Chapter 76

Mind Boggling
By Njeri Mucheru-Oyatta

Chapter 76

Election results were announced and a hurried swearing-in ceremony carried out under a dark cloud of vote rigging. All hell broke loose thereafter. Violent protests and riots and killings have been the order of the day all across the country as the supporters of the loser have taken to the streets on a rampage claiming their ‘right’. We have been under siege in our houses. There is no telling how long we will remain in this calamity. Going by the examples of our neighbouring countries, there is a real risk that our country could descend into tribal wars.

Who is responsible for what is happening to our country?

For those who support Kibaki’s presidency, it is time to accept the election result and get on with normal life. This is quite amazing. If in fact Kibaki is the winner, why is it so difficult for him and his supporters to agree to revisit the issue of irregularities in the vote tallying which have been confirmed by four Commissioners of the Electoral Commission as well as the European Community observers?

Is this too much a price to ask for the restoration of confidence in the democracy of our country? If presidents can be declared winners despite irregularities in the vote tallying, why vote? This is too big a loop hole in denying people the leader of their choice. If we accept the president’s victory based on a dubious vote tallying process, what can we expect for the future of our country? How many more dubious processes will we be subjected to in the next five years and beyond?

Have we been disenfranchised? Yes, because no-one in the world can say with any sense of confidence that the president of our country was democratically elected into office. Those who do not accept the election result have been asked to go to court. This is absolutely ridiculous when Kenya is known the world over for its extremely high levels of corruption to which the judiciary is not immune.

In response to the violence, riots and killings plaguing our country, the government and its supporters have stated that the losers are to blame because those perpetrating the violence, riots and killings are their supporters. The irony of this statement is that when our president was sworn in, he clearly stated that he would be a president of all Kenyans. If he is the president of all Kenyans shouldn’t he take responsibility for what is happening to our country? If the losers are to blame for the unrest, why have they not been arrested? Already, blame for the wrongs that are happening in our country has started being shifted away from the president, the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, just like it was in the last five years of his presidency. Every day in the last few months our president was out there among the people holding rallies to plead with Kenyans all over the country to vote for him. Now that he has been declared president, he sees no need to step out again and plead with Kenyans to stop killing each other. Somehow, that has become exclusively the job of the losers, religious leaders and peace-keepers. The president is a statesman and expecting him to step out into the same communities he was pleading with for votes and now plead with them to stop the bloodshed would reduce him to a village chieftain. He is now the president and he belongs in an ivory tower somewhere up in the sky away from the populace, busy formulating policy for the economic development of his country.

Am I missing something here? Yes, I am. I am missing a vital presumption on which electoral processes the world over are based. That vote rigging is inevitable and even the losers have done it. Rigging is stealing. Steal all you like as long as you don’t get caught. Rig all you can as long as you can get away with it. Don’t you see? The competition in elections is not who can garner the most votes. Nooooooooo. That’s not it. It is who possesses the best rigging skills to get himself the most votes. The best rigger wins. And by the way, the rigging is not limited to tampering with ballot boxes and documents. If bribing or arm twisting officers of the electoral commission becomes necessary and they are responsive to your advances, don’t let the guilt of your actions stop you. Get yourself into power by any means necessary. Those words were contained in a statement made by our Minister for Defence before the elections in which he was voted out of his constituency. At that time I did not understand what he actually meant. Now I can see clearly what he meant.

The president and his men are entitled to get away with the irregularities in the vote tallying process because it is not the president’s responsibility to tally the votes, it is the electoral commission’s responsibility. If the electoral commission has deemed it fit to declare a president despite the irregularities, so be it. The Electoral Commission has stated that although the irregularities do exist, the irregularities are not its responsibility. They are the responsibility of the courts. Most likely, at the courts, the judges in their judgment will dismiss the petition claiming that the responsibility lies elsewhere and it is too late to do anything because the president has already been sworn in. Brilliant buck-passing I must say.

What is the corner stone of democracy? Transparency and fairness. In the absence of transparency and fairness, only dictatorship exists. It is important to note that the president’s 20 cabinet ministers were voted out of their constituencies and the majority seats in parliament are held by members of the opposition party. It is obvious that the people of Kenya countrywide were using their votes to protest against the government. In the span of a few days, and by the refusal of our leaders to safeguard the integrity of the vote tallying process, a democracy is creeping towards a dictatorship.

Selfishness will not allow our president to take responsibility for what has happened. The truth has been hidden away. Freedom has been curtailed. Only one man can save the day. Only the president can save the day. He has two choices:-

1. He can choose to take time out and think deeply about what has occurred, let passion guide his actions so that he may take responsibility for the unrest and act in the best interests of others disregarding his own selfish interests. He can choose to love his neighbour as himself and do unto others as he would like done to him. He can let the truth be revealed so that it can set him free.

OR

2. He can choose to think shallow about what has occurred, refuse to follow his passion and refuse to take responsibility for the unrest thereby exposing himself to the consequences of breaking God’s commandments that Thou shalt not steal and Thou shalt not kill.

