I can still see it now, that Thursday morning is still clear in my mind. The phone call with Lena, in which she told me not to go. That it was all over the news, the KDF protecting all the roads that went to state house. It was on zello too, that cbd was filled with police.
But we were already on our way there, we had already equipped ourselves, with anger and violence to go and fight oppression. In our backpacks were posters we had made that morning, in which we were condemning him and invoking protection through the words of our national anthem.
Lena was right, I could have died that day, we all could have. Hiding out in SnoCream, at any moment, anyone with a gun could have come and marked us as dead or imprisoned us. Isn't that how quickly life changes? In the split of a second? One moment you are resting your head to sleep, in anticipation of the next morning, but the arrival of the morning brought change. Violent change. Violent endings to you, your goals, your family, your land. Isn't that how fast life changes?
Sounds of guns, sounds of bombs, sounds of people screaming, of death, of violence; isn't that how fast life can change?
I found myself at SnoCream contemplating my death, contemplating what I would be dying for if I were to die. I was ready, I was a spy for the resistance and on the streets of tao I saw why the revolution was named Gen Z after us, because on that Thursday morning, a day after Tuesdays CBD shutdown where it was rumored that at 5pm a state of emergency would be declared, only mayouth were scheming the streets for change.
The only thing power has over us is force, militarised force... weapons. I saw how ready he was to kill us that Thursday morning, when a tank patrolled the street we were on, packed with armed men, killers. I saw it when on the Zello group, someone shared a picture of snippers peering out of buildings. It wasn't even the plain clothed cops, it wasn't even the goons who they hired to fuck shit up that gave me chills.
It's that the government was flexing guns on the same people it was sworn to protect. But how could i ever expect the gova to protect me, when all this time, it had only been protecting itself, since 1963, the year of its independence, or even in, the years of the protectorate. I am just another black body to them, another African. Which meant that my life was dispensable in their pursuit of their exploitation.
But lol that it came as a surprise, I am only protected under the supreme law of this land, which was not written by indigenous elders, or God, or healers, but by men; by white men; by white men who came to rule this land as if was their own; came with their weapons, a famine, a pandemic and a bible; came with a law solely written in their foreign language and used that law to govern. A law which said that white people cannot get persecuted for killing black Africans. A law which was practiced for 300 years in India, where it had proven itself valuable in oppression.
I was ready to die in that moment. I was sited in Sno Cream, which 62 years ago wouldn't have been accessible to me because i was black. I am only now getting literate in the facade that was this nations independence. This sovereignty in which few benefited. So many things are lies and being there in cbd that Thursday morning brought me promptly to the truth. It made me realise what's really going on, the times we are living in, and what is required of meβΈΊmilitancy.
Really Lena, you were right, I had no business going to tao that morning, none of us did. None of us were equipped. Yes our phones are weapons, but they cannot protect us from bullets and brute force. We were not equipped. Yet in small groups, in numbers, mayouth waliungana and fearlessly trailed the streets of town that eerie morning. It is my hope that you don't have to face such a silent day, where violence is thick in the air, I hope that it doesn't have to come to the whole nation facing such brute presence. But heres the facts, that brute force has always been around. It was there in Githurai, it was there in Zimmerman, it is there constantly in Mathare.
Post-thursday it came to my attention that the battle was never over. The fight never ended. Dedan Kimathi was captured, photographed, killed and buried in an unknown grave. Kenyatta ruled. Elijah Masinde was kept imprisoned. Moi ruled. Uhuru ruled andβΈΊ
It's time for us to get militant about things. Be stronger and face things bravely. No fake uMkhonto we Sizwe π©
History is a tale that's always repeating itself. So we all know how it goes. But there was another part. You just didn't know about this one.
If you want to know about the tale of the jogoo , ni muhimu ujue observation. The jogoo once used to live in the forest. There with all the other chickens, doing their chickenly things like eavesdropping, socialising their young, you know the usual chickenly things. Those times the chicken was safe from terrifyingly large carnivores like cheetah, and such of their feline kind, because jogoo had told them that a chickens githuku is actually fire. No one wanted to eat chicken because nobody wanted to be burnt by fire. And so chicken and jogoo lived on happily in the forest until a young cheetah discovered that the chickens were lying. Fleeing from their genocide, jogoo and chickens found themselves in the company of people.
The jogoo in the coat of arms yields an axe. Its smallness is overshadowed by the two ferocious lions holding spears. The lions hold the spears that Mandela named the paramilitary wing of the ANC after, in the heat of the apartheid movement, uMkhonto we Sizwe. Which translated from Xhosa means, the spear of the nation. Just who are the lions of this nation and should the spear of the nation be held in their paws, or in the hands of those who need its support? Those who will use it to defend and get militant about things.
How do we get militant about things, things like the economy, things like misogyny, things like our land, things like our sovereignty? Get militant about the state of today.
