Questions the Media have refused to ask

Many people have died alongside Ainamoi MP David Kimutai Too as violent demonstrations rocked several towns in Kenya.

As a smiling Andrew Muache was being led in and out of the courtroom, several questions remain unasked as the Fourth Estate shows its obvious bias and intent to black out some voices.

• It has been claimed by the police commish that the killer and the second victim whose name has been given as Eunice* went to the same police college, who were their friends there? Who knew them? Where they lovers?
• Where is the family of the so called Eunice. Did they know Andrew?
• What about the MPs wife, did she know if her husband had an affair?

I just need to know....otherwise the doubts will linger on forever as the Kemilio seeks to murder people and justify its habit of changing colours.

Every day is a gift

I don't know what information to trust following the Killing of the Ainamoi MP.

The newspaper i read did not quote the murdered MP's parents or siblings or anyone else giving their side of the story.

Neither did i hear from the media any interviews with any relatives or friends of the woman who was with this MP, and who later succumbed to injuries at an Eldoret hospital.

I don't know if this is government propaganda.

I have decided to spend my days like every day is a gift, and it could be my last day on earth.

There is violence all around me, all i can do is thank God for the gift of my life.

Naivasha

Naivasha is the place where i went for holiday last Christmas.

It was the best Christmas i have had in years. For the first time i was not sitting at the news desk waiting for non-existent happenings.

I took a boat ride on the scening lake Naivasha and i was divine. I slept on a campsite near the lake and felt some form of almost heavenly bliss....



My friend Ayoo drove us from Nairobi in less than an hour.

I cant go to Naivasha anymore. Neither can Ayoo. We would be dead meat once spotted anywhere near there.

Why are you digging your own grave?

I have been reading other people’s blogs, and I am amazed at our collective ability to throw words around irresponsibly...not thinking sometimes the things we "think" might just come true.

Most bloggers are probably writing from the comfort of western cities, not like me here, who watches out in case somebody gets to my building and flushes me out, or burns me as I sleep, God forbid.

The night before we went to the polls I had a strange dream….

My aunt Pilpina was asking me in the dream, “Why are you digging your own grave…?”

And then I looked closely at myself in the dream. I was wearing overalls and in the process of constructing a road, at the far end there was a freshly dug grave. It was labelled with my full names on it.

I have never constructed a road before. In that dream I was carrying heavy rocks and building a road, I don’t know where. The only heavy manual work I have ever done is dig my garden of sukuma wiki and nyanya at Imara Daima estate.

I wondered to myself what this dream meant. I still wonder.

I wonder more because my aunt Pilpina is dead. She died last week in Bondo in a road accident. And to make matters worse, I cannot even dare go to her funeral this weekend.

I could also not go to my cousin Tony's funeral. I remember sitting at the News Desk when my dad called. He told me Tony had been shot in Kisumu by police as the town erupted following the illegal declaration of Kemilio as the president. at that time, insensitive souls were cheering on as they watched TV footage of people being shot at, in Kisumu. One lady, whom i shall not name, went on shouting, "They are all thugs."

Is everyone in Kisumu a thug?

I can confirm that Tony was not a thug. His only crime was being at the bus stop trying to get transport back to Nairobi after fulfilling his civic duties of casting his vote.

And then again, one polarised journalist at my workplace agreed with the police spokesman that the two guys caught on camera being shot dead was fiction. He argued with me endlessly that the recording had been "doctored."

I am not amused. Neither am i blind.

Am I digging my own grave? Are Kenyans digging their own graves?

Marauding gangs have blocked all roads. I don’t think I can travel beyond Uthiru.

These days the dreams are different.

I always dream I am at my workplace, updating the websites with gory stories of death and murder.

It is haunting.

Open Letter to Kivuitu

This letter hit my inbox earlier today. I do share the sentiments of the authour, that's why i am reproducing it here.

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AN OPEN LETTER TO SAMUEL KIVUITU, CHAIR OF THE ELECTORAL COMMISSION OF KENYA

Mr. Kivuitu,
We've never met. It's unlikely we ever will. But, like every other Kenyan, I will remember you for the rest of my life. The nausea I feel at the mention of your name may recede. The bitterness and grief will not.
You had a mandate, Mr. Kivuitu. To deliver a free, fair and transparent election to the people of Kenya . You and your commission had 5 years to prepare. You had a tremendous pool of resources, skills, technical support, to draw on, including the experience and advice of your peers in the field - leaders and experts in governance, human rights, electoral process and constitutional law. You had the trust of 37 million Kenyans.

