“If you saw a truck carrying 40 million people going downhill at full speed, would you try to put stones on its wheels to halt it and most likely get killed? If you saw a building with 40 million occupants on the verge of collapse, would you stretch your hands to catch the falling blocks and possibly get crushed? Or would you step aside and watch?” N.W. Ngumbi.
Unaware of these fundamental questions, and in a separate forum, the driver of the bus and owner of the building said he would jump out of the car or the building because it is not his sole responsibility. All the passengers can and should stop the car from crashing. As for the building, if each held on to one brick, maybe the building would hold.
The Government has proposed to increase our national debt ceiling to Sh2.2 trillion. Financiers and economists warn it will take Kenyans more than 50 years to repay it. Remember, we are yet to celebrate 51 years of independence.
Children should not have to save up for their parents, but parents for their children. Long before all but one of them are born, all my children and grandchildren are already in debt. In Kenya, at least for the next 50 years, it is children who will be paying for the day to day maintenance of their parents. And grandparents.
No one is discussing this issue. It is all but forgotten. Because a few days later after this grand pronouncement by the Government, 28 Kenyans were slain. They died in less dignity than the birds and animals we slaughter for our meals. They were killed inhumanely in the presence of other Kenyans. Those who survived this lifetime trauma have all but been forgotten.
The Government has refused to take responsibility or shoulder blame for this incident. Never mind that it will soon be mortgaging Kenyans, and the next two generations, to finance its grandiose projects. The security of the 28, and the remaining 45 million Kenyans was not, and is unlikely to make it to the shortlist of its grand plans.
These Kenyans, and many others before them, have been butchered by residents of a country that we have sent our defence forces to protect their mothers, fathers, children, kith and kin.
These butchers hail from the country that has taken ours to International Courts claiming part of our territory as we protect theirs.
In the same week, someone took, and posted, a video of men threatening to insert a bottle into a woman’s private parts. A different person filmed another woman, who after being stripped naked, was sexually assaulted by a man wearing a huge and shiny wedding ring. Urged on by bystanders to “panda mbolea”, he flipped her on the ground like a rack of ribs on a barbeque grill assisted by many other faceless hands. These Kenyan men were teaching “their Kenyan women” a lesson.
And then there was the story of two young men who lost their lives in the hands of the police. They join a long and ever growing list of Kenyans losing lives to police bullets. Yet another family faces the same fate. One of identical twin brothers was tortured to his death. His twin brother couldn’t attend his funeral for fear of his life.
Then, Bookpoint closed shop. A landmark bookshop where you could find any book from the mundane to the exciting. Accounts, finance, law, autobiographies, fiction, vanity magazines, etc. Was this closure a coincidence in the midst of all the storms?
If not like Kenya, how do falling States look like?
My sincere condolences to the families of the 28 Kenyans and Senator GO Kajwang’.
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