But how do we fight? How do we face things and let ourselves be okay after facing them? How do we find the emotional support from the weight of our battlefield where we have accumulated many wounds? I radicalise myself and learn the battle has been that of the colonised self and the true authentic indigenous black body. Let me be feral. Let me be wild so I can see myself out of the dense dark forest of my being. So that I can know who I am. So I can be me. Me, outside of Fanon's Black Skin, White Mask. Mimi, yani me!
Being militant about things is about being forged through the lineages of oppression to emerge as post-human.
To be militant is to unapologetic of one's blackness. Let's recognise who a true warrior as someone who is radically comfortable in their own skin.
the lease is the law which dictates how we interact with our land. the lease was made in 1902 when they claimed land with papers. papers which bound my ancestors into slavery. a bondage which still exists. a corruption. a joke made in our faces the moment kenyatta changed his name to sound fit to lead the nations liberation. independence was a joke they fed to us. and even now they are still laughing.
the lease binds me to the land in the ways the enemy invented. how is my life ruled by these same laws that were used to enslave my ancestors? uhuru bado. na bado nadie kuexperience change. hiyo collective change. collective meaning, it is us who brought it forth through feeling. radically feeling the energies of it all. the past and the future all felt in the tremblings of the now. meaning the joy we felt was from us all, and the pain, and the anger and the everyday militant call to resist, resist, resist.
radical change we bring forth through feeling. feeling that we have won, that it is game over for our enemies, that there is no longer anywhere for them to hide, that fire will catch them as they sleep.
this feeling
this feeling
i give divine praise to this feeling,
to this feeling that can bring forth divine change because we are all feeling it together.
Jomo Kenyatta said we should forgive and forget. He asked for peace! That's why we are raised into societies that encourage our silence. Societies which discourage us from speaking out, sharing how we really feel. Societies which want to avoid conflict.
ati forgive and forget
i am choosing to actively speak up for myself, speak up against injustice, let bitches know how i really feel
because my silence is an oppression that has been passed down through lineage
if there's pressure then just pop out, thats real militancy
that is a real spear.
The famine was used, by the colonialists, to administer influence and domination of black indigenous bodies. Is it truly a mystery that there were food shortages around central kenya in 1889, the same year there was famine in India?
The railways started construction in Kisumu. I wonder about this, because in many other geological ways, Kisumu is a very ancient land. It is the granite of Kit Mikayi, the shrine of Simeon Mbevi? When Iβm in Kisumu I contemplate this longstanding colonisation. I think of the tight embedding of christianity in Kisumu, I think of how independent churches were formed as an act of resistance to racist missionary teachings. I think of the cult of Mambo and Mambo, the serpent from Nam Lolwe, who told Onyango Dunde that the imperialist religion is rubbish. I think of Elijah Masinde, founder of Dini ya Msambwa who was kept imprisoned even in Kenyattaβs time.
REAL militant behaviour.
We are the women forged from the lineages of misogyny and femicide. We are born of the lineages of the patriarchy and so we have learnt to be motherly. We have learnt that we are hot, and we have learnt that we are sexy. We have learnt that our hotness and sexiness commands attention. We are of the post-objectification era. Objectification has transformed us into self-aware beings.
The misogyny against the representation of black womens bodies in hip-hop is misogynoir. Let me break this down for you. A bad bitch is someone who endures and is transformed by their oppression. A bad bitch is someone who rises above, despite their past, and takes their role in creating culture and community.
The militarisation of the black body includes 'hands on my knees shaking ass on my thot shit'. It means turning wounds into armour. It means weaponising yourself. Like Meg and her dancers, shaking ass on white supremacy and the patriarchy. We post-objectification beings have witnessed the desecration of the female form, and emerged out of it. Which is true liberation, to be forged by the fire which scorched you and transcend into the hybrid.
The hybrid is a being that has never existed before in their lineage. The resilience, innovation and adaptability of their ancestors has led to a new kind of indigenous being. That which Syokimau dreamt about and told her people of. The generation that behaves strangely.
This story begins with a drought which blew through the mount kenya region in 1889.
This was no ordinary famine,
this was
ngβaragu ya ruraya.
The famine of colonialism.
Was this a supernatural matter or more sinisterly, a genocidal one?
Iβve unlocked my threshold, been expanding ever more and more. And with this new bandwidth that I have, I can finally load the webpages within me that could not handle in my previous capacity. That's just to say that I am shifting. And with this shifting comes realising. Comes taking off the sugar-coated icing. Goodbye romanticisation. Goodbye a lot of things. This is what reality really is. Iβm only now realising that what I have mistaken to be Nairobi identity, is only really just the outcomes of hyper capitalism. That overstimulated awe I would feel walking downtown. That manyness. That man that has a shoe shop near ronald ngala and every time you walk by it you have to pause your conversation or louden your voice to overcome the offensively loud of his which advertises his shoes which are bei nafuu. That I can walk by a man covered entirely in socks. It really is dog eat dog out here. It really is fight, because how can you not fight against capitalism? How can you not fight against that which wants to drown you? The empire is that thing drowning me. I am calling it out. You, capitalism, it is your fault.