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Post by nereah on Feb 2, 2012 16:41:04 GMT 3
kathure,
apologies for the embarrassment by wrongly crediting you for the post.
they are all the same these politicians, aint they? some time back i traveled with a young college girl who was so passionate in her dislike for her chancellor angela merkel. and she had her facts. yet angela is among my heroines.
i also have to put up with a member of my roundtable who has a strong revulsion for agwambo. when agwambo's record as a leader came up for deliberation, the member caught us offgaurd with some weird stats, straight from moses kuria's bag of propaganda.
i am attempting to say that its not unusual to hear that nothing good is worth talking of kibaki and his presidency. my late husband for one was a victim of moi's atrocities and as some senior jukwaa personalities here have reminded us here in the past, mzee kibaki was the chair of the security committee to which the so called crackdown that victims and their families have never recovered from.
but again, as someone ask, why, for instance, do nairobi which for all intent and purpose ought to be the most informed and independent (beyond bribery) of kenyan citizenry(voters),end up with the sonkos of kenyan democratic parliament?
if raila for instance is not good for kenya, then millions of his supporters and even blind followers like nereah from where he derives his relevance, are to be blamed.
am i making sense?
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Post by nereah on Feb 28, 2012 20:28:20 GMT 3
the usually guarded president whose not keen on letting people know his stand on issues is exposing his ideological conviction and in effect feeding the revisionist frenzy with his objection to dismantling what stands out as the vestige of colonial tool;the provincial administration. he is determined that the center must remain and for very obvious reasons to those who know where his old school is coming from. by blocking the devolution bill and subsequently rallying his troops to ensure its mutilation, mzee kibaki is by all intent and purposes exhibiting his unguarded moment;the real kibaki. this is what jukwaa makes of his ballgame that is definitely the subject of political analysis this coming weekend. jukwaa.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=6637
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Post by nereah on Mar 21, 2012 18:45:43 GMT 3
fears for his job and life over the ruling against kibaki's ally bashir i shudder at prospects of kibaki presidency running into august next year.
as at writing this, news in says justice nicholas ombija who banned president omar albashir fears that mzee kibaki and his men want him axed over his ruling that truth be said embarrassed the head of state.
there are indications that wily mutunga is either caving in to the supremacists and mafiosos or just like those before like amos wako and githu mugai are first and foremost accountable to the powers that be.
as i feared, kibaki at 80 could go either way for kenya; either redeem the nation and anchor us into the desired trajectory or regress and give way to the anti-change and supremacists who are sparing no expense to ensure that the change that wanjiku craved for is not implemented.
the star had reported that mzee would meet agwambo to iron out the difference on the election date but warned that there are anti-raila forces who would likely prevail over kibaki to keep off the date.that was yesterday's issue and guess what, the hunch was right. mzee spoke by action and indication are that he is content on hanging over to the outermost limit which could as well be august next year.
now as asked elsewhere by jukwaa's brilliant minds, how would kibaki work with the new parliament assuming he wants to take advantage of the lengthy legal contests over the next presidential election outcome to hold forte?
as the commander in chief of the armed forces of kenya, he takes responsibility for failing to arrest the man whose photo appears below
this is impunity and i thought wily mutunga should spoken out against than his rant on pm's observation which resonates with millions of kenyans who want elections like yesterday.
your guess is as good as mine, how the coming months are going to be under kibaki's presidency which is evidently doing absolutely nothing to consolidate the gains that we gallantly fought for with the new constitution.
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Post by Omwenga on Mar 22, 2012 13:29:13 GMT 3
according to state house website,mzee mwai kibaki, c.g.h,e.g.h, mp for othaya and kenya's third president was born on nov.15th 1931 at gatuyaini village in othaya. this therefore means that our president will be 80 tomorrow.he has passed the biblical three scores one ten an achievement that not many of us who were born when he was half that age are sure of. the purpose of this thread is two fold: .first to celebrate the life of a london trained economist who abandoned his professional career to serve his motherland. second is to invite jukwaa to critically interrogate his presidency,assess his statesmanship and examine his politics in a score of 1 to 10. in interrogating the public life of kenya's wartime president and especially his two presidencies (kibaki I & kibaki II) i am all ears on the verdict over the often hushed debate as to whether politically speaking he is an historical accident or the essential fix that kenya needed for take off to the middle income economy. in doing so,we may want to reflect on why historians,chroniclers and latter day scribes have mishandled kibaki or is it vice versa? is it a conspiracy that there is no book ( serious attempt to capture the public life and therefore politics,entrepreneurship and leadership) of kanu's founding chief executive officer,finance minister,v-p,official leader of opposition,president and the only mp othaya peope have had all this year. curiously kibaki has never had any other gainful employment since he quit teaching at makerere at the behest of jaramogi and his late bosom friend,tom mboya.he has served under four regimes(colonial,kenyatta,moi and his)thus an institutional memory. it is kind of mind boggling that kibaki who shares a birthday with chinua achebe has never found it fit to document his experience and story in a book when his rikas like njenga karume have. i have reliably established that his co-principal, prime minister raila amollo odinga,e.g.h,mp,is releasing his second book in a few weeks time and i would have wished that kibaki does the same. nereah's scorecard on kibakias a: politician: 7 statesman:5 MP: 4 president:4.6 My scorecard: Politician: 8 Statesman: 6 MP: Average President: First Term: 7, Stolen Term 4 As a Person: 8 Here are some of my thoughts from archives: Almost 1 year ago, I posted the following in Wishing Kibaki Well As He Prepares To Retire omwenga.com/2011/04/21/wishing-he-president-kibaki-well-as-he-prepares-to-retire/It was reported in the media today that contrary to what was reported the other day that some crazy people were trying to have Kibaki run again for president despite the absence of a legal basis to do so, Kibaki is ready to retire. Go to www.capitalfm.co.ke/news/Kenyanews/Kibaki-ready-to-retire-in-2012-12505.html for the full story. Reading this piece instantaneously took me back to January 1, 2008 when having been up sleepless since election day in 2007, I recall a friend of mine and I watching the unbelievable swearing in of Kibaki at State House. Sitting there as a witness was another friend of mine I had tried to contact without success from the day before in frantic efforts to find out if there was anything he could do being a friend of the president but seeing him there obviously dispensed that idea. A few days later, I left the country in controlled rage and determined to lobby everyone in Washington for help in getting Kibaki to renounce his swearing in and allow the people’s will to prevail. You could not have asked me to name more than two people I held in more contempt at that time than Kibaki and Kalonzo and between the two, Kalonzo more than Kibaki. Fast forward, we have had the compromise leading to the current coalition government and I must say Kibaki has redeemed himself in my book notwithstanding a lot that has happened and continue to happen detrimental to the country’s interests on his watch. On balance, however, having worked closely with his partner, PM Raila to usher in the new Constitution and more recently, having backed down and allowed the appointment of crucial constitutional office holders to be done in conformity with the spirit and letter of the new Law of the land and other things I can list (even including ICC where HE the President seems to have taken a less sombre direction) Kibaki has done great to reclaim a positive legacy in our country’s history despite 07. Needless to say, however, the President owes the country a smooth transition to seal his legacy. What a sweet irony it would be for him to hand over the presidency to the man who many agree is largely responsible for Kibaki being elected president in the first place and what an even more sweeter irony would it be for him to hand over the presidency to a man who believes he stole the seat from him in the second place! I am sure even he would find that much amusing and what an incentive for him to make this happen if anything to close this chapter with us all saying all is well that ends well. (Emphasis added) I wish him well as he starts to wind down to exit the stage and may he have a good and long life in retirement. What I have highlighted is ultimately going to be the test, in my view, of Kibaki's legacy; he presides over and ensures a smooth transition, he would go far in redeeming his legacy; he does not, he seals it accordingly. Later in the year, I penned the following "I Will Retire A Happy President, Says Kibaki and Other Truths," omwenga.com/2011/10/09/i-will-retire-a-happy-president-says-kibaki-and-other-truths-as-reported-by-yours-truly/
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Post by nereah on Jun 7, 2012 17:31:24 GMT 3
months after her majesty's government gave mzee's government probox to fight crime, the wily chinese are raising the bar and are donating a more superior 57 patrol cars for anti-crime agencies in kenya. www.standardmedia.co.ke/?articleID=2000059408&story_title=Police-get-57-patrol-cars-from-China since he threw caution to the wind and started facing east, mzee has overseen the trade volume between kenya and china rising to 33 per cent and as would have been expected, in favour of china. kenya only exported some sh 4 billion worth of good to china yet china is now gobbling up our resources with big contracts. according to this link,china has even surpassed india, our traditional lead trading partner. www.monitor.co.ug/News/World/China+beats+India+to+top+trade+spot+with+Kenya/-/688340/1420534/-/7mkthrz/-/index.htmlsome brilliant jukwaa mind, argued the contradictions of kibaki who in his kanu's heydays was militantly pro west and tag teaming with america's blue eyed boy tome mboya at the treasury, saw to it the kenyatta's alienation of jaramogi and other pro- communists china ideologues. today, mzee at 80, is going to bed with the communist china and no one is raising the finger.
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Post by nereah on Aug 15, 2012 20:06:43 GMT 3
just being told that mzee is to preside over a national peace dialogue conference at bomas of kenya in twelve days time and then launch a peace torch that will be passed through all the twenty seven counties of kenya. well, late archbishop manasses kuria told us that peace is not just the absence of physical violence. kibaki at 80 is the most baffling statesman in kenya today. his presidency seems to be betraying a sense of commitment and focus on kenyan middle class with prime incentives for indigenous entrepreneurs,youth fund and vibrant banking sector that are literally seducing people into borrowing but on the other hand laid back in reigning in on the graft barons. under his watch kenya is now the most notable bastion for money launderers,terrorists with latest report(see yesterday daily nation) warning that its risk being blacklisted by relevant global agency. a diplomat has just been reportedly killed in drug what media say is drug running related murder. mzee is on one hand illustrating his commitment to a better kenya but his omissions and dysfunctions as evident with the heightening political risks, inability to expeditiously deliver local justice to victims of pev and violating the rule of law by disrespecting the court order on the county commissioners are just but some of the worrying signs. here is what the world bank makes of kenya under kibaki: web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/NEWS/0,,contentMDK:23203463~menuPK:64256345~pagePK:34370~piPK:34424~theSitePK:4607,00.html
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Post by phil on Aug 15, 2012 21:52:50 GMT 3
Very well captured Dada Nereah.. There are many more sins we can add to your list but these are really stories that deserve their own threads.
10 years of Kibaki rule has been a nightmarish experience for some of us citizens who voted for him so enthusiastically in 2002.
As you can imagine, there are those who mistakenly given the name "infrastructure" to Kibaki because of Thika Rd and the Nairobi / Kisumu Airport Expansion Projects as well as the yet to start LAPSET project. These people forget that ODM manifesto and Raila's vision for Kenya in 2007 was No. 1 Infrastructure, No. 3 Infrastructure, No. 3 Infrastructure. It is an open secret. And given that the manifestos of PNU and ODM were merged in 2008 whent he two formed government, ODM really deserves more recognition in some of the achievements of the Grand Coalition Government.
