What's in a Name?

Today our daughter Nashipai celebrates her one week birthday. As we mark this milestone, one thing we are quickly finding out is that if you are to swim against the current, be prepared to answer questions at every turn. In our case, her name Nashipai Katindi Njonjo has been the subject of many conversations and curious whispers. The most interesting being, since traditionally our middle name is usually regarded as our 'real' name (the first being the 'given name' and the last being the surname), then, 'Why is she being named after Katindi instead of after my mother according to the Kikuyu custom?' And we have to explain that her name is not Katindi, it is Nashipai. Katindi Njonjo is her composite surname, although not hyphenated. Then instead of using the Kikuyu naming pattern strictly under which she would have been called Nyambura after my mother, we chose a name that reflects a character quality that most reminds us of my mother, hence Nashipai. Which is also controversial to some, since it is neither a Kikuyu nor a Kamba name (it is not even a Kiswahili name like Baraka or Neema - which many regard as fairly neutral and safe in our ethnically sensitive culture), but a Samburu one. Nchipai means happiness and also praise. Nashipai is the female name of the one who brings happiness and also an expression of praise in a divine context. My late mother, even with her modest education, was never shy of breaking new ground. She was a trade unionist in the factory where she worked even before I could walk. I am sure she would have been proud of both her latest grandchild and the names that she bears.

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING: KENYA’S HISTORIC AND COSTLY NON-EVENT

Kenyans learned a very expensive lesson this week: that the President is like the Titanic, very difficult to turn around. Or, to put it more accurately, that eating presidential humble pie can be a costly national exercise.

For whatever spin politicians try to put on this week’s bizarre events, they amount to little more than so much pomp and circumstance to justify Uhuru Kenyatta’s having to eat humble pie and appear before a court he dismissed barely a year ago as “a pantomime, a toy of declining imperial powers”.  

Kenyatta had invested over a year of his presidency badmouthing the ICC and sending his ministers crisscrossing the globe in search of allies to back his impunity bandwagon. He had staked his diplomatic reputation to mobilize fellow African leaders to answer his call to arms against the ICC and they had dutifully played along, going so far as to swear that no African head of state would ever appear before the ICC and to amend their own laws to provide that they could never be prosecuted before a regional court yet to be created.  And yet on the date that he should have been toasting to Uganda’s independence anniversary with his comrade-in-arms, Yoweri Museveni, Mr. Kenyatta sat subdued in court, expressionless and mute, as if dutifully playing the lead role in a pantomime.

But to justify why he was now going to travel to The Hague and appear before the ‘toy of declining imperial powers,’ President Kenyatta had to first make a big show of temporarily handing over power to his Deputy, “so that Kenya’s sovereignty is not subjected to a foreign jurisdiction.” And so various organs of state had to be convened in emergency sessions including the Cabinet, the National Security Council and Parliament to be informed that the President of the Republic was donating his ‘P’ to William Ruto and becoming a mere Resident of the Republic, or an unPresident if you like, so that he could travel to the ICC in his individual capacity.

And we all played along. We pretended not to remember that Mr. Kenyatta was charged before the ICC as an individual because the ICC only prosecutes individuals, not presidents or prime ministers. We pretended that had he traveled to The Hague without all the fanfare of signing legal instruments handing over power to his deputy, power would still have been automatically transferred to Ruto as it always is every time the President travels abroad. We pretended that our sovereignty was now safe and secure at home in the hands of Ruto and forgot that our sovereignty was never vested in Uhuru Kenyatta in the first place; it always vests in the people of Kenya.

In other words, just as Uhuru Kenyatta was signing an instrument to temporarily hand over power, we collectively also seemed to temporarily take leave of our senses. At least the MPs did, and the Cabinet, and the National Security Council, and the media who faithfully reported this farce, this melodrama from the theatre of the absurd, as if it was really news and analysis.

But as Uhuru Kenyatta took back his ‘P’ from Ruto, it is my hope that we too resumed our senses. For only then would we realize just what an expensive melodrama this was when we calculate just how much this latest chapter of the ‘personal challenge’ actually cost the taxpayer. From the recalling of Parliamentarians from recess to witness a constitutional non-event, to flying the whole House to make a spectacle of themselves in The Hague, to flying unPresident Uhuru and unFirst Lady Margaret out and flying back President Kenyatta and First Lady Margaret, to blocking Nairobi traffic for seven hours, to paying off hysterical praise singers.

More importantly, it is my hope that as we resume our senses, we will also remember to whisper a prayer for the souls of the 1,133 Kenyans who could not be present to witness this costly non-event because the events of 2008 permanently removed them from our midst without giving them the option of coming back from the grave and resuming their personhood at a time of their choosing. 

You don't have to be mentally ill to suffer from mental illness.

In a period of just one month, my wife Katindi Sivi Njonjo and I have lost two dear friends to depression, and the world woke up today to news that depression had also claimed one of its most beloved entertainers, Robin Williams.

The grief of those most directly affected by these tragic deaths is unimaginable. But what is truly tragic is the utter neglect of mental health by both policy makers and society at large; the assumption that those who suffer from mental illness are somehow to blame for their misfortune for being weak or failing to just 'snap out of it', as if being mentally ill was something they accept by choice .

And yet it is the case that you don't have to be mentally ill to suffer from mental illness because all of us have a family member or a close friend or know someone who suffers depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, or some other form mental illness. And with all the pressures of modern living, mental illness is reaching crisis proportions.

And so as we mourn the passing of Robin Williams, let us take a moment and consider what we can do, individually and collectively, to be the agents of healing for those suffering in our midst by fighting stigma, advocating for the necessary resources by government, and by being there for those who, due to no fault of their own, find themselves alone and trapped in the prison of their own minds.

