Why ours is a mean man society, from womb to tomb

By Peter Kimani

Definitely, there is something macabre about the episode of morgue attendants caught selling a dead man’s private parts, although the incident reveals something more fascinating.

In the main, it amply demonstrates the workings of the capitalist economy, where everything goes for something, even if it’s a flaccid organ whose owner has expired.

But the revulsion that greeted the revelation appears misplaced.

For starters, it’s a safe bet that this possibly wasn’t the attendants’ first, but fortieth day, in the business.

Further, let’s not be swayed by the Kenyatta National Hospital’s public relations stunt about sending in detectives to pursue the criminals. Why, the best that the detectives can do is to install metal detectors, which would place body parts off the radar.

Moreover, there is no way the hospital would deploy private eyes in every corner of the building to monitor who is doing what, not to mention those being watched have been publicly warned.

In fact, the declaration by the hospital director that sleuths were walking stealthily around its compounds was a form of whistle-blowing, like singing the genteel singsong, kanyoni gakwa wihitha-hithe (hide, my little bird).

There is no insinuation here that the hospital management is abetting the vice; it is simply a dumb strategy.

But that’s not my problem. Neither am I bothered that the incident rekindles man’s wickedness against fellow man. That appeared to have gained acceptance over the years.

Neither should we fault morgue attendants, who are generally honest, hard working citizens accustomed to having their way, especially when demanding pounds of flesh from mourning Kenyans, who desperately want their kith and kin prepared adequately before their final journey.

My beef, if I might call it that, is why we only take issue with imaginative Kenyans who want to contribute to Vision 2030 by taking the meaning of "eating where one works" a bit too literally.

Why, the morgue attendants simply responded to market dictates of a capitalist economy where the rules of supply and demand often negate humanistic values of the services rendered.

Organ harvesting, after all, is a perfectly legit business, especially if one has the requisite signatures from City Hall, and the organs accessed are used in the furtherance of human science.

There is the question of consent, naturally, and Kenyans take too many liberties.

Which is why men, and invariably women, are bound to keep touching their bodies whenever they step out of matatus, just to be sure their private parts are still intact because one doesn’t know who to trust.

The living have no respect for the dead because life isn’t generally respectful, even for age-old traditions that abhor young men seeing the nakedness of their elders – dead or alive. Now sons have to examine bodies of their grannies when they die, just to be sure.