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Post by nereah on Sept 15, 2012 17:50:48 GMT 3
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Post by nereah on Dec 9, 2012 17:51:20 GMT 3
the people newspaper is running a three part series on kibaki we never knew.it begin in its sunday edition today.
i hope by tuesday i would be able to understand what inform mzee's moral choices and why he can be so obstinate as at now when he defiantly sits on the list that was forwarded to him by established authority on the critical police reform. parliament is winding up and mzee nor his handlers dont see the urgency of naming the first commissioner general of police even as terrorists continue plying their trade, almost killing a lawmaker!
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Post by nereah on Feb 14, 2013 18:53:38 GMT 3
kibaki at 81 remains the most confounding political animal as they come. according to my informant alturl.com/ysze9 mzee was at the famous address where he paid homage to one of the greatest men that ever lived in kenyan. he was in bondo to confer it with a university charter.but back in nairobi, willy the mutunga who i have no regard or respect to was swearing in three individuals least of all one whose appointment by mzee erodes the very gains he seeks to make in is legacy. then there was this alturl.com/jsusgso there we have it, a double faced, cold hearted and calculating political animal who historians must handled with the care.
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Post by jakaswanga on Mar 9, 2013 0:16:02 GMT 3
Well, now at 80, this relationship between Emilio and his reflection still came strong. Like now Emilio grinned and chuckled at his dark isomeric twin, staring back from the mirror. 'Rascal!' he told it! 'Rascal!' the reflection hummed back! Emilio and his reflection burst into full fledged laughter. In total perfect unison. according to state house website,mzee mwai kibaki, c.g.h,e.g.h, mp for othaya and kenya's third president was born on Nov.15th 1931 at gatuyaini village in othaya. HE WONT WRITE HIS MEMOIRS? HMM, WATCH US DO IT FOR HIM!EMILIO MWAI lumbered toward the adjoining bathroom. He had left it a bit late, so he sprayed it around, loosing nearly all of it just before the pot. The rest wet his pants and trickled down his feet. This was nothing to be ashamed of, since the management of the pressures that build inside the bladders for men beyond a certain age, more often than not, tend to be a hit and miss affair, with the odds monumentally stacked against the more hygienic option. On the other hand, for the shamelessly pragmatic, diapers weren't meant for infants only, meaning adults too could use them to remedy a socially highly bothersome peril; but we are not telling the tale of the leaking women of the Kivus of the Congo, where this is a running epidemic for some unclear reason.. Emilio shrugged at his self defilement, indulging himself with a boyish chuckle. He had long accepted this particular problem that accosted old men. And at a decade less than a septuagenarian he accepted he was an old man, reluctantly yes, but there were limits to self deception, and he wasn't exactly insane. He chuckled dismissively; Lucy would be mad as usual, but that too was now ritual. In any case there were days long gone, when he did worse, releasing it much earlier, not because of age nor some other sickness surprisingly, but purely due to the excesses of maleness, when that thing which made Ken Matiba famous, and the highlands of Scotland even more so, was a passion he regularly indulged with recklessness. Yes Lucy had seen it all. Good old faithful Lucy. Bless her soul. And her bouts of ritual madness too! Emilio shrugged again. This time more a gesture of helplessness than defiance. Then he made to shake the member, --his member which, like most men, he had a kindly baptismal name for. A wide mischievous grin spread over the face of the fading president of the republic the Safari, as, member in hand, the image of young Wambui mushroomed in his head. Wambui, O robust Wambui ---the woman who had brought a new zest into his life, and his body, re-invigorating up to areas whose dormancy threatened to permanently retire into extinction. Fond, Fond old memories these were, and they made Emilio forget himself and chuckle loudly and lazily, very much in the characteristic way Kenyans were used to whenever he fumbled for words on public platforms, as he tried to improvise after his written speech. This was the Wambui they called the Othaya Narc activist! And many other idle things. Foolish foolish Kenyans! Sweet Wambui who got under everybody's skin, which was why they forced him to make that silly public declaration on his marital fidelities as singular, and more recently, that foolish Kimemia whom they imposed on him to replace the incomparable Mathaura, was caught pants down trying to rig her out of the Othaya seat. ---Pumbavu people, these new upstart Kikuyu's without breeding, discretion nor tact. Muthaura O immeasurable ambassador! how he would have loved to retire first and leave Muthaura to neatly round off all the loose ends with his competent hands. But now... He could not maintain this self-pitying train of thought, as the image of high-performance Wambui came again in greater force and lifted him up again. The trademark grin came back, fitting his face effortlessly like the tailor-made mask of a mummified pharaoh. And still with the indulgent grin on his face, Emilio lumbered forth toward the sink. The sink was overlooked by a large mirror. The mirror was not as large as it originally had been in design: actually, it had taken an executive order as president to decrease its size, because that is what had been demanded to override Lucy's preference which was to the contrary. Emilio loved this bathroom because there was no evidence the stale goat-herd Arap Moi had ever used it. He had had his way by irritatedly pointing out to the stubborn Lucy that she had enough toilet options in this house of the republic, aka Ikulu. This morning Emilio's spirits were high on the whole, and not, as used to be long ago, an upshot of chemical inducement, nay, his birthday was always something of a running amusement. Mathematically speaking in calender terms, it was an arbitrary date, but he loved the farce and cakes that went with this fictitious notation. Nobody had ever asked him if he really was born on that day, and come to think of it, neither he himself had ever bothered to unearth the exact date. But who would let such a useless detail disturb his appetite for good cakes? Emilio of Mount Kenya did not. The PORK grinned at his reflection in the mirror. Ever since he became president, he always did this when cheery and present minded. This was perhaps the deepest solitary ritual of his personality: grinning affectionately at his own face. It was a communion with the self that dredged deep, waded through his heart, all the way to one of the greatest formative moments of his personality. This was in childhood when his grandmother had given him an acute sense of his worth. Emilio was born Mwai, a dark Kikuyu, of pigment very black in body colour, and in the racial hierarchy of those white colonial days when more brown in skin colour was the social superior, the lighter Kikuyu boys always had one on him. Keeping him way down the ladder in daily humiliation. But one day when he came home crying, and without the goats, beaten and abused and emotionally broken, his grandmother --bless her keen sense-- took him aside, out of every prying ear, and read him the riot act in classical gikuyu. She said: 'Come on Mwai! You are cleverer than them all combined. Your head terrifies them, so they spend days concocting methods to tame you. They are goats that need you to tend. Without you they are lost. I tell you even the white tribe that now dominate our land, you are above them all. Just make sure you go to school, be diligent, and steal the whiteman's's magic that hides in his books. Never cry again Emilio. Your face is dark like the founder of our nation. It is your birthmark of pride!' That was the day Mwai discovered the self-indulgent grin. The grin that erased the tears. It became a feature of his personality long before he became a regular mirror user. And he never looked back. He would go on to privately cultivate a humanly comfortable, very affectionate relationship with his black face, and black appearance, and his black other in the mirror. Few Black-men who had known racism in the whiteman's highland, were as comfortable with their ebony face as Mwai Emilio wa Kibaki, destined to be president of the banana republic of Kenya. Charcoal black. --Even as the cartoonists in the press portrayed him a frog, cum a lazy absent minded golfer, he took no offense, only a whiff of distaste at their their lack of imagination at the depths of his perceptiveness. A stupid lot taught by nincompoops no doubt, Emilio noted. Well, now at 80, this relationship between Emilio and his reflection still came strong. Like now Emilio grinned and chuckled at his dark isomeric twin, staring back from the mirror. 'Rascal!' he told it! 'Rascal!' the reflection hummed back! Emilio and his reflection burst into full fledged laughter. In total perfect unison. But that was the day, long ago, when a bit tipsy and unaware Lucy was hiding behind the curtains, he carried out a longer dialogue with his reflection, revealing stuff that is better gone with the winds than be funneled toward the ears of ones wife. Yeah, he and Lucy had come a long way, weathered many a weather. And had beautiful children. Children pleased his heart. His own children. Emilio gazed at the family portrait which he insisted be hung in the bathroom. He drew extensive comfort from it, and since the bathroom could be the one place where he could occasionally be totally alone, he could indulge himself. And he always did. Today his thoughts picked out Jimmy. Jimmy was a good son. Not in possession of the insane drive of the Samoei Ruto, nor the turbo-charged Luo Raila, nor the reckless avuncular cold ambition of Uhuru the son of Jomo, but a good disciplined boy and of good nature. Occasionally more of his mother, but a good son nevertheless. He made him happy. Yes. Give and take. ------------- I will be back!
