I bump shoulders with vacant busy bodies rushing to their jobs; jobs they don’t really know will exist tomorrow…
By Lydia Mutuku Nzilani
I am talking to you all and I can only hope to hold all of your empty hearts and kiss them so, I am quite contrite that I am incapable of doing so.
I took the morning bus to school on Wednesday; the 8 am doomsday express where the first step in the misery shuttle is filled with unbuckled, restless yet empty souls of what used to be a sanguine nation. I agitatedly rest on the left penultimate window seat of the Embasava next to a man with a wet snot rag on his left hand and a blue woven bag on the other.
He reeks of misery just like me. Just like everyone else. We sway to the motion of the ponderous machinery that clumsily takes us to our headquarters, and as we sway to motion our bushed souls remain constant to the rhythm.
As the middle-aged man next to me blows his nose, I slowly shift my head to a homuncular boy sitting on the seat right next to me in navy blue shorts and an orange backpack that looks tired and worn out. He has a warm sandwich in his bag, I can smell it.
He shifts his head into a quick glimpse and we both gaze into the emptiness we delicately carry and he quickly steals a glimpse at my faded Vans and suddenly his eyes are glued to the back of the seat ahead of him.
We are all machines in motion, meticulously placed axle shafts of a massive truck with a heavy load, steady we go; grunting and pacing in control. We are frozen in a cycle of generational affliction and we pass it down to our children and they will pass it down to theirs and we shall form familiarity out of association;
Fuck Moi,
Fuck Uhuru,
Fuck Ruto
Fuck ___ (?)
And that was exactly the first thing I saw when I stepped out of the metro at Archives, a beautiful and downright graffiti that said ‘Fuck Ruto’ on a wall whose purpose was to hold down this city just like many others. I watched as the country paced up to work; grunting and pacing in control.
A tired old lady with a weary, blue, checked apron set up her fresh apples and sprayed them with water on the same spot a twenty-two year old girl in grey cargos, white turtleneck tucked under a black shirt and a blue face mask held a customised placard that said ‘Free young thug, take Ruto’
If you looked carefully you could see her silhouette resting on the same space, her placard raised high and mighty and her agitation is slowly eating away the apples; they look sad and rotten, she must have tried selling them since last Wednesday.
She repeats the embellishment; she sprays a little bit more water and they look fresh and edible from afar. I am pacing up to her; heavily charging with my heavy tote bag filled with scribbled books of content I’ll never use in this lifetime, we exchange looks and I peek into her eyes and she tells me that she wants it all to end but I quickly shift back to the busy road filled with hurtling, empty busy bodies. We resume motion, we always do.
And as I pace up Tom Mboya Street, I can smell the decaying riot of yesterday, it’s warm and fresh and it’s choking me into literal death; Tutaandamana adi lini jameni?
I bump shoulders with vacant busy bodies rushing to their jobs; jobs they don’t really know will exist tomorrow and I see a tall middle-aged man with an old adidas jacket running a cart with all manner of things from nostalgic patcos to face masks and I run to him for rescue.
I brush hands with him as he gives me a black face mask and I feel it; leaden despair blatantly surfacing through all the pretense screaming and begging to be set free. He tells me, just with a glance, that he could recoil into a suffocating face mask and be sheltered from the corrupt Kenya, saved from the darkness eating up his turf.
I nod, a quick inopportune and meaningless nod and I stray away. I put on my face mask and shield my nostrils from the pain of yesterday.
I pause to cross the road where thumping super metro buses are jammed up among each other all traversing the same march as yesterday and all the other restless days. Debilitated faces peek through ramshackle windows; some of them have exasperated eyes glued on the walls of my city; our town almost cursing them out for not falling apart along with their tired spirits.
I find myself doing the same as I glance at my next destination, Kenya National Archives; fly born nerve-center of all our history locked up and hidden in a beige building. I watch as the contaminated, once beautiful structure glares at me and I can feel a single tear trickling down her window from having to stand still and watch her subjects scorn her purpose.
I am immersed in a short-lived dreamscape of the happenings of yesterday when a beautiful dread head thirty-year-old boy dug his hands in his messenger bag to grab his phone and quickly check the time.
