What Can Go Wrong? a Story of Reflection
Grandpa was murdered in the mid 1990s. It was a culmination of long running land conflict. It's the sort of conflict that a teenager would fail to understand. To start with, no adult in the family ever discussed, or attempted to explain to us kids the nature of the conflict. All the knowledge we had gathered was through eavesdropping.
The extended family land conflict had been so intense that I trembled at the evil that can prevail amongst parents and their children. The death of grandpa effectively transited this evil to the next generation: We.
We, who had by then grown to be teenagers with opinions and prejudices shaped by what we had heard about black magic, divination, witches and witchcraft through Chinese rumors; we were sucked into a rein of evil, intimidation and fear.
His body was discovered in a thicket near a river. Witnesses described a horrible evidence of death by strangulation. More or less like the way a wicked boy would wring a chicken by the neck for sport. The crowd who got curious overwhelmed the crime scene. Scene contamination was the reason police could not gather enough evidence to arrest anyone. That was how grandpa met his death.
Couple and half decades later, I am a post graduate student at the University of Nairobi. It feels nice to be among intellectuals who are equally ambitious. Every morning at nine, we could persevere the morning traffic to be in time for the morning tutorials. Many were the times the classes turned into fora for intellectual discourses. Memories of grandpa faded into renewed respect for life and humanity.
At the end of the first year I and Mercy met at library. Both of us evidently anxious of our continuing exams. I could not, however, fail to note her newly styled hair. Her matching freshly minted smile embedded into my mind. It was a heartwarming encounter. I even ventured to request her phone number.
It was therefore a de javu when on a bright, sunny Sunday morning, the biggest daily in the city run the face of Mercy in its morning headline minus the smile. She had been found dead and trumped upon by trucks on a major highway connecting the capital to the Western part of the country. The police commissioner said there was no evidence to sustain an arrest due to scene contamination.
The case has been ignored by the local media. Only a few columns have been dedicated to highlight the plight of a family brutalized by the murder of an offspring at her prime.
Before being discovered she had been to a house party in an upscale residence attended by ranking people in business and politics. There were reports of exchange of harsh words with a youthful, if dreaded, male politician which led to her exit in middle of the night.
Though grandpa and Mercy are generations apart their tragedies are heart rending.
Respecting the sanctity of gift of life is a higher level of evolution.