DESOLATE

She was sited by the window, reading the book she just pick from a friend’s home mini library. As far as she quite remembers, this is her second or the third time to visit home. A place everyone now despise. The heaven that everyone has become a desolate street. A home that everyone has contribute into destruction….everyone including the media, has pulled at least a brick or two to make sure that there is nothing that stand on two feet apart from leaning on the pillars of humanitarian assistance, rape during the day and night, shrink economy that is at the sick bay, among all the things she has been hearing from her friends and bit of what she has read.

In the West, where she grew up, her parents and the uncles and aunties, who periodically visit them in Australia told her a little or nothing at all. “How do you find home?” her cousin teasingly asked her, “I mean, apart from these rude temperatures, what else can you tell your white friends when you get back to Melbourne?” she went on with her serial commentaries of lamentations. No one like home.This tells you a lot: that, in this country, we complaints a lot even on the things we have no ideas. An adult of twenty something years of age and above complains of why the government is not giving him or her a decent job even when he or she has no qualifications of working as a receptionist let alone being a bank manager. Some even complain about Monday, claiming it that, it’s as jackass hell of a day yet they don’t go to work, and; even in January, people with less responsibilities and no salaries complaints of January as it is assumes by income earners as sixty-two days.

“You see”, she squeezed herself to sit at the helm of a brown wooden home made chair, “in Nairobi, in such hot days like this, we would go out to the mall, when the temperatures are hot like this and have some ice cream. Life was good, I tell you.” She said.

It is a common thing that people forges life sometime. It didn’t start in this century whereby one’s own identity is a crime in some part of the country. If you don’t think this doesn’t make sense, your dollar bill worth questions will be answered by why most black melanin women lighten their skins and feel good. This is because they coerces to the circles that they want to be identified. Does it make them happy? No! It doesn’t make them happy. All they want is the affiliation.

Regina is past this type of mediocre that is invented by some home girls. There was a time, when she was in school, in her history class – where they were studying a topic on trade- African trade. Her teacher was explaining something about Africa and the slave trade. “You see. Most black you see here today are the results of what their leaders were doing back in the past. They were sold off during the Trans- Atlantic Trade.” The lady went on with her platitude chat while the other white kids in her class spiced the whole lesson with ill-willed participation. Regina felt bad that day. She has always felt unwanted but not to this extend because she is always in a wrong society. A society that glorifies skin tone. A society that put itself first. A society that you’re taught to believe one single story. A week earlier, before she leaves a place she called second home, all the media outlets were corrupted by the African Gang news. Apart from rape, which is always the rare case in the West, they were branded with all the ill adjectives. Robbers. Drug dealers. Rumors had it that, a hell of a politician, a national figure to be specific, had a claim that they wouldn’t go out at night because they fear being attack by the African Gangs.

So that night, after school, she dug her head in books to read how did this thing came about. Slavery isn’t just a thing to joke about. She wanted to know why a grown up woman would make such statements to her and influence the innocents to back her up. She read and read a lot that until she eventually get the inner part of what really gave birth to slavery. She also read about the Old Ghana Kingdom, the Ethiopian Monarchy, the Napata King, Monroe, Buganda, Abwanga Kingdom, among others. She read, too, how they were brought down through western influence and how the leaders were conditioned to capture able-bodied Africans to be taken into slavery and work in Europe as farmers. Tears strolled down on her young cheeks when she read it. Though the story is contrarily different from what her teacher made up in class, it still hurts her so much to learn that a section of race was capable of doing that to the other. Where is humanity? Where is God to stand with this people in the first place? What is the crime that they have committed that can’t be forgiven? Why can’t they feel the guilt and instead apologizes in a proper manner rather than giving aids to African nations in the name of humanitarian assistance yet they still attach strings to every aid that they give?

Back home, she can still see the scares of colonialism and the political damage being closed through aid. She saw some women coming from the market walking barefooted in the hot sun; the temperatures, as harsh as they’re, hawking ripe mangos. She thought, all the way, from the streets of Konyokonyo, how much they hustle in hurdle to make sure their tables don’t miss meal and clean plates before their kids goes to bed. “So how do people make it here to make a living? I mean it is quite expensive to live here.” She had seen how women are making it hard to make ends meet. In her neighborhood, there live a family where a woman is making tea under the shed whilst the man wait the monthly shrink salaries that sometimes don’t come in time.

“Well, it is quite hard to live a happy life in this country if at all your smile is smeared with the ‘blood of money’.” Said her uncle who has just come in from the balcony.

“You see,” said her uncle, “we all have different reasons to love a country. There are those people who love the country because they want something better for their children and the children of their children. This class go for any job, scream for equity and good governance. Unfortunately, this class has no power and money. Again, there are those of people, within this same country, they will remind you that they love the country more than you do. I’m not telling you that you’re in a wrong country: these people exist in all corners of the world. They will torture you when you talk of the evil deeds of the system.” He said. “All the doors might seems shut but one day, this crack of a smile will widen. Have faith.”

Regina was being merge into the line. She is getting the share of thing she has always dream to hear. She has read a lot about the damage society that is polluted with dirty politics, fake religions and distorted identity. The biggest shock was the day she read it on some blogs that, a gentleman, from where her parents claims as home, was marrying a seven-teen year old girl with five hundred herd of cattle and money added on top. The suitor, who was actually way older than the girl, is claimed to be as old as the father of the girl. “Human trade!” She said.

“If you care about your home, you will never fear the seasons of wreckages in your house. Good things goes to those who work for them.” Said her uncle. She pushed the book away and then sad down to think about what her uncle told her. “Culture don’t make people, people make culture,” the words of Chimamanda send her to thought again: but how can she alter the thing that her forefathers have been inscribing in the blood. What did mere traders do apart from imposing impunity? War might go but the scares will never be closed any time soon. “How far is too far?” She asked herself that question. She went to her room and closed the door behind. The door slammed but she didn’t care anymore. What should she do? Cry over spill milk? Stage a protest single-handed like a mad woman? Or, should she keep quiet and pretend like she hasn’t seen anything wrong? She then again walk to the window and then saw no one on the street. The streets were deserted.