re: When you want to mourn or pray you now have to pay something

I found this article by Barack so interesting. I hope you enjoy is as much.

Odundo

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The Standard, Saturday August 4th, 2007

When you want to mourn or pray you now have to pay something

By Barrack Muluka

You have perhaps heard of the tragedy that befell the sad land of Kusadikika. If you know of the dreamer who went by the name of Ustadh Shaban Bin Robert, then you probably know of Nchi ya Kusadikika. For, it was Bin Robert who dreamt the sad dream called Nchi ya Kusadikika.

Kusadikika was the one society that was anathema to the truth. The leaders and the led, alike, thrived on selective amnesia. They remembered what was convenient to remember.

They forgot all that was convenient to forget. Historical facts were only selectively remembered if they helped strengthen your case. Otherwise you pretended that they had never happened.

The land of Kusadikika was a truly strange place to live in.

The political fraternity, the ordinary mwananchi and the religious man alike, thrived on dishonesty and chicanery, otherwise known as utapeli and ulanguzi. Matapeli and walanguzi were the supreme ministers in the Cabinet and the Church, alike. The men and women of God were governed by the same passions as the people of the world.

In the proper order of time, the sad dream became the Kenyan dream. That is why I have just come back from a crying competition. We cried not with our mouths, but with our pockets. The telephone message from the man of God who invited me to the competition was brief and to the point.

"My sister is dead," said the stranger at the end of the line.

He did not even bother to apologise for "flashing" me, as we say, in the first place. Nor did he consider it useful to thank me for the politeness of calling him back after the flash. It is taken as a matter of course that when you have dreams of becoming a Mheshimiwa, earning tones of tax payers’ money for doing nothing; it is your responsibility to call back everyone who "flashes" you on your cellular phone.

And so the good man went on, "They say you want to go to Bunge. I want you to come and rattle politics. We are burying her on Saturday. We have decided that Saturday is the best day so that you people can come and rattle. Njoo ungurume siasa (come and discuss politics)," the bereaved gentleman said. He spoke with aplomb.

You would have thought he was saying, "Drop in for a cup of tea."

When you get to the funeral, you discover that it is not just a matter of crying with your mouth. For, in the old days, mourners arrived throwing themselves this way and that way. They did funeral dirges and jigs.

They wondered aloud why the deceased had decided to "do this" to them. You wept and said things like: "Oh, my dear so-and-so! What have you done to me? Oh, daughter of the great ones! Why have you gone without biding me goodbye? Whom have you left me with? Oh, what will I smell like? Oh, what will I do with myself?" Your body moved with the staccato of your words.

You went on and on, stealing the show from everybody. Now you were in a teary crescendo. Then you did a diminuendo, before picking up very sharply again. You cried like someone who knew how to mourn.

When you had done a good job, you cooled down and looked around. You noticed society for the first time. Then you walked to the cooking place to wonder aloud why people thought you would get malaria if they gave you something to eat. Minutes later, well fed and satisfied, you would engage in little talk and local gossip, laughing away at this and that, the antics of moments before all forgotten.

But today we cry differently. You can spare us your tears. Nobody is very keen on seeing your teary red eyes. What with dying and burial as everyday affairs! Now we mourn with the pocket. But we have also discovered that some fellows’ pockets do not know how to cry that well. An honourable pocket should cry in a special way. After all that is your passport to rattling politics. You do not just come to the funeral to rattle when your pocket does not know how to cry. No, you rattle with your pocket.

That was what my professor friend found out where we went to cry and rattle politics.

Professor wanted to cry with one thousand shillings. That was not good enough rattling fees. "No, Professor," the man of God told him, "That is not how a person of your standing cries, especially when he wants to become a Mheshimiwa."

Professor is still working on his crying skills. He hopes to do better at the next funeral. Meanwhile there are dozens of pending invitations to rattle politics in an array of churches on the landscape. The pious priests want to know who worships best. Here, again, you worship with your pocket. The modern god has no time for empty pious incantations. It is the pocket that prays.

Kusadikika is a truly rotten place, standing on a rotten foundation. Its moral and ethical pillars are caught up in the same morass as everyone else. The chief priests cast aspersions on prophets who tell them to repent or face earthquakes. But who can escape social earthquakes in a society whose profane chief priests hiding under frocks of piety worship earthly gods?

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