Some time last week I got home really late. I’d had a long day and my feet were sore. I had a clamant need for food and sleep since I was both hungry and sleepy. All I could think of was how I’d get home and go to bed. Unfortunately this was not to be.
We all got home at around the same time. That implied that I wouldn’t evade kitchen duty that night and so I had to demonstrate vitality since there were responsibilities that I needed to attend to.
While attending to my culinary duties my niece came over. She turned 3 recently. On this particular night, she was singing a certain mock song that took me 10 – 15 years aback. The song says something like this:
Fanya kazi kwa bidii… Uta lipwa big G (bigi gi)
I recalled how we’d, or rather my friends, would sing this song to me because I was mostly on the receiving end. I neither had sisters nor did we have a house manager so I would do most of the work. Sometimes that meant attending to my chores when it was play time because I didn’t want to cross my mother. My mother the disciplinarian was quite something and that is most definitely a story for another day.
Oh how I hated the song. I’d feel a lump form on my throat that was increasingly difficult to swallow. I had to blink repeatedly lest tears freely flowed leaving me 100 times embarrassed. To this day, I avoid engaging in exchanges that would result in my being on the receiving end of such mockery.
My thought train took me to the current state of affairs in my country Kenya. We’ve been in a season of elections. That said, some candidates won while others lost. It is the rule of life. The bottom line however is that we were all voting for a better life. We desire better policies and better services.
The reaction by most of us has been similar to what used to happen back then. While the candidates that we voted for could have won, it doesn’t nullify the fact that the other contestants had visions that some of us believed in. The human thing to do would be to understand that it’s bad enough that their candidates of choice didn’t win, we don’t have to rub it in.
While peace, justice and unity are on our lips, these qualities are very far from our hearts. This reminds me of when God told the children of Israel that despite His name, Yahweh, being on their lips, their hearts were very far from them. It was not until they came to the realization that they truthfully needed God,or rather came to true repentance that God intervened in their lives.
It is not until the deep seated issues in our hearts are resolved that the rift between us will be bridged. As we work towards that, let’s be mindful; one to another.
