Gardens and literature

A labour of love and dirt

With Kwani?  @10 in mind.

Growing a garden is a dance of chance and defiance

that sharpens your patience

or proves that you have none.

You defy nature; it edifies you.

A language is sustained;

an eloquence made of dust and tears.

Growing a garden is a study in inelegance.

There are no neat conclusions;

no easy pickings. You work through a tangle

of plants you have no name for.

They speak back to you

in tongues of green and brown

and sometimes in the colour of death.

You dream a discourse from broken stones

and walk a path scattered with talking leaves.

Digging is easy enough if you have the muscle for it.

But it’s never the tilling, is it?

Gardening is an attuning to the secrets of the soil;

a willingness to listen to half-told mysteries;

to coax life from reluctant roots and shoots.

Growing things thrashes your illusions

but never leaves you empty.

You are at the mercy of fragile beginnings

that may or may not take.

You shape a thing or two; give them ideas.

While you are sleeping,

little men with green fingers come

and make things grow,

and you reap the joy in the song of a new leaf.

There are cruel acts of kindness:

pruning, pulling, culling, thinning.

Promises are broken as often as kept,

scarring you deep, and

keeping you from ever trying

to own the narrative.

You caress it with miracle fingers;

with reverence, and pass it on.

You are a guardian, an imperfect angel

with no flaming sword to ward off evil.

You are armour-less seraph with the soft underbelly

of those who labour in love, for love.

All other things come second.

You wield the subversive influence of the vulnerable.

You are an angel nevertheless,

Tending and spreading things as powerful as being.

The people we have 'disapperared'

Westgate has opened up old griefs that were not properly grieved...

Disappearance

Six British nationals are confirmed dead.

There was a Canadian diplomat.

Every nation reckons its stricken citizens.

The list reads like the guest list

of a diplomatic get-together

(pardon this irreverence).

Had this been that kind of gathering,

would we have included the waiters?

Would we have numbered the chef

the ayah, the cleaner,  or the messenger?

The media and foreign offices

catalogue people who are not us –

at least not the rest of us.

The rest of us have become illegible,

like the Tana River 500, the Wajir,

and Mandera hundreds,

the 42 on the Narok bus, and

Mombasa Road’s daily toll.

Earth cries for her children

buried into burning holes of grief;

into fiery bosoms of pain.

Earth cries for her un-eulogised.

See how we deny them a mention in death

just as we disappeared them in life.

These are the ones we cremate conveniently

in national amnesia.

After every tragedy we bring up

the palimpsest and swear

then swiftly overwrite it with the newest grief.

From Sinai to Sachang’wan

we stand indicted, the flames

of Kiambaa an unheeded subpoena.

The only forensic evidence

is found in the trembling hands of old

people petrified by anguish

and a reluctant acceptance.

 

Undying death (all the deaths we die)

For Michael Onsando, who insisted I should write about 'death in small doses'. This is also possibly the darkest poem I have written.

Quotidian death

He has eyes the colour of doves.

You half expect them to take wing.

He sits there playing with his phone,

from time to time raising his head

as if to verify he is actually in the room.

These days he doesn’t give away much.

He used to be different: a closed book,

but one I knew was there,

solidly occupying the same earth as me.

These days he is an ephemeralness.

He occupies a body; clothes.

But it seems as if his inner being

went somewhere, or at best

doesn’t visit his body as often.

He is not quite like a ghost.

Ghosts are grey, often menacing,

and sometimes dangerous.

His eyes are the colour of absence.

He has become like an abandoned tipper

from which life falls noiselessly in the dusk.

Even rust won’t touch him.

It is hard to tell when he began to depart:

it is difficult to track the progress of a shadow.

Death isn’t like a sundial.

I am afraid one day I shall find

he has turned into a mummified

boneless unbeing ambling about.

I am afraid he will not know how to die.