Can our president really choose the righteous way? If you ask me, I would say that is IMPOSSIBLE. The selfishness in his heart and the hearts of those around him has them all blinded to the grave injustice that has been meted out to their brethren and their responsibility for it. They are experiencing spiritual warfare and losing the battle by allowing selfishness to win over their passion.

The selfishness of our leaders is a Goliath of unimaginable proportions. Can this Goliath be slayed? Where is David and his catapult? Is anything really possible with God? I am praying that God will show me that even this is possible.

Chapter 75

Mind Boggling
By Njeri Mucheru-Oyatta

Chapter 75

The first unimaginable thing I decided to do was to vote for the Luo presidential candidate instead of the Kikuyu one in this year’s general elections. The reason such an action is unimaginable can only be understood by a Kikuyu. Among the Kikuyu there is a saying that ‘you stick with your own’. According to the Kikuyu, your own means a Kikuyu. Other tribes are not your own unless you are fighting against another country. Even then, I think that if the Kikuyus were not under any threat, they would easily join the enemy in the hope that the other tribes would be obliterated and they could be left as the only tribe in Kenya.

Throughout Kenya, all Kikuyus were determined to vote and prevent the tragic occurrence of an uncircumcised jaluo, otherwise referred to by the derogatory term ‘kihee’ becoming their president. If as a Kikuyu you dared to support the Luo candidate, you were regarded a traitor. Through my interaction with my fellow Kikuyus, I came to realize that the Kikuyus believe themselves to be a superior tribe to other tribes in Kenya. They believe that they are an intelligent, enterprising, peace loving and civilized people while the other tribes, especially the Luos are a bunch of empty headed trouble makers who just happen to excel in academics on account of consuming too much fish.

The tribal slurs and superior talk when discussing politics in a gathering of Kikuyus left me in dismay. I am married to a Luo but as I understand it, my husband is an exception to the rule. Generally speaking, Luos cannot compare to Kikuyus in quality . Kikuyus are the majority tribe in Kenya and that in itself places them a notch above the rest. If you visit Kenya, you will realize that Central Province, a predominantly Kikuyu area, is a far much more developed area than the rest of Kenya. The reason for this was told to us on a television interview when a Luhya man representing the Kikuyu president’s interest in Western Province stated that while the Kikuyus were busy working hard, the rest of the tribes were busy idling around and making trouble. I could not believe that the person from whose mouth those words came was actually referring to himself as a busybody. The unequal development of parts of the country apparently has nothing to do with unequal distribution of government resources. It is the ability of the Kikuyus that has put them ahead of the rest.

Surprisingly, Kikuyus do not agree with the theory that white people are superior to black people and anyone advocating such a theory is a racist whose ideas are completely unacceptable in this day and age. The reason why countries ruled by white people are exceedingly more developed than those ruled by black people is definitely not that the white people are a more intelligent, enterprising, peace loving and civilized people than the blacks.

What do racists, tribalists and chauvinists have in common? It is a fear of becoming irrelevant. When a person decides to attack another based on his/her race, tribe or sex, it must be presumed that the attacker is superior to the attacked therefore the attacker has a God given right to dominate the attacked. The Kikuyu are superior to all other tribes in Kenya and therefore they have a God given right to dominate the other tribes and retain leadership exclusively within their community. Never again will power be allowed to leave the hands of the Kikuyu.

Kenya has no policy of segregation. Kikuyus live in close proximity with all other tribes. They share the same roads, the same supermarkets, the same fuel stations, the same restaurants, the same schools; there are no special privileges derived from the fact that our president is a Kikuyu. However, only a Kikuyu can associate himself or herself with the president. The fact that our president is a Kikuyu is an achievement for any Kikuyu comparing himself/herself with someone from a different tribe. For instance, if a Kikuyu meets a person from another tribe who has done reasonably well, bought a house, drives a nice car, is happily married with beautiful children and the Kikuyu feels envious of that person, the fact that the president is a Kikuyu will serve to diminish all the personal achievements of that person and relegate him to an inferior position to the Kikuyu. The reason for this is that the ability to lead a country is not something anyone from any other tribe can claim to possess. As it is, the Kalenjin president proved this point without a shadow of a doubt. If there have been any failures by the Kikuyu presidents, those failures are inevitable as can be seen all over the world and it is not the president who should be blamed for them. It is the people around him and those who he has employed in his cabinet.

The fear of becoming irrelevant feeds on an inability to deal with personal insecurities. If the personal insecurities were themselves addressed, the need to dominate and thus gain relevance would not arise. The inability to deal with personal insecurities does not allow a reasoned assessment of the respective positions of individuals. A male chauvinist believes that he is superior to a woman regardless of the woman’s achievements. A racist believes that s/he is superior to a person of another race regardless of that person’s achievements. A tribalist believes that s/he is superior to a person of another tribe regardless of that person’s achievements.

The inability to respond sensibly to a leadership challenge by a person from another tribe is plaguing the leadership of our country. From the campaign strategy adopted to the exposure to allegations of vote rigging, it is clear that no reasoned assessment of the challenge made against our leadership has ever been made. The assessment has been driven by and based solely on the belief that the Kikuyu are superior to the Luo and a Luo cannot be possessed of the ability to unseat a Kikuyu president. The irony of all this is that going back 5 years ago to the time the Kikuyu president came to power, it is clear that were it not for the Luo challenger, the Kikuyu president would never have been able to defeat the incumbent’s choice.

