Artistry

Be careful what you wish for

2012-02-06T15:01:00.002+03:00

A journey of a thousand miles

Must not be started in a sprint

So when she said he lacked stamina

She had judged too soon.

For she had declared she wanted to fly all night

Only to realise that the night is too long

And her scoffs on his lack of fortitude

Turned into gasps of praise

As she lost her breath halfway through the night.

Credo Kama Sigara

2012-02-01T11:52:00.001+03:00

Two young men lie under a tree smoking. It is their ‘lunch break’. Since they have no money for lunch, they share a smoke instead. They are lucky to be employed though, this new government started an initiative called 'Kazi kwa Vijana' where young men are given slashers, jembes, spades and wheelbarrows to do menial work for three hundred shillings a day.

With three hundred shillings a day, you not only skip lunch, you don’t have breakfast either. This is if you are to feed the children back at home, pay the rent at the end of the month and survive in this city. A phone rings and before the shorter one among them answers the call it goes silent.

‘Nani huyo anakuflash, hajui kuna bamba ngovo siku hizi jo,’ the tall one with the cigarette, which is almost halfway smoked, taunts the shorter brother with the phone.

The shorter one looks at his phone and his face is undecided on whether to frown or be concerned.

‘Ni matha bana’ he says, ‘alikuwa anadai ganji fulani nabado sina any. But itabidi nimpigie.’

‘Wewe ulitupa mbao’ the one with the cigarette says between puffs, ‘Kazi kwa vijana si kazi, mbona uliwaambia umepata job? Saa hii wanadhani umeshika mkwanja noma. Mimi home wanajua bado niko jobless so hakuna msee ananiitisha ganji.’

‘Wee unanimalizia fegi!’ the short one says as he yanks the cigarette from his friend’s fingers. After a long drawn puff, he turns to the friend, ‘Nisaidie na ashu niget bamba. Matha anaeza kuwa na emergency.’

‘Acha zako bana. Buy ata credo ya finje jo, ashu hauwezi ata sema hallo ukamaliza’ the tall one says laughing

'Acha nikushow' the short one retorts 'credo ni kama sigara. Ukinunua packet utavuta mob bila mpango. Ukinunua credo mob utapigia wasee bila design. So vile mimi hu-buy sigara moja moja ndio nisivute mob ndio vile pia mimi hu-buy credo ya ngovo ngovo ndio Safaricom wasimange ganji yangu. Ni kubaya jo!’

‘Yenyewe kama imefika hapo, ni kubaya!’

Even after death

2012-01-10T12:29:00.001+03:00

Has a thorn
A venom dripping thorn ever torn
Torn through your flesh to the bone
And after causing your death
After leaving you with no breath
Refuse to come out, even after your death!

Surprised?
Or you didn’t know you were dead
Don’t worry,
Locate your thorn instead.

For I was sick in bed
But I didn’t know I was dead
Until they buried me -
With a thorn through my heart!

©2012 Otiato Opali

Life’s little things.

2011-12-20T09:54:00.000+03:00

The great things this life does hold
Don’t make our lives bold
Not even gold –
It’s the little things

It’s a tiny flower
A baby’s smile that never turns sour
A little word sincerely spoken
Can lift your spirit high
Like a feather in the sky.

It’s that little dew drop in the morning grass
The warmth in the sunshine
And the splendor in the moonlight.

Money can quench not
Desires that burn us hot
The remedies are all around us
They are all a parcel of God’s creation
And all are free
Free as wind –
Free little things.

©2011 Otiato Opali

Not With My Eyes Closed

2011-12-01T08:12:00.002+03:00

Bought a ¼ Kg of sugar at the kiosk for 50 shillings
Normally I would pay 50 shillings for ½ Kg
To last me every two weeks
But am not giving them my 100 shillings for ½ a Kg
Not with my eyes closed.

It makes no difference, really
I will still have to buy another ¼ Kg in a week
And still spend 100 shillings for ½ Kg,
They will take the extra 50
But not with my eyes closed.

Because it's closed eyes that dont see the whole world in debt
With the missing money in a few silk lined pockets
Yet governments scoop more of our hard worked sweat
To pay for the missing money they have hidden in plain sight.

I will therefore pay 50 shillings twice as they take their 100
I will not pay 100 shillings where I used to pay 50
If someone has to rob me
They better do it staring in my eye
Because am not letting anyone rob me
Not with my eyes closed.

Lord Ouma!

2011-11-22T08:34:00.003+03:00

Have you ever met a man so great that you cant describe him in words? I have not just met such a man, I have known him for quite a while now. Lord Ouma is one of those characters that can only be described as phenomenal.

Lord Ouma comes from Busia like I do but I knew him because of his son, my best buddy so far and a former schoolmate.

I was therefore enthralled to stumble upon a witty article by one Biko Zulu (who I find to be the best blogger in Kenya yet) on Lord himself. Biko was talking about what a car can tell you about its owner in his article Cars; their stories and thank God he spotted Lord Ouma's KPP. What followed was the most candid rendition I've ever seen or heard about Lord Ouma. I've annexed the section about Lord and shared it below with permission from Biko.

Have a good look at this man’s face. Look at his eyes. What do you see in them? The answer is nothing. Now forget about all that wind about telling a man’s character by looking into his eyes. You can’t, at least not entirely. But this man’s face is a storyboard and it has that lopsided character weighted from cynicism. This is how a cynic’s face looks like. This is the face of a man who questions things. A curious man. This look here says, “Oh, is that right, son?” This look here is a look of a man who has lived his life believing that not everything is what it seems.

Look at his hat. I like his hat, perched atop his head like an afterthought. But you can tell it was intentional, this hat. You can tell from his hat that he still seeks swag. This hat might not be trendy, but it’s his hat and he never leaves his house without it.

This man was a cop for 35 years, most of which he worked for the Interpol’s anti- narcotics wing. The Narcs, as they call themselves. Who could have guessed?

His name is Mzee Ouma. He is in his 70’s. He is retired, over ten years in retirement. He spends his day sitting in his bar, drinking what he calls “Coffee spirit.” I found his car before I found him and his car led me to him. His car is a 1970 Fiat. Old as the hills. I asked a couple of boys next to it who owed it and they told me to find him in the bar. And I did.

When I walk in, he is seated in his darkened bar. His socked feet are stretched on top of the table, next to his drink. He regards me coldly as I shuffle in and introduce myself. He offers me a rumbled handshake, a weathered handshake, the handshake of an old man. I tell him I love his car and I would like to ask him a few questions regarding it. He motions me to an empty chair.

He takes his time before he talks, as if he is stringing the sentences and editing it in his head before he utters them. It’s old age maybe. He asks me what I do. I tell him I’m a scribe.

“Can I see some ID?”

I hand him my press card. He gingerly removes his reading glasses from its case and pores over my Press card, then he does something odd. He asks the lady at the counter to bring the day’s newspaper. “Now show me which article you have written today.”

I tell him I don’t write on the Friday paper, that I write mostly on Saturdays and occasionally on the sister paper. He absorbs this for a while before asking if I’m writing about his car for the newspaper.

“No,” I say, “It’s for my blog.”

“What is that?”

“It’s like a diary.”

“Only women write diaries!”

Some moron seated two chairs away chuckles heartily at that. He finds that really funny, the funniest thing he has heard in a while. I want to ping a beer glass off his skull.

“It’s not like a diary, diary,” I stammer, “It’s like something you write on the internet.”

He grunts. I’m hoping that’s not a sign that he’s about to fall asleep; you know how old people are, if you bore them they will sleep.

“Who reads this, this, thing?”

“Blog.”

“Yes. Who reads it?”

You know that’s a question I have been asking myself lately. Who reads this blog? Truth is I don’t know. I know their pseudonyms, but that helps as much as broken clock.

“That’s a good question.” I say reflectively to which he stares, no scowls, down at me obviously expecting an answer.

“Well, the people who read blogs are faceless.”

One of his eyebrows arches up.

“I mean to say, it’s hard to say exactly who reads, but I want to think they are like me.”

“Like you?” he asks.

“Normal.”

He cracks the first reluctant smile.

“Do you make money of this, this…thing?”

“Blog.”

“Yes, blog.”

“No, at least not yet.”

“So why do you do it?” This question is punctuated by a look that implies that I’m sort of stupid.

“Probably the same reason why you sit in this bar daily drinking your coffee spirit.”

He stares at me, an intimidating look that says “Oh, we have a smartass in town gentlemen.”

Anyway, he talks about his car. He bought it for Ksh 17,000n at F. Boyare Kenya Ltd.

“Is it still there?” he asks.

“Yes, it’s outside.”

“I mean F. Boyare Ltd, not my car.”

He says F. Boyare is a motor store at the junction of Harambee Avenue and Parliament Road. Maybe it was, in 1975, not now I tell him. He says he has kept the car for this long because it’s “durable,”. He adds that its spares are authentic, not the knock offs that are sold now. He scorns at automatic cars, calls them “Lazy.” He loves the stick shift because it’s a good form of exercise. He takes me outside and he proudly pops open the bonnet and shows off the engine. He starts the car and revs it, and then while the engine idles he steps out and stares at his car with a pride that is fun to observe.

Back in his bar, he opens this old but cool leather case which contains certificates and land title deeds and all these important papers and there he shows me the receipt he bought the car with. He also shows me the receipt for the first car he ever bought, a Datsun in 1963. As expected with old people conversation drifts to his time at the police force, his long travels in America and Europe. He shows me a medal he earned at Interpol. He talks about the Russia’s KGB, the America’s FBI and the Scotland Yard. He tells me he can tell a druggie a mile away. He can tell the quality of cocaine by tasting it.

“Have you ever shot and killed anyone?” I ask.

He ignores that question like I never asked it. He talks about his son instead, the one who “just died.” I say I’m sorry to hear that and he waves it away dismissively. He talks about another son who went to Makerere University to study but came back without graduating. “Drunk too much in Wandegye, yes?” I say with a chuckle. He talks about his kids who “have disappeared in America.”

“How many children do you have?” I ask.

“Several.” Comes the curt answer. Several could be 50 kids you know, but I don’t want to pursue that.

“Do you fear dying?” I ask.

“Why?” he asks preposterously, a question that acts as my answer.

He has lived his life well, he says. He loves his twilight years. When he talks about his children he harbors little bitterness. He loves to sit in his bar and drink his coffee spirit or whatever. When I ask him what he regrets most about his life, he thinks for a moment and replies, rather dishonestly, “nothing.”

“Not one thing you wish you did differently?” I insist

“I’m happy with my life.”

So I ask him what quality one needs to live a successful life. The maxims of life that can help us navigate life successfully.

“Honest and integrity,” he says, “Be satisfied with what you have. Don’t aspire for riches; make enough to offer decent education for your children, to buy a decent house to live well. Wealth kills; it will bring disease and grief into your life. Greed for money will be what finally kills young people.”

I realized that throughout our talk he never did once mention God. Not to imply that he wasn’t spiritual, but I would imagine that a man in his twilight years would by default throw in God in his conversation. Or maybe he was being respectful not to call the good lord’s name in a bar.

Dear Sun

2011-11-01T09:44:00.002+03:00

Birds salute dawn with lonely tunes

No one to listen with me.

The sun yawns orange gloom

No one to grieve with me.

Dear sun,

While on the other side of the world

Tell me, have you seen her?

My forlorn shadow dwarfens under my feet

No one to redeem me.

Half way across the sky

The sun blends my tears with sweat
No one cries with me.

Dear sun,
Having searched half the earth
Tell me, have you seen her?

Couples, in gold lit faces, gasp at sunset
No one to gasp with me.
The sun’s golden rays seal their whispered vows
No one to whisper with me.

Dear sun,
Now that you retire
Will you ever see her?

©2011 Otiato Opali

Police Brutality - Fanya Fujo Uone

2011-10-25T11:10:00.006+03:00

There are some things called tools of trade. A policeman's rungu is one such tool. Our tax money is spent to buy these rungus so that they can be used to beat up citizens when talking just won’t do and I’ve never heard anyone complain about this.

In Kenyan riots (most university students - former & present will agree) the police normally dispatches regular and administrative police to disperse rioters. In case the rioters overpower these, the elite GSU squad is then dispatched and I have never heard of a case where the GSU were overpowered because their nature is to flatten everything on sight. That is their job description.

In a shoot-out between police and a gangster in Nairobi's Buruburu estate recently, the regular police spent hours trying to smoke out a lone gun man in vain. When the GSU RECCE squad arrived, the gun man was finished in minutes. That's how the GSU work.

I was therefore not happy when some people were putting pressure on the police to sack an officer who clobbered an elderly woman the other day (watch video here). Why sack someone for doing his job?

These were the GSU and by the time they arrived at the scene, the woman - or anybody in their right senses - should have rushed as far away from the scene as is humanly possible. These people swear during their Passing out Parade to beat up even their mothers if need be. That's what they are trained and employed to do

Otherwise the GSU should be sent to riot scenes with bibles to preach peace, not with rungus.

Go Down Death

2011-09-26T14:09:00.001+03:00

(For Mama Wangari Maathai)

Weep not, weep not!

She’s not dead, she is resting on the breast of Jesus

Heart broken son, weep no more
Grief stricken Kenyans, she’s not gone
She’s only seen home.

Day before yesterday morning

God was looking down from His great high heaven

Looking down at an earth she strived to restore to Eden
And His eye fell on her - Mama Maathai,
Tossing in her bed of pain
And God’s big heart was touched with pity
With everlasting pity!

God sat back on his throne
To the tall bright angel at his right
He ordered, ‘call me Death’
And with a voice that broke like the clap of thunder
The tall bright angel cried
‘Call Death, call Death!’
The call went down heaven’s streets
Until it reached that shadowy place
Where Death waits with his pale white horses.

Death heard the call
And jumped onto his fastest horse,
A horse as pale as a sheet in the moonlight.
Up the golden street, Death rode
The hoof of his horse struck fire from gold –
But it didn’t make a sound.
Up Death rode to the great white throne
And waited for a command from God.

God said; go down Death, go down.
Go down to Africa, Kenya, down in Nairobi
Go and find Mama Maathai.
She’s borne the heat and burden of the day
She’s weary, tired
Her strength retired
Go down Death and bring her to me -
Go down Death!

Death didn’t say a word, out and on he rode
Past heaven’s pearly gates
Past suns
Past moons
Past stars
On Death rode, straight as he came.

As they were looking around her bed
She turned her eyes and looked away
She saw what they couldn’t see –
She saw old Death coming like a falling star

Death didn’t frighten Mama Maathai
He looked at her like a welcome friend
And she whispered to them: I am going home …
Smiled, then closed her eyes.

Death took her up like a baby
And she lay in his icy arms –
But she didn’t feel a chill.
Death began riding again,
Up beyond the morning star
Up beyond the evening star
Up towards God’s son
Into the glittering light of glory
And there he lay Wangari Maathai
On the loving breast of Jesus

Jesus wiped away her tears
From her face he smoothened any furrows of fear
Angels sang a little song, pleasing to her ear
As Jesus rocked her in his arms every time bringing her near
As he kept saying, take your rest my dear
Take your rest, take your rest.

Weep not, weep not!
Wangari Maathai is not dead,
She’s resting on the breast of Jesus!

Talking Eyes

2011-09-15T11:24:00.003+03:00

Above the murmurs in this congested hole
Above the acrid smell of beer and cigarettes
Above the occasional grunts from the passed-out drunk,
Above all are the talking eyes.

Winking eyes telegraph messages across tables
A man’s smiling eyes declare intentions at one end
A woman’s submissive eyes seal the deal at the other
Five minutes later, they both walk out hand in hand.
Couples tables apart but eyes together.

One from a table across chats me with her eager eyes
‘Do we do business?’ the eyes invitingly ask
‘Am broke,’ mine reply
‘Can’t even afford a cheap lodging room'
‘Go to hell!’ her eyes glare back
‘No money no business’

Her eyes then rove the bar for better eyes
Better money talking eyes.

©2011 Otiato Opali

Heartbeat.

2011-09-05T12:04:00.000+03:00

He came home
Went to the safe
There where he locks his heart
But alas! It wasn’t there
It was gone, stolen!

He saw footprints – the thief’s
Followed them, one after the other
And found himself at the door of her heart.

She had stolen his heart
And kept it in hers.

He took her into his arms
Looked into her deep tender eyes
Keep it safe – he said,
Thief of my heart!

© 2011 Otiato Opali

That was MASENO for you!!!

2011-08-29T13:10:00.006+03:00

Location: Kenya, All over the world, Internet, MASENO SCHOOL
Cast:        Maseno School Class of 2000 Jambazis
Time:       Past & Present
Source:   #MukuruKwaZuckerberg

Muluvanga Imboko Ya Banyala
For those out of the know, am the one and only Otiato Opali! 4G Mafia! Member of the I-riginal G7 made of I, Douglas Ndombi Okhungu Chris Angwech Haig Aseda Aholyx Bobb Lee Odiga and Clifford Ongugo! Eat That!

Chris Angwech ‎
Muluvanga Imboko Ya Banyala, I think u r forgetting the one n only Wuod Ongele Doc Doc, and waz Douglas Ndombi Okhungu really in the pic? I think this waz only a Bowers Crew Affair!

