Of delayed rains, Mau and our ‘crazy gods’

“The gods must be crazy” is one of those films we all watched. It depicted a Khoisan man who was tasked with the job of getting rid of a bottle that had divided his tribe. They had lost their sense of oneness owing to the selfish approach to the use of the bottle. They decided that since they could not share it, then they must of necessity, get rid of it. Through that journey, the village found peace. In Kenya, however, we kept our bottles and our gods are still crazy.

The high jinks in that movie are nothing compared to the absurdity of real life for any Kenyan. Where the Khoisan knew nothing, Kenyans know everything, but still act as if the bush is their home. Civilisation for us is only clothing deep, our character still as naked as we were when we evolved from capeman.

Selfish not sensible

Kenyans are the kind of people whose walls have to be marked to explain to grown men that they are not ablution facilities. It is only in Kenya that every plot owner has to indicate that his piece of land is not for sale, because should he fail to do so, the plot will be stolen as a matter of course.

It is standard procedure that a Kenyan is selfish first before he is sensible. Our traffic jams are caused by PhD holding literati who would rather block a junction than let one car pass them to turn into a traffic free lane; if he is late we all must be late.

It is educated Kenyans who campaign from election to election, with the same mouth they declare their undying support to a person who just two years before they declared a thief. Their support unflinching for as long as the purse remains open. Their scruples on sale to the highest bidder, their IQ reduced to repeating old and tired narratives ad infinitum.

A crazy nation?

The craziness of our nation extends to how we love and acquire spouses. The spate of killings of both men and women tells us that we treat each other like property. A spouse is an entity you buy on hire purchase, paying in cash and kind over time and when your payment is done you get to take the spouse home. Any interruption in this process either by them finding someone better than you, or loving someone else or even them seeing that you are not really worth their time, is met with extreme violence.

Society justifying that either they should not have taken your money if they knew they won’t love you after they finished college or that the years she slaved away working in your house entitle her to keep you miserable, divorce her at your own peril. Love, once purchased in Kenya, can only be exited under tight security lest your life is on the line.

For practical reasons - because our greed has eaten the Mau and almost all our other forests. Now while we in Nairobi bake in ungodly temperatures we assume that Kenyan gods are moody and they also don’t listen to the Meteorological Department.

They change their minds about rain as soon as very sinful politicians and their spouses pray. The Kenyan gods apparently do not care that the Mau is being stripped bare, that we have harassed nature and grabbed everything in sight; instead they will bless us with rain because we, their bushmen in suits, booked Uhuru Park and prayed.

We ignore that the good book said that we must turn from our wicked ways before the rain comes. But in Kenya we cry about a drought we caused to a God we don’t love, hoping that the gods will send our version of blessings. We are devoid of righteous acts but we desire blessings.

The priests of the crazy gods will tell us that if Kenya only prays, and the political leaders show up everything will be fine.

It will rain, our crops will be saved and we can return to pillaging each other and plundering the nation. They will prophesy a lie, they will call some politicians the sent ones of the gods and the other politicians the witches of the night by whose actions we are now in drought.

Who will step forward?

While we worship these crazy gods, and listen to their mad priests and their thieving kings, no one will take the journey, like the Khoisan man, and throw what ails our society into the abyss. For what ails our society is simple; we are mad, selfish and greedy.

I say mad, for only mad men would strip the Mau and still expect rain. Only mad men dance praises to leaders who ignore their jobs to campaign for bigger jobs using the CV for the job they are currently ignoring.

How I wish our nation was a big joke, a movie we could all laugh at and return to normal lives. But unfortunately, our crazy gods and our crazy society are what we embrace.

We are mad men, praying to mad gods expecting great blessing where there has been grave iniquity.

We do not turn from evil but with filthy hands we turn to pray, for rain we do not deserve; for rain we could have made, but we did everything in our power to stop it from raining and now we are left with hope and trust that our gods are as mad as we are and they will let it rain no matter how evil we have become.

Mr Bichachi is a communication [email protected]