A Crude kind of Death awaiting Kenyans…

After having a shiity day, I get home to find the 7. Oclock news well on its way. But what I find being reported shakes me to the core, and makes my day worse.

There are these three people who have been forced to sit down by the side of the road by a highly charged up mob. One of the three people is an elderly lady, and the other two were men who seemed to be in their mid thirties. But their swollen forces may have adjusted my age estimates upwards. And though I only see three, it is reported that there were five people.

As I look on, one man from the crowd charges forward, and with all his weight behind him, flies in with a forceful kick, landing on the elderly lady’s face and knocking her over. As if taking cue from that kick, another young man approaches her from behind with a long stick. As he hits her over and over, on her head and back, the stick disintegrates completely.

The rest of the mob closes in on them. We are then told that they were beaten senseless, and the camera jumps to the time they are being burned alive. We see them being covered with leaves and sticks, and a fire is lit. As they burn, we see as some eager villagers approach the fire with more leaves and sticks, making the fire fiercer, and delighting at the screams of those burning.

I writhe. My heart ties itself into knots and sinks.

I look for emotion from the news cast members, but there is none. This is just some great piece of news, caught on camera. I listen with rage in my eyes as those responsible are interviewed. They have just killed five people, yet they have this glee on their faces illustrative of a worthwhile accomplishment. One even goes to the extent of saying that this has been a good start, and encouraging the rest to carry on with that spirit.

They say that those killed were witches who had terrorized that community for a long time. They say that the elderly lady they had just killed had made one of the kids in that village dumb. Maybe it is just me, but I do not believe in any supernatural powers by human beings, be they religious kingpins or voodoo witches. Most usually run scams and even so, that is no reason to kill them and in such an atrocious manner.

I have written before about how mob justice has become a legal way of killing people but which, and dangerously so, individual responsibility gets diluted within the mob. From my sociology and psychology classes, I wrote about the mob psychology in Watching a Man Die and the Power to Take a Life. I say dangerously because without that burden of taking someone else’s life on one’s conscience, such a person will kill to no foreseeable end. That must be the reason the Mungiki and similar sects kill in groups.

But not only that; that must be the reason it was so easy for people to pick up machetes and kill their neighbours at the height of the post election violence. And until these people are individually held to account, that murderous side to them, though latent remains very potent. And that makes me uneasy, and also makes me comprehend Kaasa’s reasons for not coming back to Kenya.

I normally live without a care in the world about what will happen after I die. We have been told that we will burn in hell if we do not get born again. I have since accepted that and told friends and colleagues that my default setting is to burn in hell. As a skeptic, I see that every religion and even lack of it, can create it own path to heaven (if it is there), depending on what the individual does. No religion has the right of passage to heaven over another.

But I digress.

The point is; even if I do not give a shit what the hell happens after death, there are some very cruel ways to check out; and those scare me. Kenyan pundit says in  the post “Cannibalistic Nation” that after being accepted to Havard Law School, coming back home out of the way, at least for the first years, primarily out of fear of dying. People die in America too, but not in such crude and unexpected ways as they do in Kenya.

This fear proved founded after the unfortunate murder of the 29 old  Dr. Muiruri, who had just returned home from Sheffield University, where he had handed in his PhD Thesis. Yes, I said PhD. He had an altercation with someone in one of the Nairobi Joints (Crooked Q) but little did he know that this guy was a cop. After driving off, this cop trailed him, pulled him over and shot him dead.

I am scared of dying from a stray bullet; a threat that is too real today. I am scared of dying from mob justice, as a mistaken identity; which has happened a lot. I am scared of being burned to death; and I am not looking forward to hell either. I do not want to die from police brutality; they will beat my face in and fcuk it up with machetes so that nobody will recognize me, if I am found at all. I am scared of getting hit by a speeding Matatu driven by a drunk driver who gave the cop at the check point KES 50 to continue driving drunk and without a license.

I am scared to die without doing all those things I have planned. But a little part of me dies everyday that a young person is killed, which is every day.

And I fear that my family members, my friends, my colleagues and any other innocent Kenyan out there might die from any one of these crude means.

The unfortunate thing is that we tend to easily forget these abuses, even when Human Rights bodies are in our faces with these facts and figures, day in, day out. We wait until five instead of one person has been burned alive for it to make news. And even so, such news are few and far between, and devoid of the emotion that is only human to have. We wait until a 29 year old PhD holder becomes a victim of extrajudicial killing for it to elicit reaction and more so because his father is still well connected. That is how a society’s morals slowly rot away.

I do not know to what end I wrote this. If it was release; it did not work for my heart still feels twisted in knots and the frown I started with is still there. If it was to tire me to sleep; it has not since it’s 2.am in the morning and my eyes are not even tired. I guess I am far too gone on this one.

I usually listen to neo soul or classical music as I write, but ironically, just after writing that I am far to gone on this one, “Bruised but not broken” by Joss Stone started playing. Anybody with a conscience in Kenya is both bruised and broken. But we still keep on keeping on, for we have no other choice.

I do not know whether it has done anything to you; but I would like to know…

Excuse me as I shut my eyes… I hope that sleep will soon come. I will listen to India Arie‘s Strength, Courage and Wisdom first.