Haig Aseda

lol! very true, the I-riginal G7, hii ya akina Ruto ni shadow

Douglas Ndombi Okhungu

I was a member incognito. I think the admin mistakenly sent me to Stansfield instead of Bowers..lol. I missed out on the photo with all heads together that later turned out to be Papa's imagined evidence for DW. Chris Angwech and i were ordered not to be seen within 3m. of each other.

Chris Angwech

hahaha,,when seen together school captain's office pap! Then the next morning ,,, "after the assembly may I pliz meet Douglas Ndombi Okhungu and Chris Angwech thankyou"!

Chris Angwech

The DW suspension letters came while we were @ the music festivals!

Haig Aseda

i donno what illegal stuff Jim was smoking

Douglas Ndombi Okhungu

‎Muluvanga Imboko Ya Banyala, Chris Angwech; Rem. Papa was related to my neighbour in Ksm then i paid back big time when i hooked up with one of his nieces. Mimi fala nikamshow siku moja ka ashaniona na chuma ya umbrella. Waar! Sasa ndio chuki ikazidi. Its funny we could meet in Ksm after 2000 severally na bado na-smile naye!

Douglas Ndombi Okhungu

‎Muluvanga Imboko Ya Banyala umenikumbusha mbali sana! The day i went to take a sh!t kwa toi then kumaliza natoka nje napata Nyamila n co. waiting for me. Ati fungua mdomo tunuse kama ulikuwa unatumia drugs huko ndani. No hard feelings but i wish hiyo siku singesuguwa meno asubuhi wapate mdomo ikinuka diambo. lol.

Muluvanga Imboko Ya Banyala

This is what am talking about!!!! The crew wamesema.

Tom Nyongesa

Otiato Tell them u were in 1R kabla ujaenda 1G.Remwith the mzungu bio teacher

Muluvanga Imboko Ya Banyala

Tom kumbe una memory! Tulikuwa 1R na kina Ben El Rey Wandera Clifford Lukaye Bob Annon etc Mambo biad!

Ben El Rey Wandera

na Muluvanga Imboko Ya Banyala uliniudhi sana ukienda 1g bro

Muluvanga Imboko Ya Banyala

‎Ben El Rey Wandera Sikuchagua, ilikua mashetani ya one Jim Papa Agutu!

Ben El Rey Wandera

hahahaaaaaaaaaa..............si kwa ubaya bro

Hesbon Okeyo

weee, ulikuwa mtundu, si Jim

Aholyx Bobb

The Bowers Seven. Ati unasuspendiwa juu ya kupiga picha na vichwa pamoja.

Douglas Ndombi Okhungu

One day i left my sugar tin open then roaches dropped their sh!t in it. Unfortunately that was inspection day so my tin was confiscated and i had to clean all the droppings and hand them over to the authorities led by Hesbon Okeyo. After a ...week i was summoned to the office only to find my Dad sitted in a meeting explaining why i should not be suspended for using drugs. Kumbe Papa and his crew had taken the extra droppings and filled them in my sugar tin then went ahead to claim that the droppings were KUBER and i mixed it with sugar and got high during breko and carbon time. Kwani walidhani my Dad, The late WJO and The late Mr. Odundo who was present hawana senses za kunusa. I dint have much to say, Buda alichomoa wallet akaniangushia shillingi kadha and i was ordered to go back to class and represent the school well in National Schools Drama festival that was around the corner. LMAO!

Muluvanga Imboko Ya Banyala

Boss! Papa's methods were wrong!

Bob Annon

basi douglas okhungu ulipitia mambo kweli.get saved n drink booze with christian names only,like Jack Daniels..e.t.c

Ogero Otekki Musa

BTW who authorized those weird inspection hours?..opali it resulted in that wash and wear shirt rule.,it was said they should not get you with more than one shirt and still you pulled through..,enyewe we survived difficult times.,house a...ssembly collar inspections.,wuz caught with carbon coated shirt n boycotted kuenda ku squat hapo mbele ya assembly.,wuz punished for a whole week.,but here i am today..,memories are made of this.

Douglas Ndombi Okhungu

‎Bob Annon haha! Ata usiseme. Kuna chupa ya Tomatoe sauce i used to scavange spices with then carry with to the DH. The day i was visited, i threw it inside my mabati box that i rarely used as an F4. Mimi fala nikaisahau huko ndani and as y...ou know the kidogo content that was left fermented with time. As usual, i was only being inspected by the big guys so by the time my good friend and Hse Capt Oliver Ogutu Omondi found it, the bottle was almost exploding. Wacha aifungue..ile pungent smell ilimchapa..waar! I couldnt blame him for taking it to Papa who concluded that it was alchohol and specifically Bond 7. So according to Papa wakati wa lunch na supper i was busy mixing Bond 7 with Ugali and beans nikijibinjari. Really!!? LOL!
Edwin A. Ochieng
Enyewe kama kuna mtu jim aliswaga sana ni Opali...ulikuwa customer wake!

Haig Aseda
‎Douglas Ndombi Okhungu i feel you, Jim was a nutcase. He could accuse you falsely and make it look like a movie

Gregory Okeyo
You guys are cracking me up like nothing else! No wonder bowere\s had most actors

Muluvanga Imboko Ya Banyala
I loved this ambigous statement Papa had stuck on his office door - Spare him not kill him! It meant different things dependin on how deep in sh!t u were.

Chris Angwech
man,,,these guyz convinced us to accept that we were DWs for us to be readmitted back to school! thats after 9 wks chillin @ home!! the charges were rediculous!

Chris Angwech
Papa wud pick up a ciggarette then call u and insist its urs and he saw u sneaking out of the house to smoke it in the middle of the night,,waaah

Ben El Rey Wandera
Torch ya battery nane na mbwa kaa kumi meanwhile zinakunusanusa buda ai the guy was a wizard

Muluvanga Imboko Ya Banyala
Halafu Nyang'or anasema kwa assembly '2moro we are going to Chulaimbo for volleyball, Permenas, Chris Angwech Douglas Ndombi Okhungu ongele etc have been banned from the cheering squad since they are a danger to security. In my absence, Festus Ogada will be the acting school Cap. SCHOOL . . . ATTENTION, dismissed!

Ben El Rey Wandera
hahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Ben El Rey Wandera
na anakubali wakora kama Alfayo Miguel a.k.a shem obaje etc waende

Chris Angwech
‎Muluvanga Imboko Ya Banyala, Douglas Ndombi Okhungu rem when we were to leave for Music Fests, papa tried to ban us but Duch cud hear none of it,,,we had clearance from WJO!!

Muluvanga Imboko Ya Banyala ‎
Chris Angwech kwanini unadhani nilijipata handball, tena kwa school team! Ati wanatufukuza ICVS Roy Kush akani-adopt kwa handball team hehehe!

Douglas Ndombi Okhungu
Meeeen! Nobody protected us more than Duch and later on Mr. Odinga under the banner of Anti-Aids club. Kaka braza Silas Amunga J Namale pia akani-adopt kwa Rugby. Yaani tulikuwa tunapromote chuo vipoa lakini wengine walipenda tu kutuchokoza.

Silas Amunga J Namale
eroo waa

Douglas Ndombi Okhungu
Nakumbuka Papa aliniappoint SB mimi nikathani 'ameona mwangaza'. Kumbe it was a divide and rule ploy to keep me away from Muluvanga Imboko Ya Banyala, Chris Angwech and the rest of the crew. Alipogundua hawes make he sent emissaries to spy ...and finally the hummer fell on me when i was caught dancing ndombolo kwa DH after an inning. Ati SB's dont dance infront of visitors and a couple of weeks later cops had an inning and we could hear them sing and dance wakiwa Geog room. Talk of double stds.

John Adrian Yuko
That psycho papa got me suspended for an altercation. Na Biko during the holidays in nairobi yet the same biko amemaliza high school I still don't get that!!!

Bob Annon john
wats an altercation?that aside,papa was an idle man out of his mind,kabisa.

John Adrian Yuko
The guys who bore the full brunt of his madnes were akina opali,ndombi,angwech...axis of evil and once in a while one cartoon called philip aloo mwangi!!

Bob Annon
he he,Aloo mwangi..yeah,the guy was bent on destroying those boys.wonder wat his motivation was,am stil amazed.

Douglas Ndombi Okhungu ‎
John Adrian Yuko i rem. the Biko saga. Yaani alishamaliza shule na bado unafwatana na wasee. He reminds me of the guyz who would cry ati shule zimefungwa na siku ya opening wanarauka ngware kutime breko ya shule. lol.

Douglas Ndombi Okhungu
‎Ogunde Arnold Aze a.k.a Aloo Mwangi.

Oliver Ogutu Omondi ‎
....talking of Philip...i met with him this evening in tao. I think he was going to have some booze with friends.

Hesbon Okeyo
Use ua name so u dnt hav2 make along intro.

Muluvanga Imboko Ya Banyala
‎Hesbon Okeyo This is a virtual me and not really me ;-)

Haig Aseda
papa was way too idle, i spent my 9 out of 12 weeks of form 3 3rd term at home because of some stupid stuff he cooked in his head, i will never forget!!

John Adrian
Yuko papa ako wapi ako wapi.....niko hapa!!!

Edwin A. Ochieng
that guy was a bored adult...that is a dangerous combination with power!

Wuod Ongele Doc Doc
i once went to papa`s offiice4 he asked me wat i would like to be in future i told him i want to TREAT people he told me NEVER on earth, Fuck him hard i treated his kid and many other teachers wa maseno. i think papa was in love with guys from Kisumu. ALL Prefects who helped papa fuck with my life FUCK YOU ALL.

John Adrian
Yuko heh doc what is.....pewa achiel

Chris Angwech
omera osiepa John Adrian Yuko, ilal kanye?

Edwin A. Ochieng

Opali enyewe niambie ukweli Jim sahii hayuko. What happened ile siku nilikutuma sigara kubwa kisumu!!?...gave u doo when u were going to an outing in kisumu, u came back ukaniambia umekosa then few days later Jim ananiita na mashtaka ya bangi!...did u snitch me out?

Wuod Ongele Doc Doc
there was this prefect in bowers who had a big bro in owen house wat was his name? I can bet with you we never talked in form four ma prefects wat was papa givin you coz its sickening that you can be in the same school and year but not even joke with each other. Infact there some people i must go to their burial to confirm they are dead.

Wuod Ongele Doc Doc
i forgot the prefects who fucked my life and we have met and did not scream thief you are not in my bad books. Kiba wat progress has occured in the get together so that i can forgive the ones who tresspassed me and drink to all who were good to my life.

Haig Aseda
‎Wuod Ongele Doc Doc sometimes you've got to let these things go, it was part of life and it made us what we are today. The get-together should enable us recollect both the good and the not so good days back then so Anthony Kibagendi should keep us posted, meanwhile congrats kibah on your new addition

Muluvanga Imboko Ya Banyala
Edu, Papa would have wished I snitched for him but that was just a wish coz I would never. Doc, forgive but never forget!

Bruce Omondi

one day I was called into Jeam office to get some nude magazine i had,it was reinforced with a cello-tape then placed nicely in my file then my parents were called to discuss the matter. The day they came very anxious to to take away their son,guess what happened,Mr,Agutu sent for my file.Remember the messenger of doom,I decided to faint.I hope Pato the dispenser can remember that incident. An ambulance was called and the story ended just like that.

Edwin A. Ochieng

Bana bruce u ought to have joined drama club, dutch would have utilized ur talent!

Peace

2011-08-24T12:15:00.000+03:00

Peace …
With the calm of trees
No bad winds, just a breeze
Calm, like the silence in an abyss.

Not tongues that clang
And guns that bang
With hopes that hang

Hanging for peace -

Peace …
What the world needs.

©2011 Otiato Opali

Stupidity

2011-08-17T08:08:00.000+03:00

(For Africa; For Libya)

His hue’s entity
Dark as a moonless night with its uncertainty
Hides cultures and ways of high quality
But also hides with it the stupidity
Which leads him to taking weapons in quantity
From their pretended honesty
And use it to kill his brother without pity.

©2011 Otiato Opali

The Drummers’ sticks

2011-08-09T08:30:00.000+03:00

These shiny slimy leeches
These smartly dressed chauffer driven vermins
These drinkers of our blood -

They are the drummers’ sticks
Who skillfully hit the drums to different tunes.

But we are freaks
Who fall for their tricks,
We dance to their tunes
And welcome our ruin.

©2011 Otiato Opali

A death of ants

2011-08-03T08:25:00.000+03:00

Some ants climbed into a glass of water for the sugary drink inside, they never made it out!

Tongue Tied.

2011-07-20T09:11:00.000+03:00

Then to those left on his left he would say,
Away from me
Away to the eternal flames
I was hungry
You would not feed me.

Then they would answer him,
When did we see you
Hungry, naked, a stranger
And did not attend to you?

Then he would reply,
Whenever you refused
Any of these least important ones
You refused me.

Then they would lament,
These least important ones you talk of
These least important ones were us –
Hungry, naked, strangers … us!

Then he would be tongue tied.

©2011 Otiato Opali

Conversation with Ngugi Wa Thiongo

2011-07-19T10:46:00.003+03:00

Before our last General Elections in 2007, Ngugi Wa Thiongo wrote an article about his take on the politics of the time. Read the article here - Ngugi Wa Thiong’o reflects on Mwai Kibaki and the 2007 Kenya General Elections I particularly took issue with some of the ideas fronted by my greatest writer on earth and did a comment on the article. Allow me to share the comment here since next year is an election year and the players are still pretty much the same. The issues too haven't changed a bit!

(It would be worth noting that Ngugi's article was written before Kibaki (allegedly) STOLE the elections leading to the post election violence in Kenya. Mine comment was written after the violence)

Mr Ngugi,

To say I am an ardent fan of yours would be an under statement. I named my pet dog after your character Matigari. Having studied Literature at the University, you struck me as Africa’s best yet but things are changing and am sad to note so.

This article is naive to say the least. It might have been written before the violence flared up and its no wonder it has such glaring gaps. In the article, you rightfully note that there are the haves and the have nots, Kibaki never changed this.

It took Kibaki Five years to do what Moi did in Ten years of his rule, create disparity between the rich and the poor. You remember, when Mwaura in the Petals of Blood led the villagers to the Golden Heights cave In illmorog, that is what the poor did after Kibaki’s government disenfranchised them. Like the crowd in Matigari, the people burnt down cars and houses in protest.

Dont misunderstand me, I am one of the most faithful students of your socialist take. ’Great Hapiness I saw among the women and the children, even a bean that fell on the floor was shared among them.’

The Viloence that occured after the election did not have a socialist push to it, and its because you have deserted us and there is no one to give us that guidance. What we have are politicians who take the revolutionary in us and make it flow along tribal lines. That is why it was a tribal upheaval and not a socialist one.

Though you display concerns in the article for the motherland with the mention of the Armenian brothers, the Anglo leasing scam and the ’Standard’raid, alot that goes on misses in the article. One cannot talk about the politics in Kenya and mention Kibaki’s name thrice without mentioning Raila even once.

You talk of your encounters with Kibaki, how he transformed from a hardliner for Kanu to a president and that was a good analogy but how about Raila. What about the almost ten years he spent in detention cells under Kibaki’s supervision. He shared the same detention facilities with you. How has he developed and what has he become. we need to hear your take on this. What’s more, Raila shares your communist ideals.

When your people tell you Kibaki has given them electricity, Kibaki’s allies have been given more than electricities. His friends businesses are growing threefolds. When he came to power, bread was Ksh 22, It is now Ksh 32, only after five years and the economy is growing. And the poor us have to buy this bread at the same price with the rich them.

One thing I am sure about you, Ngugi, is that you are biased towards the poor. It is for this reason that I ask you not to praise Kibaki because he has not helped poor kenyans anyway anyhow. And am talking about the kind of help you advocate for, not some small electricity here and some few boreholes there.

You remember when Gikonyo in A Grain of Wheat was swindled out of buying the settler’s farm by the politicians, that is what Kibaki has done to Kenyans. They trusted him to help them get prosperity like Gikonyo trusted the Politician and he took all the property for himself.

My biggest challenge to you, come back home. Dont be Like Leopold Sedar Senghor who wrote so much negretude against the french only to go and spend the rest of his life in France.

Otherwise, I am still your fan, I have read all your books except Murogi wa Kagogo and I still kind of worship you.

Otiato Opali (20 February 2008 at 14h16)

Dedan Kimathi Waciuri

2011-07-18T07:11:00.000+03:00

Still wanted in 2011. Still at Kamiti prison. Impression at parliament buildings

Kim Jong-iL

2011-07-15T08:05:00.003+03:00

Recently someone wrote some graffiti in North Korea and the whole city of Pyongyang was almost shut down as they looked for the culprit responsible. In this day and age! When the world is so Liberal that Kenya has a Chief Justice donning a stud and the Anglican Church is ordaining gay priests, people still live in a country where graffiti is a sin!

Kim Jong Il is a shame and a sham! He doesn't deserve to lead human beings living in this millenium.

Am therefore sharing the graffiti with all who'll be able to see this (it was taken down immediately). Kim should know that the world is now a village and it is a matter of time before North Korea becomes FREE!!

The graffiti read;

“(The late South Korean President) Park Chung-hee, a dictator who helped develop the nation’s economy; Kim Jong-il, a dictator who made people starve to death.”

Ha, She Virgin!

2011-07-14T08:41:00.004+03:00

No greater irony
Has man than this.
That a woman
Should have a husband
And still become
Our all time
Blessed Virgin!

©2011 Otiato Opali

Good Uncles.

