LAST WORD ON A YEAR THAT WAS
LAST WORD ON A YEAR THAT WAS
The council of village elders had gathered as early as four in the morning and were silently intoning mumbo jumbos led by Ochieng ’ s grandfather . Apparently what was on the agenda had to be finished before dawn as daylight was inimical to their proceedings .
Ochieng never got to understand why his grandfather always took him along as he was not allowed to be near the elders and ended up sleeping at the edge of the forest clearing waiting for day break so that they could go back home after being admonished not to talk about what he saw .
All the elders would be dressed in resplendent animal skins and all carried cow horns from which they drank some brew and spat it out and they also carried huge war clubs with which they threatened
‘‘ But what really flummoxed Ochieng is the very act of trying to influence the outcome of the elections by other means rather than the will of the people which renders the whole democratic ideal as stipulated in our constitution worthless .’’ imaginary adversaries on their way to the shrine .
Ochieng had thereafter been sent to a Christian boarding school far from home and one holiday when he came home , his grandfather had already passed on and there was a church being built on the clearing that he had visited with his grandfather but nobody ever talked about what used to happen there .
That was until this year when Ochieng received a rare phone call from one of his ancient uncles , those that seem to live forever , asking him to go home urgently as there was a matter he needed to discuss with him and a ceremony he had to preside on .
Ochieng now learned from the uncle that his grandfather was a medicine man who interceded with the gods on behalf of the community and since he used to take Ochieng with him it must be because he intended to pass those powers to him .
The summons had come about because forty three aspiring politicians , interested in national and county positions had individually approached the uncle for intercessions and were willing to pay very good money for the ceremony but he believed Ochieng was the authentic heir .
Ochieng was dumbfounded and amazed as to what length people were willing to go to achieve political power but even more surprising was the fact that these aspirants were also ardent church attendees and it seems that they no longer trusted their Christian God on political issues .
The Kenyan code of law and ethics is based on a Judeo-Christian ideology as inherited from our colonial past and if this is the law that our politicians swear to serve and uphold then it appears that we are in dire straits as the politician don ’ t even believe in what they are swearing to . But what really flummoxed Ochieng is the very act of trying to influence the outcome of the elections by other means rather than the will of the people which renders the whole democratic ideal as stipulated in our constitution worthless .
But something is already very wrong with our whole political process and we need to really re-think where we went wrong and begin to rebuild our systems to be truly representative and to try to attain some of those democratic ideals we have strived for .
This year is turning out to be a very important year to review many things we do as a nation in the name of leadership and evaluate our relationship with politics and ponder if what we have embraced will ever achieve what we intended .
To begin with why is Kenya always in a campaign mode ? At what point did we envisage that we would consider ourselves duly represented and attend to other matters concerning national development and suspend campaigns until the next election year ?
This issue is raised because during the year that is concluding we don ’ t even seem to have been
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