By Barrack Muluka

We are the anthills of the savannah grasslands, we poets who are privileged with space in these pages. In the event that you forget, it was Chinua Achebe who told the tale of the Anthills of the Savannah grasslands and of the struggles between poets and emperors.

I have called this narrative to our attention before. But I now tell it again, to celebrate ten years of this column. The tendrils of the savannah flourish in the wet season. They sway gingerly in the mid morning sunshine, showing off their luxuriant green. They flower. They ovulate. They sparkle. They draw the birds and the bees to their nectar and beauty. The birds sing about them, amidst the murmur of numerous bees. But, as great poets have said, the serpent hisses where sweet birds sing.

Soon, the wet season begins giving way to dry spells. The spells start getting longer than the wet moments. In the fullness of time, the order of things is reversed. It is dry in earnest. The tendrils of yesterday start shriveling. The sun gets oppressively hot. The tendrils now dry up. They brown up completely. Forest fires begin doing their thing. There is a forest fire here and another one there. There are forest fires everywhere.

The earth is scorched. It’s ugly. The lush of yesterday is now history. The only sign of life on the landscape are the anthills of the savannah. They know the story of the grass and what happened to it. But nothing lasts forever. The ebb and flow of time eventually brings with it fresh rains. The rains bring fresh life. Yes, once again the place is buzzing with lush tendrils, singing birds and the onomatopoeic murmur and buzz of innumerable bees. But if only the grass knew what befell the tendrils of yesteryear!

But all that is if, if, if! But if ifs were pots and pans, there would be no need for trinkets. That is why the grass that is the emperors of this world does not listen to the anthills of the savannah. You can scream about the Attorney General of Timbuktu and go hoarse. Timbuktu’s Attorneys General do not listen to the anthills of the savannah.

But whether emperors will listen, poets will always be the anthills of the savannah. That is why, in celebration of a decade of this column, we may want to recall that in March 2001 the column regretted the election of George W Bush Jr in the US, the previous November. Americans had made a wrong dial, the column said. Because of this bad dial, the whole world was going to pay the price. On September 11, the world began paying in earnest. It is still paying, and it will pay for a long time to come.

Earlier, in June 2000, the column decried the encroachment of Mau Forest, noting that Mau was a disaster in waiting. It would come back to haunt us. And it has come. On the political front, the column addressed former President Moi in September 2002, cautioning him Uhuru Kenyatta, his blue-eyed political boy, was the poison chalice in Kanu’s lap. Mzee Moi looked inexorably determined to drink from the poison chalice.

The column promised him that Uhuru Kenyatta would serve Kanu a political blow that would leave it staggering for a long, long time to come. Kanu staggers on today, completely out of character with the hydra of yesteryear. And when Mzee Mwai Kibaki romped home in December 2002, the column was skeptical about his verbal promissory notes and ebullient eloquence. The serpent hisses where sweet birds sing, we said. The rest is water below the bridge.

Meanwhile, on the competition between ODM and PNU in October 2007, the column cautioned the ODM presidential candidate against precipitate overconfidence. As he scoffed at President Kibaki for fashioning a PNU chameleon to race against his ODM horse, we counselled Raila Odinga that chameleons were in the habit of riding on horses’ tails and occupying glorious seats ahead of horses.

And on December 30, 2007 the ODM horse discovered the PNU chameleon resolutely in the seat of State. You know the rest.

But you also know that throughout 2007 the column told you that Kenya would burn in ethnic fires after the General Election. Well? In recent times we have told you that unless the political elite place service above self, Apocalypse 2012 is coming.

This time round, it is not just ordinary mortals who will burn inside church buildings. Royal princes will also burn. I trust someone is listening? For, when you are an anthill in the grasslands, you sometimes wonder whether you are not engaged in dialogue with deaf grass. But we take solace in the conscientious reader. We may not always agree, but you make the poet’s day, regardless that we agree, or that we just agree to disagree.