We believed it was going to happen. On December 27th, a record 65% of registered Kenyan voters rose as early as 4am to vote. Stood in lines for up to 10 hours, in the sun, without food, drink, toilet facilities. As the results came in, we cheered when minister after powerful minister lost their parliamentary seats. When the voters of Rift Valley categorically rejected the three sons of Daniel Arap Moi, the despot who looted Kenya for 24 years. The country spoke through the ballot, en masse, against the mindblowing greed, corruption, human rights abuses, callous dismissal of Kenya 's poor, that have characterised the Kibaki administration.

But Kibaki wasn't going to go. When it became clear that you were announcing vote tallies that differed from those counted and confirmed in the constituencies, there was a sudden power blackout at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre, where the returns were being announced. Hundreds of GSU (General Service Unit) paramilitaries suddenly marched in. Ejected all media except the government mouthpiece Kenya Broadcasting Corporation.

Fifteen minutes later, we watched, dumbfounded, as you declared Kibaki the winner. 30 minutes later, we watched in sickened disbelief and outrage, as you handed the announcement to Kibaki on the lawns of State House. Where the Chief Justice, strangely enough, had already arrived. Was waiting, fully robed, to hurriedly swear him in.

You betrayed us. Perhaps we'll never know when, or why, you made that decision. One rumor claims you were threatened with the execution of your entire family if you did not name Kibaki as presidential victor. When I heard it, I hoped it was true. Because at least then I could understand why you chose instead to plunge our country into civil war.

I don't believe that rumor any more. Not since you appeared on TV, looking tormented, sounding confused, contradicting yourself. Saying, among other things, that you did not resign because you "did not want the country to call me a coward", but you "cannot state with certainty that Kibaki won the election". Following that with the baffling statement "there are those around him [Kibaki] who should never have been born." The camera operator had a sense of irony - the camera shifted several times to the scroll on your wall that read: "Help Me, Jesus."

As the Kenya Chapter of the International Commission of Jurists rescinds the Jurist of the Year award they bestowed on you, as the Law Society of Kenya strikes you from their Roll of Honour and disbars you, I wonder what goes through your mind these days.

Do you think of the 300,000 Kenyans displaced from their homes, their lives? Of the thousands still trapped in police stations, churches, any refuge they can find, across the country? Without food, water, toilets, blankets? Of fields ready for harvest, razed to the ground? Of granaries filled with rotting grain, because no one can get to them? Of the Nairobi slum residents of Kibera, Mathare, Huruma, Dandora, ringed by GSU and police, denied exit, or access to medical treatment and emergency relief, for the crime of being poor in Kenya ?

I bet you haven't made it to Jamhuri Park yet. But I'm sure you saw the news pictures of poor Americans, packed like battery chickens into their stadiums, when Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana . Imagine that here in Nairobi , Mr. Kivuitu. 75,000 Kenyans, crammed into a giant makeshift refugee camp. Our own Hurricane Kivuitu-Kibaki, driven by fire, rather than floods. By organized militia rather than crumbling levees. But the same root cause - the deep, colossal contempt of a tiny ruling class for the rest of humanity. Over 60% of our internal refugees are children. The human collateral damage of your decision.

And now, imagine grief, Mr. Kivuitu. Grief so fierce, so deep, it shreds the muscle fibres of your heart. Violation so terrible, it grinds down the very organs of your body, forces the remnants through your kidneys, for you to piss out in red water. Multiply that feeling by every Kenyan who has watched a loved one slashed to death in the past week. Every parent whose child lies, killed by police bullets, in the mortuaries of Nairobi , Kisumu, Eldoret. Everyone who has run sobbing from a burning home or church, hearing the screams of those left behind. Every woman, girl, gang-raped.

Do you sleep well these days, Mr. Kivuitu? I don't. I have nightmares. I wake with my heart pounding, slow tears trickling from the corners of my eyes, random phrases running through my head:
Remember how we felt in 2002? It's all gone. (Muthoni Wanyeki, ED of Kenya Human Rights Commission, on the night of December 30th, 2007, after Kibaki was illegally sworn in as president).

There is a crime here that goes beyond recrimination. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolise. (John Steinbeck, American writer, on the betrayal of internally displaced Americans, in The Grapes of Wrath)
Haki iwe ngao na mlinzi....kila siku tuwe na shukrani ("Justice be our shield and defender....every day filled with thanksgiving" Lines from Kenya 's national anthem)

I soothe myself back to patchy sleep with my mantra in these terrible days, as our country burns and disintegrates around us:
Courage. Courage comes. Courage comes from cultivating. Courage comes from cultivating the habit. Courage comes from cultivating the habit of refusing. Courage comes from cultivating the habit of refusing to let fear dictate one's actions. (Aung San Suu Kyi, Burmese Nobel Peace Prize winner).

