It's time we stopped mourning J.M...

He was said to not only be his mother's best child but a darling of his village, an icon.

I am not talking about Josiah Mwangi. I am talking about John Maina, a Nakuru journalist who passed on in January this year. 

J.M died of chest related complications. His doctor said he went to seek medication when it was too late. But some of his close friends feel he died out of neglect. They want his hospital investigated. 

And since we buried him, these close friends have been pouring out their hearts for this young man who they described as witty, funny, jovial, all but very hardworking.

They say they miss him. Others say they still see him in their dreams. Others say his place in their hearts will never be replaced. They are mourning him so much. So much so that they have forgotten this world is not our own. And that J.M. went back to where he belongs.

I never mourned J.M that much. Not that I didn't know him. Actually I was once his Manager in 2011 or 2012, and I loved the shine of his star that was rising then. So when he died at the age of 25, I felt some loss. 

But I rarely mourn people for long. When their time comes, they deserve to go so some more people can come.  I will also go. That is life. 

From dust to dust. Fair thee well, J.M.

What we can do is not to mourn people forever, even if they left indelible marks in our lives. The best thing is to remember them. You get me? Remembrance is the thing.

So then we cannot keep fanning a tribute page for him. He is dead, he is gone. Yet we can rekindle his memory in a myriad ways.

If for sure we feel, and this I direct to my fellow scribes in Nakuru, that J.M. did anything remarkable to take this profession forward, I suggest we come up with his memorial.

I suggest that we come up with an annual journalism excellence award that will be named after him. Let it be given to young journalists aged 25 and below who show commitment to their work and especially those who show novelty in covering County issues well.

And that should tell those who are still mourning J.M they can keep their tears to themselves. Even the tribute page on fb has lost its meaning now. It should be shut down. 

It's time we stopped mourning J.M...

Leave Radio Amani alone, it has done its work...*

I have heard a number of Catholics in Nakuru complain that Radio Amani is not worth its salt. They always compare it with Waumini Radio and say Radio Amani is not 'Catholic enough.' 

And I have always wondered what exactly being 'Catholic enough' is and how a radio station is supposed to be so. 

But deep inside me I am convinced, since it went on air in 2009, Radio Amani has done its role, and done it right, in being a 'Catholic Radio' and being 'Catholic enough.'

When I first heard about Radio Amani, I was a final year student at the Njoro Campus of Egerton University. One day the then head of Communications of the Catholic Diocese of Nakuru, David Omwoyo came to talk about the project that was to give birth to the radio.

It was dubbed 'The Bishop's Radio Campaign. He sold us book marks with the Karl Marx's message that religion is the opium for the poor. But he went on to explain that religion ought not be so. He said that they were in the process of setting up a radio that would celebrate religion in the practical sense of life. That was in 2006, around June, if my memory serves me right.

In September 2009 when I finally joined the radio, the message had not changed, at least in him. Mark you, those of us who pioneered Radio Amani had more interaction with Omwoyo than any other person in the Diocese in terms of what the radio was supposed to achieve.

So when Omwoyo introduced Radio Amani not as a "Catholic Radio" but as a "a Community Radio run by the Catholic Diocese of Nakuru" we took that and implemented the goal. 

Our mandate was to 'preach peace' in a region that had known a history of ethnic and political violence for decades. We were to talk to everyone, even the atheists, since peace is a cross cutting issue. It has as many stakeholders as it has victims once it is lost.

Within a short time, we had brought so many people on board. We hardly had any resources to pool an audience apart from the on-air-talk. But we managed to have a cosmopolitan audience. These became our ambassadors of peace. 

We even had Muslims in our fan base. Not that they didn't know the radio was 'Catholic run.' In fact the Muslim Community was so 'cool' with us reporting their issues. 

I remember leaders of Protestant churches would call in during a 'purely  Catholic show' I used to host on Sunday morning, remind their members to go to church and request for a Catholic song. 

By the way even Muslims called in to request for a Catholic/Christian song. And in town I always met political party fanatics who would always ask about "our radio."

That to me is the very embodiment of peace. And I bet 'The Prince of Peace' after whom the radio is named would have loved it that way. 