2011-07-05T16:00:00.007+03:00

Junior, my uncles are better than yours
Look! Ten shillings
Yesterday’s uncle gave me

Junior, my uncles are more than yours
Every evening mama goes out
Mama comes back at night
Every night a new uncle!

Junior, my uncles love mama than yours
Every night they come with mama
They go with her to her room
To protect her – mama says
So that thieves don’t steal her from me.

Junior, my uncles are bigger than yours
I saw one on T.V
I saw another in the newspaper
They say they are M.Ps
M.Ps and Ministers.

Junior, tell your mama you need uncles
Many uncles,
Good uncles!

©2011 Otiato Opali

Richard Gizbert - Updated

2011-07-01T09:39:00.005+03:00

On September 30 2008, I uploaded a blog post named Richard Gizbert. Now for the dis-ambiguation on the post. I titled the post so because I used to love a programme on Al Jazeera called the Listening Post. The presenter for this programme was known as Richard Gizbert.
In the programme, the media would analyse how the media covered news. I adopted this concept because the shots in my Gizbert posts show a place where Opali would analyse how Opali does things. I call such spots the Listening Post.
Its 2011 and I still use the facility. It used to be a vast open field but as you can see in this shot, development is catching up and with time it will be crawled upon by the Concrete Jungle.

Just for the record, a red circle in the following shots marks the spot where I currently rest my head at night.

Foxes have holes birds have nests but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head.

Uhuru 'bluffs' on Twitter.

2011-06-21T14:48:00.006+03:00

The social media scene is a fairly new phenomenon to Africa especially where politics is concerned. It is interesting to find leaders like Museveni, Kagame, Uhuru, Martha Karua et al on twitter. However, leaders need to be very careful about what they say on the social media scene lest they be haunted by it in the future.

America’s Folksy Mama and presidential hopeful Sarah Palin recently referred to the STATUE of Liberty as the STATUtE of Liberty on twitter. This prompted questions on her knowledge of the American history. ( http://www.politicususa.com/en/sarah-palin-statue-of-liberty ) In the same vein, our very own Uhuru Kenyatta retweeted a tweet by one of his followers where it was stated that the national anthem reads

‘Natukae na undugu / Pamoja na Uhuru’ and not

‘Natukae na undugu/ Amani na Uhuru.’

This was a bluff that could be simply avoided by a keen eye. Dont just retweet everything that is said in your favour.

With the elections around the corner, politicians (or whoever manages the social media accounts for them) should be very careful. After all, the social media is just Media and media can make you or break you!

Ode to a Fallen Friend

2009-09-21T18:25:00.003+03:00

Death;

Doesnt it matter to you
That he never smoked
That he jogged every morning
That he lived a heathy life?

Short illness-
What an open disguise!

Didnt it occur to you
That I envied his resilient grip to these words
When my hands were slipping
When I was almost falling?

And now that am on a quitting programme
Do the push-ups I do every morning matter
Does this food I try to select count
If You'll keep on appearing un-announced?

(RIP Kimathi Chabari Mucee)

©2009 Otiato Opali

The Be-attitudes

2009-02-13T13:24:00.003+03:00

Mathew 5:39 But I say to you, do not resist the evildoer. But whoever strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other to him as well.

We walk naked
Because when they want our shirts
We give them our coats
Trousers
And dresses too -
So that his word be done.
Let it Be!
Blessed are we, the meek.

They eat at the Hilton
Bathe in the sea
Dine abroad and make love in the air
Just because we are taught to sleep hungry
In order to fill their plates.

Our legs are sore
Our joints cant hold
Our breath cant last,
Because as they ride in limos
We run beside them for miles on end
Instead of the one mile they call for,
A mile they dont deserve from the onset -
Just so that his word be done.
Let it Be!
Blessed are we who mourn.

But before we turn our other cheek
Before we are twice as naked as we are spent
Before we let it be,
Let us rethink doing words.

For verily verily I repeat unto you
of all the commodities the world has on offer
the cheapest will always remain talk.

John 18: 22-23 When Jesus had said this, one of the high priest's officers who stood nearby struck him on the face and said, "Is that the way you answer the high priest?" Jesus Replied, "If I have said something wrong, confirm what is wrong. But if I spoke correctly, why slap me?"

Otiato Opali

Tomato my motherland.

2008-12-08T12:12:00.000+03:00

Upon sticks you coil her
For you want her tomatoes yours to be
Her growing across the soil you don’t want to see
But she wants to be free –

Free to roll
To roll and to crawl
To crawl like all
Like all free from your goals.
Let her be like she wants!

©2008 Otiato Opali

A Question Deferred

2008-11-13T11:40:00.005+03:00

What happens to a question deferred?

Almost five years ago, in 2003, a lecturer of mine and a good mentor asked me a question which went like:

We used to love watching the stars during our days in college, do you guys still watch the stars?

At this time I was a second year with my dreadlocks flowing, my ideas forming and my ways showing. Mr. t.m Mboya was one of my most trusted lecturers and a poet I still greatly admire.

I cant believe that being a poet, I had never understood what the question meant until yesterday when in my muse in tranquil, I finally had the opportunity to sit in the open field for hours on end into the night. As I looked at the stars, the five year old question popped up from nowhere! Being in the state I was, I finally understood what it means to watch the stars.

Yes sir, I do watch the stars!

Wuod Kogelo

2008-11-10T15:37:00.002+03:00

I never knew I would blog about Obama Mania on this forum until...

Am walking down Uhuru Highway next to the Inter Continental, guilty of visiting Afrika to conteplate Obama's win, redder than red! From nowhere, deafening sounds awaken me from my reverie and for the first time in my life, I witness live fireworks, beautiful fireworks, Obama fireworks!

Congratulations Barrack Obama.

Even after death.

2008-10-30T13:18:00.000+03:00

Has a thorn
A venomous thorn ever torn
Torn through your flesh to the bone
And after causing your death
After leaving you with no breath
Refuse to come out, even after your death!
Surprised? Or you don’t know you are dead
Don’t worry, locate your thorn instead
For I was sick in bed
But I didn’t know I was dead
Until they buried me with a thorn through my heart!

©2008 Otiato Opali

Submission

2008-10-14T11:10:00.000+03:00

For the courage you give
Through the ways you have paved
And the cowards you have braved,
Poetry –
I beg to be your slave
To the foot of my grave!

And in other news...

2008-10-13T12:17:00.001+03:00

The government has brushed aside protests by a section of the local people of Naivasha town. The group is protesting the sale of a public forest to a private developer.

The government has said the protesters are mainly drawn from a group of jobless good for nothing youth who use the forest as a venue for smoking bhang.

The forest in question is a priced spot on the terrace of the Rift Valley which is said to have the most picturesque sunset-view in the whole of Naivasha town. From the edges of the forest, visitors can witness one of the most scenic renditions of nature as the Rift Valley stretches to the horizons beyond.

It is on this expanse that the said protesters, who mostly spot dreadlocks and exhibit Rastafarian tendencies, spend most of their evenings. When asked about why they are protesting against the sale of the land, one of the red eyed fellows chanted ‘The concrete jungle eating our jungle man!’

The government through its spokesman has said it will not give in to the whining of delinquents. Addressing a press conference, the government spokesman said that orders have already been given to the police to arrest anyone who looks like Mungiki in the area.

Sources within the government have revealed to us that the forest has been sold to Libyan investors, claims which the Libyan embassy has declined to comment on. Our source tells us that the Libyans plan to build a seven star hotel on the contested spot.

Rumors have it that this is what the Libyan president Muammar Qadafi has in mind when talks about the United States of Africa.

Stay on the channel and we will be back after this commercial break.

Not in our accents

2008-10-02T10:36:00.002+03:00

Statistics indicate that cases of men being drugged in Nairobi are on the rise (believe me, I was a victim). One wonders why this still happens when men have learnt to be careful over the years especially with 'suspicious looking' ladies who prowl places of entertainment.

Well, here lies the problem - the definition of 'suspicious lookin' . Being as Kenyan as we are, most men judge suspicious looking ladies to be Kikuyu. Most of the ladies from western Kenya have been assumed to be 'mafala' and since stealing is a trait to be associated with Kiuks, men think they can be safe when paying for the companionship of Luo and Luhya ladies.

News flash - wajinga wa western wameerevuka. 70% of the ladies drugging men around town are from western Kenya. They pass off as docile and since they are not Kiuks, men think they cant steal! Thievery is not a preserve of a certain tribe. As long as politicians will continue to use us and leave us poor, anybody might as well become a thief. Instead of fighting the people who are feeding off us (read politicians) we are busy judging one tribe as thieves, another as flossy and yet another as mafala.

Just go out, pick a lady from western because she is not from the thieving tribe and the only thing you will remember is the name she told you (She told me that her name was Mitchelle Achieng). This is because you will wake up after hours at a place you dont know with nothing on you.

These traits dont reside in our accents!

Never be born!

2008-09-30T10:07:00.004+03:00

I saw her pass
As I worked on settler’s farm
Her hair – a black shiny mass
Her breasts – full pointed and firm
I fell in love!

Down with settler’s farms
I will take up arms
Was it blood I shed, was it lives I lost?
It didn’t matter, settler had to go
To leave my house for my love
I had to marry Uhuru – my rain, my shine.

Was this the Uhuru I loved
The Uhuru I shed blood for, died for?
With settler’s kin Uhuru wined and dined at the table
While I ate crumbs in the kitchen.
With settler’s kin she slept in my bed
While I spent cold nights on the floor!

Uhuru must to go!
By the ballot though, not by arms
So I married another
Mabadiliko was her name.

Need I say who takes Mabadiliko out
Need I say who buys her lunch?
Settler is still the story.

And as I watch Mabadiliko,
Dressing up for a ‘business dinner’
At settler’s Investment Hotel
My heart ponders my fate, my destiny,
The beautiful ones will never be born!

Richard Gizbert

2008-09-30T09:59:00.003+03:00

(Malo Malo)

Colour business.

2008-09-25T13:55:00.005+03:00

I look at our organs

Heart liver brain and the like.

Same here

Same there

Same everywhere!

What of blood?

Red here

Red there

Red everywhere!

Race is only skin deep!

Stench

2008-08-25T13:15:00.001+03:00

Mummy
Why does daddy stink so?

Honey
It is not him that stinks so,
It is the sweat that stinks so.

Mummy
Why does the sweat stink so?

Honey
It is the poor and the wretched
It is their sweat that stinks
It is their sweat that daddy drinks.

Mummy!

Honey
Daddy wants you
And me
And him
To grow fat!

©2008 Otiato Opali

Otiato Vs Otiato

2008-08-14T09:56:00.004+03:00

In the matter of Otiato Vs Otiato
Brother Vs brother
Countryman Vs countryman
State Vs the people,
In such a matter your Honour
What is the matter?

The defense rests.

©2008 Otiato Opali

(My bro, Otiato Guguyu, is also a poet and I've been reading his prized collection with awe. Then I imagined, what if one day we managed to publish our poetry collectively? This poem is therefore an imaginary poem, a prologue to an imaginary collection entitled 'Otiato Vs Otiato: Poetry by Otiato and Otiato' )

Be sure to visit www.otiatoguguyu.blogspot.com

Namwonja Pesa Mbele

2008-07-09T12:14:00.001+03:00

Saddam!

2008-06-27T12:36:00.005+03:00

Now you see me ...............

Now you dont!

Perched like a bird up a tree.

2008-06-23T14:34:00.000+03:00

The ‘terrorist’ –
He’d been perched up the tree,
Perched like a bird up a tree
Watching over fellow fighters.

The white soldier –
He’d been patrolling the forest
Combing up ‘terrorists’
These black defiant hooligans.

The white soldier –
He’d spotted the terrorist,
Perched like a bird up a tree
And he’d taken his time to aim.

The shot rang!
In the dark forest –
The spent cartridge leaped into the air
Up the tree –
A bullet lodged into his chest.

He looked the world one last time
Coughed blood into the air
Blood from his chest trickled to the earth
The sacrifice for freedom!

His body did not fall to the ground
It remained up the tree,
Perched like a bird up a tree!

©2008 Otiato opali

Poyo Napita *

2008-05-26T12:59:00.003+03:00

Is this poyo that poyo
That poyo napita
The poyo napita of my childhood?

Is this rusty bicycle that bicycle
That creaking bicycle he pushed two decades ago?
Pushing bicycles selling papaws singing-
Poyo! Poyo napita!

Is this torn basket that basket
That basket we used to peep into
Peeping at his papaws in the torn basket
Peeping as we sang with him-
Poyo! Poyo napita!

Is this tattered shirt that shirt
The only shirt he ever had
The sweat drenched shirt in which he pushed his bicycle
With its burden of papaws in a torn basket
Is this shirt that shirt poyo! Poyo napita?

And is this me that me
Now dressed in a woolen suit and a silken tie
Being chauffer driven in my automobile
To a V.I.P seminar on how to help the poor
The likes of poyo! Poyo Napita!

*poyo napita – Swahili corruption of the phrase ‘pai pai zinapita’, that is - am selling papaws.

©2008 Otiato Opali

Burn.

2008-05-23T14:08:00.001+03:00

It is said that Kabaka Mwanga
In his fury and anger
Persecuted the likes of Lwanga –
Christians.

Tell the children the truth!
If we can’t better lie down and die
You and I .

Mwanga burns Christians – persecution
Christians kill our religions – civilisation
They steal our land – colonization
They hang Kimathi – law and justice!

Burn them Kabaka – burn them!
Listen not to their salvation – burn them!
We need none of their lies – roast them!
Preachers of water drinkers of wine – bake them!
Hew them not as food fit for Gods
But carcass fit for hounds

To the memory of all freedom fighters
Steve Biko, Dedan Kimathi
Kinjeketile, Mau Mau
Burn them wherever you are
Heaven or Hell,
Just burn them!

©2008 Otiato Opali

A Blade of Grass.

2008-05-05T13:41:00.001+03:00

He always looked at peace
On the days he walked back home
Chewing on a blade of grass.

In this world of stone glass and marble
Built on filth rot and rubbles
He could still find time and place
To pluck on an untainted part of nature
And walk back home
Chewing a blade of grass into this mess.

©2008 Otiato Opali.

Some Bad

2008-05-02T16:36:00.003+03:00

A Tale of two fools

2008-05-02T11:50:00.006+03:00

Two fools smoking cigarettes; one rich, the other poor.
“What a strong smell, which cigarette is that?” the rich one asks.
“I smoke Supermatch,” the poor brother coughs.
“Why can’t you people smoke nice cigarettes like Embassy or Dunhill!” retorts the privileged one.

It’s like telling a brother: Why are you hanging yourself with a sisal rope when you can do it with a velvet rope or even a leather one!

We are ostracized even in our own little suicides.

Rebel

2008-04-07T13:17:00.001+03:00

“They say you mustn’t use it you mustn’t use it coz it will make you rebel… against what!?” Bob Marley.

Rebel against the lies. That one should have a whole lake to himself when a million of us scramble for a puddle. Not that he will use all the water in the lake, not that he needs all the water in the lake and not that we don’t need the water in the lake. But that he is ‘hard working’. He works so hard so that he can have a whole lake to himself while others scramble for a puddle.

That is how success is measured. Your ability to take what you don’t need from those who direly need it. To tell the people that I have what you want though I don’t need it and you must wag your tails in order for me to throw bits into your direction. That is a success story! They call it an exclusive lifestyle. Excluding the majority from having the basic necessities and heaping everything onto your self.

And when we try to create some time to think about it, whenever we try to open our eyes in order to see our shelter-less roofs, our cloth-less butts and our hollow stomachs they say you mustn’t. Whenever we try to look at the millions they have stolen from us to own unused bungalows, to clad in fabric that is more expensive than our life’s worth and to feed their cats what we can never put on our tables, they say you mustn’t.

And why is this? It’s because they know it will make us rebel. Rebel against the lies. That one should be considered great for denying others the pleasures of this life. That greatness no longer lies in brotherhood, it lies in the individual. That one can only be proud of eating to his fill when someone else sleeps hungry. That people can only recognize the richness of one’s clothing because others are walking naked. That people can only be dazed by one’s bungalows because others live in paper-bag houses.

They don’t want us to rebel. This is because through a rebellion I will not take a whole field to myself and sit there bored while others ‘squat’ in a corner. My friends, family and my people will all share this field, and we will play together on our field holding hands and singing in unison the songs of our fathers. We will run after our lovers and make love among the flowers. But since they don’t want this, they say we mustn’t, we must never see the truth because it will make us rebel… against them!

Her lot.

2008-04-02T17:20:00.001+03:00

Searching my heart with her illiterate eyes
Calling to me with her unschooled tongue
Touching my life with her untaught fingers
Is Nje of the forbidden class.

Teasing me in her kith's allure
Dancing to me in her kin's steps
Charming me with her kindred's charms
Is Nje of the forbidden tribe.

Sinking with me into illicit intimacy
Capsizing with me under proscribed unions
Rekindling in me animal energies
Is Nje of the forbidden ways.

©2008 Otiato Opali

Watching Weights

2008-03-25T15:57:00.001+03:00

A yawn here
A dream there
Rumbling stomachs all over.
Lunchtime at lunchless park
Our hungry faces litter the park.

You sat by me in my corner,
Cheap skirt-suit to impress panels
Worn out shoes tired of the tarmac
A haggard envelope carrying your credentials
Lying on your tired thighs – the real credentials?

