Grace Ogot’s Prophesy in Land Without Thunder ‘Tekayo’ comes to pass in Kenya

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.