However those who felt we were not worth it always asked why we were not reciting the rosary all the time? Or why we were not having preachers all the time? Or why we were playing secular music? But mainly, why we were not like Waumini Radio, the radio which is run by the Conference of Catholic Bishops in Kenya, and based in Nairobi.

They felt we were not fulfilling the mandate of the radio. They wanted us to ooze Catholicism, yet our mandate was to demonstrate it. To live it. 

Look, the real Catholic is a sinner. He is an inciter. He is an ethnic monster to say the least. He is the one who killed Fr. Michael Ithondeka in the 2007/2008 post election violence. And he killed him with his rosary hanging on his neck. 

This is the Catholic I have met in a disco several times in Nakuru on a Saturday night. We danced Ken wa Maria's song 'Wakatimba Kumbafu.' And we did it in the presence of our Parish Priest. But on Sunday I found him in Church. Singing in the choir. Leading in the 'Matega' procession while our Priest stood with the gait of Jesus himself to receive the gifts. The real Catholic is not 'Catholic enough.' 

In essence then if Radio Amani was not Catholic enough, then it was 'real Catholic.' Because real Catholicism is not 'Catholic enough.' 

So leave Radio Amani alone. It has done its work. But, should the diocesan administration feel it wants to change its identity, it can do so. 

*I no longer work with Radio Amani. I work with Egerton University as a  journalist and media trainer.

A Short Sentenced Piece

My mum was a beach boy. She used to sell wood work pieces on the sea shore. It was this that made me know the Akamba Hand Craft in Changamwe. I would accompany her to buy stock. She also sold mtandio. Some silky coastal fabrics that are good for women.

Her station was Shelly Beach Hotel. If you have gone to the Coast then you know how to go. That's after crossing the ferry. You turn left and drive not so far. And even at the hotel you turn left from the main road. So it's a turn left, turn left place.

There were so many people who worked with her. Some sold hand craft like her. Some sold mtandio like her. Some sold the Kisii stone artifacts. Some only worked as tour guides. Some took tourists on boat rides.

Some beach boys did not know how to speak English. But they needed to speak with tourists. One man did not know how to ask "what is your name?" He said, "what you collo?" He was my friend. He used to tell me to read hard and go to the university.

What you collo had his brother. His brother was not a beach boy. He used to sell tea leaves. In packets. The two loved the local brew. So much. But one day we woke up with a word. That the brother had been sodomized. Under his drunken stupor. But that was not even it. Some other day we woke with a word. That What you collo had passed on. 

My mum made so many friends from the beach. She brought them to the village. When she brought them she owned them. And we owned them too. We said they are ours.

One day my mum came with her Kenyan-Briton friend. She had a flowery name. Jasmine. She was a bit the age of my mum. Then I made a mistake. I asked her, "how old are you?" She said it was rude. I was an adolescent. She didn't know why I was asking about her age. I will not ask about the age of women any more. I was told it is rude. By Jasmine. I expect no woman to ask me my age. It is unkind. 

One day my mum came from the beach with a swollen ankle. She said she had been stung by a sea urchin. She thought it will go away. But it didn't. 

Then she got an ulcer. At the ankle. Or is it "on the ankle?" I don't know the language. Exactly.

She thought it will go away. But it didn't. Then people said bad things about her. Even those who got sweets from her visitors. Our visitors. These days the people have stopped. The bad things they said about her. 

The ulcer is still there. Some doctors think. It is varicose veins.

One other day we woke up with bad news. Shelly Beach Hotel would never accept guests. It was going to shut down. For renovation. 

Then it shut down. Then we waited. Then our village did not have money in circulation. I did not have school fees. Mum was no longer a beach boy. Her Kenyan-Briton friend was not coming to visit her any more. Or the Jamaican couple. That was her friend too. She was not receiving any seasonal greetings cards. There was no reminder that they would visit next winter. It was that bad.

That is how her dream of going to the UK died. Her dream of ever flying died that time too. Then recently. In 2011. I took my maiden flight. To Johannesburg. And I dedicated it. To her.

Shelly Beach Hotel remained closed. It is to date. There was no renovation. There is no money in our village. From the hotel. Many beach boys have gone back up country. I don't know what they do. My mum is still in our village. But she is no longer a beach boy. She is a charity woman. She cooks food. For the children. In our village.

