Do not neglect your mental health in this Maandamano era
What you need to know:
- The government would respond by saying, “Terrorists have infiltrated the protests”.
- The protestors would laugh them down, livestreaming mambo kwa ground, and pointing out goons who everyone claimed to know, but no one claimed to have hired.
- The police would ask us to go back home, we would say Kenya ni home.
There is a popular expression in the streets, “Weuh”. History has it on the white man’s account that when that colonial ninja, John Hanning Speke was taking a walk in good old Africa, along the dusty murrams of the British East Africa Protectorate, saying “Jambo” to every lion and “Hakuna Matata” to every antelope, something tugged at the hem of his garment. An imperial Everyman, he decided, on the toss of a halfpenny, to join an expedition to the Great Lakes of Africa, where on his peregrination there, he was stricken by heavy malaria, flesh eating ants and primitive African juju, but like the main character that the white man is, he miraculously survived and made it and saw this large mass of water and his first reaction was to write to the Queen back in England. He said, “Weuh! What a Lake, innit? Hurry on then, come, big land, no owner, hakuna matata.” Then he named it Lake Victoria. That’s how Lake Victoria was “discovered” and that’s how “Weuh!” entered daily lexicon—a word that goes through the whole gamut of expressions, a birthday, “You mean Vera is still 27? Weuh!”; a burial, “Yaani Jamo mmoja died? Jamo, Jamo? Weuh!” to even a wedding. “Ati Mercy is married? Mercy wa Habanos? Weuh!” True story. Ni me nakushow.
Weuh is also what I am shouting during the maandamano when we are exercising the “We Run Nairobi” trainings we have been doing at Jaffery’s Club in Lavington. We had been in town early—that’s what happens when there are no jobs—and the police too had been in town early, ready to maintain law and order, but mostly to ignore the former and enforce the latter, the order part being achieved through rungus, nyahunyos, and Black Mariamu. It was a beautiful orchestra, every movement, every action-reaction on cue as if conducted. First movement: cops attack. Second movement: Gen Z retreat and regroup. Third movement: Gen Z defend. Fourth movement: cops attack, and so it would go on. Adagios. Then, swift staccatoed notes. What a negotiation with my mother feels like.
If you are reading this, that means a) I am alive and b) you are not dead. Kudos to both of us. I, had, however, put my affairs in order, in the likely case that I was hit by a stray bullet, for the police in Kenya always have enough bullets to shoot stray ones. I had bequeathed everything to my cat, Moscow. It's a cheshire cat with a blonde back, white underbelly, and eyes like weak tea spotting heavily diluted milk. Left my 40 by 80 plot in Chokaa, touching tarmac and UN-approved. Everything else—my high school love letters, all my enemies, and that Hustler Fund loan, those would all go to my mother. A reminder of the failure to launch off this country, a stillbirth of opportunities, a national miscarriage of dreams.
I would also have loved my death to be announced by Larry Madowo, reporting live from the ground, with smoke from burnt tyres masking his face and teargas getting into his eyes while he yells into the microphone. Yes, Larry, a protester has been shot dead Larry. Yes Larry, the police are claiming he approached the bullet. And the bullet defended itself, Larry. What’s that, Larry? I can’t get you well, Larry. Back to you in Washington, Larry.
But revolutions have always been like trying to harness the wind with a bucket made from gunia. Who is it we are being liberated from? The last regime was also liberating us from the previous regime. To be in Africa is to be in constant revolution. A revolution for the revolution for the revolution. Every generation has its war, and learns the same old lessons on its own. Yet here we are. Some line had been crossed, something said or done, something irrevocable from which there was no longer any possibility of turning back. Nevertheless, everyone was saying that it was going down, maandamano was trending on everyone’s lips, that we must be seen, that we would take over the streets, and there was nothing anybody could do about it, and so I said it, too.
The government would respond by saying, “Terrorists have infiltrated the protests”. The protestors would laugh them down, livestreaming mambo kwa ground, and pointing out goons who everyone claimed to know, but no one claimed to have hired. The police would ask us to go back home, we would say Kenya ni home. And I would be reminded of the great wisdom from our elders, that the language of young men is pull down and destroy; but an old man speaks of conciliation.
Social media was awash with the Must Gos, and it was mostly written in capital letters, so it must be true. Like when people write FACTS. The anger was palpable, and I could imagine John Speke writing back to his Queen, “Your Majesty, the brutes are verily strong. Good for hard labour in Manchester and Worcestershire.”
In all this, I was thinking how every social space has been politicised. Facebook, that grand old party, the one where everyone’s grandmother is, and what Gen Z use to check for obituaries, now has running commentary on 2027. And who is funding who. And sijui what. Instagram is a photo collage of “standing in solidarity” with our fallen soldiers, while appealing to brands. Meanwhile, it is easier to leave Mombasa Raha than Twitter, as I think Marcus Aurelius once remarked. In the meantime, the revolution will not be televised. It will be livestreamed on TikTok.
Everything has become political, such that you cannot have a conversation before nani’s name crops up, or which politician has defected. The social fabric is torn, and the patchwork is being done by a Kenyan fundi, which means it’s not being done at all. Titty Tuesday on Twitter (no one calls it X) has now become Teargas Tuesdays and Monday Memories have become Maandamano Mondays. While politics is encoded in our nation’s DNA, politicking is fairly novel, weaponised to keep the population angry and charged, ready to be deployed as a wrecking ball, the people against the powerful, the desire to fire the bosses and crash the country club, a middle finger to the ruling class. This, I dare say, is not a normal state of mind to be in. Our mental health as a nation is already in dire straits, and we have allowed the lunatics to run the asylum.
The war, the civil strife, and the rage are funnelled into our homes through the smartphone. I’m hesitant. Lately, I’m hesitant whenever I have to go on social media. Just as before your first heartbreak you could not imagine what people thought about or worried about or hoped for, so now it is impossible to remember what life had been like before the excitement, the disruption, and tension of maandamano. And now death floats around like a bored angel, from police, from goons, from a lippy minister who says, “Shoot on sight!” on a TikTok, as if they had all read Emily Dickinson’s poetry, as if their favourite line was: “Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me.”
Brethren, however you can, take care of your mental health. In whichever way you can. Otherwise, it would simply mean we are sleepwalking through times that perhaps demand and need our alertness now more than ever. Because, weuh!