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Post by jakaswanga on Mar 9, 2013 1:18:55 GMT 3
Well, now at 80, this relationship between Emilio and his reflection still came strong. Like now Emilio grinned and chuckled at his dark isomeric twin, staring back from the mirror. 'Rascal!' he told it! 'Rascal!' the reflection hummed back! Emilio and his reflection burst into full fledged laughter. In total perfect unison. according to state house website,mzee mwai kibaki, c.g.h,e.g.h, mp for othaya and kenya's third president was born on Nov.15th 1931 at gatuyaini village in othaya. HE WONT WRITE HIS MEMOIRS? HMM, WATCH US DO IT FOR HIM! SO HE WONT WRITE HIS MEMOIRS? HMM, WATCH US DO IT FOR HIM! TAKE TWO! ----SCENES FROM A STATE HOUSE. YEAH, he Emilio Mwai wa Kibaki had never looked back, too from that fateful day when Tom Mboya drove him all the way from Makerere to Nairobi, making him bid bye to a promising academic career, and enter public service. The earnest chat of the enthusiastic Mboya had never left him, and indeed it was Mboya's voice which more often than not disturbed his sleep, and occasionally, when he was not drunk, but intellectually highly lucid, afforded him perpetual pricks of mental pain. God-damn talkative Luo! This Mboya was in the same league with the Grandma who had forged him. A father figure, or mentor in the nationalist sense then. That long ride within the confines of a car in the African heat, with Mboya explaining The Vision, remained the most intense of conversations of ideas he would ever have on the future of Kenya. Go-damn Luo, TJ. Mboya had summarised: 'Africa is a festival of broken promises. You are a promise, a potential Kibaki, a very promising promise. You are strong enough in the head to know when you are broken, and you will live with yourself after that, clever enough may be to fool others, but never yourself, Emilio. Let us beget the prosperous future for our people, omera!' While flattered that Mboya had found him that important [to the future of the country] to warrant a personal kidnap mission back to Nairobi, he felt a bit pre-concluded to the effect that he had come to fetch him without prior consultation. He must have been that sure he could bend Emilio to his will. Emilio resented this, and it trailed in his heart even as his head was already completely hijacked by Tom Mboya. Thinking of Mboya made him wince all his further political life. Somewhere he felt inadequate, that he had betrayed the man, his mentor, both in life and death. Thinking of Mboya made him feel a coward. He had lived on as if Tom's death meant nothing to him, nor needed mean anything to the country. He did not even call it murder, let alone assassination. Such a festering lie does eat a man of formidable intellect up in the inside. Grin or no grin at a reflection. And it ate away at Kibaki's own sense of worth and pride. Somewhere deep inside where not all dignity had been extirpated by the psychological mutations of permanent power. Indeed later, after being scouted by the Turgen Daniel, he could not think of Mboya without thinking of Arap Moi in the same breath. It would be this uncivilised academic nobody of a Moi who would drive the point home, that he, Kibaki, was broken, and could be bent at will, and used like any political prostitute. He remembered the way Moi had looked at him after he, Kibaki, had announced that dissent from KANU was like cutting down a MUGUMO with a razor-blade! Just like Daniel Arap Moi had hibernated his true persona deep, and become the great Kalenjin joke, humbly bearing the vile humiliations every lowly gikuyu in the court of Kenyatta found fit to piss his way, him Emilio had done that too, in his own way, first under Jomo Kenyatta, then under Arap Moi, until sometimes the deformation of character had been so complete, bypassing schizophrenia or split personality, to evolve into a complete make-over, or personality cross over. It had taken livid Njenga Karume to shout that he, Kibaki, had completely exited from his original self, to jolt him back a bit. To make him consider a personality salvage, or rescue attempt. A rediscovery of the self. Indeed he had become a true bureaucrat who rattled no feathers, feathered his own nest discretely, assuring superiors of his total loyalty in private. Ready to decipher the coming wind and bend in advance. But technically competent. Qualities which would make him a tool too useful to be discarded easily by any faction. Karume had sensed Moi was politically dying and there was need for possible successors to position themselves. He thought Kibaki matched the bill, but Kibaki himself was behaving like a political corpse more dead than Moi. Karume lost his temper with his true friend and drove home a home truth. Bitterly. For a while Emilio wouldn't answer his calls, but, just like Mboya and Moi had known, Njenga too knew Emilio could be bent. And so he patiently built DP, eventually offering Mwai a choice he could not say no to. That too, made Kibaki occasionally wince. How easily he was a pawn on somebody else's chess-board. But he always made sure to exact the maximum going rate. Pawns could knock off Kings on a good day. Moi too had become Emilio's nightmare. Kibaki remembered often with distaste how the Mugumo remark surprised Moi with its candour. The Turgen Kalenjin was amused originally, dismissively thinking it was the usual overzealous show of competitive sycophancy in his harem of rats, bureaucrats and political children, until he realised Emilio meant business. It was Biwott who told him Kibaki's voice had been forced, by fear, the fear of losing favour. It was a confession of deep insecurity. The despicable snort which the Nandi rewarded him with raised a feeling of suffocating nausea in his guts. Even later, every time he thought of the moment. A permanent trauma. That Bi-who thug! Hmmm, that was a man he hated. Biwott! the heart of a rattlesnake, an exceptional chief of staff. A terrible double act with Arap Moi. If one read your conscious mind, the other read your subconscious! Together they squeezed your soul dry of dignity! Primitive Nandis! or whatever group it was they came from! goat-herds! pumbavus unlimited! Kibaki had understood quickly how he had underestimated Moi all along. The quickness with which Moi intimidated him once he was sworn as president was a shock to his personality. The Moi who had been submissive to Gikuyu dictates was dead in an instant. It had been a patient decoy. In his place was a warrior unleashed now. Cunning, predatorily ruthless, greedy and yearning for an opportunity to exact equivalent cruelty on those who had tormented him. The forthright blood-thirst in his eyes had unsettled Kibaki hugely. It reminded him of his only confrontation with Ben Gethi, that had left him wondering if the better choice would not have been to stay a don at Makerere. But well, the financial rewards of subservience to men like Gethi and Moi were unmatchable by anything in the academic world. One had to trade something inside in the real world. A broken promise. Is a broken promise. Tom Mboya taunted him. Daily in his sleep too. And he took to the glass for consolation of the soul. Demons galore. Blessed with a stupendously powerful intellect like his grandmother had foretold, and having sharpened it further by stealing the magic from the whiteman's books in school, his consciousness was too unleashed to pander to fictitious rationales. He understood well what a broken promise of Afrika was, and that he was an excellent example of such. He had under-performed and under-achieved. As a brilliant economist, he very well understood how his succes in office and public service could be measured, and comparatively quantified. He had done well, very well for his family, and was immensely wealthy by any global standard currency. But that was not why he had joined public service. That was not the deal with his mentor Tom Mboya, nor with his grandmother who nicknamed him The Great Guide. That fabulous wealth gotten in public office, too had been the fate of men he despised, lesser men like Mobutu, Arap Moi ... the so-called gangster heads of states. Him Kibaki ought to have been different. His grandmother had said the others were goats and him the chosen one to tend them, water them, lead them to best pastures, and home again. A guide. And what had he done with the flock? Elsewhere men his equal had achieved indisputable results. Earth-shattering. Mahathir of Malaysia, Kee Ywan Lee of Singapore, and whoever of Taiwan and South Korea. These had been architects who transformed their societies beyond recognition in the same period of time. Him, no doubt their equal, could only be compared to rogues like Mobutu and other tropical gangsters like Marcos of the Philipines! Looters of the public kitty! Custodians of backwardness! Made their mark in the history of their country, but in reverse contribution. Yes, a broken promise he Mwai was. The Singaporean and Malaysian would scorn his deceitful life of national under achievement. And rightly so. Emilio was too clever to deny this comparative to himself. He winced in pain. Sharp pain in his mind like the sharp pain of a heart attack. Sad, suddenly all forlorn. and to kill off the pain, Emilio reached for a bottle of the best scotch, took a long swirl, and toasted his reflection. He could not afford a grin at it. 'Happy birthday Mwai,' he scowled. 'happy birthday Mwai,' the other Kibaki scowled back. ------------------ I may be back. To take a humorous look at the progressive reform Chief Justice swearing in suspected war Criminal Uhuru Kenyatta as president, with one of the most intense politicians in the republic, fellow indictee to UK, William Ruto, looking on, scornful malice radiating toward Mutunga. The most Roman of scenes ever scripted.
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Post by jakaswanga on Apr 6, 2013 17:56:37 GMT 3
Mutunga has provided so much drama in the last week, that he has to be researched some more before he gets a skin-shave. But we will get there. Of course his Supreme Court judgment on the election was a birthday present to Emilio. But that is a story for another day. --------------------------------- SO KIBAKI WONT WRITE HIS MEMOIRS? HMM, WATCH US DO IT FOR HIM! TAKE THREE! ----SCENES FROM A STATE HOUSE.Emilio looked forward to meeting his General in charge of intelligence. Every birthday he did. But strangely it had nothing to do with the very important businesses of state as one might have expected. He Emilio had learnt long ago, and it re-enforced the dispensation of his own personal character, not to get too involved with bureaucrats. These opaque individuals were usually imposed on you by forces you barely unearthed, and in his long life within the upper echelons of the Kenyan state, Mwai Kibaki had had enough time to intelligently analyse how these things worked. As head of anything, you were always being played. Again and again. It was this realisation at an earlier date in his career, that had further developed, and settled him into the aloof character he had become. Distant, cultivated carelessness, nearly uninterested in the daily menial chores of power --the details which essentially was intrigue. And so Mwai Kibaki slowly evolved into the perfect compromise candidate within a state of brutal sectarian supremacy battles. But this General was one of the very few who had, without common old-school history, managed to puncture the dense layers of disinterest and non-committal blandness that marked Kibaki's relationship to outsiders. The reason for this curious intimacy, was scandalous, even dangerous, in the hands of puritans. In one of the first meetings with the soldier in presence, Kibaki had discerned the distinct discomfort and boredom of the man. And he had noticed that, just like him, every time one of the delicately mobile lady attendants came to replenish the glasses of water, or do some other core that such blessed ladies do during these important meetings that shape the politics of the country, the General found a very welcome relief from his boredom, and a wax of boyish mischief enveloped his personality. Not that this was visible, nay, it was just that Kibaki was a veteran of such meetings, and had developed a keen eye of how men dealt with one of the chief horrors of high office: boring meetings. Usually men met simply to ratify decisions already reached by an inner core, say a kitchen cabinet. And nothing, in his opinion, drained interest like puppets having realised they are making do at pretense to otherwise. The General had read the situation right, and from the start his mind gone escapist. Kibaki had found a soul mate. As the meeting had ended, he had quickly, uncharacteristically, seized an opportunity during goodbye to hold the general's hand firmly, and quip in conspiratorial tenure: 'Excellent ladies all along, general, in your office too?' The General was caught off guard, and before he regained the imperial composure of the ever non committal professional soldier, his body language had betrayed his true feelings. He had smiled with genuine human warmth at his boss, and released a genuine boyish chuckle. He had recovered quickly yes, but still too late. As we say, the two had touched base. And the magic would stay, somehow finding a way to thrive in cheek amidst the official formalities of empty gestures, blank stares and of course, subterfuge. So when he next met the president, he shook his hand and, sweating in his pants because this could really backfire, he left a card the size of a small Sim in the palms of the President. It was a terrible risk but it paid off. Kibaki was no fool. Next time he just made faces at the sweating General, and said, 'excellent report, general, there is more where that came from!' The memory chip had contained photos, some of them very lewd, of beautiful African ladies, and more, doing more. The Chief of intelligence had smuggled porn, soft or not will not be our concern today, into State House, and into the hands of the hot, oldish President; and the wily man of power had found a way of enjoying them, and had returned the verdict: excellent.The two dirty mischievous boys had pulled it off despite all the watchfulness of the lot! and this dirty secret which had nothing to do with running the state, would hold them together in conspiratorial glee that was sure to last to the grave. Yes, Emilio Mwai Kibaki Githinji, His Excellency the president of Kenya, found tremendous pleasure in wondering what his cheeky chief of intelligence would have for him as a present, every birthday. Ever since. There was more where those came from. Somethings excellent? He couldn't wait to find out. He was his excellency after all. Indeed. ----------- PS: I will be back with more Emilio birthday scenes. Until he sets the record straight by writing his true memoirs! Kibaki is a library, the nation's subconscious who has seen it all and stored it all. His story is the story of the Kenyan State in transition from a full colonial regalia to a full neo-colonial walking contradiction. If he dies on us without talking, it will be like the fable of the evil tortoise that was so angry at the world, it decided to collect all the wisdom in a pot and go up a palm-tree to hoard it all. Wreaking a drought of knowledge and wisdom on the planet! This turtle story is told in one of the versions of GIMA OMIYO OPUK PATE TEK [ Why the tortoise has an armour-plated back].There is more where that came from. Watch this space.