You yawned
I saw a dream die in your eyes
As your rumbling stomach confirmed my fears.

Lunchless? I asked,
It wasn’t your bitter look that amused me
It was your answer –
Am watching my weight!

©2008 Otiato Opali

A Child of One World

2008-03-25T15:18:00.001+03:00

That ride, what a ride! This is the part where am supposed to cry but I can’t, I wont, not after that ride. It wasn’t just a ride through the streets, it was a ride through my life and I won’t shed any tears. It is said that women cry when in pain, men drink. I will not cry. And why should I? Some would tell me it is because I have been left with nothing. Nothing? Nothing is all I have had all my life. If having nothing would be a cause for crying, then my tear glands would have flown dry long ago. And I would have nothing to shed.
Like my neighbor mama Aluoch says, if things continue in this manner, she will one day throw herself in front of a speeding vehicle and bang; there goes nothing – her life. Come to think of it, that is exactly what happened to me yesterday. Mama Aluoch has a funny twist to the way she would like to end the nothingness that is her life. When the day comes, she will patiently wait by the roadside until she sees a sleek and elegant Mercedes Benz, only then will she hurl herself onto the road. She can’t afford to be wiped off by a creaky and rusty Chevrolet or some other funny car. It has to be an expensive machine. It has to be an honorable death, a Mercedes death. That is the death I died yesterday, an honorable death, a Mercedes death.
Mine was not a Mercedes though, it was a sleek state of the art Toyota Lexus. What a ride! As we set off, I snugly surrendered myself to its feathery leather seat and let the music from the player soak into me. The music seeped in, bit by bit, carrying me to far far way places, places I have never been to, worlds I have never imagined, worlds other than the one world I have always lived in, my small world.
All this while Mr. expensive suit thick neck fleshy lips just drove on sweating profusely, wishing he could get a broom and sweep me out of the car. I didn’t care, I stuck on like a stubborn stain.
As we rode along the streets, I was this important woman looking out through the tinted glass, seeing everyone while not being seen. Outside I could see council workers sweeping the streets, emptying dustbins and slashing grass. All this for a mere five thousands shillings a month. But that was them, not me. I was this elegant woman, riding in a sleek car, donning expensive clothes and reeking of money.
I had the whole of the back seat to myself, Mr. expensive suit stuck to the steering wheel, squeezing it as if he wanted to strangle it but I didn’t care, like the stubborn stain I stuck on. There was a bar at one side of the rear doors. The alcohol sounded expensive. This is because the bottles clinked in this sophisticated manner every time the vehicle hit a bump or something. I passed my hand over the bottles and I noticed Mr. fleshy lips pursing them harder while glaring at me through the rear view mirror.
I withdrew my hand but not with fear, with dignity. In a manner actually suggesting that I don’t drink, praise the Lord! I don’t indulge in earthly pleasures, pleasures of the flesh and wiles of the devil, Hallelujah! I didn’t want his drinks, even my husband would not have wanted the drinks. I suppose a bottle costs almost three thousand shillings and the bar had three of the bottles. My husband would never drink such. Why should he when he would always go to Mama Junior’s place, spend fifty shillings and come home stupefied as if he had drunk all the alcohol there was at Mama Junior’s.
Baba Billy, that man of mine could drink. I had spent the early years of my marriage trying to stop him from drinking but after twenty five years of marriage, one gets used to it. That man could drink. The best I could do to curb his drinking was to take three quarters of his salary, which was about six thousand shillings and pay the rent, buy salt, flour and cooking fat and leave him the remaining two thousand so that he can drink. On good months, the two thousand would last him till the next pay but on others, he would be out by the middle of the month and I had to lend him some of my own money. Don’t ask me why I did it yet am a saved Christian. It was either I gave it to him or he took it. We used to keep our savings in a tin buried under the bed and nothing could stop him from getting the money if he wanted to. The act of asking me was just a way of showing that he at least cared about me and respected me.
Most people blame his death on the alcohol but I blame it on nothing. He was just doing his job like any other person, trying to eke a living. Baba Billy met his death while dispensing his services for the city council where he worked. He was a guard with the city council, we call them council askaris. Their job description includes chasing hawkers from the city center. Hawkers are considered an eyesore in the central business district of our city, they are this stubborn stain that defiles the standards of civilization and further more, they steal from the rich who use the city. On the day Baba Billy died, the council askaris and the hawkers were involved in running battles.
My husband had had a little too much to drink the previous day and during the fight, he was cornered by the hawkers. The hawkers and the askaris, both living in the slums as neighbors, both earning a pittance to make ends meet and both fighting in the name of making a living, fighting at the orders of the rich. Baba Billy never made it out alive.
But even if he had made it, he would never spend three thousand on a bottle of brandy when he can deposit that same amount at Mama Junior’s and have a whole month’s supply of alcohol. And furthermore, I would never let him do that knowing well that with that money, I can do a shopping that can last for two good months. So as I withdrew my hand from the bottles, I ensured that I did it with dignity, not with fear. I did it in a way that Mr. thick neck would know that I didn't want his alcohol and even if my husband were alive, he wouldn’t want it either.
The ride went on slowly, moving inch by inch in the thick traffic jam and with it, my journey into affluence progressed. If this woman riding in this car had three television monitors in the car, how many did she have at home. There was a television monitor on the dashboard for the driver and the co-driver while both the driver and the co-driver’s seats had monitors at their backs to serve the passengers in the back seat. If this were my car, mounted with three monitors, what about my house. I believe my house would have six screens. One in the sitting room, one in our bedroom, the third and fourth in both Billy and Anne’s bedrooms, a small one in the servants’ quarters and the last one in the lounge.
Since boys love football, I love gospel music and girls love soaps while maids love those Nigerian movies, it would be convenient if everyone had their own privacy to watch what they want. Baba Billy could watch his news in the sitting room while the guests could decide what to do with the television in the lounge. That is what I call peace. No fighting over the remote and better still, no having to pay five shillings to get into a crowded hall just to watch television as it is done in Onga city where everyone, including myself, lives.
Those television dens are not good places. That is where I lost my son Billy after my daughter Anne was gone. Billy was the eldest and I thought he would turn out fine. Anne on the other hand had problems early enough in life. She failed her primary exams terribly but I don’t blame her, the school she attended was no good and we couldn’t pay for a better one. I decided to take her for sewing lessons so that she could learn how to make clothes and acquire a craft that would later help her in life but the road does not tell the traveler what lurks ahead.
Okudi, that wicked man that was supposed to teach her how to make clothes added in a few lessons of his own, how to make babies. Anne couldn’t face me about it, she ran to the coast and I understand that nowadays she does the bad work with the tourists. All this and I can do nothing, I don’t know where the coast is. People fly from abroad to come and see the coast when I can’t afford to get enough money to go to the coast to redeem my daughter, not gaze at the sea, save my daughter!
After Okudi happened on my daughter, Billy started coming home late and every time I asked him where he’d been, he would always tell me that he had been watching football at the hall where people share television. I warned him about the bad boys who hang around that place but I knew I was kidding myself. Which bad boys? All those boys are children I saw growing up alongside my Billy. They are children whose parents lived a tin house away from mine or two sewage trenches away. If I believed they are bad, then their parents must surely believe that my Billy was bad too, they were all bad.
What I was really trying to put through Billy’s head was the fact that his father was not around anymore and he was supposed to seriously think of taking his father’s position in the house but the boy had grown so fond of the sister and coming home to a house without her was coming home to an empty house. As he stayed out late, he started smoking bhang with the boys at the television hall. The bhang got into his head and he started talking of wrongs that can never be righted, telling me about the slavery of blacks four hundred years ago, what did that have to do with me? I warned him and told him that bhang would bring him no good, just madness but he wouldn’t listen. They started a movement with his fellow bhang smokers called ‘No election without liberation, no more politricks’ but they were all arrested for various reasons. Some for possession of illegal substances, others for loitering while others went in for being poor. I hope when he finishes his seven year term he will have learnt that bhang smoking is for the mad men, not normal people living normally like we do, living normally like we do...
Anyway, whatever the case, it would sure be nice to be this woman who has six screens in her house and three in her car. Then, Billy would not have had to go watch football at the hall, never have had to smoke bhang and never have had to serve seven years.
Mr. Expensive suit thick neck fleshy lips realized that I had gazed long at the TV monitor behind his seat and decided to switch it off but that would not get me out. On and on I stuck like a stubborn stain sprawled against the white immaculate leather that was his car’s back seat where I sat.
As the car indicated to turn left into the council offices, I saw a smile of victory curve itself out of the thick fleshy lips. At long last, the ride was over and the stench would get out of his elegant machine. At the offices I explained how Mr. Expensive suit had refused to stop at a Zebra Crossing where I was stationed and how he talked rudely at me when I stopped him. I had therefore booked him and asked him to drive me over to the council offices so that I could charge him with the necessary fine. Mr. thick neck winked at my supervisor and I was asked to wait outside. After a while, he was escorted out to his car by my supervisor who on coming back asked me back into the office.
I was sacked. That even after the man identifying himself as Mr. important person and deep pockets, I still subjected him to such humility. That due to my action, he was threatening to withdraw his sponsorship for the council members’ Easter Holiday at the coast unless something was done about me. I had been a good worker for the almost twenty years I worked for the council, the supervisor went ahead to add, and he would not like to lose me but it was beyond him.
As I walked home to my world Onga city which is ten kilometers from the city center, all I could remember was that ride, that opulent ride on a cloud of affluence between the Zebra crossing on which I was stationed and the council offices. That was one ride out of my world and though it knocked my job dead, at least it was a Mercedes death, an honorable death. And though my neighbors think that I should be crying because I have lost my job and am now left with nothing, what they don’t know is that I have had nothing all along. I have never known what it feels to have something except when I was in that car. It is only then that I knew how it feels to be of that other world and for that, I will not cry.

©2008 Otiato Opali

Deserve to Die

2008-03-25T15:10:00.003+03:00

The silence that greeted Mbaluto when he had unbolted the door to his house was too eerie for him to bear. He felt like locking the door and walking back into the night but where to? Glancing at his watch he realized that it was one O’clock in the night. The night was so quiet behind him, not even the crickets chirped. He had to get into the house, his house.
He had never envisaged the fact that this house would be so unwelcoming without her. Why was she doing this to him? Couldn’t she at least forgive him? He was sorry, truly sorry. He would do anything to prove this to her. But where was she? She should have stayed, should have given him a chance to express his remorse but she did not. She chose to go. And now that she was gone, he could not even enter his own house.
In the past three days, he had been coming home dead drunk. This way, the telling silence of his house could not reach him in his drunken stupor. He would get home, collapse on the bed and light a cigarette. Sleep would prevail upon him by the time the cigarette’s ember was crossing over to the filter. In the morning, he would take a shower and quickly dash out of the house on his way to his workplace. This had become life for him since she went away. Always running away from his house, her house, their house.
On this day, he had gone to the pub but he could not drink. He had to get used to his house and the only way to do this was to get home while still sober. So he had just sat at the pub, smoking cigarette after cigarette while trying to get the courage to go home.
Mbaluto was now at his doorstep but he couldn’t get into the house. He fiddled with his pocket and got out a cigarette lighter. He lit it and pushed open the door. The lighter’s orange flame made everything in the sitting room glow in a golden manner, so romantic …
Yes, it was in this very sitting room with this very same golden glow that he first knew her depths. It was two years ago and he had just been employed as a journalist with one of the leading papers in the country. Naomi had just joined a medical college then.
On that particular night, Naomi had come to his house for the first time. He had gone through the pains of strategically placing candles in the sitting room. All lights were off. The candles’ orange flame made everything in the sitting room glow in a golden manner, so romantic … He had kissed her on the couch and on the thick carpet on the floor. And it was there on the carpet that he had known her insides. God! She was beautiful, so beautiful and warm. He was a man in love and he wanted her, all of her.
These memories of that night left Mbaluto empty inside. He was like a deflated balloon with no inside. He quickly blew off the lighter to wipe the memories away. It was then that the darkness and silence started weighing down on him once again. In the darkness, he stumbled his way to the switch and turned on the lights. He then saw that he had left the door open. He walked over to it and shut it. He was now alone in the house. This made him lonely. He missed Naomi with all his being. He gave the house one look, everything was pointing at her absence.
Were she around, his shirts would not be lying unwashed on the chairs the way they did. The carpet he had once treasured would not be smeared with mud as it was tonight. The utensils would be washed and neatly arranged in the cupboard. The ashtray on the table would be emptied of all those cigarette stubs. Everything would be in its rightful place only if she were around.
He then saw her face on the wall. His heart started thumping audibly faster. He walked to the wall and with trembling hands, he brought down the framed picture. With the picture in his hands, he sat on one of the sofas. That was Naomi in his arms on their wedding day. He looked at Naomi and himself in the picture as if he was looking at it for the first time. Ice-cold tears rolled down his cheeks. He hugged the picture and let himself cry.
When he had landed himself a job two years ago, Mbaluto’s future seemed bright. There was no stopping him. He had a good salary and a good house. What was missing in the picture was a wife. Didn’t they say that behind every successful man there was a woman? The only problem was that Naomi, his all, had just joined a medical college and he had to wait for her to clear her schooling. Four years! That was too much for an impatient man like Mbaluto. He managed to convince the tender minded Naomi that she didn’t necessarily need to have a job. His salary was enough to take care of them and the children they would raise in the future. He went as far as paying her parents for interfering with their daughter’s education. Since when did parents refuse money especially if it was for their daughters? The deal was sealed.
Their wedding was so wonderful and this picture he was holding held all the day’s memories. The onset of their lives together, Naomi and himself.
What went wrong? Was it fate, was this destiny? How could he hurt the one he had once loved? So many questions. He looked at Naomi yet again in the picture. She was so beautiful. He was realizing this after a very long time. What had gotten into him? What had led him outside, away from her? What made him become so brutal towards her? She must have gone through a lot. It was funny that he was realizing this after she was gone. If only she were around, he would make it up to her. He would do anything to earn favour in her eyes again. But she was gone. Gone to the winds. Blown away from the surface of the earth. The worst part of it, she wouldn’t forgive him, she just wouldn’t.
He had pleaded with her on her deathbed in this very house but all she did was shake her head in refusal. He had promised her that she would get better. He would treat her as the queen that she was. He would never drink again. He would never hurt her, never lay a hand on her, never. He even cried, real tears. He was sorry. She did not buy it. She was indifferent to his overnight conversion. All she did was shake her head from side to side. No, she would never forgive him.
As he sat on the table looking at the picture, a deep-rooted hatred for her developed at the pit of his stomach. Why wouldn’t she forgive him? Did she have to subject the rest of his life to guilt? Hadn’t she once vowed to stand by him through thick and thin? Why didn’t she forgive him? He was truly deeply sorry. This haunted him. It made him guilty. It made him a stranger in his own house. He now hated her. Hated her so much for not forgiving him.
A thought struck him. He was going to get rid of her from his life and house once and for all. He went to the window, opened it and threw the wedding picture into the night. He heard the glass on the picture’s frame shatter to pieces in the quiet night but he didn’t care. He headed straight for her wardrobe in the bedroom. He would evict all her clothes from his house and burn them. He opened the wardrobe and with one sweep of his hand all the clothes were of the hooks. He threw the clothes on the floor and on looking back into the wardrobe, he saw it.
It had been pushed to the far corner of the wardrobe. He looked closer at it. It quietly lay at its place. It seemed so unperturbed and provocative. So inviting. In it lay the script by which her life had been lived. It was her diary. The last episode! The last entry – he thought. He wanted to read their last encounter in her words because it was here that the key to his confusion lay.
He grabbed the diary and walked back to the sitting room trampling on the clothes he had thrown on the floor. Once on the sofa, he started flipping through the diary. He did not care to read earlier entries. All he wanted to do was read the last episode.
Had he read earlier entries he would have seen something like this;

Saturday 12th April 2004

Mbaluto came home drunk as usual. It is not this that bothered me. What bothered me is that in his drunkenness, he forced himself on me. I know I am his wife and it is part
of my marital duty but for heaven’s sake not when he is drunk! Where is the man I married?

Mbaluto did not have time for this and other earlier entries. Those of her sufferings at his hands. Of the beatings, of the cheatings, of the insults. Just because she didn’t have a job of her own. Just because he had to give her everything. Mbaluto did not have time for these entries. All he wanted was to read the last episode. To revisit the scene in his sober self, from her point of view. At last! There it was. He had opened the page that contained the last entry. It was quite lengthy as he had expected it to be. He reached for a cigarette, lit it and drew in a long puff. Let the reading begin.

