a poisoned part of white
HAROUN RISA (adapted from mombasa raha, my foot)
Dear Diary,
On my way home, I saw a man sitting on the ground. He was dressed in a secondhand suit, which seemed to have fuelled more domestic violence than business ambition. I do not know who he was, but he was just sitting on the ground, staring at space.
When I saw that man sitting in dirt like that, in his drunken stupor, I shared the snacks I had with him.
In his silence, he ate. It was not much, but he ate with a grateful heart, blurting out “Mungu akubariki.”.
We both knew crippling hunger. We both knew the pain behind silent suffering. In his stupor he told me something I never forgot:
He had emigrated from Rwanda years ago, seeking milk and honey in Kenya. The joke was on him, just like all those who immigrated to Northern countries.
He was a boy at that time, old enough to see what a person could do to another in the name of ethnicity, choice, or skin colour.
He witnessed many slaughtered with simple farming tools. He didn’t attempt to ask why again. What bothered him the most was that the soldiers either participated in the slaughter, or just looked on!
Some foreign soldiers had been brought in. They all danced in glee, erroneously thinking they would be protected from harm. They soon watched the whites being whisked to safety and the blacks left behind.
Perhaps this was why many African girls bought skin-bleaching products, or started families with whites. They too could be a poisoned part of white. Maybe they would not suffer when tragedy struck. He had seen, first-hand, the power of skin colour. As he spoke, I learned the
African was now an endangered species, dwelling in a continent both abysmally rich, and exponentially poor. Still, the African held onto the vision of awaking in paradise.
At times I look back and ask myself how I made it this far. There are those who succumb to the pressure and decide to end the nightmare once and for all. This is why sleep is treasured.
For a few hours, you can let go of the nightmare you’re forced to face. You drift away to another world where you aren’t hungry or suffering. But what of our waking state?
A middle-aged man sits on the ground in his drunken stupor and secondhand suit. He stays there for the crippling fear of returning empty-handed to those brought to this world through him. He will sit there and forget he even has a roof over his head if he returns to it. He pondors those who own massive tracts of land in the countryside, who through economic slavery and systematic looting will make sure all slaves are not only numbered, but also milked bone-dry.
Homicides and suicides in Kenya have escalated.
You have seen a great deal in the world and lived to tell the most haunting tales. You imagine that paradise is up in the sky, only to realize that both heaven and hell are right here with us.
Even here, those who were supposed to protect us were the first to inflict harm. No African willingly trusts anyone in uniform.
I bid the man farewell. He continued sitting beneath the moonlight.
He admired the world in the lunar light, since it was that time skeletons could easily come out of heavily guarded closets.
He envisioned a time he would have the power to cut off everything that was no longer a responsibility, and leave everything that was poisoned behind.
Many of us were poisoned chalices.
Poisoned chalices, we walk in numbers.
Proud of their beauty oozing poison, a good number still are.
Proud of the fruit being more poisonous, not many will say they are.
Proud of your pet behaviour, many wish you were.
Proud of you for getting back up, many deep down admit they are.
Poisoned chalices, we all are,
For not one is the first to cast the stone,
Our skeletons hold us back through our reflections.
Article image by Peter Okwara
