Our leaders' crass humour and example expose their low class

I have been reflecting on the beauty and joy of life. Loveliness that we deny ourselves in the mad rush of daily timelines. A cup of tea with an old friend. Poring over a verse in a piece of poetry. Relishing intentional pleasure from a simple meal.

Or, just finding joy in being around and well. Being alive and healthy is enough reason to be happy. These thoughts flood in from a chance meeting with Fred Nabutola, a friend from the youthful years.

We bump into each other at the reception of a members’ sports club. Both of us are regular walkers here. We no longer run. Age is creeping in, with sundry implications.

Fred became our basketball captain at Cardinal Otunga High School, Mosocho, when he was in Form Three. Never mind that ahead were three streams of fourth formers, and two each of fifth and sixth formers. He later steered the Terrorists at the University of Nairobi. He was lethal on that pitch! And the boxers liked him for that. 

As we amble towards the car park, we relive the old times. Like ageing folk everywhere, we cannot help glorifying our formative times. But is it just aged baying at the moon? We recall that throughout our stay in Mosocho, the school gate remained open for 24 hours, every day. You came and left at will. There was only one school rule, use your common sense. Surprisingly, no boy went out at odd times. No unwanted strangers walked in, either.  

We allow ourselves to sink into sanctimony and primness. We wonder what happened to manners. Where did some individuals go to school? You know, those characters who mouth scandalous adult stuff at political rallies?

The ones who tell female politicians to turn around, like heifers at the auction. Yes, the ones who publicly ask questions about the morning after the night. And, of course, the women themselves; the ones who feel nice, behaving like prime heifers at the auction. Which school did they attend? 

Sense of occasion 

We quit them, and talk about literature. We flatter ourselves with the ability to recall famous lines, first encountered half a century ago. I am thinking of Shakespeare’s Cleopatra, “a lass unparalleled.” Agrippa calls her “a royal wench.” He says of her, “She made (the) great (Julius) Caesar lay his sword on the bed. He plowed her, and she cropped.” Wow!    

And Enobarbus takes it home. “Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite varieties. Other women cloy the appetites they feed, but she makes hungry where most she satisfies.” With the proper sense of occasion, this is better than heifer stuff at political rallies. 

But Fred has the pick of the basket. “Tess Durbeyfield at this time in her life was a mere vessel of emotion, untinctured by experience,” he recalls Thomas Hardy’s canonical heroine in Tess of the D’Urbervilles. She was a total greenhorn in life, a naïve girl, whom the world misused and taught harsh lessons. And so were we, too, in Mosocho in the ‘70s.   

We knew nothing of the vileness of the years to come. We did not know that such baseness would be visited upon society by persons unborn at that time, and others who were kids. If you had told us that in future we would be ruled by leaders who would instruct the police to shatter young people’s legs with bullets, we would not have believed you. The worst we had ever heard of such leaders was about Idi Amin. But Amin was in Uganda, which then seemed very distant.  

We classed Amin in the same physical vastness as we placed Adolf Hitler and Mussolini. They were textbook and newspaper personalities. Some were to be read about for purposes of passing the history exam. Others were useful for comic relief. We thought Uganda was just a mad country, with a mad leader. We were the Eldorado of Africa, and President Jomo Kenyatta reminded us as much, every so often.   

Today, we have leaders who ask about the upbringing of children they shoot in the legs. Do they forget that these youths have grown up witnessing older generations sorting out issues with street pyres and furnaces?

Adults who embrace arson, murder, rape and other depraved interventions as forms of social discourse have been the role models. Fred and I conclude that we must address the adults before we could correct the young. We joyously conclude that this correctional charity must begin at home.  

Dr Muluka is a strategic communications adviser. www.barrackmuluka.co.ke