Saturday 15th June 2004

Mbaluto has killed me. He came home drunk as usual and I served him Ugali and fried meat. He didn’t eat the food. Instead, he demanded to know where I had gotten the money to buy meat. The money he had left behind could not afford a quarter of a kilo of meat.
I didn’t work, he said, and so there was no way I could have my own money unless I was seeing another man. So where did I get the money?
I told him I had found two hundred shillings in his trouser while doing the washing yesterday and before I could even finish talking, he slapped me. Mbaluto slapped me so hard that I fell onto the carpet.
He was angry. Hadn’t he told me to give him all the money I found on his clothes? If I wanted money from him I had to ask. He kicked me on the floor and threw the plate of meat at me. Why was I stubborn, he was asking. Why couldn’t I simply follow instructions?
I told him that I did not find the two hundred shillings alone. That I also found a receipt for two at the Lucky Star Hotel. That the dinner, a room for two for the night and breakfast had cost him two thousand five hundred shillings. So I saw no problem in using just two hundred for a decent meal in the house.
I have never seen Mbaluto so mad. He beat me. So I was spying on him. So I was trying to curtail his freedom as a man. How could a woman try to ‘limit the oxygen’ of a man, was what he said.
He then kicked me on the chest, kicked me so hard on the chest as if he was fighting his fellow man. I felt a sharp pain in my heart. Vomit filled my mouth and when I let it out it was pure blood. Mbaluto has killed me.
This man I once loved. This man I once cherished. This man I once adored has become my undoing. He deserves to die. I will never forgive him for what he has done to me. Men like him deserve to die.
By the time Mbaluto finished reading the last episode, his whole shirt was awash with sweat. He should have taken her to the hospital. But how would he have explained it to the doctors? He thought the vomiting was mild and would stop on its own but it didn’t. She vomited blood until the day she died. He had killed her.
Her words rang in his head like the churchman’s bell. She would never forgive him. He didn’t deserve a life. Men like him should never be forgiven. They deserved to die. He, Mbaluto, deserved to die.
Why hadn’t he seen it before? It was so simple and it lay right below his nose. He deserved to die. He pulled out another cigarette and lit it. At last he felt at peace with himself. All the tension and anxiety had left him. He slowly pulled at the cigarette, probably his last. He looked at his house for the last time. He would miss it so much. It was four O’clock in the night. Now he was around but when the sun will be peeping in the east he will never be around!. He deserved to die. When tomorrow comes, he will be gone to the winds, blown away from the surface of the earth!

©2008 Otiato Opali

Letters to mother

2008-03-25T14:49:00.002+03:00

Mama school good. Teacher learn us to write to sing ba ba black ship to read. Mama school good school very good.
This was the first letter he ever wrote me. It was not really a letter but something to show me he could now write since he had started going to school. Not that I could read. I had never gone to school all my life. Then, girls never went to school, they went to their husbands! It is Bahati my son who taught me how to read when he got to secondary school. I now wish he had never taught me how to read. Then, I would not be able to read this letter, his last letter.
Bahati, what have they done to you? I am finished! I am finished! Without you I am nothing! Nothing! Bahati, without you I am David before goliath without my sling. My husband, my son, my life, why did they pick on you? Uuuuuuwi! Why, why oh why, why you?
Oh, I am sorry for that outburst but you will have to bear with me. It is very painful, this letter is. He was everything I had. Do you know how it feels like to be a fisherman without a lake? That’s how I feel without Bahati my son. And that I have to learn about it in a letter! Oh, how I wish I never knew how to read. Bahati, I wish you never taught me how to read. Then, I would never be able to read this letter, your last letter!
I am not saying that all his letters brought bitterness to my heart, am I? No am not! His letters always brought warmth to my heart. Whenever they would be delivered, I would stop doing whatever I was at to go and read them. Whether I was in the shamba ploughing, at the river fetching water, in my hut brewing chang’aa or with other women gossiping, I would have to stop the work.
His letters always renewed my hope in life. I always kept them under my mattress in my hut. I treasured them as I treasured my own life. These were the connection between him and me, between mother and son, between mother and only son. In times of boredom I would retrieve them from under the mattress and go over them again and again. From his earliest that said ‘mama school good … school very good’ to his most recent. His letters made me proud of my son. They made me know that my struggle to bring him up single handedly were not in vain. All that scuffling with the police as I brewed and sold chang’aa to earn him school fees was not in vain after all. My son would stand by me, his letters confirmed this. He would get a good job and support his poor mother.
I will not tell you about his father. I will not tell you about the drunkard who always beat me as if he had paid bride wealth to purchase a punching bag. No, I will not tell you about that beast who got himself a fifteen year old girl and sent me away from his home like a dog. He had found himself a wife and did not need us anymore, me and my scabies infested baby. No, I will not tell you about him.
Instead, I will tell you about my son’s letters. Going through my son’s letters always wiped these bitter memories off my mind. They gave me hope to keep on keeping on. I would be happy to show you all his letters but it is not possible. They are so many. Maybe I should show you some. Yes, I will show you one. He wrote me this one when he got to the big city to start his work. He had just finished his secondary education and Omwami Isimba agreed to employ him as one of his drivers. Omwami Isimba … To realize that it is them who have caused me this misery! I wish I had never trusted them. Oh, how people change.
Wasn’t Omwami once as poor as I am? Did we not brew chang’aa with his wife Esther? Didn’t Esther and I bribe the police together to save our chang’aa, our livelihood? Oh! How people change! Omwami and his wife Esther used to be our neighbours here in this very village. They lived in that fallen hut across my fence. Tattered, hungry and poor, that was our lot – the Omwamis and we. We shared everything, from cooking sufurias to kitchen salt. They were us and we were them. Then the winds of change started sweeping across the whole country. Elections were nearing but this time it was different. All other parties had united against the old party. Songs were sung – The old party is bad, It’s time for change, A new beginning, Down with corruption, It’s time to give back – so many songs, so many slogans.
But still, both the new and old parties dished out money to voters. They came with briefcases filled with fifty shilling notes. The new party too! Each voter got fifty shillings. They sung about a new beginning but still dished out money. They sang of no more corruption but still dished out money. They sung of no more bribery but still dished out money. Fifty shillings for the five years they would be in power. Ten shillings a year. They must have found us very cheap!
No one cared to mind. The politicians were clever enough to offer free chang’aa alongside the fifty shillings. I had never sold so much chang’aa since I got into business. Omwami Isimba of all the people was the candidate for the new party. He had simply told Esther to give out free chang’aa and he got his nomination. In these rural parts of the country where everybody is poor, hopeless and disillusioned, chang’aa is life. A giver of chang’aa is a giver of life. Omwami gave us chang’aa, we will give him our votes! Now that Omwami had become a contender, I was assigned as his chang’aa distributor and I made quite a sale out of it. I sold enough chang’aa to drown a whale!
The new party won the elections and Omwami got his way into parliament. There was talk then of better things to come. Jobs were to be created, prices were to be slashed; corruption was to be fought and so on and so forth. That was when Omwami decided to take Bahati my son and make him one of his new drivers. Within a month he had already bought three vehicles. One for himself, one for Esther and the other for the children. But even if he could now buy twenty cars in a day, even if he could now eat at a five star hotel, even if he was now an MP, what gave them the right to cause me such misery? Bahati my son what gave them the right to do this to you? Uuuuuwi! Where do I go now? Whose guest shall I be?
Oops! There I go again with my outbursts but like I said, you’ll have to bear with me. This is the cry of a down trodden mother for her son. Now where was I? You’ll have to forgive me but I’m a very bad story teller. I was supposed to be showing you a letter he had written me when he got the big city to drive Omwami around. But being a bad story teller, I keep on jumping from this issue to the other. Anyway, a bad story teller or not, my son’s story must be told. I will now show you the letter he wrote me when he got the city that very first time to start his job as Omwami’s driver. Here it is.

Dear mama,
How are things back at home? Things are fine with me here in the city though I am trying so much to adjust.
Life here is difficult and bad. People here worship money. It is money here, money there, money everywhere! Mama, life in the village is good. In this city it is nothing but money. No love, no smiles, no greetings. Just money!
Mama do you think I am lying? I will bring you here one day so that you can see for yourself. All streets are lined with cripples, blind men, deaf men, men with wounds as open as sufurias, men in pain, some genuine others pretending. All these beg for money. This is not the village mama. People wake up in the morning knowing that “ I am going to beg” not to work, “ I am going to steal” not to work, to beg and to steal money.
In this city, there are homeless children everywhere. They are called children of the streets. One wonders, did the street mother and father them? In this city, mama, no one is a friend. Any one could be a thief, a conman, a gangster – even the police! It is all for money. I recently met uncle Juma but he had no time for me. He was rushing to his shop - to make money. One could not tell he was my father’s brother. He rushed off as if he had been told I am one of the robbers in this ugly city.
Anyway, that is the way of the city. How are you fairing on? I hope things are not so bad. I have enclosed two thousand shillings in this letter. Use five hundred shillings to build another granary where you will store the beans that are in the kitchen. You can pay the boys in the village one hundred and fifty so that they can help you harvest the maize I planted. Eight hundred shillings is for you. You can use it as you wish. Give the remaining money to my friend Yusuf. I had talked to him about a bigger house which he should build for me.
I know you are wondering why I need a bigger house. Mama, I have found a girl and I like her. I know you are worried that she is a town girl, one who cannot go to the shamba but she is not. She is also from our village and she came to the city to work as a waiter in a hotel. She is good, beautiful and very caring. I love her. Her name is Edna and I will bring her home so that you can see her. I am sure you will like her.
I have a little problem with Peter, Omwami’s son. He wants my Edna by force. I live in Omwami’s servants’ quarters and when Peter saw her come to visit me he started running after her. Edna does not like him and he tried to use his money to influence her. Oh! How people change! Wasn’t Peter my best friend back at the village before his father became our MP. Did we not grow up as brothers. Didn’t we burn and sell charcoal together to raise money to help you, our parents? What didn’t we do together? Nowadays he does not even want to see me let alone talk. Oh! How people change.
Anyway this should not worry you much. I love Edna and she I. There is no way Peter will have her. You take care of things back there at home knowing that I am fine. Do not worry so much about our troubles. God will see us through. He has brought us so far. I love you and miss you so much. I miss your good food too! Goodbye.

Your loving son,
Bahati.

Such letters always left a smile painted across my face. My life had been a bitter chain of painful episodes and my son had become my messiah, my saviour. Life had become hopeless for me but as my son grew older my hopes started rising again. You can tell this by looking at the letter I have just shown you. He loved his mother, he would take care of her to the end of the road. He was all that she had.
Where do I go now that he has been finished? They have finished him, they have ruined him. Bahati, I am finished. There is this letter I have not shown you. It is the letter I am crying about. When I received this letter yesterday, I got very happy. My son’s letters were a joy of its own kind in my life. Whether or not they brought money, I still cherished them. His letters were a testimony that this woman had not lost all in life. That above all, she had a son..
I was distilling chang’aa when it was delivered. It was brought from the shops where the driver of the matatu from the big city had left it. I quickly left the chang’aa alone and rushed into the house to read it. To find out how my son was fairing on in the city. To find out when he would come home to see his mama. Will he bring that Edna girl he always talked about? I must admit that as mother, I was a little jealous of this girl. Not that I did not like her, I had never met her. I just could not help fearing that she would take my position in my son’s life. But I had to let my son go. I know Bahati well enough and there is no way he would forget me. I guess that is our fate as women. We are close to our children from the time they enter our wombs. We spend sleepless nights by them when they are small to make sure they are okay. We look after them until they become big and strong but in the long run they live us to go and stay with strangers they just met in the outside world, outside our motherly love. And so a man and woman shall leave their mothers and the two shall become one!
So much was on my mind as I opened the letter hurriedly. I now wish I had never opened the letter. I wish I had never read the letter. Bahati my son, I wish you had never taught me how to read. Then, I would not be able to read this letter, your last letter.
Where does one begin? What wrong did I do to deserve this pain, this misery? What does one do? Do you cry until your tears run dry, do you tear of your clothes and roll in the dust, do you shout your voice hoarse, what do you do? Where does someone, nay, a mother like me find justice in this world? Let me read you this last letter and you will tell me where to turn to, tell me where to go, where to find justice.
Listen carefully it says: Dear mama, things have gone bad. I will keep the story short since I do not have much time to write this letter.
I got home last Saturday and found a rude shock waiting for me in my servants’ quarter room. I had left Edna in the room when I left in the morning and on coming back I did not find her, I found her corpse! I found the naked body of my lovely Edna sprawled on the floor. She must have been hit by some heavy thing on the head because her forehead was swollen. Shock gripped me. I could not tell head or tail of what had happened. My mouth ran dry, my voice disappeared, and my blood froze in my veins. Yes, I was not dreaming. That was my girl, my love lying naked on the floor. No doubt she had been raped. Who did this to my girl? I rushed out of my room in panic and headed for Omwami’s house. I do not know what I was going to do there but I just went. My head drummed with pain. I did not even know myself.
Another rude shock was waiting for me at Omwami’s door. Before I could even knock on the door, I overheard Omwami talking on the phone inside the house. He was speaking to someone in the police force. He was telling that someone how his son had messed. His son had accidentally killed a petty thief who was hiding in a servant’s room. The servant was one of the drivers. He was saying that he wanted the driver blackmailed. Yes, make it look like the driver killed the girl … Yes it is a girl … No it will no be hard, the driver is a poor wretch I picked from the village … Do not worry, I will settle that …That is a hard bargain but I will make it seventy five thousand shillings … Okay but make it clean, my son’s name should not appear anywhere. And the press should get none of this, my reputation, you know … Yes, a clean job, remember I am paying you.
Mama, I could not believe my ears. Peter, my childhood friend had raped and killed my Edna and I was being framed as the murderer. I had to run fast, very fast.
I turned away and ran towards the gate. My heart was beating fast and I was sweating all over. On reaching the gate, I found Peter and the watchman blocking my way. I was going nowhere, Peter said. They had called the police and I should be picked anytime to help with investigations. It was the same Peter we had grown up side by side. The same Peter we had schooled together. The same Peter we had gone without food together. Money makes beasts out of men.
I looked at Peter and anger boiled up in me. He had wronged me this much and he was now boasting that I will pay for his sins. No, he will not have it his way this time. I found myself snatching a rungu from the watchman and hitting Peter squarely in the head. The watchman came at me and I gave him one too on the shoulder and he fell. I then turned to Peter and pounded life out of him with the rungu. Yes, I beat him to death. Mama it was not me, it was the anger.
I am now a wanted man. Wanted for two counts of murder. That of my Edna and that of Peter. Mama your son is a killer, a serial killer. Do you think I can let them get me mama? No I can’t. By the time they get to me, I will be with Edna. We will be together in that world where there is no more suffering. We will love forever, together forever.
I am so sorry mama. I did not intend it to end this way. I guess fate had this in store for me. By the time you will be reading this letter, my body will be hanging somewhere on a tree but my soul will be with you, always. Goodbye mama. I am so sorry. Goodbye.
That is it, there it is! That is my son’s last letter. A mother’s last letter from her son. Now tell me, where does mama Bahati find justice? Where does she begin? What does she do? Where does one find justice in this land? Bahati my son, I am finished! Without you I am done. Without you I am nothing, nothing, nothing!

©2008 Otiato Opali

Conversations

2008-03-25T14:28:00.002+03:00

What you have said is very right. The problem is on what is to be considered right and wrong. Just because they have made right wrong and wrong right does not mean right is wrong and wrong right. I saw all the wrong. Humans in paper-bag houses walking naked in streets, eating carcasses cooked in tins. The murderer sent the murdered to the gallows. The thief steals from you and imprisons you for being stolen from. And that’s what they call right. Yesterday you were telling me about your uncle. Where did you say he is? Oh! In this very prison. I thought you said he is still in remand. What are you saying? Please speak louder, since they tramped on my head with those boots I can hardly hear a thing. Oh, you said he was sentenced for life. Now, look at his case, he saw them wronging rights and he was bold enough to tell them and look what it earned him.
“Daktari, what is wrong?”
“Nothing officer, I am just talking to Isutsa, a very keen former student I had. He likes visiting me for a chat.”
“Daktari, all other inmates are asleep and you are busy rambling to yourself in there. I don’t care whether you are here on presidential orders. I will open this cell and beat you to sleep if you don’t shut up and sleep like the rest.”
“But officer, cant a man have a little talk with his former student? Isutsa is the only link that I have to reality.”
“I don’t give a damn about your students, former or present. Next time I hear you talking to yourself I will whip the hell out of you. This is a prison, not your home where you tell bedtime stories to ghosts so go to sleep.”
Isutsa, let’s go to sleep. No, I will tell you about it tomorrow. Yes, how I finished them. Yes, that too, why they brought me here.
“What are you mumbling about, I thought I told you to go to sleep.”
“Yes officer, we are going to sleep.”
“You and who?”
“Me and Isutsa.”
“I don’t want to hear this Isutsa nonsense anymore! Just shut up and sleep.”

