Every child fantisises that one day it will have a massive chunk of dough, a massive pile in Runda, a massive Mercedes-Benz and loads of fun with all four with its friends. Unless that child has been socialised in surroundings that have taken child abuse to hitherto unforeseen extremes, that child, if it is a lad, will not dream of a massive penis or the amount of sex it will enjoy because of the massive chunk of dough, the massive pile in Runda, the massive Mercedes-Benz or the massive penis. That, at least, was my impression until very, very recently.
No, I did not hear a boy extolling the virtues of phallic massiveness. And no, I did not hear a girl swooningly explain to her playmates what she would not do to behold, and be beheld, by phallic massiveness. What I heard ruined my dinner and put me off completely my drink. I couldn't even bring myself to consume some of BAT's finest blends because of the extreme degree of queasiness that suddenly assailed by lower intestines. Some of us have been unfortunate to be witness to depravities that would shock the conscience. So sometimes we think we have seen it all. Last night I was reminded that the mind of man is a spectacularly depraved one.
At that moment it occurred to me that the Man on the Street, as the standard that has been adopted for the reasonable person, must be re-evaluated if we are to confront the social schisms that threaten to rend asunder our nation and our coziest notions about who we are and what we are capable of. One of the most disturbing developments in the past few years has been the deaths of children over relatively small sums of money. Just yesterday a mother killed her child over twenty shillings. To the readers of this blog, twenty shillings is not a sum over which a child could be killed. To many, twenty shillings is the difference between a full meal after a long, hard day and a rumbling, empty stomach as one crawls into his beddings.
Mammon is the single important factor driving our every act today. It would not be such a prominent problem if we all earned a decent wage and were able to enjoy ourselves with relatively wild abandon. But la visit to Kenya's dying hotels at the coast and it is quite clear that the number of people who can enjoy themselves with any kind of abandon is quite small; the vast majority of the working masses can barely eke a living. Younger people are putting off families till much later than ever before. It is not just the needs of high education that are delaying births; the cost of raising a family in Kenya is getting ever more unsustainable. So we should expect ever greater numbers of parents killing their children over the loss of ever smaller sums of money.
We are all familiar with the Tunaomba Serikali phenomenon. A disaster strikes some place, or a negative trend becomes permanent, or our losses are the result of our greed. Whatever the reason be, we have witnessed Kenyans in abject circumstances begging their national government to do something. Much of the government, whether national or not, lives in opulent, comfortably leafy suburbia where their needs are met. All their needs are met. They want for nothing. But few of them pay for their wants through the sweat of their toil; they are the ticks that have sucked the cow of almost all its blood. They do it as a matter of right. They do it without a twinge of regret. They do not care that their insatiable avarice is the reason why mothers are killing their children over paltry twenty-shilling sums. They do it knowing that we will never set their comfortable lives on fire. Sooner, not later, we will prove them wrong.
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