Grace Ogot’s Prophesy in Land Without
Thunder ‘Tekayo’ comes to pass in Kenya
Over the past few weeks, Kenyans have
been treated to circus of corruption in the Parliamentary Departmental
Committees where our Honourable Members of Parliament began the month in accusations
and counter-accusations. Many Kenyans were shocked at the display of bribes
received so as to doctor reports exhibited by people’s representatives in the
august House. However, I was neither surprised nor shocked at the vice of our
so-called leaders; they did not do anything out of the run of the mill.
What
we’ve been reading as headlines in Kenya’s dailies is really the bits and
pieces politicians are made of and any show of surprise on our fraction would make
public that we are what's more immature or treacherous. Our political leaders often
behave in a revolting manner but their actions in Parliamentary Committees from
the reports we have been getting only served to carry to reality Grace Ogot’s (May
she Rest in Peace) prophesy in Tekayo’s story (Land Without Thunder). If you
did Encounters from Africa as a set book, then you know but if you haven’t read
it, I suggest you read it so as to be in a position to really understand the
kind of characters who represent us in the National Assembly. Having that in
mind, you would not be shocked.
Different
genres of literature, be they oral or written, carry with them great power to pass
on moral lessons to individuals who guzzle them. The many oral narratives that
are part of the cultural heritage of many African societies meant to educate
people the significance of differentiating the good from the bad, and staying
away from what could harm them. In most folktales, those who betrothed
themselves in indecent behavior were thrown out from society or subjected to severe
punishment reminiscent of being rolled down a steep slope in a blazing beehive with
bees or being stoned to death. Those who have read Grace Ogot’s short story
“Tekayo,” which borrows heavily from oral tradition will concur with this.
Grace Ogot’s Land without Thunder is
a satirical novel. It gives a narrative of Tekayo who saw an eagle flying
above his head with a piece of large meat in its claws.
While he decided to sit under an Ober
tree, he roasted his liver, ate it and as if that was not enough, he licked his
fingers. Having tasted how sweet it was, he had this desire always to eat the
same meat over and over again.
He hunted for many months but he did not succeed in
finding the animal with the delicious liver. Owing to what he dreamt of, he
decided to hunt for meat elsewhere and this time, “hunt” it in his homestead. While the children were playing, he called
Apii and lured her to get him water from the granary. While she was getting him
water, Tekayo gripped her neck and strangled her. Tekayo had to eat his meal.
He buried the body of Apii in a nearby anthill in a
shallow grave. The other children were still playing in the field when Tekayo
returned with the liver in his bag. He roasted it and ate it greedily. And Alas!
It was what he had been looking for for many years. Tekayo forgot his deed. When he killed the
second child in the same way to satisfy his savage appetite, he was not even conscious
of what he was doing. From that day onwards, the sons kept watching secretly on
the father and children for months but nothing threatened the man and the children
for many months. While they were almost giving up watching, it was Apii’s
fathers’ turn to keep the vigil when he saw Tekayo send away the children to
play in the field – all except one. He sent this child to fetch water for him. While
the child was running to fetch water, Tekayo followed him and clasped and
dragged the child towards the fire. As Tekayo was struggling with the child, a
heavy blow landed on his back. When Aganda (his son) broke the news, they were appalled. They shouted kill him! Kill him!
Reading from this narrative, the old
man is to be stoned to death for winning in an aberrant behaviour. In real
meaning, the African tradition accentuated that the common shared good superseded
the ego-centric selfish needs of an individual or a group of individuals. What
happened to what we used to know as servant leadership?
The word servant leadership is a
Greek term. According to Robert
K. Greenleaf in 1970 with the publication of his classic essay, The Servant
as Leader, "The servant-leader is servant
first... It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first.
Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply
different from one who is leader first; perhaps because of the need to
assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions...The
leader-first and the servant-first are two extreme types. Between them there
are shadings and blends that are part of the infinite variety of human nature.
The
presence of some leaders in Kenya, who claim to be leaders, must be
investigated and should they be found to be aliens, they should be put on the
first flight back home. There is a group of people in this country, who may be
citizens by birth and not by decent. There is nothing African about them, there
is nothing patriotic Kenyan about them. They may be patriots, but not of this
land. Where they came from, nobody knows and that is why it is going to be extremely
difficult to deport them. They destroyed any evidence that would link them to a
particular place of origin.
The
incidences of corruption in Departmental Committees in parliament for the past
few weeks remind us of a scene of Tekayo’s greed in the novel. Kenya’s
political class is resplendent with Tekayo’s individuals who do not know the
meaning of the words honour or respect.
One fact that disqualifies this
group from being “Honourable Leaders” is the practices they engage in. Receiving
and giving bribes to doctor reports; Tax evasion; theft from the public
coffers; starving Kenyans to death by stealing their staple foods; stealing
education funds so that Kenya continues being an illiterate society; waging war
of words against each other; and forming tribal alliances that result in tribal
clashes fueled by these same individuals!
In traditional Africa, persons who
engaged in acts considered vices and against the good of society would either
be given a chance to reconcile themselves to society by denouncing their evil
indulgences or face retribution by either dying or being expelled from the
society. Reconciliation involved compensation. Compensation included being
fined by paying double what you stole where the case was theft.
There is nothing close to servant
leadership in that; there is nothing Kenyan about it. If they were truly servant
leaders, if they had Kenyans at heart, then they would have either compensated
society by buying double the maize
stolen so that a lot more Kenyans would not die of hunger; they would have paid double the amount stolen from FPE funds
to build double the schools so that Kenyan children would go to school and not languish
in poverty that has been occasioned by illiteracy; they would have paid double the tax so that we would have more infrastructure in the
country; they would combine all their
tribal alliances into one army that would defend the country from foreign attacks and we would not be wasting
resources on foreign trips.
Grace
Ogot does not lay culpability head-on on Tekayo’s alone but the society and the
institutions established as well. As Kenyans, we voted them to Parliament. We
often trade insults, fight and even kill one another in the name of defending
them. Let us not pretend that we are mesmerized at how they are corrupt. Aren’t
they just exhibiting, at parliament our rotten society? As the electorates, we
are known best at voting for those aspirants who dish the most in terms of cash
or the noisiest regardless of their integrity. Therefore, don’t be shocked as a
voter when that same person takes bribe in that very same institution that you
placed him or her so that he or she could fight corruption. The institutions supposed
to fight corruption have become toothless. They bark a lot when they spot a
thief, but when the thief jumps over the fence, they just watch the thief loot,
pack and leave other than biting the thief.
It
is my conviction that these men and women who asserts to have Kenyans at heart
are not. They are not real leaders. They fit in to a different land, very well well-known
to them, who have been send to commended crimes such as those committed by the economic hit man as narrated
in the ‘Confessions of an Economic Hit Man’ by John Perkins.