* * * *

“Good afternoon officer. I am the government psychiatrist Professor Sigmundu Fraud. I am here to examine Dr. Okaka Okaka who was brought in for treason. After that I should be able to advice the court on his mental status. I am told you guard their cells so I would like you to assist me by informing me on his behaviour. That should make my work a lot easier than wasting time talking to him.”
“Professor, I would really like to help you, but I have not had lunch and so I was busy thinking how I will have that lunch.”
“Oh that is no problem. I hope this will do.”
“You will have to do better than this because I am still thinking how I will have that lunch.”
“Why are you so hard? Okay, have this as well. The economy is bad for all of us you know. Next time I will come better armed.”
“Not so bad but not so good either. Anyway I will help you hoping next time business will be better. You wanted to know what about which prisoner?”
“Yes officer, now we are talking. I wanted you to tell me if Dr. Okaka says or does anything strange.”
“That one is gone, Kaput! You just go and say that he is mad so that they can take him out of here and send him to a mental hospital. He gives me a lot of headache that one. No prisoner can stay with him in the same cell so he enjoys a whole cell to himself. Does he think this is a holiday camp?”
“What strange things does he say or do?”
“That does not matter. He is mad, full stop. What does it matter to you what he says or does?”
“Officer, he was a colleague of mine. We used to lecture at the same university. I want to argue for mental stability in his case so that he is sent to a mental hospital. Treason carries a death tag on it.”
“So it is true. He keeps talking to imaginary students. I thought he was a medical doctor.”
“No, he has a PhD in Philosophy and that is why he is called Doctor. You said he talks to students?”
“Yes Professor. He has a favourite one called Isutsa. Talks to him all night long and I cant get him to stop.”
“What does he say to this … what did you call him?”
“Isutsa.”
“Yes, Isutsa, what does he say to this Isutsa?”
“How do you expect me to know Professor? The man is mad. He just mumbles to himself. The other day he was telling me that I am just like him and them. Imagine, saying that I was like him! And when I asked him who ‘them’ are, he said they are the bees, making honey for humans to steal. He said the humans had colluded with the queen bee to drink our sweat and keep her majesty the queen bee fat. Just imagine. Comparing me to a bee! That day I clobbered him for insulting a police officer.”
“Is that all he says?”
“That man says a lot of things. You cant get it all unless you are Isutsa. Anyway, is it true he did it? You say he was your friend, why cant you just talk to him?”
“He cant stand me. He says I am a coward. What he doesn’t know is that cowards live longer. I tried to stop him from doing it but he would not just listen.”
“So it is true he did it. Imagine doing that to the president himself in front of all those guests on such a big day. Doing it to him in the eyes of all those citizens who had gathered to celebrate the independence day. He must be nuts.”
“I tried to stop him. I remember the day he came up with the idea very well.”
“Tell me about it.”

* * * *

“Prof. I have found the key to myself. That which will open me up and let me out of my trapped self. The missing piece in the puzzle.”
“What are you talking about Dr. Okaka?”
“What I have been talking about all this time. My entrapment in myself. Being locked in yourself such that you are always trapped. Today, God has dropped the key in my hands. Today, I will be free.”
“If it is what you’ve been prattling about, save me the time and don’t tell me about it. Doc, cant you see there is nothing much you can do about the state of affairs? You are lucky to be where you are so stay there. You did not make anyone poor. You don’t steal the money, you earn it. Why should you worry about the poor. That is the government’s problem. You cant ask me to give up my salary to go and agitate for people who never even went to school. Forget it.”
“Not just you. Me, you, all of us! However thin the sticks are, when they form a bundle they cannot be easily broken. Prof, the salary they pay you is not theirs, it is yours. You give to them so that you can wag your tail when they give it back to you. The master is away Prof. Let us come together and plan against him.
Prof, how much did he give you? Five thousand – write that down. He gave me two thousand – write that down too. Our poor fellow here was given one thousand – write that down too. Let us all bury his money under the ground and trade in our own. Why make his money grow while our money lies idle in our homes? Let him call us fools.”
“Whatever song you sing Doc, you are not going to convince me to fight for poor miserable people I don’t even know.”
“You have been transfused with their individualistic blood. In their language, the ‘I’ is written in capital while the ‘we’ starts with a small letter. They capitalise on the ‘I’. There is no difference between us and those you call miserable. We are all bees, we are all being stolen from. Let us come together. Let us desist from visiting the flowers and the nectar. Let us go to the queen bee and her thieving drones. Let us tell her that they have fattened enough on our honey and it is time they left. Come, let us go together.”
“Call me a coward if you want but I am here to stay. I shall never descend the food chain. Forward ever backward never. So what is this key you were talking about earlier?”
“I have just received an appointment from the chief thief.”
“You mean the president?”
“The chief thief himself Prof. I have found the key to my freedom. I was going to quit anyway but he has given me an honourable way to do it.”
“What is your appointment?”
“Song-writer.”
“What the hell is that?”
“Once upon a time there existed a thief, the chief thief. He would go to the people and sing a song so sweet to the ear. The people would be stupefied and in the stupor, the chief thief’s men would ransack their pockets and strip them of the little they had.”
“What is that all about?”
“tomorrow is independence day and the chief thief needs to sing a song to the poor that will be gathered there. He wants me to write the song.”
“I hope you are not thinking what I think you are thinking.”
“That is what I am thinking. He will sing my song, not his. I will have downed my tools honourably.”

* * * *

He who seeks to save his sanity shall loose it but he who loses it for the sake of the truth, verily verily I say unto you, shall save it. I have saved mine, Isutsa. They are all mad out there. What they sought to save they have lost, just because they disregarded the truth.
Isutsa, I have something to tell you. Okay, that too but before I tell you how I came to be here, I have another thing to tell you. Today is our last day together. No, don’t say that, I always enjoy your visits and I will never want you to stop coming. It is only that when you come, you will not find me. No, not that, I am not being moved to another prison. Not that either, they said the mental hospital is full. Yes, that. How did you guess? That is why I liked you as my student, you always read between the lines. You are right, the charge is treason, the punishment termination.
You should have seen the judge passing the sentence. Sweating under his white wig and his ludicrous robs in the hot afternoon, he passed out the sentence which he had definitely not authored. ‘Germination! No appeal. Case closed’ he said banging his hammer. The people’s bewildered look made him realise it. He stopped chewing his gum, put on his spectacles and after squinting at the paper that carried my fate, he cleared his clogged voice and shouted, ‘Order!’ There was silence. ‘Termination! No appeal. Case closed’ he thundered banging his hammer. The cameras clicked and the judge resumed chewing his gum.
Don’t cry Isutsa, no greater love has man than this, that I should die for you. Come on now, stop crying. This is a day for redemption so don’t cry, rejoice instead. That is better. I want you to promise me one thing though, Isutsa, that you will witness my last moment. You will? Thank you, I knew I could count on you. I also want you to promise me that you will tell the world about our conversations and tell them all about the truths, all about the rights wronged. Yes, tell them all so that the son of man does not die in vain.
Okay, I think I can now tell you how I ended up here. It was the greatest moment of victory in my lifetime. The foreign guests were all there. They had come to inspect their businesses and they dropped by to grace our independence celebrations. They had come to see how the honeycombs were doing and give the queen bee a large tip. They sat in the air -conditioned dais behind their dark glasses. In the field, the masses squeezed each other in the scorching sun. They pulled and pushed with their clammy bodies trying to catch a glimpse of the chief thief and his guests. The police drove them back with batons to prevent them from polluting the guests’ air- conditioned air. The broadcasting stations had their cameras placed in all strategic positions so that no bit of my genius would escape the rest of the nation.
Isutsa, the chief thief is a retard. On such occasions, he just sings the song the way it is written. He never reads it prior to the presentation and when reading it, he does not pay attention to the words. He trusts his song-writers to come up with spell binding songs, who would dare defy the chief thief? He trusted me and sang my song.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he sang on, ‘these dignitaries seated in front of you are our gods from foreign countries. They are the Humans. Those who eat the hen’s eggs, drink the cow’s milk and lick our honey. The Humans like our honey because they don’t pay all of you for producing it. They only pay me, the queen bee, the chief thief. Paying one person for the sweat of a million sounds cheaper doesn’t it?
One thing you must know though, they pay me well. How else could I afford this executive suit specially imported from Italy? How could I drive in a convoy of twenty limousines, all air-conditioned and bullet proof? How could my wife afford to fly to London twice a week for her shopping? How, I ask you, how could my children and their children and their children’s children live in palaces? What I make in one month can feed your hungry bellies for a lifetime!’
I was seated among the dignitaries and I could not believe my ears. Some of the dignitaries had started walking of in disgust. The crowd was too dismayed to react. They just stood there mute not fathoming the insults just heaped upon them.
I jumped up and started shouting in joy. I praised the Lord for seeing it through. I could not believe I had actually made it. It was then that the police realised what had actually happened. ‘The new Speech-writer!’ shouted the police commissioner. I was bundled into a ball and kicked all the way to this room.
You cant trust the newspapers Isutsa. What else did you expect them to write? Those stories were fabricated for state security and I am not mad. Remember that he who looses his sanity for the sake of the truth shall save it but he who seeks to save it shall loose it.
“Daktari!”
“Yes officer.”
“Time has come.”
“Let me say my last words to Isutsa.”
“Isutsa my foot! The priest, the hangman and the rest have better things to do than wait while you perform your madness. Let us go!”

* * * *

“Dr. Muga, is he dead?”
“Yes Mr. Police commissioner sir, dead as a dodo.”
“Pastor, say your prayers, we have better things to do.”
“AMEN!”

©2008 Otiato Opali

Make me King!

2008-03-25T14:10:00.001+03:00

This is not a short story to be published in your literary anthologies and later to be studied by drunk University students. Students who spend years being taught how to criticize what they will never be able to write. Neither is this a political manifesto, drafted by handsomely paid professors of political science, outlining five year plans on how to rob us the little we have. This is not a sermon either. It will not tell you to turn your left cheek when your right has been assaulted. It will not ask you to pay offerings to God when you cannot even afford salt for your soup. This is none of the above!
This is a reminder to you selfish and thankless fools. You ungrateful visitors who after eating to your fill, go ahead and shit in the plate with which I served you food. This your old prostitute’s wish – Make Me King!
You people are a very ungrateful lot. The other day your Minister for home affairs went to visit a sickling freedom fighter in the true spirit of patriotism. After giving the ailing hero ten thousand shillings, his speech followed as thus: You freedom fighters have been neglected, you live in paper bag houses while those who did not fight for freedom drive limousines to five star hotels to have shamefully expensive dinners. Immediately he stepped out of the freedom fighter’s paper bag house, smiling at flashing cameras, he jumped into his limousine and headed for a five star hotel to have a shamefully expensive dinner.
Is that the kind of thanks you want to accord me after I brought sanity back to this confused country of yours? You enjoy the fruits of my genius as you call me the old prostitute. Have you forgotten how I brought sanity back to this country? Oh … I see! It was such a long time ago wasn’t it? It was when my breasts were still pointed and my skin smooth and shiny in the sun. My breasts are now as flabby as empty wineskins and my skin as wrinkled as an elephant’s wizened buttocks. Age has caught up with me hasn’t it? It has also caught up with my heroism too, is that it?
Okay, I will tell you a story before I die. I will remind you of what age has wiped of your memories for I want you to honour my courage, I want you to Make Me King!
There was a time we had a President. This President was hardworking to a fault. He did all the jobs and left the rest of the country jobless. He believed in hard work, you see. He therefore was everything. He was farmer number one. Teacher number one. Footballer number one. Driver number one. He was commander in chief of all armed forces; headmaster of all nursery, primary and secondary schools; chancellor of all public and private universities; chairman of all political parties (where all means one because we only had one party). He appointed ministers but he was the minister of ministers. Minister of education; minister of health; minister of treason and rebellion punishment; minister for welcoming visitors; minister for political parties; minister for V.I.P salary increment; minister for everything!
Even natural jobs like fatherhood were left to him. He was father of the nation; father of all political parties; father of all schools, father of all hospitals; father of all churches; father of all children; father number one!
We were lucky to have a hard working President but people started having their doubts. The whole country was jobless while the President was extra-jobful. Those who wanted to become Presidents were told we already have a President. Those who wanted to become teachers were told we already have a teacher. Those who wanted to become fathers were told we already have a father. Those who wanted to become ministers were told we already have a minister. Those who wanted to become thieves were told we already have a thief. Those who wanted to become murderers were told we already have a murderer. Those who wanted to become Hitlers were told we already have a Hitler!
The people became helpless. They died of hunger and disease. Children died, women died, men died. The dogs, the cats , the cows –they all died. Hopes died, courage died and futures died.
On seeing so many deaths, the people resorted to weeping. They wept in towns, they wept in villages. They wept in jails. They wept at the hangman’s yard. They wept in detention camps. The people wept! The President saw another job opportunity that could be added to his curriculum vitae – weeping. He became weeper number one! He toured the whole country weeping with the people. Soon he was declared the father of weeping. He would weep on people’s behalf and no one was to be seen weeping.
When the drum is hit too hard, it tears! The people could take it no more. He killed them but they sang a new song – change! He tortured them but they still sang change. He bribed them but this song change would not go. Even the police with their batons and metal rubber-bullets could not stifle this song. Mr. President gave in and for the first time the people held an election.
His Excellency the new President was a man of the people. He believed in equality and embarked on drastic measures to make everyone equal. He argued that the country had enough resources to employ everyone. The secret was equality. He made a declaration, no one will have more than one job.
His Excellency was such a good man. He made a sacrifice no president has ever made the world over. He slashed his salary! He claimed that before he became a president, he used to earn three thousand shillings as a teacher and on becoming a president, he decided to earn six thousand shillings only! A one hundred per cent increment on his part. He thus saved the five hundred thousand he would have earned as a member of parliament. The hundreds he would have earned as commander in chief of all armed forces. He saved the one and a half million set aside for the president. He also saved the hundreds of thousands he would have received as chancellor of all universities. In general, he gave up over twenty salaries all amounting to over twenty million shillings.
His cabinet ministers were people who had been jobless graduates, doctors and professors in the past regime and they did not mind earning four thousand five hundred shillings each considering the fact that the president was earning six thousand only. If they would have been in the previous regime, they would have earned a record five million each.
Salaries were slashed everywhere. Members of parliament, permanent secretaries and government clerks all had their salaries slashed. All those who had excess it was taken from them and given to those who had none. We all found jobs. All those who had graduated found jobs in their respective fields. They became doctors, teachers, journalists, engineers as well as lecturers. Those who had not gone to school went to school. Primary education became free. I became a managing director in a parastatal. Those who had been idlers became clerks. Shoe polishers became civil servants. Mechanics became big company engineers. We would never have known that our country had enough resources to employ all of us were it not for his Excellency. We all earned a flat rate of two thousand five hundred shillings. Tax on goods was effectively collected and since we all had a salary, we paid promptly. The previous regime was wasting millions in excessive salaries, allowances, corruption and ineffective tax collection. His Excellency corrected all these. We were all equal, we were all brothers in his Excellency.
Then from nowhere, trouble erupted. Those who had cars could not have them repaired for there were no mechanics, they had become engineers. Those who wanted to board taxis got stranded for there were no drivers, they had become clerks. Those who wanted to have their torn shoes repaired were at a loss for there were no cobblers, they had become civil servants. Those whose wives were giving them headaches were wasted for there were no prostitutes, they had become secretaries.
The country was thrown into chaos. Every one had a decent job with a decent salary but crucial services were missing. Something had gone wrong. His Excellency had tried his best but this predicament caught him pants down. Something had gone wrong, people started murmuring. Economic analysts tried to explain what had gone wrong by conjuring dead economists’ theories. They drew curves on graphs to illustrate their theories. Criss-crossing curves, curves bulging like a pregnant woman’s belly and curves sagging like a young woman’s bottom. Political scientists were not left behind. They mentioned Karl Marx, Engels, Nyerere, Nkrumah. They talked of communistic capitalism and African socialism. Everybody talked. Everybody blamed. Everybody cursed.
And here I want you to read carefully for this is where I come in. All these people, the common man, the economist and the political scientist had taken a wrong path. Like the rest of Africa, they had started manufacturing theories on how their Excellencies have gone wrong. They started punching holes into his Excellency’s project. Africa went wrong a long time ago. This was when she sent the enemy away through the front door and welcomed him back through the backdoor. While people spend time fighting each other and punching holes into each other’s projects to redeem Africa, none of them mentions this enemy that is pulling the strings. Africa seems to have developed a new survival tactic. She has become the fool who after being pricked by a thorn in the leg, decides to move around on crutches instead if simply pulling out the thorn and letting the wound heal. His Excellency’s project was one such crutch. The rest of us clap and celebrate as the crutches are being purchased. Intellectuals, students and workers dance in celebration at the purchase. Religious leaders shout hallelujah in praise. The peasant in his shack is not left behind, he makes love to his tenth wife in celebration and the child born of this act will be named Foreign Aid Kujitawala!
I sat back and watched the economists and political scientists punching holes and none of them mentioned the enemy. None of them talked of the thorn in our flesh. In fact, they put the blame on the crutches. They said crutches are old fashioned. Why don’t we try a wheel chair instead, they suggested. After all we have money. Why pull out a thorn when we can afford the comfort of a million wheel chairs?
Africa knows the truth, I thought, but practice has made her live with falsity. Living a lie has become a reflex to her. At that time, I saw Africa behaving like the professor of Atheistology who was climbing the steps to a podium to lecture on how God does not exist. On his way up, he tripped on the stairs and cried ‘oh my God!’ Everybody was surprised – he was crying ‘oh my God’ when he believed there exists no God. ‘Oh my God?’ they wondered, oh ‘which’ God? The professor believed in his heart that there exists no God but practice had made him call God’s name when in trouble. It was reflex. The economists and their friends knew in their hearts who the real enemy was, but practice had made them point fingers in the opposite direction. It was reflex!
I therefore decided to donate them an automatically propelled wheelchair, the most expensive one in the market. Since they were not ready to pull out a mere thorn, let them have their wheel chairs. I made my move. Being a manager in his Excellency’s setup earned me two thousand five hundred. Everybody earned the same amount but vital services were lacking. There were no shoe shiners, no taxi drivers, no peasant workers and no casual labourers. I resigned my post as managing director and went back to my old profession. Since we were too busy protecting the enemy, we might as well survive with him in our flesh. I went back to prostitution. I became a freelance prostitute and business has never been good. I had customers hovering around my door and once a client stepped out others rushed for my door like hyenas fighting over a corpse. I started earning five thousand a day unlike the two thousand five hundred a month the managing director job earned me.
Everybody followed suit. People quit the civil service to become cobblers. They left their clerk positions to become taxi drivers. Women quit their secretary posts to become market sellers. They all quit thanks to my genius move. They all sang my name in bars as they drank themselves silly. Finally, his Excellency quit. A new Excellency came to power and things returned to ‘normal’. The President could once again earn his cool twenty million a month while the cobbler could once again walk home with five shillings a day. Things had returned to ‘normal’ thanks to me.
That was long ago. It was I who brought sanity back to this country. Then, you sang my name in bars. You even named your children after me. Time has wiped away the songs you sang in my honour. You have forgotten about me, about my genius. You now call me the old prostitute. I serve you food and after having your fill, you shit on my plates! I will not let this happen. My days have passed and my days are running out but I will not let you fools disgrace me. I am making a demand, I am making a wish, my death wish.
When I die, I want to have a portrait of my corpse taken while it lies on a mat. It should be enlarged and the least area it must cover should be three metres squared. The portrait should be hung at all national museums and below it should bear the words ‘Make Me King!’ Beside the picture should be a copy of this article you are just about to finish reading. So that all may see the truth. So that all may Make Me King!