I wake with a sense of unbearable sadness. Please let it not be true.....
Meanwhile, the man you named President cowers in the State House, surrounded by a cabal of hardline power brokers, and a bevy of sycophantic unseated Ministers and MPs, who jostle for position and succession. Who fuel the fires by any means they can, to keep themselves important, powerful, necessary. The smoke continues to rise from the torched swathes of Rift Valley, the gutted city of Kisumu , the slums of Nairobi and Mombasa . The Red Cross warns of an imminent cholera epidemic in Nyanza and Western Kenya , deprived for days now of electricity and water. Containers pile up at the Port of Mombasa , as ships, unable to unload cargo, leave still loaded. Uganda , Rwanda , Burundi , Southern Sudan , the DRC, all dependent on Kenyan transit for fuel and vital supplies, grind to a halt.

A repressive regime rolls out its panoply of oppression against legitimate dissent. Who knew our police force had so many sleek, muscled, excellently-trained horses, to mow down protestors? Who guessed that in a city of perennial water shortages, we had high-powered water cannons to terrorize Kenyans off the streets?

I am among the most fortunate of the fortunate. Not only am I still whole, alive, healthy, mobile; not only do I have food, shelter, transport, the safety of those I love; I have the gift of work. I have the privilege to be in the company of the most brilliant, principled, brave, resilient Kenyans of my generation. To contribute whatever I can as we organize, strategize, mobilize, draw on everything we know and can do, to save our country. I marvel at the sheer collective volume of trained intelligence, of skill, expertise, experience, in our meetings. At the ability to rise above personal tragedy - families still hostage in war zones, friends killed, homes overflowing with displaced relatives - to focus on the larger picture and envisage a solution. I listen to lawyers, economists, youth activists, humanitarians; experts on conflict, human rights, governance, disaster relief; to Kenyans across every sector and ethnicity, and I think:

Is this what we have trained all our lives for? To confront this epic catastrophe, caused by a group of old men who have already sucked everything they possibly can out of Kenya , yet will cling until they die to their absolute power?

You know these people too, Mr. Kivuitu. The principled, brave, resilient, brilliant Kenyans. The idealists who took seriously the words we sang as schoolchildren, about building the nation. Some of them worked closely with you, right through the election. Some called you friend. You don't even have the excuse that Kibaki, or his henchmen, might offer - that of inhabiting a world so removed from ours that they cannot fathom the reality of ordinary Kenyans. You know of the decades of struggle, bloodshed, faith and suffering that went into creating this fragile beautiful thing we called the "democratic space in Kenya ." So you can imagine the ways in which we engage with the unimaginable. We coin new similes:
lie low like a 16A (the electoral tally form returned by each constituency, many of which were altered or missing in the final count)

We joke about the Kivuitu effect - which turns internationalists, pan-Africanists, fervent advocates for the dissolution of borders, into nationalists who cry at the first verse of the national anthem .

Ee Mungu nguvu yetu
Ilete baraka kwetu
Haki iwe ngao na mlinzi
Natukae na undugu
Amani na uhuru
Raha tupate na ustawi.

O God of all creation
Bless this our land and nation
Justice be our shield and defender
May we dwell in unity
Peace and liberty
Plenty be found within our borders.

Rarely do we allow ourselves pauses, to absorb the enormity of our country shattered, in 7 days. We cry, I think, in private. At least I do. In public, we mourn through irony, persistent humor, and action. Through the exercise of patience, stamina, fortitude, generosity, that humble me to witness. Through the fierce relentless focus of our best energies towards challenges of stomach-churning magnitude. We tell the stories that aren't making it into the press: the retired general in Rift Valley sheltering 200 displaced families on his farm, the Muslim Medical Professionals offering free treatment to anyone injured in political protest. We challenge, over and over again, with increasing weariness, the international media coverage that presents this as "tribal warfare", "ethnic conflict", for an audience that visualises Africa through Hollywood : Hotel Rwanda, The Last King of Scotland, Blood Diamond.

I wish you'd thought of those people, when you made the choice to betray them. I wish you'd drawn on their courage, their integrity, their clarity, when your own failed you. I wish you'd had the imagination to enter into the lives, the dreams, of 37 million Kenyans.

But, as you've probably guessed by now, Mr. Kivuitu, this isn't really a letter to you at all. This is an attempt to put words to what cannot be expressed in words. To mourn what is too immense to mourn. A clumsy groping for something beyond the word 'heartbreak'. A futile attempt to communicate what can only be lived, moment by moment. This is a howl of anguish and rage. This is a love letter to a nation. This is a long low keening for my country.

