By Peter Kimani

I had a dream the other night in which our Members of Parliament, whom we defer to as waheshimiwa (honourables) appeared as a pack of hyenas in the wild. That’s a very demeaning imagery, one might protest, but the visions of nature and its creatures refused to go away.

The apt expression here is nightmare, for the dream troubled me since Tuesday night when I learnt that our waheshimiwa had dared the Acting Finance minister John Michuki to tax their allowances and see fire.

Quite symbolically, old and sickly women arrived at the precincts of Parliament around the same time, telling their stories of pain in the wilderness where they had been surviving on wild fruit and berries, after being displaced from their homes in what’s called "post-election violence."

Now, from those fireside stories, we know hyenas loathe fire at night, or any other period of the day. But the hyenas we are talking about are of a different kind, the sort that know fire and are not afraid to play with it.

When the women prayed for the fire and brimstone, the hyenas simply laughed, bellowing high-pitched shrieks that sounded like the cry of a child.

Naturally, hyenas scavenge for anything edible, but prefer waiting for someone else to do the killing. This implies hyenas are not only lazy but fearful, hesitant to risk life or limb in pursuit of their own meal.

But hyenas are also cunning and disguise their fear in all manners. They bray, so that other animals think of them as larger animals like the donkeys famed for vicious kicks, or bleat so that others may think them meek as sheep. The displaced women who went to Parliament may have heard some bleating. Their thoughts instantly took them home, recalling the warmth of the hearth and the gentle rhythms of animals ruminating.

In the dark, one sees the spots but there was something about the sheep in Parliament that hinted these were not meek sheep. There was a hissing sound, as though someone was passing gas, which had a choking effect. Some shed tears as others coughed.

All the hyenas were having stomach problems and the women walked away to escape the foul air.

One old woman whose feet were lame and was hard of hearing was dragged by the tearing strips of her clothe away to gnaw at her bones.

Like the hyenas in my dream, our waheshimiwa have torn away strips of dignity from the poor women that converged at Parliament to protest at State failure to protect their lives, and the dehumanising existence they have been subjected to, refugees in their own land.

*******

The beautiful ones are not yet born

I am grateful I got a wife before they learnt ngeta (mugging). I hear now they start by frisking your pockets to evaluate your worth, or speaking in their mother tongues to confirm you are one of them.

Times are so hard, I hear, that eight in every 10 women say they only marry for money (and so can’t marry poor men), while one in every two is very keen to marry a man from her own community.

Let’s put this within the context. If more than half the population live below the poverty line, and women are slightly more than men, this translates into a surplus of women for every man of means.

Love in the time of famine (I am thinking of the phenomenon as a natural calamity) can be a tough call.

Since I have never been wealthy nor good-looking to attract some gold-diggers, I shudder for the young men waiting to pick their choice.

But one should appreciate that young people are only responding to societal dictates that place a heavy premium on material things, and grow watching their parents endlessly chase after the elusive coin.

The moral of this story, no doubt, is that the beautiful ones are not yet born, for love knows no colour or creed. Or smell of shilling.

*******

Githae plays the music right

How good and pleasant to see Njeru Githae again! I hadn’t seen much of him in a long time, since his unveiling culinary invention proposing starving Kenyans eat whatever they can find in their way, wild or domesticated.

The last time I caught a glimpse of Githae, he was doing what appeared like a hybrid between rhumba and salsa, or should we call it rat-dance?

I watched Githae on TV this week, first in Parliament , where he stood hunched and I feared that he might tilt over, before straightening up to speak on the Waki Report. He was proposing a local tribunal to try perpetrators of post-election violence, the reason being that he feels for the culprits. If jailed in Kamiti, he said, he could pay them a visit and offer a cup of tea and a loaf of bread.

"But if you are jailed in Hague," Githae warned, "Even the cold can kill you!"

But what was more comical was that bland expression on Githae’s face and the chubby cheeks that appear as though he is playing an invisible trumpet.

— pkimani@eastandard.net