A mentality of a loser finds solace in stereotypes and excuses. Never admits regrets and strongly embraces tradition to justify his retrogressive ways. He’s a bully and considers his idiocy as understanding. His opinion on women is one-dimensional and his views on sexuality…are better left unsaid. His folly gainsays his age, and he is the reason wisdom of age is considered myth. He is poorly informed; less exposed and knows little about his surrounds. He’s a pity. Though he bears a title and papers, and seats behind a swivel, I count him as part of the statistic that is short of wit. And if half the people on earth were like you Mr. Idiot Sir, then Jupiter would be the place to be.

After reading the book Revolution in Zanzibar as told by John Okello, a propagator of the Zanzibar revolution, I was left eager wanting more of this intrigue. I asked around, inquisitive of this man born in Uganda in 1937, orphaned at 11 years old and left to fend for his siblings at the age of 15. He moved across the border to Kenya where he worked for a couple years before relocating to Zanzibar in 1963. He worked as a manservant, gardener, bricklayer, painter (some say he even worked as a police officer in Pemba Island) and later became actively involved in Zanzibar politics. Noticeably, wherever he worked he instigated workers’ upheavals demanding for their rights. He was illiterate with only a modest understanding of English and Kiswahili; highly spiritual claiming that God had sent him to deliver the African man from oppression. It was speculated that Okello was trained as a communist in Cuba under Fidel Castro, a suspicion which he repeatedly denies in his book.

This was also the same period when various African countries had their own crosses to bear – the emancipation from the White man rule -Kenya with the Mau Mau Uprising and previously Uganda which had just secured independence around the same time.

Okello says that the then East African Presidents, Milton Obote of Uganda, Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya and Julius Nyerere of Tanganyika (now known as Tanzania) locked him out of East Africa, he was arrested in Nairobi Kenya and was detained. He wrote his book from prison and believed to have died in his home country Uganda.

In Zanzibar, Okello landed himself of a job as a house painter, and became a member of the Painters Union. He had his devotees whom he met apparently met in secret; he stipulated austere rules: sexual abstinence, no raw meat and alcohol. He had several references from the bible, mostly alluding to the Old Testament.

He was later invited to join Afro-Shirazi Party which opposed minority Arab dominance in Zanzibar and Pemba islands. In early 1964, Okello ordered his men to kill all Arabs between 18 and 25 years of age, to spare pregnant and elderly women, and not to rape virgins. By this time Okello had gained a lot of popularity in both Pemba and Zanzibar Isalnds. With this support, Okello and his troop fought their way to the capital of Zanzibar, Stone Town, where the sultan lived intimidating even the police force. He took over the national radio, made a live speech demanding the Sultan, Jamshid bin Abdullah to kill his family, then kill himself afterwards;

“….I am thinking of going to Mtendeni (village) to destroy it if the people there do not obey orders. After 40 minutes I am coming to finish you off, especially the Comorians”. And “To all Arab youths living in Malindi; I will pass through Malindi armed with weapons of which I alone know. I want to see everyone stripped to his underpants and laying down. I want to hear them singing…father of Africans. God bless him in his task and that of the Field Marshall.”

The self –proclaimed Field Marshal, led a coup that saw about 20,000 Arabs killed, and whose families had resided in Zanzibar for centuries. However, the sultan, prime minister and other ministers had already managed to escape. During this time, Afro-Shirazi Party leader, Abeid Karume leader of the (Arabic) Umma-(Massa) Party, sheikh Abdulrahman Muhammad Babu as prime minister (later: vice-president) had not been informed of the coup.

In his book, Okello relents on how he was disowned by Karume and Babu. He alludes to his Ugandan descents, unpopular Christian ideologies, amidst an Islamic dominated culture; communist suspicions that led to the sideline and later his rejection.

I’m curious as to why there is little mention of a man who was a key player on Zanzibar’s revolution. No East African media has a mention of this man. A massacre that saw 20, 000 Arabs killed and others forced to flee Zanzibar with a poorly armed army led by ‘field marshal’, John Okello. A man behind a powerful insurrection story of Zanzibar, I want to know why this story didn’t have a chapter in my history book. I want to understand why his death is hardly thought of let alone mentioned. Or are we scared of scuffling dust that settled more than 45 years, scared of that which we do fail to identify with?

A story is s told of a spouse who took advantage of her husband’s routine night shifts to cheat with her ex-boyfriend. The trend progressed to become somewhat habitual until one unforgettable Easter. The husband, on duty despite the festival, took his usual shifts, unsuspecting that his partner was at hers just as well.

Together with her ex-boyfriend they headed to Naivasha for a romantic getaway. Drunk and desperate to get back to Nairobi in time lest traps are uncovered, the two love birds got an accident.

On his return the next morning, he didn’t find his wife in bed and so he assumed that she had started herself an early day. Until he received the distressing phone call that his wife was in hospital.

On arrival, the sight of her helpless, unconscious and mutilated broke his heart. But what was worse was when he learnt that there were two of them involved in the crash. Curious to find out and what greeted him in the next ward was what crashed his spirit.

Today morning in a matatu, on my way to work, I saw a man slithering, rugged and tattered. He looked beaten and agonized. His pants almost falling off, I thought he was rushing for a piss but that didn’t appeal much to sense.  I puzzled asking my friend questions hoping that he would stub my concern out with his usual genius speculations. At that realization, I paused as if to cry for the man, I wanted to cry thinking it would relief me off of blame. People didn’t seem to bother; all focused on errands, cars rushing by, passengers stuck in matatus, heading to workplaces all too busy to make an extra shilling but not rescue a wounded spirit.

