MY WEEKEND: Coping with election aftermath

Protesters in Kibera on August 12 after President Uhuru Kenyatta was declared winner. PHOTO| EVANS HABIL

What you need to know:

  • I cannot hug or hold the hand of the Kenyans in pain, and so every time I get down to write about a subject unrelated to this election’s aftermath, I feel like a fraud, as if I am letting someone down, as if I am betraying someone.
  • It seems I haven’t been alone. A colleague in the media (she is a presenter in one of the local radio stations) was lamenting about how she has been having a difficult time presenting her show.
  • “Sounding cheerful and cracking jokes on air does not seem appropriate right now…” she said.

I have had a difficult time settling on what to write for the last two weeks. Writing this piece was especially a nightmare. I wrote six intros, which I deleted, one after the other, because they didn’t sound appropriate.

And it has nothing to do with writer’s block.

It is just that I feel it would offend if I wrote about the normal things that we Kenyans go through on a daily basis when the fact is that “things” haven’t been normal in our country since we voted on August 8. True, “things” have quieted down somewhat, but there are many families that are mourning their daughter, father, son, brother and mother – the Kenyans that lost their lives in the aftermath of the recently concluded election. To use a phrase we are fond of, it has not been business as usual.

As a result, each time I sit to write, I end up feeling like one does when visiting to console someone who has lost a loved one. You have no idea what to say as you sit there in the face of their grief, because everything that comes to mind does not seem appropriate. As a result, you sit on the edge of your seat with growing unease, feeling like a trapped rabbit, avoiding their eyes and wondering whether it would be too soon to announce that you are leaving – after all, it is less than an hour since you arrived. It is especially difficult if you are not really close to the person in mourning; at least you can hug someone you are close to or hold their hand, or busy yourself serving visitors tea, and therefore not be under any obligation to say anything.

I cannot hug or hold the hand of the Kenyans in pain, and so every time I get down to write about a subject unrelated to this election’s aftermath, I feel like a fraud, as if I am letting someone down, as if I am betraying someone.

It seems I haven’t been alone. A colleague in the media (she is a presenter in one of the local radio stations) was lamenting about how she has been having a difficult time presenting her show.

“Sounding cheerful and cracking jokes on air does not seem appropriate right now…” she said.

 Two days after the election results were announced, a colleague arrived at work in the morning looking upset. Naturally, I asked what was bothering her. In Lang’ata, where she lives, she told me, life hadn’t changed. She and her neighbours were going about their lives the way they normally did, yet across the highway in the neighbouring Kibera, gunshots rent the air, a sign that things were far from normal.

“Kids are outside riding their bikes, and adults are having barbecues and going to the supermarket to shop as if everything is fine,” she told me.

I understood where she was coming from, and I told her as much, but I also pointed out that she had come to work – as if “everything” was fine. She, who had gone to work, and those neighbours having barbecues on their compounds and those that had sent their children out to play were not oblivious to what was happening, neither were they numb to what was happening to their fellow Kenyans.

At the risk of sounding insensitive, unfortunately, life goes on in spite of the pain being experienced elsewhere. I also read somewhere that for some, sticking to routine in the face of tragedy is a coping mechanism. It is a way to convince themselves that things are not that bad even when they know that they are lying to themselves.

 Also, I pointed out, it would have been unrealistic for her neighbours to, for instance, forbid their children from going out to play because there were children elsewhere in the country who hadn’t been out of their houses for days because it wasn’t safe outside.

Reflecting on that conversation as I write this, I realise that my rationalising was also a coping mechanism for me; while death is a fact of life, no one should die because of an election.

Even just one life lost is too much.

 

[email protected]; Twitter: @cnjerius. The writer is the editor, MyNetwork, in the Daily Nation