In a stand still of time when the numbers on his home screen switched to 12:12, the holy hour, everything tranquilised. The screams dissolved into gunshots and familiar clomping of feet were all silenced by a single action of bullet piercing skin and he fell right next to the house that held his history so silently. Silence, Rex has fallen.
I make it past the buses and I approach the building as I walk past my beautiful hero frozen in stand still, his vibration is withered and tarnished but I can smell the comely hope he restlessly generates with his spirit. He must know something we don’t.
I tread past Archives and into Moi Avenue and I see them all; pitch black scabs etched into spaces of what used to occupy empty bodies grunting, fulminating, scolding, rioting. They are painted in shadows, geared up and electric with energy channeled from fierce loathe and anger.
Hidden between empty bodies of themselves, I watch them rightfully demand an audience. Suddenly I can see the stain left behind, I can see the darkness that engulfs the sky concurrently covering Nairobi in a grey film of despair.
The buildings erected on the ground of this city that we once fought for are now deteriorating into absoluteness and blood spill has stained the roads that we built for hundreds of generations to come, why are they killing us?
The shadows remain still and they refuse to move, they are fervent trees that we have planted and watered with our tears and they will occupy and consume the country into rebirth. My motion is disrupted and I move slower coursing through shadows.
I lock eyes with a spitting image of myself; a girl in her early twenties walking towards me with an absent spirit who talks to me from across the street, ‘You see them too?’
I come to a halt and I feel nothing, not even the hard-pressed bodies of people brushing against me rushing to whatever evanescent destination. I am occupied by suffocating despondency that presses down my chest, it fills me up like a high. Swiftly, my body is light; a lonely kite on an empty horizon.
The familiar monotonous sounds of buses, hawkers, speakers and people getting down to work has vanished along with my vacant body. I am graced with the uniform rampage of men and women of all ages singing along to the tune of their bleeding hearts
Ruto must go!
Ruto must go!
Ruto must go!
I sing along to the anthem with the shadows; my bleeding brothers and sisters. The town buildings are blotched with our rage. Kenya is bleeding.
The shadow of the pregnant lady next to me with an enormous placard with the words ‘Reject finance bill 2024!’ is painted with resolute connotations to fight for the dignity of her unborn child. She wants a life for her son or daughter right here in her motherland.
The silhouettes of innumerable middle-aged fathers are screaming in tune with the song, they want their sons and daughters to live a life that belongs to them; a life that isn’t subjugated and turned into property by the government that is meant to serve.
I am in tune with the rhythm of dejection and despair conjured up by the voices of my peers; Gen-zs tumekasikira mbaya sana.
I am listening to the boys and girls who restlessly roam the cities of Kenya with their bags filled with degrees, diplomas and certificates that have been made into inefficacious pieces of paper by greedy men and women who sit in a parliament they qualified for with the same pieces of papers. Shame on you Mpigs!
I am very aware of my anger and I know where I need to plant it, I know the essence of it and I understand what it can do. I may look empty on the outside just like all of us; coursing aimlessly through this dying city, but I hold my rage with me because it is my amour I strap it on everywhere I go just like all of us.
We will paint this city with our spite and we shall occupy to be listened to. I hold on to the grip of the shadows all united by the love of our country and I can see them multiply evenly through the city.
I am entwined in an association that I will carry to my grave; the inherent love for my country that complements the one I dearly hold for my life. I am made hopeful by the voices of my brothers and sisters because I know that tomorrow will be darkened by the shadows of patriots just like me and because of that tomorrow will be brighter than today, Kesho tuko site!
But for now, I am saddened that I cannot hold the hands of the people filled with crippling despair. I can only hope to hold all of your empty hearts and kiss them so, I am quite contrite that I am incapable of doing so.
Reject! Inject!
Lydia Mutuku Nzilani (she/her) is a 22-year-old author from Nairobi, Kenya. She is a published writer, with her work featured in the Kenyan anthology Qwani 2, released on April 6, 2024. Lydia finds joy in writing, which serves as one of her greatest channels of expression and a defining aspect of her identity.
Cover photo credit: Pok Rie