Being His hands and feet...

Yesterday, Day 4 of the Citizen Mobilization Conference, participants went on a field trip to visit the J.L. Zwane Memorial Church and the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) in Guguletu. The J.L. Zwane visit was as humbling as it was inspiring. Under the leadership of Rev. Spiwo Xapile, the church has become a beacon of hope in the impoverished community ravaged by poverty and HIV/AIDS. The local congregation broke ranks with the denomination leadership to embrace the needy in the community, joining hands with TAC despite the latter being associated with gay people and prostitutes. J.L. Zwane opened its doors to the suffering and cared for the dying. Today, it hosts a hospice and has trained social workers and care givers to walk with the HIV/AIDS victims in their last days. Some of the lessons we learned from J.L. Zwane:

- We must allow ourselves to trust even the untrustworthy, for only then do we create space for transformation.

- The local church must support and cover those that step forward and go and serve in the front lines. The church should be a refueling station where members come to recharge their batteries before going back to the battlefield.

- We must deconstruct church hierarchies and make church relevant to the people’s lived experiences.

- We must be willing to go beyond all boundaries. Having suffered exclusion ourselves, we should not exclude others.

- Need to link grassroots actors with policy actors.

- We cannot commit to winning an argument and losing a person.

- God needs a person to go for Him, and I'm that person.

As we left J.L. Zwane, we left behind a beehive of activity. A TAC workshop on sexual and gender based violence was underway in the hall, children in the after school programme were enjoying their lunch in the courtyard, some women were singing melodiously in the sanctuary, and the sick and dying were being cared for with dignity in the hospice.  In other words, the church was doing what the church was always meant to do – to be the hands and feet of Jesus Christ, engaged in the work of healing the community, feeding the hungry, spreading hope, and reconciling people to one another and to God.

Not by race, tribe or colour; but by purpose...

God did not evict the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Hivites and the Jebusites from their land merely because he favoured the Hebrews over them. No, the Hebrews were appointed to be the instruments of God's judgment over these peoples - for the sin of the Amorites had finally reached its full measure according to Genesis 15:16. And these peoples were being judged because of their detestable practices the worst being the burning of children before the fire god Moloch.

As I watch the brutal massacre of children in the killing fields of Gaza today, their sacrifice once more before the fire god, Moloch, I cry out to the God of justice and ask, how long before the sin of today's Amorites reaches its full measure? How many more children must die before you can remind us once again that no matter who we are, we are not special to you because of our race, our colour, our tribe, our creed or our even religion, but we are special to you because of our purpose? And that our purpose is to love you with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and to love our neighbour as ourselves.

Don't equivocate where you should lead.

Today I came across the following quote on page 314 of Gerry Loughran's book 'Birth of a Nation: The Story of a Newspaper in Kenya' chronicling the history of the Nation newspaper. He references an interview he did with me in London in the late 1990s and it has had me wondering whether our media has changed in its outlook or contribution to democracy since.

"It would be dishonest not to acknowledge 'The Nation's' occasional descent into sycophancy, its periods of calculated silence and its propensity to turn a blind eye. In a London interview with this writer in early research for this book, human rights activist Njonjo Mue used words that proved uncannily prophetic when he suggested that 'The Nation' sometimes equivocated when it should have led. Referring to the 1997 poll, he said:

""I read a number of irritating, almost patronizing editorials calling on all sides to come together and eschew violence and so on instead of taking a real stand, not for a particular party but on the side of justice and respect for human rights. In countries where the political opposition is undeveloped, the media find themselves being pushed into that vacuum, not to play a blatant opposition role but to set out the issues clearly for public debate. I felt 'The Nation' did not play the role it might have.""

God's Chosen People or the Synagogue of Satan?

For the longest time, ever since we were children, we were taught that Israel are God's special people, the chosen race, that as good Christians we should pray for the state of Israel.

Now I watch this genocide going on in Gaza. The murder of children, women and men; the bombing of schools and hospitals, the destruction of homes.... and this by God's chosen people.... in the name of self-defence against an occupied territory that has no army, no air force, no navy.

The death toll inflicted on the unchosen people on Day 15 is almost 700 against 20 Israelis. But Benjamin Netanyahu tells the world not to worry about the unchosen, because they are 'telegenically dead'. What does that mean???

The US and Europe ban their flights from flying to Israel over security concerns and there's an outcry from the chosen people. "Unfair!" they scream. Less than 24 hours and they are already feeling the isolation. And yet for a decade, they have blockaded the people of Gaza to suffocation.

I'm I the only Christian who is feeling confused here? My mother is no longer alive for me to ask her if I should continue to pray for the state of Israel for God to give them wisdom on how to respond to the dilemma of the 'telegenically dead', for God to protect their soldiers as they annihilate the unchosen children and destroy their homes, schools and hospitals, for God to rebuke the Americans and the Europeans for banning their planes from flying to the Holy Land.

And so this morning I have to part ways with the faith of my mother in God's chosen people. I have to remind myself that in the same scriptures that my mother told me to seek guidance from even in her absence, I have read somewhere that we should love our neighbour, that we should not kill... even 'telegenically kill.' And I have also read in the same scriptures in the third chapter of the book of Revelation the following promise of Jesus, words that I pray would bring comfort to the children dying in Gaza:

"8 See, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut. I know that you have little strength, yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name. 9 I will make those who are of the synagogue of Satan, who claim to be Jews though they are not, but are liars—I will make them come and fall down at your feet and acknowledge that I have loved you."