A nation of cannibals.
That is what we have become.
Experts at finishing ours and our own.
While immortalizing Obama on the other hand.
Although if Obama’s life path would have led him to Kenya, we would have finished him too.
Like we did his father.
These thoughts are inspired by the tragic death of Dr. Muiruri. Also known as Ngethu Star . A young man who had transformed his life, had worked hard to excel, made the “jump” as I often ask people to do, and was just about to enjoy the fruits of his labour.
It’s true that the he is just one of the many senseless lives that are lost in Kenya (especially of young men) on a daily basis. But his story has resonated so deeply with me and many others. Why? Maybe because I’ve done that celebratory jaunt back home , and can picture me or someone I’m with getting into a silly fight at the heng and just like that it’s over.
A confession that’s relevant.
The longest I’ve ever been away from Kenya is two years and three months. It was painful. I was notorious for finding ways to go back home right from when I left (and have the grant applications to prove it!). I’ve worked in Nairobi every year since 1998, with the exception of that long stay.
So why did I stay away for so long? Because, after I found out I’d been accepted to HLS I had this morbid fear that if I went home something bad would happen to me. Specifically, some random tragic “killed by a speeding matatu while she was on the verge of going to Harvard Law” type storo. Of course, remaining in the U.S. did guarantee my mortality but you could not convince me to go home until I at least experienced a year at HLS…so great was my fear of being cannibalized by my country. It all sounds a bit silly in retrospect, but I was determined to do what I could to ensure that a could at least taste the fruits of my hard work…and I suspect it’s a fear shared by many in the diaspora (at least we have the luxury of staying away).
Anyway, I rambling now so I’ll let the words of someone more eloquent that I am convey my thoughts.
By JUDY KIBINGE
THE SHOOTING DOWN OF A RISING STAR
L
ife has never been as cheap in Kenya as it is now.
On Friday September 12th 2008, James Muiruri Nganga wrote the following words in his blog:
“With my thesis already submitted and in the hands of my examiners, I can feel that I deserve more from life. Therefore, destined for great heights and bigger things, I am now knocking on the doors of success and satisfaction . The world is now mine.”
Barely four months later, on Saturday morning, a car carrying police officers followed 29 year old Dr. James Muiruri Nganga headed home from a long night out in Crooked Q, a club in Westlands. I wonder what he and his brother might have been talking about as they headed home and as the sunlight hit their faces. Maybe they were wondering about the argument that had had them all thrown out of the club was all about. Some guy had picked a fight with James over a woman and the bouncers sensing trouble had thrown them all out. Or maybe, as the sun rose over the city, warming them, he felt just as described in his blog on November 4th 2008:
“Since being awarded the doctorate, every moment has felt like a quiet afternoon with the fresh air forming some summer saxophone note, rising and falling on a warm breeze. With jewels in my heart, it is heaven here and the light that glows inside my heart feels like the salvation that will hopefully free my soul and brighten many others.”
The drunken police inspector might have been the furthest thing from James mind as a moved to block the one James rode in. A few heated words were exchanged before the trigger happy policemen whipped out his gun, firing bullets into his head, shoulder and heart – a further two through his mouth for good measure after he collapsed onto the tarmac. Their vicious , drunken mission accomplished, the police officers sped off to report the killing of a “a mungiki bank robber” at Buru Buru police station. According to the Daily Nation, his father, Former Gatundu North MP, one of the first to arrive at MP Shah Hospital to receive the news was ” devastated by the death of his second-born son and said: “He was my life and my everything.””
Dr. James Muiruri Nganga isn’t the first to die this way. He isn’t the first hope of the family to be cut down in a hail of police bullets. His father, harsh as this may sound, is one of maybe even hundreds right now lamenting that their child, their life, their everything was slain.
If the stories I have heard in recent times are anything to go by, this extrajudicial killing of young men is a national crisis. James may well be one of hundreds of young men who have been killed by police all over the country in recent times. In every slum and every lower income neighborhood in this city, many youth claim – should you ask – that their peers have being slain by police every day in unprecedented numbers,. Its not uncommon for a young man from the slums to tell you that all his friends are dead. If you don’t believe me, you go ask yourself. Pick a youth, any youth in Kibera, Mathare, Huruma… and ask him what he believes the biggest cause of death for young men in the slums today is, and you’ll hear it for yourselves, with your own ears. And, like James, these kids are being classified in death as criminals or mungiki’s– or both. We have to be honest with ourselves and ask: if James’ father wasn’t an ex MP, or if he wasn’t a brilliant young man with a PhD before 30 and with his whole life ahead of him, would be forgotten just as the hundreds of other bullet riddled corpses that precede him have been?
In December 2008, just a month or two after James took his PhD Viva across the ocean in Sheffield, unaware that all his dreams were soon to end, I was speaking to a Nderitu, a 32 year old youth leader in MYSA, Mathare Youth Soccer Association, whose membership extends to 18,000 youth across all of Nairobis slums. Of all his concerns about all the terrible things going on in Mathare – the drugs, the disease, the unemployment – Nderitus greatest worry was what he called the loss of a generation, and he expressed this fear with clarity and anger:
“saa hi kukienda mathare mi huona watu wanafanya campaign za Aids mingi sana but watu wa young wana die karibu kila day juu ya kushootiwa saa nashindwa tunafaa tuonge juu ya Aids ama tuongee juu ya watu kushootiwa ? maybe saa hii haituaffect lakini niko sure another ten years ndio watu wata realize weeh,kuna generation iljkikuwa wiped out.” (“if you go to Mathare right now, you’ll see people doing AIDS campaigns, but young people are dying almost everyday, being shot by the police, and I wonder, should we be talking about HIV while people are being shot? Maybe at this moment we aren’t affected, but I’m sure that in another 10 years, people will realize a whole generation was wiped out”.)
It’s true: There’s a killing spree going on. And we can only hope that James’ death will do something to stem the tide. At the top of his eloquent, passionate , honest, highly intelligent and expressive blog NGETHU STAR (http://ngethustar.blogspot.com/ ) – he being the star friom Ngethu Village – he writes: NG’ETHU STAR: From that Destined Child beneath the Stars that light the African Village along the valleys of River Chania, to the Road to Doctorate and Beyond the eagle’s heights…
Today, I feel compelled to complete that header for him as the three dots he placed after the sentence seem to demand the completion of the premature obituary he unknowingly penned. I hope he would approve of it:
NG’ETHU STAR: From that Destined Child beneath the Stars that light the African Village along the valleys of River Chania, to the Road to Doctorate and Beyond the eagle’s heights… came the brutal slaying of a dream, bringing Ngethu Star spiraling back down to earth to die in a pool of his own blood, slain by those who swore to protect him in the country he loved so much. But through his death, he has allowed others to rise and soar to eagles heights, to be saved. To live. Indeed this brilliant young man shed his blood so that others like him may live on.
