Leading the Night

Rika you have no proof

Leading the Night 5 Rika was still in the newsroom. Now someone in the newsroom holding a remote control, changed from TV Jazeera to The Kenya Cooperative Channel, (KCC) with an unseen hand. KCC was in the middle of broadcasting the Lukiimam too. Then a series on needy cases started.There were medical appeals for: tongues, hearts, left eyes, fingers, lower and upper lips, vaginas, toes, teeth, breasts, heads, fingernails, stomachs, noses, right eyes, kidneys, ears, legs and hands on the Kenya Cooperative CorporationTV announcement program. The hand with the remote control begun to move to different TV channels for a few seconds, as if copying and pasting news clips. All the other channels were broadcasting those men grinning from ear to ear. There they were, beaming from all the respected TV stations, occupying all the screens in the country, their reflections filling the only mirrors Kenya had in common. Rika continued watching. The weather next. Warm weather is about to phase out a cold July, the coldest month in Kenya. But global weather patterns are shifting and with a smiling voice, the announcer seems to say that it is up to you if you get caught in a sudden storm. Everyone knows seasons are unpredictable now. For now however, Rika’s mind is taken up with her next scoop. She has calmed down. She was through with checking her previous stories carried in The Sabat News. Good, she thought. More time to write and get published if she was lucky. She was always searching for the hottest potato but not everyone was interested in all hot potatoes. The TV was switched off by a remote hand and the newsroom returned to silence. Rika stared at the ceiling. Rika you have no proof Rika had been working all night. Sometimes the stories she wrote did not get published.They often disappeared when they were rich in detail. The editor would say to her that she had made her stories too long. She 6 Leading the Night was told every sentence needed proof. She received a warning MEMO headed, ‘No proof’ often. She knew this was a hurdle mounted before her and not a gate to go through. Teams to work on difficult items were never formed in Sabat News. Was it a warning MEMO she needed or support? Was The Sabat News management unable to trust her nose? Rika vowed to watch the night and to dive as deeply as she could into darkness if that is where the best light was. If again we were to think about the details of how hard Rika worked, we would be tempted to think that she is a fairy God mother and that this is a strange tale. As for Rika, when she felt like taking things easy, she remembered the millions of voiceless women in Afrika. Women died silently working on the land and in other jobs. This could be said of many countries. We know Rika works with the energy of a woman who is- in charge of seven gates. It is she who wo/mans all these gates, especially her own seventh gate within her and this she does gracefully too. She works just like most of our mothers. She works for many hours, almost forgetting herself, just like most of our mothers in Afrika have always done. The scene she had just seen on TV would never leave her mind, yet the two men who looked alike, the Lukiimam, had no hard questions thrown at them on TV. She was still then taken aback. Rika knew she was not living in a fairy world. She was not virtual but actual in the way in which one might move their hand, lift a glass and take their first sip ever of a new drink that delights. A sip for example, from a clean glass full of a fresh and cool Senegalese thick baobab juice on a damp and hot afternoon. Rika works with her fingers as truly as how an initial sip of such a precious juice flows down the throat and is followed with more gulps filling the drinker with satisfaction and health. What others may read as virtual is first actual in her. The taste of her work always begun at the tip of her tongue and into its middle where it gathered before it went right down, still delighting her buds with joy to the end. Rika can smell, touch, see and [18.223.125.219...