Dear Issa Michuzi,
How do you. We live in a regionalizing world. The political crises in Kenya since the re-electionof Mwai Kibaki continue to assail my motherland and cause news headlines for her neighbours.
How do you. We live in a regionalizing world. The political crises in Kenya since the re-electionof Mwai Kibaki continue to assail my motherland and cause news headlines for her neighbours.
Below is a small poem out of my anthology of poetry under preparation. This one is entitled:A Bride Price of Tears.
I argue that there will be no rest to the Kenyan politicians because thecurrent government was built on the blood and tears of the 1333 victims of the 2007/8 post-election violence. Their dead voices cry out to the heavens and as Kenyans move towards theunsure General election of 2012, these voices plead for justice and revenge.
The name of the poem comes from Tony Ndadundo's Ndoa ya Machozi, a popular Luo Benga Song also available on Youtube.
It will be nice if you can post the poem on your blog so that it helps generate some debate or reaction from our neighbours in Tanzania. After all, your country did a noble regional duty whenit helped us from descending into civil war.
A Bride Price of Tears
A comical Coalition in my motherland
reminds me of bride price paid by tears,
the one that Nyanza crooner mentions
in a sweet song on passions of divorce.
i want to imagine that the tears of 1333
citizens who died during the 2007/8 riots
have united drop after drop into nimbus
of the darkest kind and as the marriage
of convenience between the P and PM
continues to stir like a lake under storm,
misery and acrimony reign the matrimony.
misery and acrimony reign the matrimony.
In the last twenty years I have witnessed some horrific events. The genocide or near-genocide events in Bosnia, Rwanda and Kenya have proved that there is, indeed, a very faint line of demarcation between human and zoolgical sentiments. These were people who had lived together in peace for many generations only to wake up one day with hearts brimming with hatred for their very neighbours and mates simply for being different. Then the warnings from the Qoran, the Bible, the atheistic morals were all cast aside and spilling the blood of the enemy became the priority. For what? To satify some political ego - in all cases, believe you me! We have heard it all before - people are killed and the talk is that of compensation! Goodness me! Can we ever be warned that political glory and wealth and power it comes with is nowhere near the value of a poor peasant struggling to feed his malnourished children? Surely, we may know prices or everything on earth, but we know very little about the value of life...
ReplyDeletethe situation in kenya is really worrying, with only a year or so before 2012's elections, we might be preparing for a re-run 0f 2007 clashes.
ReplyDeleteit looks like the ethinic divisions are showing irrepairable cracks.
a key question here is; who is to blame and what can be done to avert another disaster?
poleni jirani, hang in there and justice will prevail, god bless u in ur difficult time, i know we have a lot of problems here of our own, but hopefuly we r learning frm what hapnd to u, but we are all in the same pot, we just dont know when ours is going to pop,
ReplyDeleteur sweet neighbour, mtza.