The drama and twists of apologizing over 'state tea'

“I am sorry”. These are the words some people claim are a balm to wounded hearts. They are the magic portion that softens hard hearts.

Don’t apologies remind you of those silly excuses that some people give you just before an insult? Like when a person tells you “with all due respect” and you know he is about to deliver a thinly veiled insult wrapped as opinion.

In fact, they remind me of my favourite TV personality, NCIS’s Leroy Jethro Gibbs, who likes saying that “apology is a sign of weakness”.

But early last week I was tickled when I heard that the good people of Migori County had travelled all the way to Nairobi to offer their sincere apologies to the President. This after heckling him when he visited them two weeks ago.

They actually visited the President to say, “we are sorry” and to explain how heckling, throwing shoes and shouting down guests is not something they like doing.

For them, an apology is not a sign of weakness. It must be what those two-bit psychology experts would call a ‘sign of owning up and confronting your demons’.

And what better way than a long journey for the infamous State House tea? Word has it that this tea business is no joke.

cameo appearance

Even scribes made a quick cameo appearance for tea and bites some time back.

Keen people would, however, notice that even after that tea, the scribes are a hunted lot, with proposed media laws that would not have been out of place 30 years ago. But it is all good.

The people of Migori are smarter chaps, their visit was not dramatic apart from being delayed by a day before meeting the president.

They would not be cornered like scribes, or caught in the same trouble that befell a certain delegation from Lamu.

The Lamu delegation found themselves between a rock and a hard place. Some of them, we are told, were arrested and only released after an order from above.

The emissaries from Migori came in their numbers too, only some came in big cars, not driving a bull at the head of the delegation. Any serious African would have gone with some sort of animal, any animal.

No one is sure how this business of a little tea to smooth out differences came to be.

Serious African communities resolved differences among themselves with some serious brew.

A goat or sheep of a one colour, usually white or black would be slaughtered and the wise old men would munch while contemplating what to do about whichever transgression was before them.