And that is. My short. Sentenced. Piece.

Myriad Experiences: A Vault of Verses

If you should see/a man/walking

  down a crowded street/talking aloud/to himself

    don't run in the opposite direction

     but run toward him/for he is a poet!

      You have nothing to fear/from the poet

        but the truth.

'Voice in the crowd' by Ted Joans

From American Poetry

©1963 Arna Bontemps (Ed)

In memory of

Uncle Martin

Dedicated to

Juma Magogo aka Mbunge

Titus Opere aka Nyakwar'Opere

Abubakar Seif aka Antagonist

With you I shared a room at the Njoro Campus of Egerton University and perhaps,

 some of these myriad experiences

NEITHER DO I

(In response to Dr. Fugich Wako who once asked me who I write for)

Neither do I write for poets

Nor for elites.

I write for the masses

For they are my bosses.

In dream we share

In reality we stare.

With no intimidation

With no hesitation.

Ergo, in future we hope

For what is now, beyond or scope.

Neither do I need to be imprisoned

Nor receive baptism by fire

To know the graveness of gaol

Or be able to utter

In internal groaning

Prayers, for future generations.

Neither do I need to be simple

Nor speak as a cripple

In unfolding the folded, for simplicity

Is but a complexity, of simplicity.

Otherwise, about my Yahweism:

I am a nightingale

Perched on a cashew branch

Between a princely parrot

And an ominous owl.

Their voices is mine, but a blend

To remain mine, a trend

Till mine becomes, the trend.

I LOVE YOU BECAUSE

(For the late Mrs. Njagi, the oldest woman I ever met in my life; but also in response to a call in 2006 by KISS F.M who asked listeners to write a poem to their loved ones on Valentine's Day starting with the line...I love you because)

I love you because

Your stooping posture

On the three legged stool

Kept for you outside

Your shredded hut,

Is a symbol of resistance -

A defiance to the end of things.

Even as the sun bows

And you are turned

To hog its warmth

I see in thy eyes

A life that has better been

Celebrated in loneliness.

If I be your valentine

This season

I'll take you to Shangri La

There -

At the promised land

Where -

In an idyllic aura

I'll feed you with milk and honey

As you tell me

The Achilles' heel to death.

WHEN I BE

When I be a writer

I'll put down on debris

Of white papers

Illusions -

In black and white

Sighs of my soul -

Out of the sapphire blue sky.

Songs, that lull me

To sound sleep.

Dreams that open

Tightly locked doors.

Promises,

That conceive novel days

All these at once

When I be a writer

Accomplishing my dream.

ROSE

Oh my

Red ready rose

I hold you in these

My poor palms.

Should the sun

Shoot bright light

Bringing all the flower beds

Down

Let your petals

Remain

Wide open.

But oh

Red ready rose

Should you whither

As I hold

Let me not behold

What love has

Ever

For a poor lover.

MY GRANDPA

My grandfather has dimples

He goes to club dimples

He drinks but never stumbles

Like a gentleman he never grumbles.

My grandfather is the fittest

With a heavy pocket he's the fairest

That's why I call him the sweetest

And the world's loveliest.

My grandfather plays Dolly Parton

When his heart is torn.

He says, "When I listen to Celine Dion,

I remember the day I was born

For my heart goes on...and on...and on..."

My grandfather has the mood

To make you feel good

Everyone in the neighborhood

Calls him Lord.

My grandfather is the master

When you have a matter

He'll assist you perform better

Cheering as you glitter.

Nothing but the truth

Is said by my mother

And her mother

About my grandfather.

Listen, my grandfather is in bed

For him that we made

Within the homestead.

My grandfather...is dead!

DAYS OF OUR LIVES

In the days of our lives

We meet and sit

And eat and part.

We learn and run

And pant in the burning sun

We toil, till we're done,

In gossip we partake

Putting our faith at stake

We picture not, our mistake.

In the day we swim

At night we dream

Unless we're lame.

We sin, singing in skill

And grill and kill

And pray still.

We do all, haphazardly and comical

Yet like this recital

Only rhythmically meaningful.

STARE AT A DOG

Stare at a dog

Stark naked as he may be

But blush, he will not.

