Saturday, 26 April 2014

2100hrs, Githurai Market, Nairobi-Kenya

Outside the Family bank Atm the sacks roll. Dirty sacks, soil dirty, mud dirty, filthy dirty, dirty sacks roll and turn. Not potato sacks but sacks with human bodies, pitchy bodies darkened by grease sweat, rarely washed bodies, mildly mobile and frighteningly still.

They are bodies of homeless sons of Mumbi, of Mulungu. Somewhere, in the same country, sons of Nyasaye, of Engoro and of Were sleep in the same conditions, perhaps worse conditions, perhaps blacker, of the blackest black.

They don't care they are Kikuyu, Kamba or Somali. Theirs is a life of slow clock, waiting for nothing, waiting for complete stillness, with the gum making the waiting easier. They don't bicker politically, but they can insult you, insult you badly, carelessly. Perhaps they don't care about a god, any god, whatever god.

To them, the vulture is a more potent enemy, a worse enemy than the radicalized bomber. The next big enemy, i figure out, must be soberness, or sobriety, or just anything which would make them see the world as it is.

Thinking hard i realize, there is peace is the two extremes, the extreme of strong, gated and manned community and the extreme of homeless, gateless and careless community. In these extremes, religion, tribe, colour, creed or academic exploits don't matter.

Stopping to think, or even stopping thinking, i conclude, there might be another Emilly in these sacks. The one here may not have a good voice, but she may be a science genius, and science is done behind closed doors, not like art, which is done on platforms.

Some problems are worse than political Mureithism or Kalonzonology.

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