POST MASHUJAA
21-10-2018
It is 12 noon EAT, the 21st day of October 2018. A day after the Mashujaa day celebrations. The sun is burning hot and the students, save for me, as well as the teachers are standing beneath receiving its first hand impact.
I am penning this article from the comfort of my desk in one of the 25 classes of Kapsabet High School-one of the few to be appraised as a national school. And today, this very day of October, they are in anxious anticipation of a visitor whom they have acclaimed as 'very important'. I have been just meticulous enough not to use 'we' in place of 'they' for the simple reason that unlike those I am referring to, I'm not so desperate to receive this visitor.
This very important visitor has been called upon to launch a just completed project vthat has been named after him in an evident showcase of obsequiousness. I don't know why but I am a natural-born critique of such. I mean, why endeavour too hard to please or gain the attention of these 'important' people when it is conventional that none of us is a son or daughter of a lesser God? I don't know about you but that doesn't arouse any pleasure from within me. It only irks me.
This important visitor has brought along with him an entourage of likewise visitors of his calibre-people of means. Our playing field is now a sea of an assortment of top-of-the-range government vehicles. Vehicles, which in regard to the common mwanachi only exist in lucid expressions of wild fantasy. Security is also beefed up. Men in uniform from the top echelons of power are bustling around in the compound checking this and that to gain sureness that the important visitors' safety is not breached. I have not yet ceased to silently question why the very same preachers of servant leadership have not yet accorded the people they serve the same security they have accorded themselves. Is it not just so ludicrous to have close to two hundred security men of superior training at your disposal hitherto the cold blood murder of Sharon Otieno, Monica Nyawira and hundreds others who needed such protection? I reserve this opinion to myself but if servant leadership is what I know it is, then I have got no apologies to make.
Yesterday, in anticipation of this visitor they call important, the school was cleaned; thorough cleaning I should say. Even the foot paths were washed with soap and water. Not once in my three-year stay at this multitudinous institution have I seen such meticulous cleaning. Hypocrisy- that was my ultimatum on such. And owing to that, I deliberately kept my distance from them: the servile slaves of impunity.
This important visitor has come with his cronies and have subsequently dished out a whooping half a million shillings in cash to the school- allegedly for using our field as a landing spot for their huge copters and four-wheel drives. Nonetheless, I dont blame them. Isn't it their money? And aren't they at liberty to spend it as they will?
But as is my norm, I take a back seat and meditate long over the issue. Among the myriads of questions that linger in my mind, one is predominant. Who needs the money more? A school whose students pay close to a hundred thousand shillings for fees or the Wanjiku's out there in the barren cold who can't raise a meagre hundred shillings to feed their feeble children?
I haven't yet come to a substantive conclusion given that I'm a direct beneficiary of the important visitor's generosity. Humanity however dictates that the latter carries the day.
It is now 5:30 pm EAT. The important visitor has left the vicinity of our school. He has left me something to ponder over through the night.
@oiraqaleb esq
It is 12 noon EAT, the 21st day of October 2018. A day after the Mashujaa day celebrations. The sun is burning hot and the students, save for me, as well as the teachers are standing beneath receiving its first hand impact.
I am penning this article from the comfort of my desk in one of the 25 classes of Kapsabet High School-one of the few to be appraised as a national school. And today, this very day of October, they are in anxious anticipation of a visitor whom they have acclaimed as 'very important'. I have been just meticulous enough not to use 'we' in place of 'they' for the simple reason that unlike those I am referring to, I'm not so desperate to receive this visitor.
This very important visitor has been called upon to launch a just completed project vthat has been named after him in an evident showcase of obsequiousness. I don't know why but I am a natural-born critique of such. I mean, why endeavour too hard to please or gain the attention of these 'important' people when it is conventional that none of us is a son or daughter of a lesser God? I don't know about you but that doesn't arouse any pleasure from within me. It only irks me.
This important visitor has brought along with him an entourage of likewise visitors of his calibre-people of means. Our playing field is now a sea of an assortment of top-of-the-range government vehicles. Vehicles, which in regard to the common mwanachi only exist in lucid expressions of wild fantasy. Security is also beefed up. Men in uniform from the top echelons of power are bustling around in the compound checking this and that to gain sureness that the important visitors' safety is not breached. I have not yet ceased to silently question why the very same preachers of servant leadership have not yet accorded the people they serve the same security they have accorded themselves. Is it not just so ludicrous to have close to two hundred security men of superior training at your disposal hitherto the cold blood murder of Sharon Otieno, Monica Nyawira and hundreds others who needed such protection? I reserve this opinion to myself but if servant leadership is what I know it is, then I have got no apologies to make.
Yesterday, in anticipation of this visitor they call important, the school was cleaned; thorough cleaning I should say. Even the foot paths were washed with soap and water. Not once in my three-year stay at this multitudinous institution have I seen such meticulous cleaning. Hypocrisy- that was my ultimatum on such. And owing to that, I deliberately kept my distance from them: the servile slaves of impunity.
This important visitor has come with his cronies and have subsequently dished out a whooping half a million shillings in cash to the school- allegedly for using our field as a landing spot for their huge copters and four-wheel drives. Nonetheless, I dont blame them. Isn't it their money? And aren't they at liberty to spend it as they will?
But as is my norm, I take a back seat and meditate long over the issue. Among the myriads of questions that linger in my mind, one is predominant. Who needs the money more? A school whose students pay close to a hundred thousand shillings for fees or the Wanjiku's out there in the barren cold who can't raise a meagre hundred shillings to feed their feeble children?
I haven't yet come to a substantive conclusion given that I'm a direct beneficiary of the important visitor's generosity. Humanity however dictates that the latter carries the day.
It is now 5:30 pm EAT. The important visitor has left the vicinity of our school. He has left me something to ponder over through the night.
@oiraqaleb esq
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