Flatter him

To cover slightly

His muscular hind thighs

He stares back

With bored eyes.

Crack laughter later

Attempting to make the saga better

That is when he will become smarter

And sit in comfort.

The human personality

Is of the same commonality

When you query the normal

You become abnormal.

THAT PLACE

(This poem was inspired by a visit to the Flamingo Camp)

A remote but exquisitely exotic

Haven. Sitting at the bottom of a rock

Valley. It's a mere stretch from the highway

Perhaps in keeping the mundane away.

There are these little feathery creatures

Little as aligned to other world measures.

They talk  to their God in a caucus

Murmuring without the likes of us in focus.

You move closer and stir their silence

Or if you stand still and kill their patience

They fly away to hide their real self

Whether they are made of white or pink stuff.

And further afield the hills kiss the sky

Some like sand dunes not so high

Some like the pyramids so narrated

As part of the chronology of every that God created.

But it's the waters that bring the serenity

The breeze from there washing away guilty

Feelings. And what's fair to all is ideally ignited

And you a pilgrim is spiritually uplifted.

This poet who was there once

Sat and ate in a chat with no dance

His thoughts taken back to an epoch of romance

Invites you to sojourn if just but once

And feel what it feels, to be in a classical stance.

A WOMAN RE-CREATED

A woman arose from ashes

Having lived there for a good time

And a mold was made out of her

Who was in the past seen as dust.

She had first appeared as a fuel-tender

Cast in the image of a soul sought after,

Though calmly on her face -

That carpeted burns beneath.

Then she was told to go

Having woken up

From a racket of lusty reeds

To get her complete self.

 

She came back though

Claiming to seek refuge

Against unwelcome winds

Straying her land of birth.

Then she was sent back again

This time with a Lot's caution

That whoever looks back

Will turn into a salty block.

But she came back with a claim

That the last taste of the illicit intimacy

Was the same salt she had come to lick

At a time she had already become a baby's bait.

And that's how she was domesticated

And that's why her re-creation was reconsidered

And that's when her inner self resurfaced

And that's where she is, here she is, re-created.

A POST COLONIAL POEM

(An inspiration by one Onesimus Kipchumba Murkomen)

They came here in the early 1980's

In the name of SAPS

They perched on our flag posts

Then started shitting on our social welfare.

What they aimed to adjust structurally

In programmes planned without our consensus

Was sooner than later maladjusted.

So no sooner had we discovered their moves

Than they repackaged their ill motives

Then came back in the name of

Economic recovery strategies.

A hawk is better called an eagle

If its name should be changed.

These were birds of fate, this you should know

Very far from our beautiful peacocks

Or the good fortune albatross.

So next time your governor

Signs cheerfully a bail out cheque -

In front of local and international cameras:

The latter cheering with him

The former caught up in ignorance and fate

Not sure whether to cheer, jeer, or better cry

Next time

Think of the layoffs even in key sectors

Since his signature says yes to conditions

Of economic surveillance

Among other ways of maintaining the dollar gold standard.

But always remember he was nowhere

When the global rivalry was rolled off

At least twice

Leading to what even his people participated in

With no idea of what it meant

Lest you blame him for the plans

Laid down in 1944.


MYRIAD EXPERIENCES

This poem was inspired by Wole Soyinka's, 'Idanre'

 

There is a valley:

There is a valley in cast off country

Where, while in my virgin veil

I long to be

And be with others of my make.

Where I will shout without being booed

As I gulp a full fill of the earth's stinky surrounding

As my kinsmen ululate:

Welcome angel

Receive your celestial casuistry.

Then after swimming in the springs

That stretch to irrigate the creative veldt

I will journey up

To reach the apex

Of the mountain the valley baby sits

Where on top I will shout my voice to the top

And the world will tremor

With such an invincible tone.

The dream:

The dreamer got his dreams

And the dream was spelt,

When I went to stay

At the African Olympus Mountain, as I pay

Homage, to those whose poetic fame is grey.

The Bards appeared

In their true totality

And before they disappeared

I requested to be heir, to their revered

Creative haven. They answered:

Take from us what you want

And make from it, what others thought you can't.

As for now child, descend to your town

Where from you'll get what for you whine.

