East Africans

As a child a border was a fence, a wall, a separator and sitting on the fence meant practically having to withstand the gashing spikes of thorns or glass on stone walls, throes of indecision.

I traveled to Busia hoping to walk along the perimeter wall, like Berlin or Greatwall of China and see what strange people lived across it whose president ate people and dumped lame men into Lake Victoria that when you fished you were more likely to get a watch or a ring in a fish, so fish were carnivorous?

But in Busia I met a gate, then nothing.

No border no fence, no strange people in fact they were too familiar, spoke even my own language better. So a border was actually nothing, air kaput!

Peculiarly too I met the first East Africans, the Baamani clan of the Bakhayo. They are the Maasai across Kenya and Tanzania, the Somali sprawled in space across Kenya and Somalia, they are the Teso  on either  side of Mt. Elgon, the Hutus and Tutsis and Rwanda and Burundi, the Merile and Karamoja. The people on borders, on nothing, on air kaput.

Here their land stretches and pans downs and ups, is split by rivers and ownership, but no line nothing air kaput.

Here they call Uganda Ingerekha ‘The Other side’ vaguely, there and not here. The clan is everywhere the other side and here and there.

They tell me what makes one a Kenyan or a Ugandan is an ID card. Its where for convenience you think you have a better shot at life. So a son can be a Ugandan a father a Kenyan a brother both. Well it doesn’t change where they live nor what they know about themselves. A young man failed in Kenyan form four exams, he went to Uganda for form five and six and became a Ugandan.

Here currency operates like a forex bureau, you do not have to mind which one you have as long as u understand the exchange rates and you know a little arithmetic. Either side operates either currencies. Anyway they are both shillings if you get rid of the prefix (Uganda and Kenya)

Here politics is also twofold, with the feeling of lack of democracy felt just within a year of the feeling of chaotic elections, Uganda votes just one year before Kenya.

It is here, where there is no border, just air, nothing kaput, that a people, East Africans, Maasai, Somalis, Itesos, Merile, Karamojong, Sabaot, Luhyas etcetera etcetera live in one country in two countries.

Serenading East Africa

Weary with war

Come lay by my feet

And find peace

Discriminated and depraved

Disintegrating in secession

Come ye and find justice here

Torn a part by tribe

Torn apart by religion

Come glued in our shared history

And find a future

Robbed by modern Cecil Rhodes treaties

By an open market with barricaded doors

Come ancient traders and trade in

Our market

This is East Africa

Land of shared destiny

Multiple identities

A pan African Federation is imminent

Impending Hegemony

A friend of mine warned me about the end of the world one morning. Being naturally a skeptic of religion I was lent to believe that he was deluded by teachings of fear. And as a supposed he was luring me from what he thought was my biggest devil. Alcohol. So when he talked about the pale horse in Egypt and the biblical premonitions of the end times. I was comfortable with the cynic explanations in the press about camera angles and the blurry photos that might have just scared the world.

But then again there was something in his warning that could not just be abandoned. I thought though more practically than the religious fanatics he is lent to. There are people out there, white who were fanatical enough to actualize the teachings of their religion. And then I decided to use precedence and see if actually the world can end at this point in time.

I drew the following theses and in as much as I wake up every morning to dismiss it, it sounds real every day more real than I could allow myself to imagine it.

In recent times there have been several revolutions in the Arab World. Sometimes history becomes too coincidental and we are forced to ask questions. Why the Muslim world and why now. Why force even states which were as stable and developed as Libya into this turmoil why create so many Somali states up north. And most importantly to whose interest.

The world is closely controlled by the interest of the few developing nations and they cannot just loose it in pressure for change as they would have us believe. Egypt was practically America and how dispensable was it, especially to Moslem Brothers who are anti west?

Now the revolutions have gone deep into the Middle East and most comfortable monarchies that were less vigilant are falling to extremist groups. Religious fundamentalists are virtually coming to power in most of Arabia something the west purported to fight for so long.

I was willing to ignore all this as coincidences when the ace was tossed. Osama was killed. I did not believe it but instead of pointing out the too much contradicting evidences or the lack of, I went to examine the question that plagued my mind. Why retire Osama now.

He could have been disposed years ago. Practically I came to realize that the world’s most feared man is not so dangerous after all. He is practically credited with bombing Nairobi and claiming responsibility over the twin towers bombings besides driving Russians out of Afghanistan. His great terror organization for over ten years has Kikambala, Kampala and a handful of real terrorist activity. As observed by Eric Hobsobawm the terror threat is grossly overestimated.

But why now. Well a quote in Immortal Technique's response to bin laden’s death jolted me into my theses

Zbigniew Brzezinski, the man who called for any means or method of attacking the Russians during the Afghan Jihad, was heavily criticized after the attacks of 9/11 for his callous looking down upon the issues that could arise from U.S. support for Islamic militants. But he left a quote that resonated with me, “Moreover, as America becomes an increasingly multi-cultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat.”

Now Osama is out of the picture leaving behind his atrocious affiliates who want to avenge him. This has cumulated with widespread fear of al Qaida reparations and everyone is looking out for retaliatory attacks. This will surely come. And as Immortal Technique rightly visualized it is easy to hate a foreseen enemy and disastrous to hate a group of people thought of as the enemy. When they attack we would no longer be hunting a man, Osama but a group al Qaeda. This faceless group will be one and the same with the people within whom it exists. Al Qaeda will be one and the same with the Moslem world. Thus the widely perceived direct external threat to America and more so the world.

Then throw in the extremists of the Arab revolution, aided and engineered by the so called fundamentalist groups aided by the west. Nobody to shield Israel even in Lebanon and Syria. Throw in Iran and an unstable Iraq. Afghanistan with withdrawn troops from America. This spells chaos. The most natural thing will be for the new strengthened Muslim neighborhood to attack its age old enemy. Israel.

With the al-Qaida attacks on American vassals like Kenya and the pending attack on Israel then the world’s mortal enemy becomes Muslims. Viewed as an attack on Christians is how the media will sell it to us. We will allow mindless consent of military action against the Muslim threat and significantly so when Ahmedibijan purportedly has a chemical weapon. If he uses it, even to defend against our attack on his backdoor, he will have ignited the nuclear war that has been long overdue. The third world war.

The football will be opened and with the hands of America the world as we know it will end. The war so gross and blamed on religion will allow us to want to eliminate military governments and place security in one unified body that will have emerged as our universal savior. The ‘impartial’ and arbitrating UN. One world, under one government, religious less, godless, so illuminati.

But the puzzle does not fit too right as I have demonstrated. Where does China come in? I hope I will figure it out soon.

After 2013 polls

We all have divergent views of our future from the boda boda to the ceo's  but our destiny is tied to our proximity, we live in Kenya. I want anyone's opinion on what they think will happen next year or stories you have heard from anyone on what they think will happen next year after election. my friend told me we will be under military rule another told me his grandad thinks we will go back to colonial rule. i want raw thoughts, sincere foresight real and imagined.From This i hope to compile the views in a story which i will post here. mail otiatoguguyu@yahoo.com. Thanks