©2008 Otiato Opali

Endless as the Waters of River Nzoia

2008-03-25T13:14:00.002+03:00

It was early in the morning and the sun had just but peeped over the hills in the east. Everything was quiet in Sigalame village apart from the relentless cry of the little girl that flowed endlessly from the lonely hut. A crowd had already gathered by and more people were trickling in. None of them had dared enter the hut. They just came, peeped into the house momentarily and moved aside covering their wide open mouths with their hands. They had formed little groups around the hut talking in low tones about this tragedy that had befallen them.
In the hut everything neatly lay in place, a testimony that there had been no struggle whatsoever. The bed, a worn out mattress and dirty un-matching sheets, was neatly spread and no one had used it for the night. Beside it was a stool that acted as a table with a Bible on it. On the other end of the room were tins neatly arranged on a rack these served as the utensils. Besides the Utensil was a clay water pot sitting quietly in the silence. On the floor, the little girl cried. Tears rolled down her cheeks like the endless waters of River Nzoia, never ending. Her face had lost expression and one could not tell whether that was anger, bitterness or sadness that had settled on her face. She just stared blankly at the people in the doorway and wailed. Her voice did not seem to get exhausted, it just wailed on in a single monotonous tone that was as endless as the tears that rolled down her cheeks, endless as River Nzoia! Beside her lay the lifeless body of the woman. It lay sprawled across the floor facing the grass thatch roof of the house. The eyes were wide open and as pale as a sheet in the moonlight. Wide open, the eyes stared at the grass thatch roof trying to solve the puzzle of this brutal death by looking for an answer in the tufts of grass that made the thatch. Between her flabby breasts was lodged the kitchen knife, proud and firm. Her blood had soaked into the earth and had clotted where the knife had stabbed.
Outside the hut, people gathered in small groups and whispered in low tones. To the right of the hut lay two graves, one big and the other small. In the big grave lay Emanuel, the villagers called him Manu. In his life, he had been the husband to the woman lying sprawled on the floor. He had also fathered the two children, the girl who was crying tears as endless as the waters of River Nzoia and the little boy who lay in the smaller grave that lay beside the big grave, Manu’s grave.
The mother of the two little children was dead. No, not the woman lying sprawled in the hut with a knife in her chest. That too was dead but the mother of the children had died earlier. Manu had married the woman who lay sprawled with a knife in the heart but after unsuccessful trials, he realized that she was barren. He then demanded that the woman’s relatives provide him with a sibeyo, a compensation not to be married but to bear him the children his wife could not. Nafula, a smaller sister to the woman who lay dead in the hut, therefore gave birth to the two little children, Manu’s children. Was it bad luck or was it fate that got Nafula killed? She was swept away by the flooding waters of River Nzoia during a season of heavy rains. She had gone to fetch water at the river and she never returned, neither was her body ever found.
But death never gets tired of reaping. About a year ago, the grim reaper left villagers asking of the age old question, whence cometh another. In the Sigalame book of village records, the most drunkard slot was occupied by Manu. Never had Sigalame village seen a drunkard like Manu in its entire existence.
He spent entire nights and days drinking chang’aa at Senga’s place. He would cut trees in his compound, sell them as firewood to Senga in return for chang’aa. All this while, the woman with a knife between her flabby breasts, the little girl with River Nzoia tears and the boy lying in the small grave all went hungry. Manu drank on and on as his wife and children slept hungry. On coming home after a spree, he would belch stale alcohol onto the woman’s face as he asked for food. Realizing that no food was forthcoming, he would slap her, kick her and later on enter her. All this time he would be calling her names, barren, useless, ugly, all names. The woman never talked because this, to her, was life.
As he kicked and slapped their mother, the little children would watch from a distance with hopeless eyes. Not only did they go hungry for days, not only did they walk naked in tatters, not only did they miss out on school but their mother also beat them. The anger that Manu nailed into their mother found an outlet in them. Immediately Manu would leave for Senga’s place after a night of beating his wife, the children would be faced with their own session of whacks. Very small mistakes earned them very thorough beatings. They had no one to turn to. Telling Manu about it would only infuriate her more and earn them more beatings when he was gone and if anything, he was never there to listen. At one time the little boy told the father about the beatings, this earned the woman an extra share to her normal beatings from Manu and subsequently earned the children an extra share of their beatings from her when he was gone.
A year ago, Manu was found dead in a ditch early one morning after he had disappeared for a whole week’s drinking. He had felled a whole tree that week and his supplies in exchange to firewood that week seemed endless at Senga’s. Nothing could get him out of Senga’s during that week, nothing except death. The woman buried him beside their hut and the few villagers who attended the funeral knew one thing for sure, never had Sigalame seen a drunkard as tough as Manu and all they were left to ask was; whence cometh another?
Last night when the little girl started crying, none of the villagers were bothered because they were used to the cries of the little girl. All they did was comment from the safety of their homes that ‘Mama Obuha beats that girl too much.’ After Emmanuel’s death, the woman intensified the beatings she gave the children. In her heart, she hated the two little angels with a passion. What bothered her most was the fact that they were not her real children. They only reminded her of her inability to give birth.
It was only two months after Emanuel’s death that Obuha died. The woman had sent him to the shop and on his way he had lost the five shillings that was to purchase a packet of salt. The woman consequently beat the child well. She took a piece of wood and thwacked the child as if she was pounding life out of a snake. The little boy sustained internal bleeding and after a week of ailing without any medical care, he died. As the boy took in his last gasps of air before his death, he gave the woman a long and hard look. The woman shivered at the stare from the boy and looked away. In the eyes, the woman saw vengeance, she saw hatred and revenge. All these in the eyes of a little boy, a little dying boy.
The villagers never knew the cause of Obuha’s death, they just buried him in a small grave beside his father’s. It is no wonder that when they heard the little girl crying last night, they were not moved. They only commented from the safety of their homes that ‘Mama Obuha beats that girl too much.’
While they were commenting from the safety of their huts, Mama Obuha was killing the small girl. The small girl had spilt some salt on the floor and the woman was determined to teach her that things were hard to come by in this hut. She picked the same piece of wood that had killed Obuha and started hitting the child. The deafening screams from the child pierced the quiet night in Sigalame but all the villagers could do was comment from the safety of their homes that Mama Obuha beats that girl too much.
The girl writhed on the floor as the piece of wood that had killed her brother landed heavily and mercilessly on her. The woman struck her ribs her back, her buttocks her head her everywhere! She was determined to teach this child that things in this hut were not bought by stones. How could she spill a whole pinch of salt? As she went on beating the child the woman felt rather than saw something move behind her back. She instinctively turned around and what she saw made her drop the piece of wood in disbelief.
She looked straight into those vengeful eyes, those hateful eyes, eyes burning with revenge, Obuha’s eyes. The boy, or was it his ghost held the Kitchen knife in his hand. On the floor, the little girl did not realize anything except that the beating had taken a break. She covered her head with her hands waiting for the beating to resume but to her amazement, she saw the limp body of the woman falling on her. On the woman’s chest between her flabby breasts, the kitchen knife was lodged, proud and firm. The rest of the house was quite and no one else was in sight.
Her heart beat faster as she raised her screams to higher pitches. Down her cheeks, tears as endless as the waters of River Nzoia freely flowed. In the safety of their houses, the villager only said that Mama Obuha beats that girl too much.
The villagers only went to find out what was happening when they realized that the child’s screams had lasted the whole night and that she was still crying in the morning. Having called on the woman from outside her door and receiving the endless wails for an answer, they decided to bring down the door and they were met with one of death’s best masterpieces yet.
None of them dared enter the house. they only gathered in groups around the hut whispering in low tones as they waited for the police to arrive at the scene. To the right of the hut, two graves peacefully lay, one big and the other small. In the hut, the woman lay dead facing the grass thatch roof of the house. Beside her the little girl cried tears as endless as the waters of River Nzoia.

©2008 Otiato Opali

Emptiness

2008-03-19T17:15:00.002+03:00

When I finally merge with opulence
Drinking expensive wines
Buying her expensive gifts
Dispensing thirty pieces of silver
To bait young pointed breasts,
Will I forget about us?

This was supposed to be a poem about us,
With our outstretched hands, begging
With our sunken eyes, despairing
With our rumbling stomachs, hungering.

Instead, it’s an empty poem
A poem about our emptiness
The lie that is the reality we live.

As I work hard, I dream harder
Of driving my wife around
Taking my girlfriends to Hiltons
And taking my children to academies

When that day comes
Will I forget about us?
Of our wives under burdens of stale merchandise
Trekking to markets full of emptiness,
Our children plunging into sewages for a swim
Of how many we are, how few they want to remain
Of the emptiness that separates them from us.

So the poem remains unfinished
Not knowing whom to Ballard about,
The me I want to become
Driving as others starve,
The me I am
Starving as others drive,
The me I should be
Looking down if am up above.

And instead of singing a poem about us
My heart belts out in sadness
Screaming a cacophony of emptiness.

©2008 Otiato Opali

Mariwana!

2008-03-18T14:51:00.004+03:00

Following is a quotation from a Doctor who was investigating the effects of weed and decided to use the participant observer method of collecting information, quite something!

"I had taken the drug with great skepticism as to its reputed action, or at any rate with the opinion that it was grossly exaggerated, and I accordingly made up my mind not to be 'caught napping' in this way again, and to keep a careful watch over my thoughts. But while enforcing this resolution as I supposed, I found myself, to my own astonishment, waking from a reverie longer and more profound than any previous. From skepticism, to the fullest belief of all I had read on the subject, was but a step. Its effects so far surpassed anything which words can convey, that I began to think I was on the verge of narcotic poisoning; yet, strange to say, there was not the slightest feeling of inquietude on that account. I resolved to walk into the street. While rising from the chair, another lucid interval showed that another dream had come and gone. While passing through the door, I was aware of having wandered again, but how or when I had permitted myself to fall into the reverie I was perfectly unconscious, and knew only that it seemed to have lasted an interminable length of time." Dr. John Bell in 1857

Sending the day off

2008-03-10T10:33:00.016+03:00

Wretched of the earth.

2008-03-04T14:49:00.002+03:00

Lost Soul "Lives in the city but his heart is at home"

2008-02-29T12:28:00.003+03:00

Chichi dodos

2008-02-21T16:13:00.004+03:00

The Nation Television (NTV) recently aired a section of Professor Ali Mazrui’s Documentary Film The African, A triple Heritage. The section entitled ‘Tools of Exploitation’ tells the story of Africans as inhabitants of Africa, and of Africans as those whose heritage and culture stem from Africa though slavery robbed them of this heritage.
Watching the documentary, one can’t help but admire with awe the depth of knowledge that Mazrui commands and the eloquent way with which he renders it in the documentary film. Produced in 1986, the film has nine sixty-minute sections in the documentary series. The triple heritage in the film refers to the three main cultural influences on Africa: traditional African culture, Islamic culture, and Western culture.
The 1933 born scholar definitely enjoys the membership of the crème de la crème club of Kenyan and indeed African scholars. Having done considerable research into the problems facing Africa since the days of slavery to the present day globalization fad, Professor Ali Mazrui and his peers owe their motherland guidance in the struggle against imperialism from the West.
In the ‘Tools of Exploitation’, Mazrui picturesquely talks of the forced labour that Africans had to accord the West through slavery and how this has made the West forge ahead economically leaving Africa lagging behind. This notwithstanding, listening to Mazrui’s remarks on this issue, reminds one of a bird called the Chichi dodo talked about in Ayi Kweyi Armah’s The Beautyful Ones are Not Yet Born.
In this novel, Ayi Kweyi Armah creates an analogy of this interesting bird. The Chichi dodo claims to be a very clean bird which hates any form of filth. The bird goes through all pains to keep filth out of its way. The ironical thing about the Chichi dodo is that despite its sanitary standards, it feeds on maggots which are found in animal excrement. The bird feeds from the filth it so loathes.
This brings a question to mind, are the scholars we have in Africa positivist only in as far as academia is concerned or are they actually drinking the wine they preach against. How thin is the line that separates scholarly renditions from heartfelt reflections on the African problem?
These questions pop up because in his film, Mazrui talks of Africans being forcefully uprooted out of Africa to go and help industrialize the West while in his time, Mazrui willingly goes to live and work in the West and consequently helps the West to advance further through his knowledge. Sounds more like the Chichi dodo talking about the moral filth of the West when you have to live there for your food.
Mazrui is not alone in this situation. Great African scholars have written great books and advanced enviable arguments about the problems facing Africa. Most of them trace the problems to the instability the colonial masters introduced in Africa and which the West is still perpetuating through neo-colonialism and imperialism. What leaves one baffled is the fact that most if not all of these scholars end up getting attracted to the lusture of the very West they blame for Africa’s problems.
With the world becoming a global village, arguing that African scholars should not seek to teach in the West would be naïve. This notwithstanding, such scholars need to put their knowledge to work for the benefit of their homeland and not play leading roles in the brain drain drama directed by the West.
While Professor Mazrui is a Professor in the Humanities and Director of the Institute of Global Cultural Studies at Binghamton University, New York, in Africa, he holds the ceremonial positions of Professor-at-Large at the University of Jos in Nigeria and Chancellor of the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology in Kenya. I would like to believe that our ailing education systems need more attention from our scholars than the departments in New York universities.
Writers like Ngugi Wa Thiong’o have spent their whole lives fighting the capitalist ideology of the West and its exploitative ways but like the Chichi dodo, they have to live in the ‘filth’ for food. Ngugi left Kenya for political reasons and threats to his life. He vowed never to come back for as long as Moi was still the president and true to his word, he never did. It was only after Moi left power that Ngugi made his return. The return was not a return in the sense of the word, it was a visit because after a short stint in the country, he ‘returned’ to America.
Ngugi is now a Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature, and Director of the International Centre for Writing and Translation at the University of California Irvine. This has made Ngugi drift further away from home to the extent that he can not make authoritative deductions on the socio-political situations back at home.
In a recent article written by Ngugi and published on the internet by thepatrioticvanguard.com entitled Ngugi Wa Thiong’o Reflects on Mwai Kibaki and the 2007 Kenyan General Election, one can vividly see the way Ngugi’s grasp on the political scenario back at home is loosing its grip. He admits to determining the situation back at home using the services he receives at Kenyan diplomatic offices abroad.
He says “As a writer I try to get glimpses into the big picture through small things. I have seen a very improved courtesy in the Kenya embassies to which I have gone for services, especially in Los Angeles, Johannesburg and London, a far cry from the previous era.”
This clearly shows that Ngugi has lost touch with the have nots he spent all his literary energy on in trying to liberate the poor from yokes of oppression. The poor watchman who lives in Mathare Slums and the workers at the Export Processing Zone factories do not even know what kind of services are offered at Kenyan embassies.
In the wake of the post election violence recently experienced in Kenya, one wonders if the permanent and continued presence of scholars like Ngugi, Mazrui or Professor Makau Mutua in the country would have led to a different consciousness among the voters.
One wonders what moral authority scholars like Leopold Sedar Senghor had to accuse the West of plunder in Africa when they secretly went to bed with the same West. In his negritude poetic movement, Senghor talked in great praise of the marvelous nature of Africa and the beauty of being African. This conviction on the beauty of the African land, people and ways did not however stop him from spending the last years of his life with his wife in Normandy, France, where he passed away on 20 December 2001. As a token of thanks, the then French president Jacques Chirac and Lionel Jospin the Prime Minister did not attend his funeral held on 29 December 2001 in Dakar.
It is time our scholars gave up their highly paying jobs and trooped back home to help us in moving our continent forward. If they do believe in the theories they advance and the arguments they make, they should place their country and continent before their materialistic gains. They should stop building the West because of the monetary gain they get from it. It is time they stopped talking the talk and started walking the walk.

Existing, not Living

2008-02-19T14:28:00.002+03:00

Interesting

2008-01-06T10:15:00.000+03:00

That since someone stole your vote
And asked you to go to court
You slay my wife
And point me to court to claim her life.

Interesting.

Someone tell me, I pray
What does my wife
Have to do with your courts
And votes?

Moi's 'Pheuks!'