I, too, stand accused. I am guilty of being part of an idiosyncratic people. Our compassion is draining out and not too long ago, we were well thought-out as gentle and warm. Remember the song Hakuna matata? (The title of the song is in Swahili referring to Kenya as hassle free nation.  The song is now an ironical background song in our country at present). Where did we go wrong? The city of sun is a big ghetto, hardening us not to over play fear and other thwarting sentiments.  A few weeks ago, I was… or rather we saw a a dead man, covering the eyes of the children not witness the horror, as we whisked them away from the late night scene. Singing songs and lying in their ears so that they could stop howling. They, too, had heard the blaring gunshots and witnessed grownups petrified, fleeing and abandoning them from the scene. (In my defense, we came up back as soon as we realised that the kids had been deserted by their parents). That was in the serene country side, Karatina, in Central Kenya, where we had gone for a family get-together. In the villages, such episodes are relatively odd. And as the incident quickly spread to make itself agenda, it was palpable to point out the visiting Nairobi onlookers, who didn’t seem dumbfounded, some sipping off their beers watching from the balcony without much care, still mesmerized by the fair price of beer in the countryside.  Nonetheless, residents knew the deceased as a police officer, who was said to have had a brief confrontation moments before he walked out of the bar only to met his death angel.  About a month before the happen, the deaths of law enforcers was making shocking headlines in some media outlets.  And as I told my story to my fellows, they gawked impassively as if it was never news.

Several weeks before, an early morning crowd was drawn to an off road trench, where a body lay cold dead. And as our matatu driver strolled by to present himself a chance to inspect the corpse, I saw it.  His eyes deep and intent, his face without a trace of the last word he said. It looked like he had been mugged or maybe dumped after killed by gangsters. As we drove off, the vehicle that had burst out in loud murmurs at the sight of the dead man quickly faded to silence, nothing to fuss about. Obviously the chapter had been long forgotten.  There is too much insanity going on, and to over emphasize for us is to over empathize. But what a shame, that we cannot trace how we got to such a point?

The Kenya we hate:

Sadness and horrors rule by night. I lay to dream that death and tears won’t conquer my fights and one day, it’s going to be good; It’s going to be lovely. It bites my people  -

Now they live life for Fridays, draining away sad days, smoking off a fucked day. Loving life by the needle, others living by and for the buckshot, dying for riddles. Now who’s the pawn in this gamble? Today is your cheerless, mines’ a fortune– Will it ever be good for both of us? The whole lot of us?

I’m cheated by this balmy slumber to wake into another blunder yet sunrise rays wait to re-awaken my faith.Praying that it’s going to be good, I know it will be lovely.                                                                                                    Pictures: Courtesy. Graphic re-touch: Waxspell

I usually tell my colleagues that I’m fed up with tagging over our opinions on gender, tribal politics and religion; because these arguments are always ill-fated. And my colleagues being too bunged with their opinions may not see why it is futile for me to engage in so. When FIDA announced its satirical mode of challenging the status quo in the name of ‘sex-boycott’ I knew that this would come up over our usual lunch hour chit chats. Well, just to make things easier and my lunch time worth-while we dismissed the notion in all sorts of yarns and invectives. And that was the order of the day on TV, radio talk shows, bar-talks, I’m sure a few lectures mentioned it to kick- off their classes with a light touch. Deep down I was careful not to mention to the ‘clever’ critics that FIDA cleverly won Kenya’s agenda.

Maendeleo Ya Wanaume (MYW) was next the thing trying to get Kenyan’s something to blurb about ‘the battered male statistics’. Shockingly, 1.5 million men in Kenya are said to be silently suffering domestic violence meted out by their wives.

Accepted by many women who rendered today’s Kenyan man as ineffectual and men who deemed it a way of undressing their egos, the topic won the hearts of the masses. I am still not sure what to make of the statistics but FIDA had its stand that it was an exaggeration of some sort.

With the realization that both genders are crying foul, I can’t help but conclude that Kenya is at a war of sexes. This warfare is becoming fruitless with time. If for sure this is an issue, then we need understand that there is a problem with the institution of marriage. Whichever the spouse who hits out the lash, at the end of it, I cannot ignore the plight of children who have had to witness this war newly  sponsored by FIDA and MYW.

Instead of this why can’t we have a situation where FIDA and MYW acknowledging the problem instead of its outcomes alone? Without rubbishing FIDA

and MYW efforts in voicing the voiceless; I hope that a day will come when the two forums can address this issue regardless to their gender respect.

I designed this last year for Darfur’s plight, without a stint of an idea that Kenya would cry the same tears. For a moment, things took a sudden turn. I’ve been quiet. Maybe because I felt that this time the pen wouldn’t be mightier, so writing was shadowed by my reflections that are better left un-uttered in detail.

Now here is the same piece that I wrote for Darfur that I am writing for my Kenya. Bet its just another case of same script, different casts. I am heavy.

The ad hit backs between the aspirants are quickly picking up to be really stupid and childish, rendering them all DOMO ( the politicians have paying for air time to trash each other. So, to quickly paraphrase the meaning, Domo directly means mouth., in this case would mean “mouthy”, “empty words”, “full of lies”  ).

Whilst PNU and ODM have a point to make in their ads, they soon will lose the point.  I am always left to be simply entertained all in the name with little regard of political responsibility seen from either side. If we keep enjoying this, we could be fanning up a fire that’s its blaze will never be easily exhausted.