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Post by jakaswanga on Apr 6, 2013 18:12:47 GMT 3
THE UNAUTHORISED MEMOIRS OF EMILIO MWAI KIBAKI CONTINUED: 4 ;D. Emilio had good fortunes to look forward to this day. But further in the wider expanse of the City in the sun, his kind of friend was not too sure. Superintendent General Gichangi grimaced. He hated these meetings at state-house. Nobody could believe he wouldn't mind being retired rather than face them at a weekly retinue. Ikulu was not a soldier's domain, in his opinion. It was full of fanged, scorpion-tongued civilians whose every vowel was cyanide impregnated. Ikulu was pit of snakes slithering in a cesspool of poison of their own secretion. You never knew how the ranks, nor the lines of power ran, nor how exactly the chain of command went and worked. One time he had realised late, and to his cost, that the daughter of a presidential adviser of old-boy school camaraderie, outranked him at his own specialty: intelligence. Dazed in shame at himself, he had licked his caked lips, all gone sandy like a thing dying of thirst in the desert sun; but he was a soldier, a good soldier, and such stalwarts, once they had perceived the hierarchy, obeyed it all the way to death. He grimaced again. What jokes did they not crack behind his back, those hissing reptiles at State House. He suppressed the thought. But it always came. Would it be different, with Uhuru Kenyatta in charge of the country? This was treason, and the trained, disciplined soldier of high honour, had no heart to let his insides be a devil's workshop. He did not do intrigues, nor entertain such thoughts as could be called politically bestial, like imagining who else could be president if not the current. Out of question, Nay, that is how it always started, and then one day the devil tells the soldier he himself would make the best President, and before one knew, one was Macdeth plotting a bloody coup. Nay, that train of thought was forbidden. Always, forever. But still, he was only human, was he not? and he wondered. Alone. Sometimes. And every-time he came to the house of state he momentarily wondered. Even as he revitalised the boyish cheek and conspiratorial warmth that flowed between him and the decaying Emilio. A dilapidated sigh escaped him. He preferred DOD. There, rank was rank, and what you saw was what it was. There were no mistresses to colonels who gave orders to full-star generals. No lieutenants who barked curtly at Brigadier generals. Damn, tales from Ikulu told of a mere police captain who had ordered a General to get the keys to a car, so to have the general chauffeur him to some presidential errand! Should not a honourable soldier commit suicide or fall sick at such insensitivity, such outrage, faced with such ignominy? Both had been Gikuyus, not even Meru and Gikuyu, let alone an uncircumcised general which could have made it a bit more like a boy being used appropriately. Hush, that later thought too he suppressed. Prejudice was not his discipline. But there it was, escaping like some stinking, embarrassing gas from a body orifice without notice as one coughed. Prejudice! occasionally he shut his wife up because she was a woman, even when she appeared to know more about a subject than he, chief of intelligence! You couldn't just avoid this prejudice thing, it was like a biological function in Kenya. Even the pious church of Christ and her holy men were guilty of worse forms in Kenya. Gichangi shook his head sharply, as if to shake away these disturbing thoughts. The gesture failed in purpose. State House meetings, an abomination he thought. And went back to the thing that always relaxed him. Music by Jamhuri Jazz, a legendary Tanzanian group of the late 60s and early 70s that had given the Great Morogoro Jazz under the even more legendary Mbaraka Mwenshehe, a run on every note of lyric, every tap of drum, and naturally every twist of waste. The DGI's face became all relaxed and he started to whistle a saxophone refrain from one of the classics of of old Jamhujazz. As he started to sing the accompanying refrain after a while, he stopped in mid tone and slapped himself, No! this was Morogoro! but equally a favourite of his. Damn! On the upper window, second floor, in an office overlooking the parking Bay, Prof. Kariuki watched the limousine approach the parking. He always made sure nobody got the idea they had a free pass to state house, even the DGI. He too would go through the protocol, sometimes designed to rub it in, that he was an outsider.. ehm.. a menial actually. A self-satisfied grin crossed the face of the Rasputin of Kenya. He turned around and winked at Dr. Nduruk, who, too, was standing in the room, but a little distant from the window. Kariuki did not like Nduruk neither, but needed his wily grit to keep the damn noise-makers and their d**n allies at bay. His reasons for disliking Nduruk were many, all virulent. He knew the man found him despicable too, looked down upon him the way a royal Gikuyu might a lowly Embu. Four years they attended the same school, and Nduruk always beat him, at everything that mattered, and that was actually everything else too. Always, even to the lady. And even when Nduruk had been sick half the school term, he still came back end-term and managed to top him up. When Kariuki could not contain himself and called him weakly and sickly, Nduruk revenged by stealing Rasputin's girlfriend and boasting that he had not only better brains, but balls too. Kariuk's heart screamed murder and he never forgot the insult. Even now, every time he looked at Nduruk, several decades later, that was the slight that scarred his mind. He had read a book in which the medical superintendent of a hospital, in revenge at a roommate who had lain his fiancee and broken his heart in college, organised a series of medically induced abortions even as he offered good rates to the offending couple to entice them to his hospital, and he, Kariuki, had toyed with the idea of bribing some Kenyan doctor to do that to the Nduruks. ---Perish the thought, but the pathology stayed. The venom in his heart was like the sting of a red scorpion which, men tell, send people mad in the desert until they die eating themselves up. but he had managed this venom well, making it the skeleton of an ambition, and fire, to propel him to the pinnacle of society. But damn, did he not long to strangle Nduruk, and be the last to enjoy hearing him breath his last. Rotten bastard. But he was a man with an agenda, so he composed himself, and usually avoided childish explosions, nearly always with others, but always with Nduruk This made their official relationship dynamic, a hit, administratively. There they were then, twin monsters sharing a heart, and to survive at the top they could not afford to cannibalise one another. So far, the instinct of self-survival had proved stronger than individual pathology. They were a superb complementary act like Blair and Brown at their height, at number 11 and 10 Downing street. Deadly mutual foes, but as a united front, invincible. In-conquerable. Dr. Nduruk had his reasons to pretend he liked Kariuki ---actually he liked Gichangi, but life being life and power being power, he shared in the jocular banter that ever belittled the soldier at the behest of Rasputin. But he stayed wary, especially ever since, for no reason at all, getting a feeling that Ochangi and Obako were on to some game unknown to most. The little soldier who ran national intelligence Gichangi, was baptised Ochangi, to make a certain point. Even as he was the dog whose olfactory lobes eavesdropped all secrets in the land. As for Kibaki being called Obako, that was the day, after Kisumu, when within Airforce One the president had insisted on a detailed answer, as to what on earth those fishermen of the West meant by that! Onyatto, Obako, Moi wuod Odongo! Damn! could they not stick to peoples names, especially Presidents! And soon, Ouru wuod Onyatto! Must be that gap in their teeth doing them in in pronunciation, pumbavu kabisa! ......... The dog arrives, Kariuki announced. His voice an implication of distaste. Nduruk came to the window. Rasputin twisted the knife inside the banker: 'Some dog that! arriving in style at your cost! in a kernel which is a 100 thousand $ Mercedez original. Aint the tax-payer a fool to afford a dog such a ride, huh!?' It was a bull's eye. Nduruk winced. He hated wastage. Pathologically. His mother, trained by harsh poverty, had instilled in him the concept of economisation, frugal prudence, re-use of valuables, and an extreme austerity to the extent of self-denial. A miser he was by both emotional and intellectual identity. Long periods in his life he had been averse to comfort, even when he could afford it. And to theft too, even when the situation begged for it. His dear mother had trained him with zealotry, and this principle, frugality, had served him well in his personal life. As a student he wasted neither time nor opportunity. He ran a shop selling cigarettes, bread, sweets, anything that went, and his pocket money doubled. He bought chickens which bought goats which his mother tended, and relatively she improved, even in looks. No longer sleeping hungry, she blossomed so to speak. Local men who earlier had not considered her a glance worth, stopped to say hallo and insist on holding her hands long, sometimes the handshake going above the elbow and, as Achebe the Great Chinua would say with a grin, becoming quite something else in the process. But she had refused them all, and told her son the terrible reason. 'Ever since your father died, Nduruk, all my honour is you. It is when men all over the world respect you for who you are, that my life is crowned. We are a proud people Nduruk, and I make your father proud for ever. However much the pressure, he will stay the only one. Do not ever break my heart, by selling our pride. At least wait til I die.' Nduruk became a banker, after being a great teacher, and his reputation spread. Until he was scouted by Arap Moi. The bloody man's gaze of seduction was like a tse-tse sting, he perched his glance on you, you entered his cycle, you rotted on the inside. So now, having risen to the most eminent banking position in the land, he knew he has a disaster zone. 40% of the country's wealth was dissipated in corruption. Billion dollar errors filled government budgets. The frugal manager of wealth and money-doubler [that was his nick-name in school] had perished long ago in the Kafka-esque corridors of power. But at least his dear mother was long dead, too dead to re-die of the shame her son had become. But even then, her grave must have been a rattling den of dry bones in discomfort, Nduruk thought whenever he was drunk. As such, he quit drink. To smoke in chains, a habit that infuriated Rasputin to hyperventilatory nausea. He Nduruk had mutated into Mr. Wastage as his wife occasionally chided him. Making sadder than she could guess. The real Nduruk had died long ago. Only a shell remained. The essence of his high public office was wastage, the very thing he hated with all his heart and life, and philosophy. A traitor to his own soul, and the soul of his mother, and the pride of his father, truly he was a dead man walking and the personification of disgrace. Prof. Kariuki telling him what a great fool the tax-payer was, to be picked and stripped that easy and unconcernedly, while he was the tax-payer's chief banker, was a dead shot at his weakest spot. His already dead heart broke once over, and he broke into sweat, overwhelmed with nausea. He mopped his brow. Rasputin glanced at him, the pleasure on is face apparently balancing as a mask of pathological contempt. Ochangi was ushered in. Rasputin let him wait, not bothering to notice him immediately. Like a schoolboy before a headmaster, the DGI waited. Wearing his own mask containing the fury in his heart. The concentration required to maintain perfect self-control made him perspire. Rattle snakes that slither at you while you stand at attention lest movement cause you be bitten tested a man to breaking point. State House, pure hell. Thought the caged general. But all the military discipline in the world and some, could not kill off the shining intensity of the look in his eyes that forced to blink. That one could not be caged. Every man in the room was sweating. Afrika. I will be back!
