Death of a boy-racer.

I do not fit the description of an angry man, young or otherwise. I am endowed with a skill-set that affords me a decent enough living that I am only in fear of losing that life to which I am now accustomed. I sleep hungry only by choice. I commute only by choice. My suits are threadbare only by choice. There are millions of Kenyans who do not enjoy the same life I do, while there is a tiny elite who will never ever want for anything - nor will their children, grandchildren or great-grandchildren.

That elite is no longer invisible. You will hear of their exploits from time to time. When one of their own passes on, the nation is usually gripped for a time with tales of their goodness and accomplishments. In regard to how high up the tree of elitism they are, the examination of their lives will be calibrated to establish just how important they were, with the attendant public expiation of their goodness by someone or two of similar rank.

Yesterday a man died in a road traffic accident on a road in Kiambu. He was driving a very expensive racing car. Few Kenyans could afford it. His death was not an "ordinary" accident, in that it did not occur on his commute to or from his place of work, or on his way to an appointment with his dentist, doctor, chiropractor or mistress. He died while driving very quickly on roads that were not designed for driving very quickly. He died in the company of his friends who were driving similarly expensive cars beyond the reach of the majority of car-owners in Kiambu. His death was examined and re-examined in the free press and on the internet. Even from thirteen thousand kilometres away I am forced to confront the death of a man I have never met, would only have heard of in the most exceptional of circumstances, having died something that I could only dream of if I were a member of the fat-wallet society.

It is something that should enrage us, this celebration of wealth for celebration's sake. In his acquisition of the wealth, or riches, that permitted that dead driver to purchase that expensive toy, we are left to speculate about how much worth he was tot he men and women who walk or commute to work every day, those who slumber with rumbling stomachs of hunger, unable to walk into a shop and purchase off the rack new sets of suitings, shirts, stockings, underwear, belts and whatnots. That while the just government of the people is engaged in an orgy of self-immolation at the altar of corruption we must engage what little of our public commons to the mourning of the death of a boy-racer should enrage us to seismic proportions. It is a complete negation of the priorities that should order our lives.

No, sir. I do not deny that he was a man of some worth; I refuse to accept that his worthiness was greater than that of the four men who labour day and night to watch over my property while I toil or slumber. When their ilk is attacked in the dead of night and murdered in cold blood, they are not mourned save by their loved ones. Their day to day exploits in service to others are not celebrated - instead, they are tolerated when they ask for just a little more when they offer to wash our cars for us or clear out the gutters of our roofs.

So I shall not mourn the boy-racer. He died doing something foolish. He died in the company of other boy-racers doing foolish things. All that promise his family and friends saw in him was sacrificed to the vanity of the elite who must show us that they have more, they are more, they can do more. I should not be asked to mourn him, though I mourn every loss of life. I need not know of him. He was not me, and I could not possibly be him.