I am from a small town, Marsabit
, it is a beautiful place, beautiful not in the sense of scenic aesthetics- you
know the flowery lanes, clean streets, tarmacked roads and the sort but
beautiful nonetheless. The beauty of small towns like Marsabit is its people,
the smallness of their beliefs, the depth of their small convictions, the
communal sense of being, the extent of their hate and love, their gossip, their
pretenses, their lies and truths, laughter and tears- the simplicity of even
their complex issues and Ideas, of daily living. The ease with which one can
assume many things and just be okay, the seriousness with which even the
slightest of things can be brought to life...one minute an issue is just a
small murmur in the air, then it becomes a quasi-secret gossip to be whispered,
then a few hours later, a full blown concern, truth with people swearing, phone
calls are made, and confirmations sought…from the villages where the issue is
rumored to have happened, then phone calls from the villages to the town to
seek for more information.
A section of Marsabit Town |
I am touched by the communal side
of my small town. I have on more than one occasion been confronted by people,
strangers who have without a care let me in on the darkest sides of their
lives, their problems, their challenges and the gate pass into their lives,
into their dreams and fears is just their knowing me…knowing somebody I
know….knowing I am so and so’ s son, brother, lover, father, mother or niece;
friendship is kindled ….with just your name you can have cousins, uncles,
clansmen, in-laws materializing out of total strangers. This is community. You
can walk into people’s homes and have free lunch, free bed and engage in a long
talk with the members of this household and walk out as easy as you came. Or
strike lifelong friendships by just a few minutes of talking.
Yet, this communal outlook is
this town’s greatest challenge. There is something sinister that lurks behind
the welcoming smiles, their too trusting loyalty, and the ease with which
people can take in convictions and clasp it tightly with their lives. This
loyalty, the undivided love that is offered too freely, it can be seen
everywhere, in schools, in the market, in the village, in households- it has
been passed on like an infectious flu- like something necessary, like fashion
and any kind of dissent is frowned upon- if it’s against the communal think-
keep it to yourself.
There is some mild sycophancy, an
instantaneous unshakable fanaticism, rumors and speculations, spontaneous
worries fly back and forth and in just a few minutes various versions, modified
for various ears- the conspiratorial, the impressionable, the doubters, the
fanatics each of them blowing like hot airs rife and palpably in the air! The
fodder that feeds propaganda and in this way suspicion is bred, nourished and nurtured
to live whole lives- lives bigger than human life, and the suspicion supersedes
propaganda and transcends into hatred, into blood, into murder, revenge-
crosses border and grows into an international crisis- the Oromoland, into the
Burjilands, into the Gabra areas of Ethiopia. Cousins and relatives in Ethiopia
wonder what is happening in Kenya and send a few guns and horses to go fight
off aggression to the respective community- then the buzz dies down, slowly,
the angst goes silent for a few hours, a few weeks, months and possibly a few
years- then the rumor begins and previous scars are piqued, rancor boils and
the suspicion grows into propaganda, the propaganda into suspicion, suspicion
into fear, fear into hatred and hatred into impulsive wars and on and on ad
infinitum goes the reign of rumor in the land of the gossip. Gossip and rumors
have a way of growing wings to fly, have some mutable characteristics in my
small town, the capacity to remake itself into funny tales, into shocking news,
into war cries, into songs even.
And when my friend often says
“you will run mad, reading so many books” I will never take those words
seriously than my worry about who hears it because I may wake up two weeks
later to people’s sympathy or a distant relative coming all the way from the
village asking my mum
“How is he now? We heard he ran
mad after reading so many books?”
Or just wake up a new person,
with strangers regarding me in a new light, with awe because they heard that I
read so many books and I am supposed to behave in a certain bookish way.