A VERY DISSAPPOINTED KENYAN CITIZEN – Ogubi Hudson.

Losing my sleep over my country

Last night i didnt' get to sleep at all. No. I tried but it was just a waste of time. It's difficult to sleep at such times. Not with that image of an unarmed protester shot in cold blood that was aired on KTN news replaying itself on my mind. Why are Kenyans not being allowed to protest? Clearly, KTN showed images of a peaceful demo in Eldoret town earlier, and all hell broke loose as soon as the GSU arrived. In Central province, processions and prayers were held and nobody was arrested or dispersed for unlawful assembly. There were no deaths, and no casualties. But why, oh why is this 'law' on public gatherings being given double standards? Why cant ODM supporters be left to demonstrate! Is it not a human right? Ordinary Kenyans like me have nothing else to do. I cannot attempt to demonstrate because i cannot run faster than the police. No body wants to hear my voice. I can only pray, and ask my fellow muslims to invoke the 'halbadiri'. I hope one person will drop down dead as a result of my prayers. That person is one 'Kemilio'. As Ali Kiba sings in his hit song "cinderella" 'Hakuna aujuaye rangi ya Kinyonga ila yeye na muumba..." for now "rangi ya Kemilio ni nyekundu...imepakwa na damu ya wakenya".

We must protest, but who will teach us to do it peacefully?

A majority of Kenyans are feeling wronged. They are feeling wasted, abused and denied their democratic right.

Many people are feeling wasted because they spent lots of hours queuing to cast their votes, and yet, apparently to them, it was not a transparent process. They felt all their efforts came to nothing and now, they are angry.

That anger can clearly be seen in the outburst of violence that broke immediately after the announcement of the presidential results. The burning of homes and the Eldoret church massacre are just some of these instances. These are clearly things which are not ‘Kenyan.’

I felt the outburst of anger from the comfort of my office chair on the same day the president was re-elected and sworn in.

I received a distress call from a brother. He said his neighbourhood was on fire. Marauding gangs from the neighbouring Kibera had moved into Olympic estate and were stealing and setting houses on fire. His house was spared, at least for some time, because he could speak the same ethnic language as the attackers and pleaded with them not to loot.

Later on, he called to tell me the looters were stealing everything from the houses in his estate, including the doors and gates! Apparently, they were ripping houses apart, removing the plumbing fittings and destroying anything they could.

Many days later, one could see the protesters’ anger by looking at the remnants of that estate. And the anger is visible when one looks at Kisumu, now a shadow of its former self. Eldoret and Kericho, with their overhelming numbers of displaced people and looted shops in Mombasa and of course, several grieving families.

I also felt that anger when I sat at a café in town, sipping coffee. When it was news time, a big TV was switched on and everyone milled around to catch the latest happenings. As new ministers were being sworn in, two men moved to my table to catch a better glimpse of the goings-on. And then I heard shattering remarks. The men claimed Kambas were going to be the next in line to be killed, because their leaders had apparently moved to the “wrong” political divide.

The problem with most Kenyans, o is that they don’t know how to protest. That is why we have seen a scenario of people burnt up in a church, because their aggressors saw no better way to express their anger than kill, maim and loot from people who share something they consider to be in common with their enemy – ethnic origin.


And peace makers have been preaching on televisions urging people to be peaceful. They are saying, do not kill your neighbour, do not burn your neighbours’ house and lots of other things. And yet they are not telling people who are feeling deeply aggrieved how to release their anger.

From the International non-violence protest movement, we have seen many examples of peaceful protest. Demonstrations, Sit-ins and sit-downs – where the aggrieved parties move to certain areas for a period of time to express their anger, “haunting” the powers that be, by using volunteers to follow and haunt particular officials until they get tired and listen to one’s cause are just but few of these methods. And from our own traditions, we saw how Uhuru Park was safeguarded in the early 1990s as women striped naked in protest.

If only Mahatma Gandhi was here to preach non-violence methods of protest to Kenyans!

Unfortunately for our society, we seem to be unkind to such types of protests. It was only last year that a group of disabled hawkers kept vigil while on a hunger strike outside the building where I work for almost a month and nobody seemed to care.

It is heart wrenching for me to see my fellow women-folk, peacefully demonstrating, being dispersed by police and tear gas. I suppose if the police just left protesters to march and march until they got tired, their anger would be a little bit soothed.

As long as the root causes of people’s anger is not satisfied, or at least seen to be satisfied, then our people might continue resorting to unorthodox means of protest, with devastating consequences.