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Post by jakaswanga on Jun 8, 2013 17:41:33 GMT 3
THE UNAUTHORISED MEMOIRS OF MWAI KIBAKI! PART 5I must have said I would be back, and here I am am! Got delayed bandying stories in a busaa joint ---strong and pure choices they offer! and what do you do as a historian if not trade stories? I quote from the TJRC report of MAY/JUNE 2013]---- Emilio Mwai wa Kibaki was there all along. At the top. And he is a clever perceptive man whose many years at the centre have bequeathed a well-honed mind, full of wile and guile, and further sharpened his vintage instincts to bend with whichever winds and survive it all. Which he did all the way to the peak. And he knows the thick of it all the way from here, and around to the start. This legendary head of Mwai is, willy-nilly, a bibliography and a kind of Wikipedia reference hoard, a granary containing and detailing the --sometimes stained in blood-- adventures of the Kenyan ruling class in the first half of the post colonial century. One just has to finger the appropriate event, and Behold, the historical Kibaki furnishes enlightenment! And so shall we take our shots, risk a few misses and harvest many hits. But do we care? when a tale is well told, the lesson in history is made. All over history, one comes across characters whose lives provide a perfect psychological insight into the power intrigues of an epoch; and not uncommonly, the toll they take on an individual.'s make up. Sometimes not necessarily because the poor chap participated in it, but merely because they were caught in it in such decisive a fashion, that their individual pains, dilemmas and choices, treacheries and heroism, scattered pieces of their lives and emotions, are a mirror that reflect and representatively articulate the real lives of those [his or her tragic] times. Yeah, they evoke universal empathy. I could say the adventures of Obong'o-Obong'o the legendary hero of many a Dholuo Folktale comes to mind, but seeing that there are no more Jaluos on Jukwaa ever since the ---have your version will ya--- CORDED party was rained on at the polls, it is to far-off Russia that I shall ran to draw my illustration: namely, Dr. Zhivago. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Zhivago_(novel) Dr. Euri Zhivago is a fictional character created by Boris Pasternak in a landmark novel bearing the same title. Apolitical and content to pursue his professional interests ---Medicine, and on the sidelines indulge his heart's vocation ---Poetry and passion for P*ssy, Zhivago nevertheless is entangled in the monumental events of his country Russia. His personal life and professional path are blown helter-skelter by the social turmoil of revolution, and his love-life reduced to painful stolen moments. The grooves on his face, reflecting the scars in his heart, narrate the ruthless paroxysm that split the souls of so many of his country-folk, and their country too. As Russia rid itself of the iron yokes of the feudal economic system. 'Nothing is holy in Russia anymore, Zhivago. Nothing. Only the future exists!'Zhivago is told as he 'risks a whiplash' with indifferent men who have herded the former godlike family into a basement ---wine cellar, and executed it without a thought'; thereafter discarding the family of the Romanov Nicholas, The last Czar of Russia, in a nondescript bush. Mere bones after a hunting barbecue. 'Nothing is holy anymore in Russia, Zhivago, nothing. Only the future exists. And the Communist Party of Russia, pointing towards it of course!.' His adopted daughter goes to school and learns: 'the Czar was an evil enemy of the people. He lived in outlandish wealth and opulence, while the people starved by the millions, forced to gnaw even at horse-hooves! He had nothing more to offer Russia, so Russia got rid of her, to the roots!' -- O good fates that came and met the tyrant! Zhivago who had once been a society doctor, well regarded and feted in those opulent banquets around the palaces of aristocratic Moscow, and, as an army surgeon, had seen the Czar's Generals send Russian boys with sticks against German automated fire, and in addition abandon the wounded without medical care, could only smile absently and furiously search for poetical lines to capture this Ruthless Russia. The new, no less ruthless than the old. Well matched. Always the future never feared to crush and replace the past. A few decades earlier, Tolstoy had accurately documented the hell-hole the Russian Empire had herded itself into, by depicting the [emotional and psychological] rot of her ruling aristocratic class, and instinctively predicting other forces would rice and sweep them to oblivion. And so the eternal beauty of Anna Karenina. Tragedy beckoning. But the soundtrack is Always a lot of screwy fun. As if saying baada ya dhiki itakuwa furaha. Screwy fun! a welcome distraction when all is lost. When an aristocracy is going down. Even as they seem to be on top! The last kicks of dying dicks. (May be like M7's latest frantic security reshuffles after that fallen gun incident with a bodygaurd yesterday.) BUT, CLOSER TO HOME WE COME Yes, our own Emilio is an exemplary tale of our times passing. Like a forensic investigator of Mafia crimes must follow the money, a story-teller of our epoch must shadow Kibaki, and of course the men in his shadow. Detail by detail slowly the contours shall emerge, until Behold, the pieces all shall fit and the complete picture be visible in all glory. Amen. And so yes, to Nahashon Kinyua. The shadow of Power. Kinyua was the man to watch if you knew what you were looking for. If you wanted comedy and celebrity and high-flying power antics, then he was not your man. But if you wanted depth, character and grit, and the worth of men who maintain composure, their nerves ice in the bloody deeds of power, Kinyua was your guide. He had always been there, orbiting around the centre of power, attending her key players in some discreet way, and letting his head become an information system in some way or other. Kinyua had developed an ability to be somewhere yet not there. He was always furniture, or that is how they referred to him in the Moi State House. And uncannily too, in the Kibaki State House. Furniture! And so we will call him Furniture. Such do have seen every asz, bore every weight, heard every tail. But shamelessly indifferent, cold like a yawning, waiting grave. A shadow. Participating in a ritual, but hollow of content. But now like Kibaki he was an old man. And like a pharaonic obelisk, his face --and heart, were calibrated with hieroglyphics indecipherable to the lay man. And there was a strange comfort for the younger generation in always having the same old furniture around, more like the stone under the oseno tree where, ever since your eyes opened, Grandfather always used to sit on as he filed his farm implements on the seru. There to, under this eternal tree, even after granddad is long dead and the home has become a 'gunda' reclaimed by the tropical bush, you still will wade the bush alone to ritually stand by the seru-stone, like you did, half a century ago as a boy, when your grandfather rhythmically worked and told you tales of your heritage in count. Teaching you the ins of who you and your people were, are. Engraving in your soul the contours of identity. ---Bedrocking that stubborn tribal loyalty which mocks and shows Kenya, for all her pious anthems like 'Kenya nchi yetu hakuna matata na tutaipenda milele', to be a useless pretender warming the seat, but having no emotional resonance in the heart of men, and women, tribally initiated. Nahashon Kinyua then, as furniture, had this mixed effect on many operatives of a younger generation. But stone silent he was. A disturbing man. One could only go upon his official personal history in snippets. On that, Kinya was not very helpful to the curious. But when was he ever anyway with intimate questions? He was born in either Nyandarua or Nyahururu. He was either the son of a colonial chief or a Mau-Mau foot soldier who died young. But whatever the case, grow up he did as son of a chief. A chief whose Chief Wife tried to manipulate into neutrality between the then warring parties. The Mau Mau and the Colonial security forces. He was born in the times of a rutless social crisis. His [biological] mother was a mental wreck by the time his eyes opened. His elder Mother, the Chief Wife of the Colonial Chief that is, noticing he was a quiet boy but with all his wits around him, told him a tale: Kinyua's mother had been 'married' young. That is the possibly-paedophile chief had demanded her as tribute, and it came to pass. A confiscation of a life. But she had had her own heart, which was stolen by a goatherd from the other ridge, her peer, who in the heartbreak had joined the Mau-Mau, --or gone to the forest as they said. There she would go to fetch firewood, bring him food and lie with him in secret. One day a self-appointed investigator who had noticed her solitary forages into the dangerous forest tailed her, and Behold, she beheld the sight of illicit passionate love. This intruder wanted to trade by blackmail, exchange his silence for a bit of a jolly-good ding-dong [as Njakip of Jukwaa calls that sweet dirty business] time with the pretty little thing. That became his death at the hands of an 'animal in the forest', but Kinyua's mother who had not bargained for this resolution, became guilty and entered a depression. To relieve her heart she confessed her suspicions to the chief wife who came up with a genial solution. She would let her get pregnant first with the beast in the forest, then let justice take its cause. For she had dishonoured the chief. A sinister detail was the Queen had blood ties to the late blackmailer. Well, the 'beast' in the forest was betrayed and caught after his seed had passed on, and in a public, darkly ritualised execution that mirrored all the morbid forces at work, he was skinned alive. Kinyua's mother, pregnant and watching from a distance ---though custom banned women from watching these terrible deeds, fainted and only good fate made a wood-fetcher find her and have her carried home. She was nursed to full fruition, and full motherhood, though the baby was prematurely born,;but she would never recover her mind. Kinyua was effectively adopted by the Chief Wife, but she would let her mad biological mother suckle her under her opaque gaze. Kinyua's mother, they said, was the cleanest mad woman in the world. And nobody wanted to know how many subsequent abortions she did undergo in her long service to desperate men in the neighbourhood and the forest. For men are decent in public decorum, but most of them have a morbid lust which, if they can get away with, is an expression of the pathology of abuse, which is why in Lawless war, soldiers will always rape. When the Chief Wife felt the message had been learnt by all women of all generations, Kinyua's mother was laid to rest. Actually she was given a paralysing medicine and buried alive. A coup de grace. Why this artistic torture of an unfaithful woman? It was to honour the deal that saved Kinyua. The chief in the hurt of his honour wanted to kill the suspected 'illegitimate' infant. The chief Wife had knelt before him and pleaded his case: 'He is innocent. Grant me his life. In exchange, on the honour of my ancestors, I will grant you your worthy revenge!' An emotional trade (off)! Steeped in layers from the fathomless depth of a mature culture. And so it came to pass, that the chief granted her the boy's life, and she granted his office recompense for his abused honour. Destroying both the body and mind and dignity of the adulterous co-wife. And making it be known discretely in the world of women, as a tale of deterrence. Well, Law and Order we say nowadays. Retributive. But of the female kind, artistic to boot! This was another Africa not everybody wanted to know about. But it was where Nahashon Kinyua came from. And he would be mentored by the best practitioners of that old order. Opaque, cold and steely action. The heart on ice mode. There had been lucid moments with his mother though, as occasionally even a mad one will have their hearts shine through for a few seconds. And their honesty can be absolutely disconcerting. Through these moments, Kinyua would construct an image of the other man in her life, his alleged father. ' If he loved me, he would have killed the chief and taken me to live with him in the forest, so that we fight the whiteman together! --bastard! Now I am everybody's wh-ore! You want to taste me too, son! I am hot!'But Kinyua's heart had already riveted, his mother was still alive simply because he had not found a way to commit the perfect murder. He had concluded her life no longer served any purpose other than ... he knew, but did not dare admit it. As he continued to plot, someone moved first. The dawn of his mind as a boy had been infested with a singular murder plot. It was both a relief and an irritation when the burden of action was taken away from him. Whatever her reasons were for the patronage, the Chief Wife was more than an able guardian angel to young Kinyua. 'You are no goatherd', she interned in him. 'Your grazing ground will be the Whiteman's world. Go into his books, and come back and tell me what is there. Why so few of them are completely turning our own world upside down with the support of many of our own people. What poison does he have in that book --the biblia, that captures the hearts and kills off the minds of so many of our people? ----Kinyua, go find out for me. Why does the whiteman tame us so easy!?'---TO BE CONTINUED---
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Post by jakaswanga on Dec 28, 2013 10:19:28 GMT 3
We take a FastFoward that shortens to FF. This means we freeze the unrelenting tale of Nahashon Kinyua for the moment, and catch up with our star Emilio Mwai in retirement. Of course at a future date we detour back, to unlock Kinyua and have him walk about in his frame once more. Nahashon Kinyua, he met them all, studied them all and ‘concluded’ them all ----Njoroge Muigai, Arguings Kodhek, Joseph Murumbi, Mbiyu Koinange and even one or two of the famous Mau Mau Fieldmarshals. You name him, aint no mystery for Nahashon. The Shadow of Power. And of course he knew all their screws, which is another word for mistresses. But that will be our second volume: The mistresses of power and public resources!