 

My salute to post-Westgate blood donors

Love after Westgate

I feared we might become a bunkered state,
a plastic nation with resin for blood.

We chose instead, to let our veins.
Running full throttle, we bled.

They stole some of our blood.
But we gave the rest willingly:

rivers of humans choosing to suffer;

to give birth to a new life, pint by pint.

We loved our injured with our blood
and bled internally for the slain.

This is our testimony; a signature in red.

It's that time of year

Jacarandas in September

Maiden blushes, pubertal bashfulness.
There is no hint of passion,
nor clue that in a little while
the world will wear a purple wedding gown.
Poets will be led to the altar
and wed for a few months –
some on their knees in despair –
then abandoned  for nine months.

Where do jacarandas go, when they go?

They are not angels.
They seem to thrive in their floral
ephemerality;
hordes of ephemera with a
a memory more sure than elephants’.

They come back as priests whose religion
seems to be, simply,
Be.

In September language starts as a stammer of colour,
the script of Spring; a sliver of imagery.
Before long they are a violet song,
a palette of eloquence;
a river speaking in tongues of men and seraphs.

I would join their faith
if I knew how to embrace
the communion of the falling and the fallen.

Seized by Scents, by Wambui Mwangi

Wambui Mwangi reminds me that at the end of the day, it has to be about people.
http://madkenyanwoman.blogspot.com/2013/08/seized-by-scent.html

Koroga season 4

http://koroga.tumblr.com/

An apology, nevertheless

What is now clear to me is that the form, in which the article was written and published, left room for doubt as to the position of the author on the subject matter. - Dr. Frank Njenga

The cycle of micro battles

War is generally a series of small battles as opposed to a single onslaught; a series of small losses or victories. Folk wisdom abounds in maxims to the same effect: a stitch in time saves nine; usipoziba ufa utajenga ukuta (if you fail to repair a small breach, you will eventually have to rebuild the entire wall). I believe this is why 'divide and rule' is such a successful war strategy: keep the enemy so preoccupied with small battles they cannot see the gains you are making. The use of landmines during conflict effectively demonstrates the power of small crises: keep the other side preoccupied with attending to maimed soldiers while you make territorial gains. If you can plant more landmines than the enemy, the better for you. Throw civilian casualties and collateral damage into the mix to keep the adversary occupied for years after, not to mention that demining costs significantly more than planing the mines in the first place.

But this is not a blog post about landmines. This is about small battles; death by a slow bleed.

During Kenya's struggle for independence, hundreds of thousands of natives were herded into concentrations camps euphemistically referred to as reserves. This strategy served several purposes: a) the people so herded could easily be conscripted into forced labour b) means of production were severely restricted: the inmates could only gather food during limited hours under close supervision c) as a result, it was hoped, the inmates would have no energy to agitate against theft of ancestral land and other injustices.

We all know that the things didn't quite go according to the script. Kenyans found ways to fight back, and fight back they did. After about ten years of systematic massacres and other crimes against them, the Kenyan people wrested power from the colonists. Citizens were now free to pursue their destinies as free people.

The reality has largely failed to match the prosperity script used to galvanise Kenyans into resistance. How many massacres has Kenya experienced since independence? How much land has been stolen? How many people have been forcibly displaced? How many live in the cruel clutches of poverty, insecurity, marginalisation, and chronic under-development?

I do not posit that successive governments have intentionally created these problems to keep citizens subjugated. Such a position would be too conspiracy theory even for the skeptic in me. I am convinced, however, that someone or someones figured out a long time ago that by inaction, government could perpetuate preoccupation with micro-issues, thereby robbing citizens of the capacity to engage with larger issues. Fail to act on labour rights, and the poor will keep trooping daily to earn less-than-minimum wage, and get up the following morning to do the same. Fail to tame traffic congestion and behaviour on the road, and drivers and commuters will be preoccupied with getting home in the evening. They will then get up the following morning to do it all over again. Just getting through the day is work enough, as the brilliant Wambui Mwangi has expounded in 'Demon City.'

