapegoat that offers a better and more fertile nursery bed for the growth of 'Mungiki' into a tyrannical empire within a lawful government. If they are allowed to advance their terror, archaic persecutions of innocent Kenyans, they will gain the mentality complex that they can even execute their terror on the leaders. After the innocent man on the street, who next?


With time (if they are allowed to 'grow') they will tend be more organised with complex networks and will be bleeding hungry to lead a nation. But, how can this come to pass, they will feel so superior as to attempt to stage a rebellion against the powers that be.


Mr. Salim, I think you should tell them how rebel groups, some of which have led to collapsed governments by taking power themselves, can be formented! This situation should be contained without fear or favour.

Good day


JM.

Torn Between Hostilities

I witnessed the case of the fall out between a boda boda man with his wife, who had stayed out of the home for three days without permission. She had not even bothered to go back home and breast-feed their one-year-old toddler. This prompted the man to put his walk of life aside so he could take care of the toddler and his seven-year-old son.

When his wife went back home, he told her to return where she had been to.

“I’ve come to breast-feed my baby,” the woman said. She was not even bothered by her husband’s seriousness.

“After three days?” Untold dismay could be read on the man’s face. “After three days; then you remember to come and breast-feed your baby? Return to wherever place you’ve come from.”

The woman, determined not to yield to her husband’s threats went into the house to pick up the wailing baby. The irate husband pursued her to the house to teach her a lesson. All of a sudden, there came out the woman’s shrill cry. Some struggles ensued. After some time, the woman sped out of the house while holding the baby tightly in her bosom. The two were weeping loudly.

Their ten-year-old son, who had just come from school, arrived in time to witness the on-going curfew between his father and mother.

“Bring the child and return where you came from,” the man hollered insistently as he drew towards her in haste. He caught her and punched her in the face. Succeeding punches landed on the little toddler whom the woman had resolved to use as her shield.

“How can you stay out for three days without my knowledge unless you don’t want to care for the children? Unless you are a slut!” the man continued exuding his venom. He landed a grip on the toddler and snatched her from the mother. But for the mother’s speedy kneeling, the toddler could have landed head-on to the ground. The man held the toddler by the arm while with his other hand, continued administering his justice on the woman.

A few on lookers urged the woman to run for her life. She did. She took hold of their ten-year-old son and sought for refuge from her fuming husband. Thick blood oozed from her badly fractured nose. Her ten-year-old boy had joined her in the wailing.

“Let me never see you in this house again,” the boda boda fellow kept on thundering as he held the toddler in his arms. “As for this child, forget. I will breast feed her.”

I glared at the man and his critically wounded wife and pitied them. In fact, I pitied the two kids so much for the terror that had been inflicted in their tender innocent hearts and minds. The mere fall out between their parents the two kids from each other. And, since the boda boda man kept on proclaiming that he would bring in another woman in his wife’s place, the more serious trauma lay in their children. More so, I was greatly concerned about the fate of the toddler.

The two kids are the ones who shoulder immense suffering, both physically and psychologically. Young as they are, they are not mentally prepared to host such shame, bitterness, violence and trauma that results from their parents’ fall out. This engenders untold suffering to them. They end up thinking everybody in the world hates them; hence they reserve and resign into themselves.

Apart from being subject to the violence and horrific scenes of the tussle between their parents, such children countenance stigma and abuse from other children within their social spectrum. In schools, they become the favourite talk of other children: “Your father beat your mother and dumped her… You do not have a father or a mother… and the like.” They fall prey to such abuse that should otherwise have been eschewed.

This relegates them to self-rejection, stress and trauma. Sometimes, when the going becomes unbearable, they mete out violence on the offenders in a bid to silence them. The situation, more often that not, aggravates. In the long run, the child’s academic performance faces a bottleneck.

Why should this happen? Why do parents of such calibre resort to act on impulse? Fighting is never always the problem-arbiter. In any case the parents should attach immediate resolve to dialogue rather than irrational action through fist throwing and exchange of abuses. There’s more to dialogue than meets the eye. Sensitive domestic issues, which need not spill to the public ear end up being solved amicably where dialogue is initiated.

Most of the problems that we witness nowadays like family break-ups would be rare phenomena. My advice to such parents is, think before you leap. If you must leap, do it rationally in case you want to save the future life of your children. Otherwise, what’s the use of destroying the future life of your kids? Please, let’s save the kids for a healthy future.

Joshua Masinde

Lesson In The Hard Way-Encounter with a fresher in my fresher days

"I've come from very far; from deep inside real troubles." It's as if he is no longer himself. It was some kind of an informal appointment I had struck with him after he had previously asked me to be calling on him so he could tell me his bygone tribulations. Knowing damn well I didn't entertain tales that would offset me into instant dizziness, I just went. He was glad to see me.

"I used to push ass-carts, cut grass from deep inside thickets, wake up at dawn to milk several cows and later on, during the day, do what the prodigal son did that pumped sense into his noodle." He was obliged to ensure the swine had a well-balanced diet, each day.

"Why?"

It was the Devil of indolence and crude obstinacy and not himself that had inspired his vile situation. The Devil confided in him to abandon school once and for all time and to inform his father thus.

Could the old man adhere to such a serious contention said in jest? Considering the privilege he attached to education, more so in the higher circles of learning and the fact that his son was the only one in the entire clan, who had the potential of making it to the higher atmosphere of learning; this was pure nonsense. The mzee could not hear of it. The son too could not hear of it. Even after being subjected to the sting of the stroke on his natural seats, he remained indifferent to what his father liked: education. Since he couldn't make do with more of the strokes, his father resolved to get a helping hand from some askaris. The son eloped from home for a month, in which time; he ended up in the jungle of miseries and hard life.

How he could allude his experience to that of the prodigal son and fail to derive a lesson of significance from it, I failed to make out.

In his new life-system, he swallowed bhang smoke to make his life real. The more he had a puff at it, the more he cherished his new accomplices' common nonsense indoctrination on educational slavery.

When life proved too real, he had some options to consider: suicide, more bhang, more hard labour, but one sounded right to his tortured conscience. He would recite the decision before he went homeward bound.
"Father, having defied your noble conservatist rules and views on higher learning, I hereby present myself before thee for remission. Please, show me the path on which you want me to tread." His accomplices were sad to have so lost a devoted member of their ganja club.

He bitterly learned to value what his father valued. So, he is now happy that he is pursuing a degree course in Community Psychology rather than biding his time in a remote village on a neo-modernist black settler's farm undertaking odd jobs for a 'hand-to-mouth' remuneration. Even so, everything seems quite a fantasy to him. It's an odyssey of fairies he had learned to contend with.

He now hands me a cup; rather, a mug of tea. Courtesy, isn't it?

Joshua Masinde