Well, Emilio it will be today. INSIDE THE KSH. 700 MILLION TOMB, A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A RETIRING BARON OF MODERN KENYA.
Emilio Mwai Gikonyo Kibaki, the ex-president of the Great republic of Matatus, sat in the inner portico of his freshly-built palatial. It was a retirement abode the competition of the burial chambers of any great [Egyptian] Pharao, and it was highly likely it had been one of the blind-spots in they eyes of the seer Francis Kimemia. A man of chequered sights. Kimunya, if you can spot the difference, had been the kind of civil servant who never heard of the budgetary constraint as far as public finances were concerned, and even as open-source statistics indicated, that a dollar-a-day was beyond the [income] dreams of many of the subjects, Francis Kimemia stayed obsessed of a drive to opulence. The Central Bank had a limitless source of value in the mind of this kind of gentleman. A Frenchman coined the term State Bandit to describe his ilk. I on the other hand always let it at poorly-bred children at the open cookie-jar when the parents are absent. Mayhem, until the cookie-jar itself is smashed to pieces. Yes, such rascals ran the treasury. Just the way your manambas will run your matatu when you are out of sight!
‘’They can print and increase tremendously the amount of money, but they can not maintain its value!’’, Mwai Kibaki the erstwhile professor of economics had sighed weakly when he heard, swallowing the pumbavu hiki that formed in his bile. ---Unbelievable it was, but yes, the ‘original’ Kibaki was not yet completely extinguished, merely paralysed. And in this state of paralysis he recognised it was too late to teach some old dogs some thrifty old tricks! He looked helplessly at Wambui.
‘You are being buried alive in a spacious tomb, Mwai’’ the incomparable Mary Wambui had elbowed him. ‘’A smaller burial chamber would not be enough for the warring ghosts of your two women, Sweet I and Mad Lucy!’’ She had finished in a deal-clinching, nerve-soothing whisper. Her Dear Mwai accented, but inside it was still all PUMBAVU rage. There was this day Kibaki had caught a hollow look on the eyes of the chairman of the central bank of Kenya ---the Titanic will sink unless there is divine intervention look. And so he had gone East to forage. Short memories! Here they were again, firing torpedos at their own ship! ‘O Ngai na Mumbi! What a pumbavu some of your offspring!’ The old president spat at his own.
So such as it is, here was Mwai, or the remains of the former head of state of Kenya, enjoying his burial site. Enjoying the position of a living dead; but something was amiss today. He was pensively watching the TV, an exceptional glass of single-malt resting on a glass-table within curved elbow reach. It was a whiskey with a story [one we shall tell later length, when our own lower-class Waragi fires us with jelous, competitive inspiration].
On the TV taking Mwai’s attention was BREAKING NEWS. And it had been breaking news for ages, yes, for a go-da-mn whole day. It irritated Kibaki. ‘Mavi ya kuma mbichi ya kuku sho-ga journalists!’’ the ex university don fumed internally, glass of whisky shaking, twirling in his hand. ‘Why did they not say CONTINUED COVERAGE? Was it not more than ten hours into the same story now? Ten hours of which there had been no, and still very likely, would be no added information! On local TV the story-line was thus actually dead. One had to monitor foreign media for developing angles. Or one had to have an inside line to national intelligence. If there was such a thing in Kenya of course: national intelligence. Kibaki grimaced, just short of scorn. He was the national intelligence of course. But he had been retired. The vacuum he had left, no doubt, would take a millennium at the least to refill.
Yes, stupidity, let alone raw stupidity as was now exhibited by the Kimunya’s and Kimemia’s of Mumbi, had always irritated Kibaki. Now it did even more that he had taken some distance from it. But he was not going to let it spoil his humour. To the extent he could.
Ever since he quit office, there were things he had decided to let be. Raila Odinga (he could not remember giving him that new phone number) had called him earlier in the day with a proposal he had declined. It was too much of a throw-back to their doomed act of co-principality of which Ben Mkapa had said: shagging the same pu-ssy, even if you are loving twins, does not further sibling harmony even in the best traditions of open hearts, so you two lads will have to really work at it for this Annan baby to go anywhere!’’ ---Bloody Tanganyikan comedian! (Kibaki did tremendously enjoy Ben Mkapa’s company; not once did he catch him being stupid, well, except for that candid moment when he told him and Raila, that they very well knew they were going to do what Condoleezza Rice told them, so it was merely a question of thinking out ways to sugar-coat the bitter pill, to make the Sh!t swallow-able without throwing up!) ---Bloody Tanganyikan comedian! Yes, he would ask his stiff-thighed Wambui to find his number and invite him. Mkapa would definitely have some intelligent quips to help him keep sane in this mind-numbing tomb of a retirement home!
But for Raila? Well, this late, with his phone call, Raila was still kind of seeking to be in the game, whereas he Kibaki was contented to be buried alive in this public-funded museum. Huuughhhh, it was not necessary really, this tomb of his, the money could have been better spent scouring the cellars of the World’s best distilleries, Kentucky USA, Scotland UK, or France Old Europe, seeking ‘ambrosiated’ nectar laced with the drops of a goddess’s divine, morning urine, the God’s drink. But arguing in sense with imbeciles like Kimemia or Kimunya, or even that Kenyatta’s boy Uhuru Muigai, was a bother greater than being a living dead within their monumental folly’s. So was Emilio’s take. What a relief he was outside government at last, no longer privy to the day in day out idiosynkrasia of cheap shot bureaucrats. Outside Raila, nobody else had called him early in the day. Specifically, nobody had called him over the Westgate Mall, which had been the breaking news now for a whole day. He did not care. Kibaki laughed with himself, what did he really care about? What had he ever cared about anyway? His grandchildren? May be?
Here, Emilio felt a tinge of insecurity. He could not deny it, let alone suppress it with copious helpings of stuffs which induce forgetfulness, but his natural love for his kids favoured Wangui Mwai, the daughter of the famous beguiling thing, aka the Narc Othaya Activist. Sort of that is. He would have loved to play with Wangui’s children, her children with a Gikuyu bull that is. He would have loved to teach them boys cheeky stuff in gikuyu, crawling on all fours with them around the Big House, and outside within the even bigger courtyard. O yes, he would, he would they would be true blood Gikuyus! ---so he would teach them cheeky stuff in gikuyu, like what you called the obscene case of a female donkey having urinated, and going on displaying a perfect control of the vaginal labii! Or what you said in Gikuyu, when a male duck was on top of a female duck, and still aiming with busy tail. Yes, there was a granary of cheeky gikuyu lingo up his sleeve he wished to impart to a future generation of his stable. But his dear Wangui had married into something far-off, and which, frankly, with its distance to the Gikuyu, meant nothing to him. He Mwai Kibaki was for whatever reason way beyond the social niceties of pretending interest in….. what really? He had not even bothered to hear, or was it know or pronounce their names. The two goons from was it Armenia or Yemen? ---very tumbafu maneno really! The aging Gikuyu had thought.
Wangui O Wangui! Kibaki’s chin hit his chest as one of his hands supported his forehead. He forgot about Westgate showing on TV. Wangui was a true weight in his heart. A child who had given him exceeding joy of heart, really just like her mother Mary. Holy Mary, he thought kindly in self-indulgent mischief. Daughter Wangui never seemed to sulk on anything with him, not what he could remember anyway. ‘’It is just you being you dad!’’ she would chide him in comfort when she became the victim of one his callous shows of disinterest.
Mwai Kibaki did really find it difficult to pretend. If he was bored, he was bored. In a long life in politics which had ceased to be a challenge of any kind to his mind, and finding no guts to quit, he had had to find something to survive the boredom and tedium that came with it. Ah yes, he was a strong man, of fortified constitution, otherwise alcohol would have done him under many years ago! But there he was, at his retirement after reaching the peak office, aged and forgotten but still alive, knowing more about alcohol than politics and economics, which had been his official trade all his life!
But there had been a heavy toll. Both in heart and in head. There was this day he had read a statement in public declaring he was ‘’mono-wifed’’. Some time later, Wangui had busted him alone in his private office. ‘’How did the guard let you in? I instructed him to bar ALL’’ Kibaki croaked like a cornered frog. ‘’I promised him a sex or a sack!’’ the naughty daughter replied. And continued jokingly, holding him up by directing an imaginary double-barrelled shotgun at him: ‘’why did you not read the section which says you have no daughter named Wangui Mwai neither?’’
Kibaki raised his hands high in submission to the heavens: ‘’If you listened, I cited my optional righs to adoption! Not all my children need come from the single wife!’’ ‘’You adopted the daughter but not the mother, O Solomon!?’’
The old man left his side of the desk, open armed to embrace his daughter. The young woman lovingly returned her fathers quest, rewarding him with a profuse kiss. Kibaki breathed deeply. It was a homerun moment. And he was touching base. ‘’You smell of an old man!’’ she accused him in ritual. ‘’No, that is exclusive French perfume from the young mistress I keep in the cupboard behind me! ---But eh, child, how would you be intimate with Old Man odours? I thought you did youthful drug lords and not sugar daddies!’’ And thus father and daughter kept on the free banter between them. Always, they did enjoy one another’s company tremendously. Always a high point in Kibaki’s emotional life. Always. How he wished she would find an original Kikuyu bull to sire his grand kids!
To avoid going that painful route, Mwai Kibaki halted his reverie and came to the present. He stared at the screen where yet another fool appeared. Westgate Mall Breaking news was still the caption. He did not know who this new fool was, nor care, but the fella talked like he could be the minister of something to do with security or home affairs. Cabinet Secretary, the explanation under his talking stupid head announced. Kibaki shrugged. If Uhuru and Ruto insisted on hiring fools to run the country, that was their funeral, and, likely, that of a large portion of Kenyans along with it. Foolish boys! and as their marriage deteriorated, and it would as the contradictions of power and greed nestled in, then would they have an inkling of the importance of having competent people around a crisis. Men like Muthaura, men like Gichuki and Njenga Karume. But well, may be they did not really care that much, and could not be bothered, for they had other distinct priorities.
Kibaki shrugged again -----O poor poor Michael Kariuki Gichangi, Kibaki thought in a rare moment of empathy; the DGI [director general of intelligence] had wanted long ago to fold ship and quit, but with Muthaura gone, Nahashon Kinyua would have none of it. Gichangi was a discreet, quiet man by nature and a shadowy job suited his personality. He hated intrigues, and with the ambassador gone and the succession battles condensing, Kibaki’s state house had become the house of intrigues. Dark intrigues which needed a discrete man to untangle lest the ship sink [kochiegni gowo] as those fishmongers of Kavirondo do remind: [even within shore sight O sailor, beware lest you capsize and sink forever!].
Kibaki remembered the day Michael ‘Digi’ Gichangi was forced to sit in as ‘eminent’ forces worked to have Uhuru Kenyatta stand down for Musalia Mudavadi. Gichangi had at first refused to be involved ---not because he feared a backlash of heady gikuyu nationalism chanting hot under the flag of the Muthamaki, O No, but just because like in 2007 and the subsequent consequences of the ‘’due’’ election of Mwai Kibaki, Gichangi firmly thought an intelligence service playing ‘political fixer’ on the fate of the nation was an organisation too corrupt to perform its key role ---guarding the security of the state. ‘’The intelligence service is not a political party anointing a candidate, nor are we the people exercising an electoral mandate!’