The average Nairobian has to battle mad traffic to get to work. If she is lucky to own a car, her going-to-work battles might involve only the following: gridlocked traffic and matatus driving on any part of the road or on the pedestrian walkway. Occasionally, she might have to grapple with dry hoses at her favourite fuel station. If she is not lucky enough to have a car, she has to contend with crude matatu crews who may decide to go on strike on her first day of work, or decide at a moment's whim that she should be dropped off three kilometres for the terminus, or hike the fare at the slightest hint of rain.  If she is walking, she has to watch out for matatus and boda boda bikes driving on the walkway.

The average Kenyan then has to go home and worry about his safety and security. Will his home be burgled that night? No wonder we live in voluntary prisons, spending our nights behind ornate metal bars. A prison is a prison, no matter how well appointed. 

The line between acceptance and abetting is very thin. Ask anyone who has tried to protest against an arbitrary hike in matatu fare. The dirtiest looks come not from the matatu crew but from fellow passengers. Like lambs to the slaughter we are silent. Where, then, will we find the energy to speak up against members of parliament and county governors who want to steal our money to buy themselves expensive cars while patients wait months in line for a chance to have dialysis?

The number of small battles is enough to make anyone despair. It is sincerely difficult to blame anyone for giving up on fighting. Given the limited amount of energy and time in a day, which battles do you fight, and which ones do you ignore? Sometimes you just want it to be over with so you can get to your fortified iron-bar prison, so that you can get up the following morning to do it all over again.

As Shailja Patel put it:

'A Brief History of Micro-Aggression' by Shailja Patel

meaningless storms
in tiny tea cups
paper-cuts
that we endure
day in, day out
dayindayout
dayindayoutdayindayout
over and over and over and over and over and over and over again
daily ordinary interactions
one drop of blood at a time
until we bleed to death
exhausted
pissed-off
alienated
really sad
we are assured
that our concerns
are silly
minor
best forgotten

I choose not to despair. Our grandfathers fought some significant battles that aggregated into one large victory. There were many unremarked individual acts of courage and sacrifice, without which we would not be where we are today. We have their blood in our veins and their courage in our hearts. We can therefore push back a little. A little every day till large tracts of our ability to function as a decent nation and as decent human beings are won back. Every day we must get up and push back a little. And then do it again the following day. We must refuse to bow to arbitrariness, one small battle at a time; one human being at a time.

Woven with Wambui Mwangi and Shailja Patel.

Women are necessary, lovely, delightful, wonderfully colourful creatures.

One could use the same words to describe a potted plant. So cute! Would you like one for your office? It would go really well with your new decor and ergonomic furniture! Give it a try. Just don’t let them take over the running of the company. These pretty things are not very good at business. Did you read about a certain company featured in the Business Daily?

The Nation Media Group’s Business Daily is at it again. Last week it ran an awful advice column in which an ‘expert’ psychologist did some intense victim-blaming.This week's offensive column is written by a research fellow. Now, we know or at least can assume that fellows are funded to carry out research and contribute to the generation of new knowledge in their respective fields.

Anyone with the most rudimentary idea of research knows that you cannot make assertions such as the ones Peter Mutua makes without the backing of some credible data. 

Instead, he uses a badly posited anecdote. Company x did not do well because it was ran by a predominantly female board. One would assume that Mutua has controlled for all the things that make for a successful business: the right business strategy; the right products; the right marketing and sales; market reception; motivated workforce; competition; macroeconomic factors such as inflation, and many others. Holding all these factors constant, the company would have thrived if it had been run by a mixed-sex board.This would be the equivalent of arguing that company y does well, not because it has the right market mix, but because it is run by an all-male board. It is the sex, not the skills and competencies that make a board; is that right, Mr. Mutua?

