mute

Ever have days when your every thought, impulse, feeling, intention, seems leaden, clumsy, poorly informed, and misguided?

When your incapacity to execute anything with precision, grace and effectiveness overwhelms you?

When you want to cry every ten minutes? Over the boy who should be in school, who guides the blind man with his alms cup through morning traffic on Ring Road Kileleshwa. Over the shoes of the woman toiling down the steep hill of Ring Road Parklands in front of you. She carries a large sisal bag on her back, its strap anchored on her forehead. It is laden with something you can't see, but her panting assures you it's heavy. Her shoes are dusty black canvas flats, with broken buckles - just keeping them from slipping off her feet must take effort.

And you despise your own easy tears. Your ability to open your wallet, open a window of hope, generate the flash of delight and gratitude at your largesse. Because you know that giving everything you own would not alleviate the systemic, entrenched, institutionalized injustice that creates and sustains poverty. Because you know that everything you do, every person you help, is less than a drop in the ocean. And you despise cliches like drop in the ocean. You despise those who parrot drop in the ocean to justify doing nothing, switching off, choosing not to see. You are a roiling concatenation of incoherent rage and grief, and you despise yourself for giving in to it, because it serves no one, and there is work to be done.

first ever petition to Kenyan parliament

march on parliament

what I did for my birthday

Took part in the historic, first-ever, petition of Kenya's parliament by Kenyans, to protest:

1) the unconstitutional Media Bill passed by parliament, now awaiting presidential consent, which would force journalists to disclose all their sources of information.

2) the corrupt, immoral, illegal "gratuity" payment , amounting to 1.4 billion Kenyan shillings, which Kenyan legislators want to award themselves when they leave office at the end of their electoral term this year.

Last week civil society activists tried to present this petition to parliament. They were harassed, beaten, tear-gassed, arrested illegally, and almost killed in a car crash involving the police vehicle they were forced into. One of the petitioners, Ann Njogu, founder of Kenya's Centre for Rights, Education and Awareness of Women, was slapped, kicked, punched, and dragged down a steep flight of stairs by the police. Charity Ngilu, Minister of Health, stormed the police station to rescue her, and drove her to a hospital for treatment. The next day, Ngilu was ordered to report to CID headquarters, and detained without cause for 24 hours.

So I was - to put it mildly - petrified. But there's a point where you can't NOT show up - and still face yourself in the mirror.

And I was SO glad I did. The march was peaceful. Miraculously, mind-blowingly, heart-liftingly, peaceful. The Kenyan police actually respected the law. They let Kenyan citizens exercise their constitutionally protected right to petition their parliament. A Member of Parliament (and ODM-K presidential candidate Joseph Nyagah) accepted the petition from us to take to parliament.

I'm still finding the words to describe the experience - and it's impact on me. I've protested injustice and war on the streets of England, of America. I never believed I could do it in Kenya, without detention, injury, or worse.

Interesting side-note: I was the only brown i.e. South Asian, Kenyan in the march. The reactions ranged from assumption - that I must be a journalist with an international agency, rather than a Kenyan - to tremendous warmth and appreciation from the organizers and activists. They said:

Bring your people to the next march. Tell them they need to be here, this country is for all of us.

The photos here were taken by Daudi Were, leading Kenyan blogger. See the full set on his Flickr.

bodies in motion

speaking the language of point and line and curve, gauging space and moving through it with precision and intention, executing breathtaking leaps and inversions, landing on slippery stone floor as gently as butterflies on moss..........

The dancers of the YK Project, at Yaya Center less than an hour ago. For 30 minutes, they turned the entrance of this Nairobi mall into a performance space, and it was beautiful. Mind-expanding.

It made up for the dance-fix I'm going to miss tonight, Eric Wainaina at Club Afrique, because I am currently Sneezy Gonzales, heavy head cold working it's stuffy way through my body.

thank you

all you Shailja-blog readers who sent me happy birthday emails this past week. I'm touched and amazed that people not only noted the date from my last year's birthday postings, but that they put it on their calendars, noticed it was coming up, acknowledged it.

Both heartwarming, and guilt-inducing, since I was born without the birthday-tracking brain lobe. I forget birthdays with monotonous regularity - including those of my immediate family, close friends, godchildren.