Kenya, Will You Marry Me?

20. Everybody is pointing at my nation

191 20 Everybody is pointing at my nation A chieng, Ong’, and Kenyalin, it is not only my children who are embarrassed when they speak about our country abroad and everywhere. Even if you want to say you are of a new generation, politics at home drags you down. Baba above is ashamed that all are pointing fingers at our nation. Pamoja and Umoja, Baba is very disappointed and so is Mami. But we are not just going to sit and cry. Let me first console my soul: Everyone is pointing at the country that you fought for Baba, and the president does not care! The ministers do not care! Judges do not care! Parliament does not care! “Nobody can point fingers at this house of mine!” Baba’s words referred to his own home and they meant that no one could take our progress lightly. His style of delivery of those words sounded ritualistic; but it had become a song in his heart; it has become for me his will for our country. Mami is crying with pain in her heart for this land. Many women work and also cry. Tears are a sign that our bodies and feelings have a live connection to pain. But for us, they must begin to mold Change! 192 Kenya, will you marry me? I remember Baba gleaming with joy and dreams. The peaks of his happy brown cheeks shone as his skin held them tight. His white teeth looked as good as strong maize. I did look into the middle of his eye and from there; it is as if he would carry me in a trance. I would just listen, hardly talk. Sometimes, he would urge me to talk. When I did, the soft tender skin surrounding his clear eyes would gather into lines of happiness as my words fell one by one the way you take grains of maize off a hot cob. I said to myself inwardly, “you have a sense of power and pride nobody can take from you. It is curled and packed somewhere inside you.” I sing a dirge again for Baba, my brothers dead and my Motherland. I wear the sack that the women from Ukambani slept upon in my childhood and mourn. When I begin to weave, we shall all retrieve hope. Fifty years after independence, will I sing a song that will awaken my land? Will I sing a song that with words; and without words, Will heal my country torn by politics and hunger for leadership? My country seen as hunger and strife while others play up tribalism? I am in love with Kenya. With all of Kenya and now you know why. You have seen the paths that weave in and out of my heart. Every people, each modern and olden times province is my brother or sister. I am for Kenya, my Motherland. Marry change oh Kenya! I woo you knowing you … You have nothing to lose! But all your youth to gain! And she will laugh again with the memory of Baba, my Grandmother Em and my Grandma En. For my brothers she will cry because they all died young in a country starved of energy. 193 Everybody is pointing at my nation I remember the rose bush whose branch Mami brought from the flowers that bordered our mud and bamboo house, the one we called Kirosi (rose). I remember the cutting she carried with joy to join our spirits with all that is beautiful in our earth and in our new house. The roses, she says, bloom red when some wonderful news is on the way; a birth, a marriage or just some badly needed cash. She tells me it blooms red now for Kenya. She tells me about the soft petals and lilac colors of yesterdays, today and tomorrow bushes. We shall plant all of them for Kenya’s wedding. I showed her a wonderful photograph I have of the Bird of Paradise - Sterlitzia Regina. She told me she was certain that years ago, this wonderful flower, grew here in plenty as a wild flower. I hold her and look into her eyes. We want a wedding full of wild flowers. She told me people must have cut most of the Sterlitzia Regina down so that some now think these are new flowers, atypical. They are not. We have their rugged ancestors. I show Mami...