I am equally baffled by the Nation Media Groups irresponsibility as displayed by publishing such articles. NMG needs to answer several questions. Has it run out of professional editors? Are the current editors misogynist or simply uncaring? Is there media group pursuing a sensationalist agenda? Incidentally, the same Business Daily Publication printed an article in April 2013 calling for more women in boardrooms. Identity crisis or printing articles for the sake of it?

When Kenyan women are facing assaults on so many fronts; from public stripping to being taken advantage of by the porn industry, why is an otherwise-respected media group supporting and abetting such unhelpful attitudes? Should the media be reporting with apparent glee these incidents, or investigating why for example, none of the men who have been stripping women at bus stops have not been arrested and prosecuted? 

Such articles should not see the light of day.

To be Frank, I don't get this!

My attention was drawn yesterday by Andrea Bohnstedt and Stephen Partington to an article published by the Business Daily, a publication of the Nation Media Group, on 28 May 2013. In the day's advice column, a woman who had been abused in her teenage years by a relative and kept the abuse secret was wondering whether to finally now speak out. She's since got married and has children. We shall call her Wanjiku. 

Dr. Frank Njenga's response to her predicament seems to start well. You shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free. Good, so far. Well done, Doc. Then he proceeds to quote the Biblical account of a woman who was caught in adultery. 'Let him who has no sin be the first to cast a stone', Jesus told her all-male authority-figure accusers. I like the direction Frank Njenga is going. Then he does a very unexpected and surprising thing. He turns the story on its head and offers the advice that perhaps, perhaps Wanjiku should not speak out because her motives for doing so may not be pure after all. Maybe she only wants to speak out only to hurt her abuser, who is now a respected elder.

It is difficult to figure out which angle to approach this from: there are so many of them! Let's start with the misinterpretation and misrepresentation of the Biblical account. Wanjiku was abused. Her dignity was forcibly violated. Wanjiku is hurting, and has been carrying pain all these years. On top of all this she gets to be compared to an adulterous woman. Help me, somebody.  

Frank Njenga blazes on and implies that Wanjiku should stay silent in order to protect the reputation of the now-elder then-abuser; maybe still-abuser. The truth shall not set you free because it could hurt your children, your family, and your husband. Be a strong woman; think only of how everyone else may benefit from telling the truth. Truth can be a very inconvenient thing. It can have some unintended consequences.

It is interesting to note that Jesus doesn't condemn the woman. In contrast, the word guilt appears at least thrice in Njenga's response. The word hurt (yourself, the abuser, your family) appears thrice as well. You are suffering from guilt, guilt, guilt Wanjiku. And you will hurt, hurt, hurt others.Speaking out is a bad, bad, bad thing.

The icing on the cake comes when Njenga implies that Wanjiku's abuse could be a false recollection. Maybe a delusion. Nice one, Doc; gosh, how many delusional women we have! We have whole hospitals dedicated to treating women and girls who have delusions of having been raped and nearly killed! Heck, we even have an Act of Parliament meant to protect women who might be delusional. Because, you know, sexual abuse is such a wonderful thing to fantasize about; what a good way to lift your mood if you are having a bad day! You can become so good at it the difference between reality and fairyland disappears.

Find a way, Wanjiku, to deal with this in a 'healthy' manner. 

I don't know what is more pathetic between Njenga's 'advice' and the Nation Media Group publishing it. What I do know is that Kenya will remain an unsafe place for women and abusive men will continue to prowl in freedom as long as authority figures and media houses continue to be so blasé.

