Mon, 4 Feb 2008 06:32:07 -0800 (PST)


Dear Editor,

As I look upon the colors of my country’s flag (not the flag of my nation), I observe hatred, darkness, hopelessness and a near death situation camouflaged in black. I see white (not as peace) intertwined with oozing blood dripping on our green motherland with intense multi-segregation.

I feel like burning up my flag that reminds me not of peace, love and unity but the never ending struggle for occupancy, power, fights for land and other resources with tribalism being the minefield that struts the ownership. The current turmoil that inheres in our country (not nation) only put a powerful finish to nothingness in the previously ended farcical elections.  Our eyes and hearts get heavy with pain.  Our different ethnic backgrounds further clank against one another as we get lost in the welter of self-war. Instead of moaning and forgiving, our ethnic gape keeps on widening apace as more lives get snuffed. I blame not ordinary citizens, but the tribal hatred that remains shell-locked on our flag.

The colors of progressive segregation and persecution that the British colony left behind. From tribalism to disunity, the British also left behind the bleeding colors that still haunt us so hard. It seems our stale historical vanity would remain hooked in our hearts. This crushing condescension, even as we spurn our furloughing Kenyan flag, the periodic hiccups of helplessness every other election year, would only make us be historical prisoners of our bitter past and always on each others’ nerves.

We need to transform the clawing colors of our flag but remain symbolic in meaning and interpretation of our historical pat.

Certainly, as I look upon the clawing flag, the shield and spears remind me of the never ending war and struggle for re-independence. The colors bring forth a symbolic acid slur even as I sourly sing the national anthem. I only get relief after falling half-headed when I hum the last verse.

And as I contemplate the colors, symbolism and the national anthem, what comes over me is a bundle of historical contradictions inscribed in our constitution.

What Kenyans yearn to have is real peace. Not deceiving elite symbolisms and choruses that only instigate the country to disunity and remind us that in order to ‘gain the rightful and needful’ blood ha to spill on the land. Our flag only polarizes the mind as we become intellectually monopolistic and uni-ideological as we seek national justice using machetes, pangas and other crude weapons of human destruction to ‘negotiate’.

The current nationwide wave of revulsion is our unburied scrap heap of our history though we still refuse to influence reason by historical tuition.

I term this bastardization of our emerging tribal democracy above the din of the current post-election atrocities that run deep in our veins.

But can Kenyans under the United Nations (UN) and the African Union (AU) help broker peace and political deadlock?

Or would our protagonist leaders selfishly bury the impending stalemate in the welter of political muscle and counter-accusations?

For me, the current mediation and dialogue seem to be part of our ‘ambulance politics’ that is our system with extensive analysis paralysis of our foreign arbitrators on the weighty historical manifestations.

Don’t we need a ‘Kenyan Oath off Citizenship’ than to sing to the verses of the national anthem and observe the colors of deceit on our flag?

When Martin Luther King Jr. was killed, the following lines from the Agamemnon were memorized to help bring back inner solace.

I quote, ‘He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart and in our own despair against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.'

These words ought to be proclaimed from the roof tops of our hearts even as we face the weighty historical challenges.

As a youth, I fully miss the sheen of the sun of our independence. But, until when?


        Regards,
        Mundia Mundia Jnr.