2008-01-01T12:14:00.000+03:00

Dear Lena, wherever you are,

I am writing you this letter because I am happy beyond words. We made it again! Though Giddy lost his seat, the rest were mercilessly floored and The Rift valley rejected me, This man Agwambo was stopped yet again.
I chose to send you this letter because I could not think of anyone else to share my predicament with. The whole world knows how aloof I was while I was still the president of Kenya. I also happened to make more enemies than friends during my tenure courtesy of my use and dump policies so I am left with no one else to talk to. Just hear me out like a friend would hear out a friend. I know you envy the way Kibaki allows his wife to talk too much and wield a lot of power and you wish I would do the same with you but that is in the past. Let’s bury the hatchet and just hear me out.
During my tenure, some not-so-good things happened. You remember the slightly over Kshs. 100 billion that found its way into my bank accounts abroad? Some people calling themselves Kroll have sniffed this out. Had Uhuru Kenyatta, my protégé and puppet, made it to Statehouse, none of this would be worrying me.
When Kibaki became president, I was so worried that he would scathingly launch an assault into my past over-indulgences. However, this man had been my vice president for ten years and there was no way he would humiliate me to that extent. He had himself dipped his hand into the candy jar while he was my vice president and all the years he had been in government since our independence. I used to bait them with this or that here or there and they were all part of my choreography. Kibaki had also sat and watched as his buddies emptied public coffers during his presidency. He therefore had to scratch my back the way he expected his to be scratched when his own retirement came.
But there is this man Agwambo. In the first place, had it not been for him, Uhuru would have been president. The whole world knows by now how he single handedly brought down KANU, a party that had for forty years ruled Kenya with impunity. Since it was he who helped Kibaki in becoming president, (Kibaki had made two miserable attempts in the past) he tried to put pressure on Kibaki to have me investigated. Kibaki on his part distanced himself from Agwambo and surrounded himself with people who were concerned with ‘eating’ as Lina Jebii Kilimo, an outgoing Member of Parliament, put it.
Kibaki having adopted this strategy, I retired into enjoying my retirement. One area in which Kibaki managed to beat me was in his supposed development record. He threw billions at his eating buddies and a paltry amount went to building roads and stuff. During my days, we ate everything! Consequently, banks like Equity Bank took five years to grow to heights that government owned banks like the Kenya Commercial Bank could not in over thirty years. Instead of government tenders being awarded to government owned banks, they were awarded to Equity, to his eating buddies. It should therefore not come as a surprise that this bank’s owners and other individuals who had similarly gained from Kibaki’s government could afford to pay a million Kenyan Shillings for a plate of food to help fund the president’s re-election bid. A president who had promised to end economic disparities had friends who could pay 1million per plate when Kenyans are sleeping hungry!
Since I was sure Kibaki would protect me, I decide to campaign for him during his second bid but being the tribalist I am, I only campaigned for him in Rift Valley province because I knew as a tribal leader, only my tribe would hear me. But this man Agwambo is a schemer my dear Lena. Even his father could not manouvre in this manner. I had perfectly contained his father through detentions and manipulations but this man Agwambo is a different species of a politician all together. Talking of detentions, I detained one Kenneth Matiba for just two years and he came out with his wits upside down. This man Agwambo on the other hand spent eight good years in detention and came out better than he has ever been.
I was greatly perturbed when it became apparent that he was the one who was going to take over the government. Like Kibaki, I had decided to fool myself that he would not make it but after the people voted, it became clear as day that Kenyans wanted him. It was then that the reality of what was to come dawned on me my dear. Time to pay for my sins had come. We had to act fast. Luckily, Kibaki has these greedy ‘eaters’ I told you about around him and they wouldn’t let the chance to fatten slip away. And like myself, they knew only too well that the Agwambo Presidency would nail them as well, they and we would have to cough up what we stole from Kenyans. They therefore decided to blatantly manufacture votes for Kibaki (and people thought I was the worst) and now This man Agwambo has been stifled again.
And so, my dear Lena, though our sons have been humiliated and though Rift Valley is no longer under our hold, This man Agwambo is not yet there, and should never get there otherwise…

Yours,
Man Torro.

Caitani Mutharabaini! (Devil On The Cross Remixed!)

2008-01-01T12:03:00.000+03:00

And today the biggest thieves in the country gathered in a cave at Golden Hills, Illmorog, to celebrate their latest victory and compare notes on how well each one of them stole in this latest conquest.

This big shots had made a bet that the one who would steal the most and do it most skillfully would be decorated with the second highest office in the land, the vice presidency.
Before setting off for the uphill task of stealing, they had gathered here in Illmorog, in this very cave at the heart of Golden Hills, and they had been convinced by the reigning Thief of The Year record holder that they had no option but to steal, and steal hard.
Rattling like a snake, the record holder told the thieves who had gathered then that the people of this country were tired with their stealing ways. He reminded them how this government had been busy stealing and that the people were not blind. They had seen it all and they were now ready to take the devil and crucify him on the cross. He cited a few thieving cases they had been involved in and that had incensed the people. AngloFleecing, TelkomSale, ArturMargaSargasyan, EthnoCentralism and MeChukism to mention just but a few.
You have to steal their birthright too! he thundered. The people are angry and they are now wise, they will throw us out. We therefore need to not only steal material thing from them to keep the down, we need to steal their very essence, their constitutional voice, their only voice! Our ancestors (the pioneer thieves) once said, Iba kahora uibe matiku mainge (Steal Slowly Slowly So That You Can Steal For Many Days) but these are not the ancestral days, things have changed and we have to steal big because this is our last shot at it. With that, the reigning Thief of The Year Record holder sent them off to go yonder and steal.
And today the biggest thieves in the country gathered in the very same cave at Golden Hills, Illmorog, to celebrate their latest victory and compare notes on how well each one of them stole in this latest conquest. But they were all crest-fallen. The people had greatly massacred them. Their KKK party (Kiama Kiria Kiraathana) had been slaughtered at the altar of democracy.
Nursing their wounds, they trooped back into the cave with shame hanging around their necks like a boulder, drowning them in the sea of defeat. Their biggest shame was the humiliation their commander in chief had received. He had been trounced mercilessly by the people he had betrayed for so long. His only hope came through the Reigning Thief Of The Year record holder who was now at the podium addressing the humiliated thieves.
I now understand why you people are always behind, he bellowed. You can’t steal, that’s why. Look at our people, they are the biggest thieves and they are the richest people in the land. They are represented in all cadres of theft, from pick-pocketing through bank robberies to government fleecing and vote rigging.
When we last met, he continued, I asked you to go forth and steal but you just couldn’t! Our Chief was therefore beaten in all the regions except our region. I had to do the dirty work for you and literary add figures for this win to come. Am gravely disappointed by your thieving skills.
All of you who do not come from this ethnocentralistic community and lack the skills in stealing will therefore have to undergo a specialized stealing training before being appointed to any post in this last chance we have to steal. The one who shows most promise will be given the second highest seat, now that you were all unable to steal and make our win easy. This is the last leg we are having and we can’t afford people can’t steal, he concluded.
As they walked back home, they thanked the reigning Thief of The Year record holder for saving their skin at the last minute. The people had caught the devil, flogged him and hung him on the cross but the reigning Thief of The Year had come rattling like a snake and brought the devil down from the cross, nursing him and giving him a new chance to bedevil us for five more years!

Prostitutes and Wives

2007-11-30T11:35:00.000+03:00

Prostitution is the one profession that has been painted in a bad light for so long by people who have gained most from it. These are none other than the women whose men indulge in the business. Am serious! For reasons that am about to highlight, women will be happier if they imagined their husbands with prostitutes than with anyone else because there has to be someone all the same.
Though I will refer to the profession as ‘prostitution’ and the professionals as ‘prostitutes’ herein, it’s for convenience purposes only. I personally don’t like these references, they sound demeaning to say the least.
Nowadays, secretaries are referred to as administrative assistants, watchmen as security personnel and toilet cleaners as sanitary officers. Why then do we insist on calling our prostitutes prostitutes (no pun intended).We have an array of euphemisms to choose from, ranging from commercial companions to Plan Bs.
Anyway, to tell the truth and shame the devil, all men are cheats. Whether they swear by the breasts of their dead grandmothers, they will always have extracurricular sex, period. However convincingly they deny it, they will always have that extra share of the cake. It is only natural, just like women like soaps so do men love football. In the same vein, just like women love gifts and expensive dinners so do men love sex.
This does not mean that men don’t fall in love. They do. To men, love does not equate to sex, they can love one woman but have sex with any number. Women on the other hand consider sex and love as synonymous, unless they are Plan Bs. A man can therefore have sex with numerous women but only make love to one. It’s only natural. It’s no wonder that our universities have awarded all of them MBAs, Married But Available.
(N.B: Don’t expect your man to accept these allegations. This is the one and only area where men say no when they actually mean yes.)
Since it is given that men will always play these ‘away matches’, let’s examine the options they have. The first is running after young school girls and college students or worse still, the maids in their backyards.
I know wives will not want this. The school and college girls may be younger and probably prettier than the wives and the men may get obsessed with them. Maids on the other hand are out of question, which self respecting woman can stand the fact that her husband is fooling around with a maid, and worse still, in their backyard?
The second option is to have an affair with other viable women. This is more challenging to the wives because such a setup will demand that the man diverts attention and resources to the other woman. This sounds like a direct threat to the wife’s capacity as the incumbent. Women don’t take lightly to competition and that is what an affair such as this presents them with. Second wives are normally end results of such affairs. An affair also creates a window for the man to possibly fall in love with the other woman since they spend some reasonable time together. Consequently, he might fall out of love with the First Lady. Now, we don’t want that ladies, do we?
The other option is masturbation but please, let’s not even go there.
Enter prostitution, the oldest profession in the world. This is the best kind of infidelity a woman can ever wish for her partner. This is because it serves its purpose with fine precision. Men do have sex plurally, we are already agreed on that. This method therefore allows them to do so without raising any questions since nobody who matters ever finds out. It also transpires without creating a conflict of interest between the wife and the service provider. It is cash on delivery business, nothing more. You pay, get the services and go to hell (or wherever it is you came from).
When a man goes for a school girl, he might be tempted to skin-dive by assuming the young girl is innocent. When he has an affair, he will eventually develop trust for the other woman and they might start having unprotected sex. Not so with the prostitute. Since he knows only too well the nature of her occupation, he will always use condoms. This therefore serves as the safest type of stolen sex.
A prostitute’s contract ends once a man puts his pair of trousers back on. The transaction is always so professional that a man can bump into the prostitute in the company of his wife and have a chat with her (the prostitute) without arousing any jealousy from either woman. A fling with a prostitute is therefore by no means a threat to the relationship between a man and his woman.
A man may repeatedly visit the same prostitute due to services well rendered but that will be about all there is to it. Show me a man who falls in love with a prostitute and I will show you a confused man.
Prostitutes do not therefore pose any threat to the incumbent’s territory. They just help the men do what they have to do. Men will rarely go for a lasting relationship with a prostitute.
Am therefore not asking women to allow or encourage their men to chase prostitutes around, all am asking them to do is not to despise these noble women or sneer at them whenever they talk about them or happen to meet them. Women are right in thinking that once a man loves them, he never desires any other but deep down their hearts they should harbour one prayer and that is; if my husband decides to cheat, let it be with a prostitute.

Villainy.

2007-11-30T11:22:00.000+03:00

Locked away in my solitude
You passed by exuding your fragpranks
Then you smiled and smiled
And I let you in.

With your right hand
You bewitched me with your wand,
With your left
You stabbed at my heart,
And smiled and smiled
And I let you stay.

Having sucked me dry
You cynically walked out
Leaving my spent self cursing after you
But you smile and smile
And I miss your villainy.

© 2007 Otiato Opali

Nana's Trilogy

2007-11-27T11:03:00.000+03:00

“… and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.” Genesis 3:16.

But For Those Breasts.

(Morning: listening to the office messenger)

Couldn’t believe it was her
Having seen her still a toddler,
She sounded twelve, but looked twenty!

But those breasts!
I would have said hi
But for those breasts,
I didn’t even see her wave
Courtesy of those breasts.

They were so full
Pressing hard against her blouse
I must have salivated for them
Those breasts, full breasts
God! I wished she wasn’t twelve.

Next time I met her
Couldn’t face her and her breasts
For those breasts, I had learnt
Were full for breastfeeding.

The one responsible (or is it irresponsible)
Is a respected man.
A wealthy man
A family man
And above all, a responsible man.

They Puff Away

(Lunchtime: Jivanjee Gardens)

I passed them puffing at the smoking zone
And my lungs were inflated with desire,
The cigarette whiff sent craving deep down my bone
I yearned to partake of the nicotine fire.

They puffed away their cigarettes
While laughing away my predicament.
Puffed and puffed and puffed
Laughed and laughed and laughed,
Laughing at my handicap
My inability to join them for a puff.

Not a single lady was in the smoking zone
Not that not a single lady smokes
But that not a single lady is expected to be seen smoking.

So they puff away at the nicotine of power
Puff away at wealth control
Puff away at the pleasures of MAN-kind
Puff and laugh, laugh and puff.

The doomed us watch with craving eyes
Wishing we could walk in and share in the puffing
But society returns us a cynical stare,
We are not forbidden to puff
But we are not expected to!

Painting Of the Sun and the Rock

(Evening: My boss and I)

He rants on and on
Drooling foolishly, smiling deviously
He chants on and on
Devouring me with his greedy eyes.

My eyes, bored, blankly stare past him
To the painting on the wall
A painting of a rock in the sun’s glare.

The sun victoriously shimmers its rays on the rock
Celebrating its effortless conquest
Devouring the rock with its mighty splendour.

In the morning, it would blaze the rock’s face
Afternoon, scorch the rock’s top
Evening, rage the rock’s back.

Reigning over the rock day in day out
Hitting the rock from all angles.

Shrewdly, the rock lies in silence
Guarding its secret from the sun with its life
For whatever angle the sun takes
The rock will never show it its shadow
Its dark side, its hidden side.

They rant on and on
Chant on and on
But we are the rock in the painting
And they will never know our secret side,
Our woman side!

© 2007 Otiato Opali

Kibaki and Smokers

2007-11-21T16:04:00.002+03:00

It is election time yet again and the promises are flowing in like hell. This is the first time am in a proper mind to notice this lie that electioneering is. In the last election in 2002, I was a drunk undergraduate who dint have time for election crap, the elections preceding that found me too young to grasp anything.
This time round, am a broke and jobless graduate with all the time to ask 'what went wrong' since am beginning to feel that political misappropriation is partly responsible for my barrenness.
When this government came to power, they swept our filthy system so clean it hurt. The matatu industry was shaken into sobriety. What's more, even the touts had to put on Uniforms.
The hawkers on their part were not spared. They were swept out of the city centre to a distant ten kilometre away since they were an 'eyesore' in our beautiful city. With them went the street families and street urchins dragging away their jigger infested limbs to where tourists could not see them.
There are also these characters in the name of Mungiki, most of whom were the youth. After terrorizing the country for long enough, the government decided to roll up its sleeves and engage them in a fist fight. The president and his internal security minister ordered the police to leave no mungiki skull un-cracked, fire would be met with fire. What followed was a massive man-hunt that saw many a youth, most of them mungiki, sink six feet under.
We also bore the brunt of these new guidelines. We were not allowed to smoke aimlessly in the streets and inconvenience non-smokers with our cancer-ridden exhalations. They made seclusions for us and like animals in an amusement park, other city residents pointed at us as they passed by our designated smoking zones.
That was then, this is now. The city cleaners are now back and this time it is not to sweep us away but to woo our votes. Knowing only too well that all that ordeal they put us through was for a right cause but not being manly enough to stand by it and let history judge them, they approach us with a devious smile, half apologetic for the 'cleaning' they had to do while in office.
Its interesting what people can do to remain in power. They can even go as far as discrediting their 'good record' just to remain in power. As we speak, the hawkers in the city center are more than the other city residents going about their businesses in the Nairobi City. Their brothers, the street urchins, are back too smearing the pavements with jiggers and feaces as they beg for a penny.
(Just a Sidekick: If the economy really grew as they claim it did during their tenure, how comes the number of hawkers has seemingly doubled and the street communities are growing into societies?)
Recently, I was surprised to read in the press that the president had relaxed the rules for touts and they dont have to report to work in uniform. The reasons given were that the uniforms were expensive and costly for the touts who earn a pittance. Wasn't that the case when the rule was being introduced and if not, has the economy grown that bad that uniforms that were cheap then are expensive now?
The president has also asked the police to stop brutalising the youth (read mungiki). Is this some sort of guilt on the government's side? And why should they feel guilty if what they did was right. I am getting this feeling that to get votes, you cant just stand up to be counted, you have to renounce your reforms if you have a feeling that they might have rubbed some people the wrong way. Is this what democrazy means in your dictionaries? Someone should enlighten me.
Now to my predicament. Someone has deliberately decided to forget about us, the smokers. Despite all the good rules being relaxed all around us, we still have to gather in shaming groups at designated spaces to take our cancer sticks. Mr. president and your men, we too have votes you know. We also need the reprieve.
Why not let us go back to smoking in the streets like the hawkers are now allowed to sore eyes in the city center and like the chokoras are now allowed to smear the pavements? Together with the touts who don't have to wear uniform for now and the 'youth' who are not being harassed by the police, we will go back to our pre-election existence once you get to power.
After all, its votes you want for now and its votes we smokers also have, for now. I speak for the smokers you speak for want of the votes, do you hear me?