Things and concrete

On the morning of Sunday 26 May I took a flight from Nairobi's Wilson airport. Overflying the waking Nairobi bathed in soft light, I was faced with two realities. One is the beauty of the Nairobi National Park, and juxtaposed against it the housing estates of South C and South B. All bathed in the morning's sleepy light. The plane quickly changes direction and flies over the Industrial Area and the cornucopia of infrastructure. One moment, an industrial plant, next, a slum with neat rows of rusty  mabati roofs crammed together, next, a middle-class housing estate, next, a quarry. On and on until we left the City perimeter and got to agricultural land interspersed with deep and dangerous quarries. Our love affair with infrastructure is undeniable. A road here, a bridge there, a school, laptops -- the manifestos must have been manufactured in the same factory. Read the Machakos County Manifesto, and you realise that for an area so often ravaged by drought and famine, little is said about environmental regeneration and green technologies. The manifesto mentions the word environment exactly twice, once in relation to sand harvesting (yes, sand harvesting), and the other in relation to market infrastructure. Give us another concrete edifice, please. 

The Jubilee Manifesto does a little better. In a 70-page document, the environment is given two pages. Specific initiatives to encourage citizen participation and education in energy and waste management, and recycling are visibly absent. The plastic bag menace and public health implications of our open-air garbage disposal stink very loudly. Also highly desirable are land use policies that maximize what we have. How sustainable are projects such as Tatu City and other mushrooming lifestyle developments that uproot coffee and plant buildings? All the while, we are investing dollars in researching coffee varieties that can grow in dry areas.



Visions cast in concrete

We need roads,
we shall build roads.
The Park is in the way of the highway.
Move the Park
We need to move goods,
trade is important.
Development is at stake.

Where will our children play? 
Play? We shall give them laptops. 
Where will the women get together? 
We shall give them shopping malls. 
Where shall we grow our onions?
We shall make this a 24hr economy
strengthen construction and tourism,
grow the GDP so you can afford 
things in cans and fried and cured.

Silence, woman.
I have a manifesto to fulfill.
Sleep on, sleep in the city's beautiful lights
The city never slumbers.  
You don't need to be vigilant.

Sleep to the sweet jingle of progress
Sleep, sleep, the day is young,
and our vision is fresh. 

Let the dream embrace you.
You can lean on it -- 
it's as sure as concrete. 

A Fragile Contentment

"Don't aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. ― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

 

The same can be said about peace. Peace ensues. It is an outcome, not an output. I am intrigued by the recent directive outlawing public demonstrations in the wake of the disputed March 2013 presidential tally. This is not a comment for, or against the directive.

I think the directive is a reflection of our fears.

We are afraid of ourselves

We are afraid of the untamed animal within.

We saw what the animal could do in 2007/2008.

We saw what the animal could do in Tana River.

We know what the animal does to disenfranchised labourers in cities and other places.

"I knew a man who lived in fear

It was huge, it was angry, it was drawing near

Behind his house, a secret place

Was the shadow of a demon he could never face

He built a wall of steel and flame

And men with guns to keep it tame

And standing back, he made it plain

That the nightmare would never ever rise again

But the fear and the fire and the guns remain…

And then one day, the neighbours came

They were curious to know about the smoke and flame

 They stood around outside the wall

 But of course, there was nothing to be heard at all

 "My friends," he said, "We've reached our goal

The threat is under firm control

 As long as peace and order reign

I'll be damned if I can see a reason to explain

Why the fear and the fire and the guns remain"  -- Dan Heymann

The recent prescriptive campaigns for peaceful co-existence are well meant, and I am sure they have had an impact. However, as long as the shadows of our demons remain; as long as the elephants in the room remain unspoken about, we shall continue to need guns and tanks. This begs the questions: What happens when there are so many elephants that we become and elephant graveyard? What happens when the ghosts overrun us?

We all know from science fiction movies that bullets don’t kill ghosts. Exorcism works better. The peace we desire and are urged to maintain can only come when we commit to exorcism and healing.

I look forward to the time when we shall collectively appreciate that peace is more than not killing each other. I have hope from the fact that many of us who think this way. In whatever language you translate the word peace, it implies harmony, safety, and right relationships. My favourite word for peace is Shalom (from the same root word as Shelam and Salaam). It implies welfare, prosperity, and wholeness.

Shalom, Kenya.