Nairobi People, Where Are You Running To?

Image credit: google: corner.youth.cn

You Nairobi people amaze me

You are always running!

In the morning, even before cows

Get out of cowsheds, you hit the streets

A frantic pace, a small run here, a dash there

Tell me Nairobi people, where are you running to?

And when I see you eat

You keep looking at your watches

Chewing more than you can swallow

Holding a newspaper here, checking the phone there

Watching 1 O’clock news and gossiping over the counter

Done, you clutch your briefcases and dash

Please answer me, where are you running to?

Nairobi people, your city stands tall

Fixed to the same spot, aloof, lethargic

Yet you who occupy it disturb her serenity

And meditative pose with the stampede

Of your feet and your hurry

Your vehicles drive deadly speeds

Your tongues speak fast,

Tell me Nairobi people, why the hurry?

How will good ideas perch on your heads

If they are not stationary, if they gallop and trot?

Stop the chase, wake up and see the sunrise

Feel your heart beat, sit under a shade

Feel that moment, close your eyes

Be still, let urgency scuttle past you

Sit back, be renewed

Time to slow things, feel the rhythm

Watch the sunset, hear the cowbells

Feel the warmth of the fireplace,

Never run, just walk, observe

If only you Nairobi people did this

You would have seen the beauty

Of a bird’s dropping on a statue

Or the skilled beggars on abandoned alleys

Playing songs from bad radio speakers

Or old couple adeptly crossing busy highway

Or moving lips of people in their monologues

Or Bus Preachers with raptured voiceboxes

Preaching the message of Eternal Hellfire

And you ask, well, please don’t shout…

If you were patient, Nairobi people,

You would have seen the hawker

Selling cockroach insecticides

Yet  immediately sell umbrellas

At the fall of the first rain drop!

Or notice the irony of a church

Adjacent to a bar business

Or measure the country’s economic growth

Using a smile-o-meter pa-smile- capita

Not those arcane Economics functions!

If you weren’t in a hurry

You would see that occasional academic

Standing beside the road, trying to order his theories

Grappling with Einsten’s Theory of Relativity

The Schroedinger equation and such stuff

You would see him scratch his head and ruffle his coat

His eyes fixed on some pothole or space

But you wouldn’t notice such things,

Nairobi people, you are always running

And am afraid you left life’s lessons behind!

C) Lorot Salem 2011


Shared in Thursday Poets Rally 43 ( May 05-May 11, 2011)