We may not believe court, poll outcomes but we must now allow Uhuru to work

The people of Emanyulia have now come to terms with the March 4 election outcome. They have accepted that Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta is the Fourth President of Kenya with William Ruto as Deputy President. They wish them well in their new tour of duty.

Our people are familiar with what the dog said. The dog said, “It is a game if I fall for you and you fall for me.” And so our people have been saying, “Let the CORD dog fall and let the Jubilee dog fall, too. Let the eagle perch and let the kite perch, too. If one says, ‘No,’ to the other, let his wing break.”

Such is wisdom that you only get from villages like Emanyulia, in the Northern Hemisphere. The villagers voted overwhelmingly for Raila Odinga and CORD Alliance candidates. They were confident that the election outcome would be in line with what pollsters had been saying all along. That is that the Son of the Bull was the man to beat. You can therefore imagine their distress when Mr Isaac Hassan announced that their man had lost. This is despite the fact that they had not registered as voters in any useful numbers. Nor did they vote as massively as their competitors.

You see, around here, we like “to be greeted” and “to be released” before we can do such things. We are greeted and released by the contents of a man’s wallet. The Son of the Bull and his agents did not do too well in this regard. Still, we expected him to win.

We were disappointed still when Dr Willy Mutunga and his team dismissed our man’s case, “with a wave of the hand”. The villagers have been asking how this man, whom they fear even more than the man in the Big House on the Hill, could dismiss “their matter” – as they call it – in three minutes. How could he do it without explaining why, even in one sentence?

In our courts at the marketplace, you give the reasons first. You walk people through the evidence that has been laid before you. You then conclude, “Therefore the son of Akaliche stole the chicken, as claimed by the son of Amakulie.” You don’t say, “The son of Akaliche stole the chicken. We shall tell you our reasons in two week’s time.”

Our people do not understand that kind of justice. That is why they have been a little sulky. Now these people are very interesting. They are disappointed that the great judges with the power of life and death over we the ordinary mortals “did not read their reasons in court even after they found them.”

They have been saying to me, “Dreamer of Dreams, where is this place called the cyber space? Where is this strange place where they say people have been hiding to do post-election violence? We hear that the court has also gone there with the reasons the Son of the Bull lost the election? So how do we get there, also?”

You see, while we live in the Northern Hemisphere, we are not yet digital. That is why we voted for our fellow analogue man. But that is also why they are saying, “Dreamer of Dreams, you are the one who goes to that big town. For us, we are too heavy. The vehicles that go there cannot lift us. We are too fat to go through the doors of trains and the buses. So take our message to those big people. Tell the big chief that here in Emanyulia, we can accept what the judge says, but that does not mean we believe it. In fact, tell him we promised to accept the election results. But we never promised to believe them. We also promised to accept what the court says. But we did not promise to believe it. The Court is the law. Is the law the truth?”

The man called Akaliche said to me, “Dreamer of Dreams, I accept the law and believe the truth. Go and tell the world that a man may make me accept what he says. However, he cannot make me believe what I don’t believe. How can he even know that I believe, unless I tell him? But even if I tell him that I believe, maybe because I am afraid of him, how will he know that I believe?

“Look, Dreamer of Dreams, I like to hear the inflection and conviction in a man’s voice, when he makes judgment on a weighty matter. I like to look in his eyes, to see if he is convinced about what he says. Is his whole body speaking with his mouth? Have I asked you how you can tell that I believe what I say? You will know if I say it with my whole body. Now, if I put it in a strange invisible place, or in a book, how will you see my body and know that it also speaks with me?”

The good news, however, is that even if these people do not believe, they accept. They have sent me to “ask the people fighting in that invisible place to stop it.”

 “Life is like wormwood,” they said, “It is extremely harsh. You sip it a bit at a time. Let us sip this wormwood slowly. There is no rain that beats you forever. Take it easy.”

Finally, I was given a message for the Son of the Bull and for the Son of Jomo. “Tell the Son of the Bull to take it easy, too. What God has not designed and divined will never come to pass. Tell him, also, that the galloping calf often ends up with a broken leg. Let him not break his leg over these things. Let him allow the Son of Jomo to work. Let it not be said he did not deliver because of distraction from the Son of the Bull.” As for Jomo’s Son I was told, “Simply tell him, ‘Emanyulia is in Kenya.’”