Godhood.

There is a creature abroad in the land. It has characteristics that have evolved over a very, very brief period. While it took Homo erectus several millennia to reach the level of techno-sophistication witnessed at the beginning of history, this creature has managed to evolve in barely fifty years. When it first emerged, this creature performed a specific function and retired to its hole-in-the-ground without quarrel. It's descendants have become like vermin; wherever they land, an itch develops, a rash is transformed into skin cancer, and people die. It seems that with each evolutionary stage, this creature has lost a portion of its IQ and EQ. It will communicate in a language only it can understand. And it will perform acts that prove that it is possible for an intelligent being to deliberately not think.

In recent months, this creature has witnessed challenges in Kenya that should have required its foremost attention. There is a famine in the north of the country and starvation deaths have been reported. Armed bandits seem to kill at will in the borderlands between Kenya and Ethiopia, Kenya and South Sudan and Kenya and Somalia. The price of essential commodities (essential to the working poor) has escalated such that each is now offered a choice: body or soul, not both. Corruption seems to engulf every signature project of the Jubilee administration. (Tots may never get their free laptops at this rate, and the debate over Standard Gauge over Metre Gauge is set to go on til the cows come home.) Meanwhile, there isn't a town or urban centre that doesn't seem to manufacture its fair share of gangsters and gunmen; death stalks all who seem capable of holding down at least one steady white collar job. Cheating is corroding the pride children should feel at taking and passing national exams. Universities are overcrowded dens of iniquity, inequity and violence.

But this creature cares naught for all our crises. This creature has demonstrated a singular desire and capacity for self-preservation that would make the gods of natural selection smile. This creature has managed to amass power, influence and wealth in a vacuum. It has turned a deaf ear to the cries of the people. It has turned a blind eye to the privations of the people. It has arrogated unto itself the power of life and death. It has evolved into a god.

When the historians go over the events of the twenty-first century in Kenya a hundred years hence, and if these historians have not been infected by the mutating gene that has transformed the creature that is the subject of this post, it will be clear that the idea of a Kenya that was a nation died precisely because KANU lost the 2002 general election. NARC's was a corrosive tribal arrangement that foundered when it became clear that ideals had nothing to do with governance. It is in the period 2003 to 2007 that the creature underwent a rapid transformation, evolutionarily speaking. It is the moment when that creature evolved from a human to a parasite. It's greatest trick was in persuading its victims that the victims needed the parasite. It injected some sort of mind-controlling venom into the blood of the people and the people went along with the needs of the parasite. It is sucking our life blood and persuading us that this is a good thing. It has achieved godhood, I tell you. Godhood!