LETHE By Stephen Partington When peace erupted, none of us was ready. You remember how the sticks above our heads were gently lowered, how our riot gear was sloughed-off like a skin? We rubbed our chins. And yet, the dead, they didn’t rise. Do you recall the day the grandmas of the Rift embraced the grandsons of Nyeri, when the youth were given grants to raise manyattas they had razed? We rubbed our eyes. But still, the dead maintained their peace. Think back: the way the Lake and Ocean rose to kiss Mount Kenya’s peak? The glossy adverts in the Nation and the Standard: We congratulate our leaders for restoring Peace and Unity, and all is well in Neverland? The dead began to wake. Do you remember how they asked us to forget? In 4-by-4s, Big Men from each and every province drove a web across the land, their shining megaphones proclaiming: Back to work! The dead were spinning. And the bishops and the diplomats, the councillors and businessmen, they gathered for a conference outside the new Grand Regency and told us It was all a dream, an error, so now nothing needs be done, some things just die, are best forgotten. No? Come on!! You must remember how the landless and the jobless dead erupted from their coffins with a shriek? You don’t remember?! Let me help you. Hold this gun. I have a cutting. Take a peek.
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The Point of Poetry
Call me a Philistine, but I've never much seen the point of poetry. Sure the War Poets did some good stuff. But when you are capable of stringing together sentences into a few coherent paragraphs why bother chopping it into lines and verses? It seems a bit, well, contrived.
Maybe it takes a war? Whatever. There's been some cracking stuff in Kenya's literary magazine Kwani dealing with the post-election violence here. Such as...
Rob Crilly in Jerusalem
Rob Crilly is a freelance journalist based in Jerusalem writing for The Sunday Telegraph and The Daily Mail. He spent...
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