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.