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| Samson Ojiayo looks on gladly as Mbugua Muriithi, lawyer greets Philo I author, after 28 hours of detention and lost files for decampaigning corruption. 2009, the question of famine in Kenya |
Do you know what it feels not to know what to eat next? I have known hunger but not of so many days. So many that people become thirty years older if they are adults and children become brown haired adults with extended bellies when their hair was black before.
I have known hunger on my way to a library even after eating, hunger that would not let me read or think and that was just between hours. Hunger and thirst for days on end. Hunger and thirst, famine that recurs every few years, five and we are never ready for it in Kenya, hunger known for generations. Can you bear to look at this video?
http://www.nation.co.ke/video/-/1951480/2367158/-/fs9yw2/-/index.html
Shall they hunger and thirst always, then? Why? Who is not providing?
No questions?
They hunger for food, water, education, freedom from mutilation, genital mutilation, early marriage and the rest is not easy. Can they at least be sure of food so that early marriage will not make sense.
Can we assure these people of food security so that they do not live only thinking of a few hours time. Will this be the last famine for which the government is not prepared?
For I was there in 2009 and we were arrested for shouting out
" Corruption is Death!" There is the hunger for justice and the hunger of the eyes, the hunger that we must no longer only speak about but act. I know others hunger elsewhere but for this hunger
we can never be sad enough. No.
