Curse of superstitions that education has failed to slay

By PointBlank

People in Mt Kenya region laughing their heads off whenever they hear tales of hearses destined for Western Kenya that won’t jolt, allegedly because the departed are ‘too angry to go home’. As dead men have never been known to have the energy to tell tales, people wonder exactly where they get the strength to stall vehicles.

But truth be told. No Kenyan community can claim to have completely detached itself from the machinations of their ‘ancestors’ or is it their ‘dark past”? Last week, the country was shocked by the decision of a Central Kenya family to bury a calf alive, ostensibly to please the spirits of a dead man and keep his curse at bay.

long time
Well, that is to say the least, barbaric. But try tell that to some of the Kikuyu, who still believe, and some claim to have witnessed, that a curses from beyond the grave are real.

No amount of education and especially of the religious type, has persuaded them to ignore such beliefs. Do such curses work? PointBlank knows not, but it’s clear that fear of the unknown will be with us for a long time.

Why MRC members are mourning   

It appears that members of the outlawed Mombasa Republican Council have found a way of outwitting the police and holding their clandestine meetings right under the officers’ noses, according to Mr Martin Makundi.

He claims the members have been meeting, sometimes for weeks, without raising even a single eyebrow. He alleges that the group meets on the pretext of holding disco-matangas, in informal settlements.

Disco-matanga, he explains, is a funeral fund-raiser where “music is played all night and funds are raised by charging dancers and spectators.” He adds: “Ordinarily, the event lasts at most for four days. However, there is one that has now been going on for slightly over a month.”

Tired of the ear-splitting music, residents of an estate neighbouring the settlement recently decided to confront the mourners. Shockingly, however, they came face to face with strangers who threatened them telling them that  “Kenyans will not dictate to  people of Pwani”. 

“The slum dwellers confirmed that a majority of the alleged mourners were strangers to them and they were holding meetings in small groups.”

Injustice for ‘peasants’ at Law school
The Kenya School of law, the institution mandated to turn  lawyers into advocates is being accused of deliberately sidelining the poor from the law profession.

This, according to some prospective KSL students, is being done by increasing fees to levels that children from poor backgrounds cannot afford.

The students claim that between 2005 and 2012 the fees payable for the nine-month advocates training programme  has been increased from Sh45,000 to a prohibitive sum of Sh190,000. One is required to pay 70 per cent of this amount before they can be admitted.

The students lament that  the amount is too much bearing in mind that HELB does not fund the programme. They argue that  ordinary Kenyan students, who managed to go to university because of HELB’s benevolence, won’t be able to fulfil their dream to become advocates.

Tragedy
They want KSL compelled to lower the fees or HELB petitioned to start funding the costly programme. Or has someone taken seriously the suggestion by a senior advocate who once remarked that, “the tragedy of the legal profession begun when we allowed the sons and daughters of peasants to join.”