Vengeance is Mine: Being Unafraid
“Vengeance is mine, I will repay”, saith the Lord.” Psalms 94:19
As I wrote this piece, I had just finished reading the two books of compulsory “homework” that my daughter occasionally passes on to me when she suspects that I am beginning to lose my concentration. In a way, it is vengeance on her part because when, she was growing up, I used to make her read all sorts of literary junk in order to keep her mind suitably engaged.
Payback time...
The Home Work
My homework this time around was in the form of two small books she was sure I had never read. The first peculiarly titled “Find Me Unafraid” was by a young Kenyan whom I can only describe as a maverick because of the kind of life he lived as a young boy in Kibera or, more appropriately, Kibra. More of this later.
The second is similarly mysteriously titled: “Born a Crime”. It is also by an equally young man but this time from Cape Town in South Africa.
The similarity between the two books does not end there. Both boys were born to single mothers - by choice. The Kenyan mother, from the Lake, refused to get married to her culturally designated husband and chose to become pregnant by her boyfriend. The South African one chose to go out and get pregnant by a Mzungu who was not even South African. Against unimaginable odds. But somehow she managed to bring up her mixed-race son in a horribly hostile environment. More of this also later..
“Find Me Unafraid”
If you have been to Kibera recently or driven by the Southern Bypass, you might have noticed a couple of metal water-towers high above the tin roofs of Kibera. If you looked a little bit more closely, you might have noticed the name SHOFCO painted on those water towers.
The SHOFCO project is the penultimate part of the incredible life journey of one Kennedy Odede whose struggles to realize even part of his dream is told in a brutal manner through the eyes and hands of his own and those of his American counterpart named Jessica Posner, a white American girl from Denver, Colorado.
He was originally from Nyakach deep in one of the most traditional parts of Luo country and he ended up in
Nairobi and, not unexpectedly, Kibera as a very young boy after his mother ran away from the cultural nightmare of being a single mother in Luoland.
The story, if you can call it that, goes on to describe in incredible detail, how he lived and the great deal of the trouble he got into in the process while many of us were blissfully complaining about own relatively minor escapades.
And, of course, how he eventually met this crazy American girl who had come on a salvation mission to Africa - Peace Corps - and, of all places in Kenya, chose Kibera as her area of interest.
It would be unfair to both youngsters if I was to tell too much of their story in this kind of piece. So, if you care about your fellow man’s condition, just go and grab yourself a copy of this book from your nearest bookshop and share it with a friend. It will leave you open- mouthed about the so many things we take for granted about our people, their heart-rending challenges and, worst, about our so-called leaders who only see their people in terms of votes.
“Born a Crime”
As you can imagine, the second book is equally out of this world perhaps even more so. The author, Trevor Noah, is a South African boy born of a Xhosa woman and a Swiss diplomat who was working in South Africa. They met in Cape Town where his mother was a house girl to some “Kaburu” in the city’s suburbs.
And, along the way, came Trevor who could not go and live with the other children in Cape Town’s “Soweto” because of his colour. Nor could he live in the white suburbs because of the same stigma.
How he survived an abusive step-father in a newly “de-apartheided” country is the kind of story that makes “Alice in Wonderland” like a walk in the park. And how he later survived and ended up being a celebrity on American television circuit is even more incredible.
A Tale of Two Tales
Each time I think I have read the most incredible pieces of writing, I get a blast in the face telling me: “Boy, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!”.
And, as I said in the case of the first story, it would be unfair to the authors to tell all their secrets to just any “Johnny-come-lately”. So, if you are genuinely interested in a valuable read, why don't you go and get these books from your nearest bookshop.
Or, if you can’t, go to Amazon where you will find them. Wonders, you will discover, are still happening right under your noses.
Happy reading. And tell a friend..
JH Kimura,
Bangkok,
Thailand October 2018
Looking back, the stories of these two fellows make a very interesting comparison. Trevor Noah literally broke the glass ceiling of his mixed race parentage and took off to the US where he is now the host of one of the best shows in the US, The Daily Show, where he can even ridicule the biggest political leader in the world: Donald Trump.
Rumour has it that he is dating a Kenyan film star from the same lakeside area as Kennedy Odede. She is the daughter of a professor who converted to politics and is now the governor of one of Kenya’s 47 counties.
On the other hand, Kennedy married his Colorado-born white girl Jessica Posner and they are now the proud parents of a boy who was not born a crime and may, with time, become another Trevor Noah.
Coincidentally, both of the were born in same year, 1984, made famous by a British author George Orwell who had to conceal his true identity because of social prejudices when he wrote the book(1948).
I wonder if the two guys know each other, i.e., Odede and Noah.