Kenya, Will You Marry Me?

4. My head is in my heart

31 4 My head is in my heart S tory! story! story! My story and Savaiva’s go beyond story. That is why I say, story! story! story! as if it flows like a river. Let your big story also come. We all have had fathers and mothers and we have this land. Aaiya, what have I said? My written story is beyond this written one. It falls off the edge of the page where we are all meant to stop at the margin. It is swept up by the wind of creation. The winds have swirled up to the top and have fallen all around us. The wind has come down where we are and come into the story. It is our story now. It fills and blows every word we speak in every language. The wind that kissed the trees of hope now fills our different tongues. How can we allow our gifts to keep us apart? Look at the wind when it fills our languages and their beauty becomes boundless. Look! Listen, Savaiva. just like you, I think about her often, in my nights and days. Mine and your umbilical cords lie in her soil. Her name is Kenya. I am in love with her. Most of us pronounce Kenya with an open vowel. That sound ‘eh’ in her, whisper it after me, is ‘eh’. It is like ‘e’ in echo not ‘equator- which bestrides us invisibly gracious. So echo Kenya, after me. I hear you say, Kehnya! Good. The British and some Americans insist on Keeeenya.. with ‘eee’ like ‘bee’ and ‘queen’ and in English! At home, we do not agree on what Kenya’s name means but I love it when she means all of us are in love. I love it when she means all of us are free. I love it when she means that those big ones who steal and kill will face the law. Let the law keep justice for all. I love it when it means that powerful people not only kneel but put their heads down in front of the power of freedom. 32 Kenya, will you marry me? With the sounds, it is not different with our towns and cities. We all have our own ways of pronouncing words. We are proud of them all. A child playing outside a home in KisiiKenya might be singing to grasshoppers to take their greetings to NyairobeehKenya … another in dala, meaning home in Nyanza, would be going to Naaairobe. The child in Ukambani Kenya will talk about Ilobi. The Turkana send people to Nairobe-Kenya, and ask them to greet people in Kenya. Are they not in Kenya? Savaiva for many years we have been divided. The undying voices of the courageous have saved us from losing our freedoms. The eye that is always open, the one that does not sleep must be passed on from generation to generation. A good powerful leader should look at voices of freedom and human rights and smile warmly, reaching out to the hungry who speak about peace. There are violent ones among us. We need to all become Kenya. No politician should divide us. If wherever we are we agree to be the capital citizens of our nation, and unite, look how well we shall do. The margins rise like mist and softly in song and thought they disappear. Open the doors I want to put out my hand, my feet and my tongue, to open up to identity as we and our fore bearers -Mothers and Grandmothers too- did in our philosophy before someone told us that our clothes, our languages and our thoughts were too poor and not royal. I want to feel good when I see the doors that Kiswahili opens for Arabic and transforms wisdom within the wisdom of languages, our homes. Rejecting fundamentalism. Rejecting colonialism. When identities melt we can love merging into one and discovering our unity. Hariri, if we have lost the beauty of your name, we still have the power to recreate it, and that is my happy creed. I still put my head in names. My head is in my heart. I seize the freedom to create the future. We can do that with words and more. We can do it in the silence that reveres freedom. Hariri, our languages need not divide us. They are all fluid and tongues, we have many. We change the name of a place -in pronunciation- sometimes three times...