echoes of the hills: A LETTER TO THE FUTURE

Saturday, 8 November 2014

A LETTER TO THE FUTURE

I imagine a future, a future where peace reigns

In the breasts of men

Where killing the other will be regarded

As an affront to society, an abominable act.

Somebody hand me a pen I write this letter

Give me a blank paper I scribble these thoughts

Give me a corner I write this letter

Somebody allow me to weep my agony on this page.

Today, let us ask ourselves serious questions

Let us today hang our dirty linen in public

Let us show our festered wounds

Let us bare our chests today and show our scars

Today, let us prostrate ourselves to Truth.

Truth must we speak, O Souls which love lies,

Clouded by ethnic bigotry, prejudices and senseless cocoons

We have become a segregationist society, too tribal

Too flammable, we are explosives

Our hearts are burning with hatred

Our consciences are dead, we now justify murder!

I am Pokot.

I have Turkana friends.

I talk with them and hear their dreams and hopes.

A few months ago, I struck friendship with an Illchamus lady

I have talked and lived with Marakwet brothers.

I work with a Samburu.

I share a name with a Turkana.

One thing that I have learnt is the bond that unites us all.

The love that God has for us all.

Another is hardship.

A pastoralist boy is mostly born without the benefit of a maternity ward

That boy will squeeze whatever breast-milk he may from his mother

Whose breasts, symbolically and figuratively, are shrivelled from scant resources

Most likely, he may not receive vaccines

He will not lie in a baby-cot, a hide will suffice

That boy’s bath is two mouthfuls of water, one to apply soap

The other to rinse him

Most likely, he may not go to school

And will be a herdsboy

When the time comes, he will marry the girl of his dreams

And he will sire other pastoralists.

So, it gets confusing to me when life brought forth in such hard conditions

Should be easily taken away.

It pains me to see years of nature’s mercy upon the life of a pastoralist

Wasted away, not by disease and famine, but bullets.

As an intellectual, I may justify the deaths at Kapedo

Just to fit into my ethnic dimensions

I may not understand all the dynamics

But I speak not for the Pokots nor the Turkanas

I speak for the mothers of those killed

I speak for the wives of those killed

For they let their men set forth

And in the evening, they waited upon them

They were no more.

They thought love would last forever

These women would bury their sons and husbands

And their hearts will cry for many nights

These women will ask themselves so many questions

Questions like why were their sons and husbands killed

The fresh grave mounds will remain mum

And they will hear people say,

The Pokots are bad, The Turkanas are bad,

They killed us first, we have lived here before

And like swords jabbed at their hearts

They will receive this empty chatter

Through their tears, they may whisper

Life is cruel, my husband’s life, my son’s life

Is as worthless as cowdung (But not, because even cowdung

is manure)

And that woman will weep at her son’s/husband’s grave

Seeking answers.

But the mound will now be stiff and parched

Just like the hearts of men and women

Who killed her son or husband.

But the most hurting words she will hear

Will not be from the illiterate, merciless bandits

But from the educated bigots.

With the benefit of their learning, they will spew ethnic vitriol

With the fluency of overfed honey-badgers

They will shame learning and walk naked

Crying ‘kill them!’ ‘Kill them’

I exaggerate. Though they won’t be naked

They would have bared their debauched hearts

And that is still nakedness.