The transfiguration:

Their word I obeyed

Thus down I journeyed

Only to meet three faces

At the mountain's base:

An African literary laureate,

An obscurantist poets poet

A voice that condemned Africa

To literary desertification.

From them came a chorused command:

Unfold your folded!

To which the reply was

I am a cub

Pawing, pouncing, proclaiming

My tigritude

Which has nothing to do with

Colours connotating Negritude,

But just a way of capturing contemporary African hood:

It's the point where

Black Ideologists

And Negro Realists

Meet.

I shall accept the awards you rejected

Not because I suffer from avarice

No!

The African nature that always gives

When given, always receives

Thus strives

To reach literary afforestation.

They gave me a long stare

That made their second question bare:

Who are you?

I said

Lois begot Eunice

Eunice begot Timothy

He of the epistles

Who through loyalty to the good news

Believed in the power of the word

Through the faith that was handed him

By the two great women

A slave he became

A combat in the best combat

To succumb like He

Who wore your Albatross and mine

On his neck, to save us from the shame

He who succumbed untainted -

I am the Timothy.

Priscila  dies:

Leaving them to conjure up their hay days

I went my own ways

And lo!

Another terrible sight

Another terrible plight:

A cock and an owl compete

For recognition, as I cross the village gate

One to usher a new day

The other to bid farewell

To a development conscious mind

That was shifting to the land underneath.

With melancholy her cows mooed in their pen

Chanting a confused concerto

That marked her departure

And that of another of their kind

That was to follow to mark her send off.

Her daughters stared in confusion

The tug of war between the Akamba and the Abaluhya

In determining who deserved to see her off:

The former having been there in the beginning, briefly

But who as tradition dictated deserved it

For they paid the three goats, in the beginning.

The latter having been there in her hitherto ups and downs

Having been there in her rise and fall

Wanted to be there in her final journey

In the name of love till we are done part.

Pindua goes home:

This disgusted Pindua

Even as he staggered home from the night long harambee

One could see in his eyes the vexation

"Who deserves the right to the dead?" he lamented in a question

"Is it the one with whom she had her first born

Or the one with whom she had her last

Is it the one who broke her hymen with primal libido

Or the one who saw her past menopause -

The one who took her for a walk and massaged her

To relieve her of osteoporosis?"

It was when he was me, paused, and said

"Sorry, your friend is gone."

Then he continued,

"Great women are made of deeds

Their word is the seed

Similar to the believers' creed.

The womb of a heroine

Is not fit for a heroine's conception

That...was a heroine, beware of those who mar her fame

For all dogs tail wag, tail or no tail.

Better die struggling to survive than relaxing in relief

Chance is birth and death

It's born once with a mortal breath."

On matters of the heart he said

"Matters of the heart, leave them to the heart

Love is not blind

Love is an owl

It sees in darkness.

You talk of true love:

True love is only existent

Where external forces aren't persistent

We otherwise toil doctoring perceptions

Of what we call love

To fit feelings of the heart

As they daily unfold, full of emotions

If only we could focus

Some miles in to the future

To see the impossible.

"Are you not aware of the trapping triangle?

Listen: the eyes and the ears

Are liars

Where love is concerned

Especially where the heart gets in

Complicating the trapping triangle,

In a situation you had vowed

To emerge the victor

You become the vanquished."

H e then burst into laughter, dance, and song:

"Salome...Sally...Salome...

Salome has gone to the River Nyando

She carries on her tender cradle

The family's earthen pot

In which drinking water is always preserved

Salome...Sally...Salome...

Salome is back

Drinking water is back

Thirst is gone, life is back."

Reflecting is said

"An eel is the water

Drinking water for the family

Break the pot...?

Pour down the water...?

Kill the eel and poison the three...?

Oh Salome...Sally...Salome...

Salome's water is in the earthen pot

An eel is in the water

How do we assist Salome?

How do we save the society?"

Then he staggered away

The illicit cup still working on him a big way

Whence I thought of my grandmother:

I said

"Your cockerel has been chasing your neighbor's hen

Here they come, open the gates for them

And make her one of your poultry stock

Then shout to your neighbor and report

Her nanny's leg was broken by one of your own

And make the necessary arrangements."

She opens the gate, and we go in

And we live happily

There after.