And somehow this communal
naivete, this too trusting loyalty is in the hands of a few, it is easily
manipulated, it is a switch box that can effectively unleash raging currents of
hate, love, sympathy, contempt, love and life- those who thrive on anarchy are
using it- a few months ago the local leaders gave a simple decree- do not buy
from two communities and do not work for them- then the loyal people,
communally decided in that mob way of thinking followed the decree and
overnight we had meat, whole steaks, fillets and entire goats rotting in the
butcheries and people being beaten by hooded goons in the evening for defying
the decree to buy from “marked shops, butcheries, wholesalers” there were
hushed whispers, fear of unseen eyes watching, one women was beaten while her
husband watched because she had a “concubine” from the “marked” communities,
there were more cases of tearing of shopping bags and open pouring
of purchased goods from the marked shops. The poor suffered, business men
suffered, casual workers lost their jobs and daily wages, they returned home to
face their hungry children, then slowly life came back and business is now
returning almost to normalcy.
And just yesterday I was walking
around the villages, and the many settlements around town for a simple
exercise, a polio monitoring drive. I walked into many compounds and homes and
walked out. In all the homesteads I was more than welcome; I was kindly
treated, served tea and ate those small tumandazis, popular in our town…sweet.
I ate lunch in one of the households and then my host talked about peace in
general for a while, then not realizing my feigned interest, she leaned closer
and in that conniving way of crafty elderly women she said almost whispering
“You know so many of them have
died, everyone is hiding their shame”
Pause
A picture of the backside Marsabit |
“I was in Moyale recently,
believe me there is more to the war in Moyale than you know…..they are using
spirits…jinn…. They tried burning the house of one of them and it could not
catch fire…..can you imagine they even bombed it and it could not catch
fire…..”
Surprise on my face
“Yes!!….every attempt at burning
failed until they had to call the sheikh….a sheikh who came and in front of
everyone cast out the jinn….11 of them…can you believe….Jinn…11..”
I listened carefully, putting all
the oohs and aahs and mmmhs as demanded by her dramatic narration; she delved
into details of exorcising the jinn…she painted the picture of a jar of fresh
blood found under the bed….the sheikh standing in the middle of the house while
cats appeared and disappeared, with unseen dogs barking from the many rooms….I
endured all her talk until the jinn finally disappeared and the onlookers
looted and burnt down the house….with just one bomb….boom!!
I sat there trying to act normal,
refusing to psycho-analyze her, trying to believe that she too did not believe
what she was saying and that maybe she was high on something she accidentally
took. That maybe this is a lie….and she may say something like….heyy stop
listening…am just pulling your leg. But believe me she is not alone, I have
heard this talk more than once but I have always banished it to the back of my
mind, locking all those tales into a tight cage somewhere in the past. The
other time, a sheikh was accused of casting demons into six madrassa going
children, (there is even a video clip of this somewhere), the local leaders,
chiefs, councilors and a local MP were present…the crowd was a big one, the
sheikh and demon possessed girls sat on opposite sides with the crowd watching
them in awe. Then the girls began talking in funny tones and the crowd almost
ran away….the demons/jinn in the girls were confessing before a powerful
sheikh….how they came from Somalia and they were treated to chicken blood or
something like that! And that they were here for some sinister affair!!
Unbelievable is your thought
now….but this is something that is happening, this directionless-ness, and
confusion, this murky, voodoo, fanatical, primitive, ungodly ways belong to
this century. To this present; It is a village in a supposedly post modern
city. This village will endure- this traditionalism will mutate into another
form, an amorphous state of our backwardness, it is the intersection of
primitive traditionalism shifting into something more sinister, more
traditional, more backward and obsessive; imprisoning our thoughts, caging our
minds into small cages of aggression, irrationality, fanaticism especially of
the region-political nature, propaganda, confusion and anarchic gossip. I avoid
some of my childhood friends who have stuck in some state of mental quick sand
because in one way or the other they will delve into that irksome Illuminati
talk, they will vent their anti-west, anti-American supremacy sentiments, talk
about the new world order as if that matters then say a few things about
Jesus….about Prophet Issah and eventually narrow down and zero-in on me
“Please do not die a Christian”
they will say.