Kibaki grimaced as he recalled the glinting scorn on the face of one of the eminent fixers. Was it John Michuki or somebody else? Was it Nahashon Kinyua or another fixer? But it quickly became apparent Gichangi had made the mistake of thinking he was boss: ‘You are a cop, and you do what you are told to do. And speak when you are told to! The law? That is us, politicians in power!’ So the old soldier always did what he was told to do. In 2007, in 2012, in 2013. Whether or not he stayed as DGI was never his decision. Whether or not his National Intelligence Security Service (aka NISS), doubled for political fixer, anointed Mudavadi the head of state, manipulated events playing custodian of the National Fate, could never be his decision. He was a pawn of forces (he actually knew very well). Nevertheless, as is in the nature of man, Gichangi writhed ever laboriously to escape his prisoner’s cell. Kibaki had recognised a fellow journeyman earlier on. ‘’We are all prisoners of fate!’’ Kibaki once offered him a philosophical pillow to sob into. ‘’Some cells are more hell than others!’’ retorted the tortured mask of the DGI in sarcasm.
May be in his days as military intelligence operative, Gichangi had developed a very clear idea of how the cells were, in Nyati and Nyayo houses in the center of Nairobi, where Moi’s special branch offered hotel services to political dissidents then besieging his glorious KANU.
Old Emilio sighed for the seventeenth time, and smacked his lips at the hot cool liquid from Scotland. A rare emotion accompanied the sigh. He empathised with Michael Gichangi. A loyal man cut of the old wood. He was aware of how the choice fell on him to be the DGI. And he wondered if the man knew how he had been made. Ach, he was no fool, he surely knew how the cards of power lay. Like the old gambler of Kenny Roger’s fame, he must have made a life out of reading peoples faces. Only fate and the future could poker him! And women of course.
Yes, thought Mwai of him. Westgate was an intelligence failure of monumental proportions, unless it was an act of government policy. Deliberate. And the old soldier had been obedient once more, swallowed his pride and that of his organisation, and done as he was bid. A soldier to the death. Loyal beyond a dog to higher authority. A total moron?
To be continued. First, breakfast. Omelette toast, washed down with steaming waragi.
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Post by jakaswanga on Dec 28, 2013 14:53:00 GMT 3
Kibaki shrugged, a malicious, mischievous grin spreading slowly to saturate his face. He was aware it should be treasonable for a former head of state to entertain such a thought about a government he had headed until only yesterday --- (barely half a dozen months ago)! But Mwai wa Kibaki had been too long in the run and grind of top offices in the dark continent to bother with formal hypocrisy’s in his old age. The tales he had heard, and later confirmed, of the devious insanities men had perpetrated to stay in power, had cured him of the need to express preposterous horror unnecessarily. And there was this case of his own due election closer to home! The ex-president allowed himself a dance of his aged head on his shoulders, a wicked twinkle in his eyes: ‘duly elected! Let us drink to that!’ Governments in Afrika, or anywhere else for that matter, one did not really want the details of what they did to ‘manage the consensus’ of their people! Did not that Paul became Saul boy of Rwanda deliberately order Juvenal Habyarmana shot down, in the certainty it would trigger a crisis beyond comprehension, but likely to leave him the key player? Did they not say hush hush, that the explosions which felled apartments in Moscow and mandated the Russian army to do total war on Chechenya , were kind of you know what!? And was it not so, that the story of WMD’s which led to the destruction of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, was a lie cooked over barbecue in a certain ranch? In Greek mythology, the sun is called Helios, and is a god high up in the sky during the day. Why does he set? Well, ten or so hours per day of viewing the evils men do upon one another, the lies and debauchery they practice amongst womenfolk, the rot of their human civilisation, so sickens the God Helios with his all seeing eyes/ray, that he dims them to recuperate through the night! Yes, Mwai Kibaki had been around power a life time, and the incredible evil with which the game was played, left him no witness to illusions. In this respect, Kibaki was a hardened veteran. Nothing really could shock him. Even if it be that, on the Westgate Mall, Michael Gichangi had been ordered to shut up and sleep on advance intelligence, to let Western female diplomats be ravished by marauding Pumbavus from god knew where, that some other higher political purpose be served. As President, he had occasionally asked Gichangi to hand him over some classified intelligence from the Moi period, compiled by the devil Kanyotu, just to satisfy his curiosity over certain events in the country. No, one did not really want to know all the details people in power had planned on behalf of the people! Yes, the people. The people! We the people! No body in power ever trusted the people. Give them a chance, they vote you out next election! ---Pumbavu mavi ya kuku things! Fwacking illiterates! The people! –Goats! Bure kabisa! No gratitude! Malaya ovyo! Kuma yao!Mwai Kibaki could rise to the occasion when he felt to. His mind had always been lethal. Awake. That is why he had the confidence to leave Kenya burning and attend the AU summit in Addis Ababa in early 2008, only to spend the time snoring his head off during the boring stupidities called speeches that mark such events. Which Nuisance in that Hall, decorated as head of state, would dare face him down? Pumbavu presidents of pumbavu countries of pumbavu people! Fellow Nuisances! And so Emilio Mwai had grinned internally and went to snore with his ass in the great hall of the African Union, built expensively by the cynical Chinese in Hallowed Addis Ababa, in starving, feudal Ethiopia. Back at home, tough cop Hussein Ali, under the orders of even tougher cop John Michuki, would murder the nation back into line. With business taken well care of both sides of the coin, Emilio slept like an innocent baby in Addis Ababa, as his fellow nuisances gave their nonsensical speeches, in the Great Hall of the African Union, built expensively by the cynical Chinese … etc etc etc. By and by Time crawled ever further from the start of the siege, but Westgate was still breaking news on the local channels, and this ‘drama’ kept Kibaki’s mind on Gichangi the DGI. ‘He would be the man in a spot. So to speak. He alwas kind of was!’ thought Mwai, and with a whimsical look the ex president recalled the ‘’parley’’ at state house, of which the son of Jomo was later to allege, publicly, was a work of Satan. ‘I tell you Satan can be strong, wanakenya wenzangu! see how he befuddled my mind! Lakini ashindwe! Mkorofi huyo wa giza! I am back and will be your president as you furiously wish!’ (a charged Muigai Kenyatta told a much bemused nation) Thereafter Kibaki had called Gichangi privately and asked him: ‘’Kagame was ready to risk the destruction of all his fellow Tutsis to rise to and maintain power. Do you think Uhuru Kenyatta would sacrifice the Gikuyu to do the same here?’’Gichangi rose to the occasion and replied: ‘’We sacrificed the poor Gikuyu in the Rift Valley for your second term, and nearly sacrificed Kenya along with them. You can not do a moral on Uhuru Kenyatta, atherere omera!’’Stung to the cradle, Kibaki rose to his feet. Tall, dark, foreboding and a mask of total scorn. He had lost his temper, and in one of those rare moments that musicians love to capture in lyrical croon, Emilio’s heart unfolded like a flower yielding their radiance in spring. His mind and body language were one. Those two were divorced long ago and had become total strangers to one another. This re-union forced by DGI Gichangi’s retort, was the equivalent of the Big Bang in his deconstructed and dispersed original consciousness. Totally honest and all his senses attuned, the inbuilt contempt Mwai Kibaki had for most people exploded to the surface, shocking Gichangi who took a step back. The mental violence was so venomous, the emotional intensity so furious, that Gichangi the trained soldier instinctively identified a life-threatening situation and involuntarily activated a self-preservation mechanism. His hands flashed around his normal pistol holster. The pistol was not there of course. But still… ‘’Did Mwai Kibaki wa Gikonyo ever insist on a second term to you, or the likes of you in plural? Gichangi! Did I ask you to organise or participate in any phase of a rigging!? Answer me, mother of a red goat’s c-unt!’’ ---The last part, he thundered in plane Gikuyu. Gichangi [mother of a red goat’s c-unt] was so taken aback he wilted. This had always been the problem. Even in his first term, to God it be sworn, Kibaki had never been responsible for the breakdown in relations with that fishy Kavirondo Kerher: --this was the breakdown which would make his tenure a limping endeavour in public administration, and later nearly drive Kenya over the cliff. It had always been know-better, know-all courtiers, Big Gikuyu xenophobes who doubted Kibaki’s ability to defend the tribe --(hahaha, their personal wealth and fortune stations], creeps who had warranted themselves the brief to curtail the perceived threat from Keherhersland. Stupid Foot and mouth diseased Kikuyu boys, as Njenga Karume had dismissed when he was recruited to come save the fort of Mumbi. Again in 2007, Kibaki was deemed ready to gracefully accept defeat if that was what the ‘’result’’ said. But a section of those who had come to own the state under him, plus a horde of gikuyu patron saints, had decided otherwise. Or, put another way, the result that would confront Emilio, would be the desired result, and thus Emilio would have no option but to soldier on. Duly. Kibaki did not even bother to follow the results after he had voted [did he really vote?] He was later informed he had won and, drunk, was sworn in for the benefit of ‘’the nation’’. He had not even bothered to neither ask nor know the margin of his victory. He did not care, and he could not see what the matter was, so long he could remember to use the word ‘’duly’’ every time. And Kibaki had nearly provoked a heart attack in the Muthauras and Michukis, when, during the first take of the sunset swearing in (whose videos later disappeared ), Kibaki had paused at the word DULY, then read the word ELECTED with question mark? Grinning with mischief at CJ Evans Gicheru, he beckoned him and asked him in a Gikuyu tone which could have implied Gicheru was a Mmeru orderly, and certain episodes between Kikuyu Kings and Ameru counsels were stuff of unflattering folklore. ‘Evans, it is all very clandestine and furtive around here! No body ELSE in town wants to drink to our victory? –yawa! Where are the Osiepes!’Gicheru’s mind took the import, and like Obama’s first swearing in, he tripped and fumbled over his words, showering the event with an omen of confusion. But Kibaki saved him, and the rest of others on the verge of a heart attack breathed again. Like a loving grandfather prodding a fearful grandson to be a man and face the circumxisor’s knife with courage and save the family honour, Kibaki toyed with Gicheru and the courtiers, the scorch of his big mind (even in half sober state) reducing the geniuses who had orchestrated the event to lowly plotters chewing their nails ala nerve wrecks. Gichangi had grimaced, nearly hating Kibaki. His mind was on the practical problem of containing a burning nation, and here was this half-drunk sod playing mind games with his fellow rotten geeks. But Gichangi could no wholly suppress his fascination at this political hooligan Emilio, drunk or sober, his mind when fired, was pure rattlesnake friendship. You never had him down until you had totally mangled its head. They even whispered he was a fwaking drunk who deliberately urinated in his hotel beds on state visits abroad, and left menials to sort it out. When Kiraitu Murungi, agitated at being so unceremoniously reduced in rank by Njenga Karume (that was when Kiraitu and Murungaru had let power enter their heads to the extent of threatening the survival of the government), had professed his loyalty, Kibaki literally farted and said: ‘’Prove your loyalty NOW Kiraitu. I only reward loyalty when expressed at the level of sycophancy. Come with me to the toilet, and wipe my arse with your loyal tongue! If No, then Obey Njenga!’’ And Karume grinned. ‘’And my own unders come dirtier than Emilio’s, Kiraitu! So prepare to dig your tongue in! and scrape!’’ And so ended Kiraitu’s power at a simple Kibaki joke. Gichangi had gone back to look at Kiraitu’s impressive CV as a brilliant Harvard academic and lawyer, and looked out the window. And Kibaki broke him one touch like that!? Sack me! I will come in his mouth too, this Kiraitu. He mused in contempt. Yes, Gichangi thought and thought. Kibaki had not in any way orchestrated neither his ‘’due election’’ nor his ‘’per-protocol’’ swearing-in, post 2007 elections. ---But had he not been a willing accomplice? Participating and enjoying the drama even as he built layers of emotional detachment, mental distances, and other forms of insulations from the crime? Mother of a goat! What a wretched power prostitute! What a wretched hypocrite! Gichangi thought. But no, there was really no smoking gun somebody could produce which would tie Kibaki to ordering that his election be ‘’due’’! So the DGI wilted before the mental violence of Kibaki’s scorching contempt. Gichangi stared at his hands in shame. He had offered misgivings, saying he did not trust the Rift Valley. It could turn out to be the hot spot. But these had been weakly, barely audible protestations, and Muthaura had waved them aside without but a glance. Why had he let himself be so easily ignored by these office rats who were ignorant of the field? Why had he not firmly defended the prerogative of facts on the ground? Here was Kibaki effectively hinting he, Gichangi and his intelligence service, had colluded to sacrifice the Rift Valley Gikuyu peasants, knowingly! Crazy lunatic goat from Othaya!No Gikuyu had ever told him this. He was Michael Kariuki Gichangi of the Ndirangu line! No Gikuyu could look at him in the face and pour this amount of contempt on his proud soul. He wanted to leave there and then. But he retreated. ‘’Yes, some of the characters at your State House could sacrifice the gikuyu and Kenya in toto, just like some were ready to do for your second term!’’ he replied. His heart had never been so cold. He was so tense he felt like pacing around the room while chanting old Gikuyu initiation songs of his peer group, or riika. ‘’Is that why you want to quit so badly? You have had enough of those Kagame options? enough of rigging elections and daring the international community aka ICC?’’ Gichangi shrugged: ‘’I am an old man like you Emilio. I have had my days. The brazen games of the young warm my heart no longer. Guilt complex? Naa, aint I a soldier? I will take the bullet for you Emilio! –even if you yourself is lorry load of mavi ya kuku!’’And with that, Kibakitoo had retreated and offered him a good make-up drink; also aiming to wash down his earlier emotional put down. Yes, showing a proud man you are indebted to, to his face, how much insatiable contempt you can generate for him, is a friendship killer of the first rank, and needs copious amounts of reparations. And so they drunk great whisky together, each man silently enjoying he company of the other. Old soldiers with too much history between them at the trenches. Too much history to traitor the other. All these passed through Emilio Mwai’s mind as he gawked at the TV screen, which was running Westgate as breaking news for hours on end with no additional lines to the story. Poor Poor Gichangi! Poor poor Gichangi! Thought and commiserating, decommissioned President Kibaki. What a cock-up to be in the thick of. One way or another, a narrative would be developed making him the fall guy irrespective of the facts. Still, the hang- and hatchet men in the employ of Uhuru would have to tread carefully. Gichangi was an old deep-rooted tree, and you wanted to watch where you stood, and how the wind lay, before you felled such. At the same time, the felling could just work out to be pruning, that is paving the way for a sprout of even vicious ambition from the same tap root. Kibaki who in his half a century in high office had witnessed many purges, knew of the many instances where the new blood proved even more unsettling than the old, quiet guard. But these were no longer his problems. Still, he enjoyed musings on them, to accompany the great whisky and keep his giant mind busy. What else did he have? Like Otishotish of Jukwaa had discovered in his marital bed, official p-ussy lost its magic after a certain period and the body moved on, to discover new pleasures like surfing! Ha-------- PS: To be continued: ---tea break, and this time that is a long tea. Because unlike chaste Njakip who declines to ‘’outrage the modesty of the housemaid’’, I am a child of a naughtier god, prone to corruption, and our maid is the always willing type when the Mother Superior is out.
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Post by jakaswanga on Aug 24, 2016 22:23:02 GMT 3
DEAD APARTHEID MOCKS INDEPENDENCE IN KENYA: KIBAKI FLIES SOUTH FOR A MEDICAL The goats! thought Kibaki with a scornful tweet of fury! the goats! So let me tell you about Mwai Kibaki, and why he tweeted a silent 'goats'! You, dear citizen, have heard of the horror scenes, where a patient supposedly under narcosis (anaesthesia), regained consciousness during surgery, and is forced to run the gauntlet of all searing pains as the surgeons chop merrily away, confident in the assumption the patient is sound asleep. Such a patient desperately tries to communicate his plight, but the state of physical paralysis inflicted by the dose, puts paid to such efforts. And it is this excruciating experience of pain, of being there but not there, wherein the mind achieves a clarity often, they say, the monopoly of near-death experiences. This clarity is akin to the heightened state of consciousness and perception often reportedly achieved by the enhanced meditation of a practiced Guru. APARTHEID'S LAST LAUGH ON THE GENIUS FROM OTHAYA! Fully conscious but physically paralysed to make his clear thoughts intelligible to the outside world, Mwai Kibaki brutally resigned in fury to the historical significance of his rush to South Africa on a stretcher, bound and wheeled like a morgue-bound carcass. And here were these goats --well-intentioned family members, but goats without his herdsmanship errant in deed. To go and vegetate in a former Apartheid posh clinic like Mandela in his last days may appear a boastful honour to them goats, but to him, the big-brained Othayan who fought rivers of broth to a draw, this was humiliation pure grain, this was degradation worse than that of the stupid kids, way back in Othaya Nyeri in boyhood, singing songs after bullying him to tears, scolding his 'satanic' black charcoal face! Now in this enhanced but paralysed consciousness as he was being wheeled away from his beloved Kenya, Kibaki reminsced over a a former president who was, they said, secretly flown out to be clandestinely operated upon by the Apartheid heart (transplant) surgeon great Christian Barnard. All that time independent Africa yelled sanctions in public. These memories somehow triggered Mwai Kibaki to recognise the horror of his life story. Important decisions had always been made for him. Even those of a very personal nature, like who to marry. His appointment to the VP-slot by Moi? He wasn't asked. Neither did he consider refusal once appointed. 'His' democratic party was also formed and funded by others, and it was the same others who hoisted him to the top of it. And come to think of TJ Mboya! The man just showed up in Kampala and kidnapped him in a Volkswagen beetle; good bye academia, welcome civil service. The Luo hotshot and sh!ithead didn't even bother to consult him on his career plans! he was the hand of providence of course! And once in Nairobi, old Jomo K. took him over from Tom's patronage and bureaucratic concubinage, as if he, the Othaya genius, was some hot piece of hot w-hore to be passed around the barracks! Yes, the lord gave them the insight he, Emilio, was the most unique of the lot! And neither did Raila consult him before his Tosha chant! --The lakeside goat! Going into history as the maker of his Presidency, and ruiner to boot! He, Kibaki, was going to win anyway, thrash Moi to bits; but the wily Luo, scared of his looming irrelevance, was just jumping ship to get a job in the future, forcing a coalition. --Ati Kibaki Tosha! goat! Even before he was born the heavens had already decreed Kibaki Tosha! Mavi ya kuku people kabisa! He needed no Tosha! He was an outright winner already! And then the riggers of 2007 too. Who told them he, Kibaki, wanted a second term at all costs!? Nobody asked him: Jaduong', should we rig if things go bad? That stupid Kamba of a Kivuitu is tame like a dead worm!'Go-d-damn! The wretched empty-headed vile riggers! they just went on and did their evil! And swept him along! Michuki is lucky because we wont meet in the after life since he will be in hell! otherwise I would make his life after death a real hell! -the goat! fumed Emilio in retrospectful clarity. In post-colonial Gikuyu folklore, stupid folklore full of balderdash, they had always branded him General Coward. His fellow Gikuyus boasted he, Emilio, was a fence-sitter par excellence. -No fence he saw he never sat on. Every goat just understood no decision could be left to such a man. And if such a man were a herdsman on whose head a full stomach at the end of the day would depend on, then he needed must be ignored. Always! No, his mind needed always must be made up for him. And so the concerned family wheeled him out like a vegetable to go and vegetate elsewhere, or recuperate of course. And of course here goes I, writing his memoires for him! He would never do it himself, would he? - -Who is your goat now!NB: Subtext: Kenyan medical services does not offer the best money can buy. Even the cutting edge of Kenyan medics are still a bottom pack, if comparisons be made. And comparisons are always made, which is why going abroad for medical attention is fashion for the rich of Kenya. He, the herdsboy of Othaya, a genius from childhood destined to be the herdsman of men --at least that is the sense of destiny his grandmother had inculcated into him, faced up to the fact that, after a lifetime in public office in which he had occupied every major falcrum of decision and policy-making, he had not herded the nation and its multitude of goat-heads into a medical regime capable of holding its own against the best in the continent. And let that best of the continent incidentally be the product of the greatly condemned and vilified apartheid curriculum. Barely a month ago, old General Muhammad Buhari of Nigeria was rushing to London to have the buzz in his ears checked for cancer -no doctor nor equipment capable of that in Nigeria. And here bolts our ex-president too, out from the medical sewer belt he had helped create! His mind clear, Mwai Kibaki passed out to ease the pain, like his younger version habitually had, only then passing out from over indulging the bottle! Woe! Woe be upon the penniless Wanjiku doomed to the pre-Florence nightingale racket we call our hospitals! And once did the genius from Othaya serve as minister of health! Mwai Kibaki was overwhelmed with grief, the grief of an unfulfilled dream. His real dream. Money he had grabbed countless, no problem there, the Kenyan rich list had him at top ten. Still he heard the harsh scornful laugh and the disdainful spit which followed it, when the late Singapore dictator analysed African leaders. ' These cheap mafia don minds which I crushed in the havens here selling opium and running brothels in Singapore harbour, in Africa they become presidents. Go take a look at the result! Personally I can not be bothered to go witness such mediocrity, and cheered too!'O ld and frail Mwai Kibaki did not have alcohol to numb his senses. He needed not keep up appearances by acting the loof arrogance of power, nor needed he wear other such death masks. This was Mwai writing his own epitaph, looking at his fail paper, marked by the old woman who in his boyhood had formed him. And again Kibaki shuddered into unconsciousness. And here are these goats! Us goats! Not asking him a damn thing. Just doing! Truly he is the best President Kenya has had so far! Who is your goat now!
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