Today is the third day since we voted. Results of the elections have been trickling in through official channels but have been unofficially released by the press and media. As far as civic and parliamentary elections are concerned, the two sources of information are at par. However, the presidential votes are differing seriously and civil unrest is beginning to show its ugly head in many parts of the country. Resentment against the Kikuyu has been aroused among other tribes and there is no telling what will happen once the Kikuyu president is declared winner of the elections.

If you ask me, I would say that it is IMPOSSIBLE to convince the Kikuyu that a Luo can rule Kenya and bring desirable change which will benefit even the Kikuyu. The tribalism of the Kikuyu is a Goliath of unimaginable proportions.

I voted in Kiambu. A Kikuyu area. While standing in line to vote, I experienced a feeling of deep sadness as I listened to the tribal remarks being made against my candidate. Daring to say anything in his defence would have been a fatal action. I associated the feeling I got to what my dad must have felt when he got onto a golf course to play at a time when golf was exclusively a white man’s game during colonial times. The effect of racism and tribalism on an individual is the same.

Can the Goliath be slayed? Is anything really possible with God? I am praying that God will show me that even this is possible.

Chapter 74

Mind Boggling
By Njeri Mucheru-Oyatta

Chapter 74

My relationship with the Christian God was faltering. I asked myself why it is that no-one I know thinks like me and I thought that perhaps I am in the wrong religion. Perhaps I belong in scientology where life is analyzed scientifically. Scientologists would probably be more willing to understand my theory of spiritual identities than Christians.

If God is Love, why can’t the devil be selfishness? If God is Love and I am created in His image, why can’t I be Hope? Only a Christian can explain the difference in these concepts, if there is any.

I have been examining my relationship with God and wondering whether it is a good relationship or a bad one. How do you tell if you are in a good or bad relationship?

I was fearing that I was about to break up with God for the second time. My fear was derived from the fact that a relationship which results in people breaking up and getting back together again repeatedly cannot be a good one. Before deciding whether or not to break up with the Christian God, I had to find out whether my relationship with Him was good or bad because I knew that whatever I decided would affect my life in a serious way.

I decided to examine the relationships I have with people in my life which I consider to be good relationships. Of course my relationship with my husband was one of them but the fact of chemistry and attraction made that relationship unsuitable for a proper comparison with the one I have with God. After racking my brain for a while, I found just the right relationship to examine.

I have a partner in my law firm. He is a Kenyan of Indian origin and runs his own law firm in a different city. I hooked up with my partner about the same time as I hooked up with my husband. We started our partnership in July and I got married in August of the same year. I am not a racist or a tribalist. I love a variety of people in my life. I am a Kikuyu married to a Luo and partnering with an Indian-Kenyan. I believe that variety is the spice of life.

The relationship I have had with my partner has undoubtedly been a good one but I have never stopped to wonder why it has been good. I looked at the good things about our relationship and realized that distance helps us give each other space so that our levels of responsibility in the firm vary significantly. Just like my relationship with God. I am the one here in this life doing all the living while God is at a distance allowing me the freedom to think but giving me the assurance that I can call on Him. My partner is there when I need him otherwise he is busy doing his own things. The fact that we were not intending to work in the same office was a big plus towards us deciding to become partners. It was a partnership of convenience. Coincidentally, he was looking to open an office in Nairobi at about the same time I had had enough of employment. Our needs converged and we seemed to agree on what it was that we wanted. Another coincidence in our lives is that my partner and my daughter were both born on a Monday 30th October in the morning albeit several decades apart in years.

I can confidently say that my relationship with my partner has improved both our lives immensely. Everything has just seemed to fall into place with us both accepting our roles as if we were born to play them and our expectations have been greatly exceeded.
Am quite certain that any astrologer would confirm that the year 2003 when I got married and partnered up was a lucky relationship year for me.

My relationship with my partner has confirmed to me that the essence of a good relationship is maturity. A relationship in which you are able to deal with conflicts and disagreements in a mature manner and which leaves you feeling more grown up than before you entered into it is undoubtedly a good relationship. A bad relationship is one in which you are unable to resolve a conflict or disagreement in a mature manner and which leaves you feeling vengeful and bitter.

Is my relationship with God a good one or a bad one? Do I feel more mature now than I did when I entered into my relationship with God? Unfortunately for me, the answer is an obvious yes. I definitely feel more mature in a spiritual sense and I would not want to let go of that maturity. Starting afresh is not an attractive option but running away from the relationship in order to satisfy my doubts and seemingly free myself from the burden of trying to understand who I am and where my life is headed is an appealing option.

I am tired of thinking about my life. I wish I could just go back to being a floater. I now know the true meaning of the saying that ‘ignorance is bliss’. Knowing God is absolutely not the work of an ignorant person as philosophy would have us believe. Unlike any other type of knowledge, the knowledge of God tests the human mind to its limits and beyond.

I have now reached a stage on my journey where I have realized that I must let go of conventional thinking and let my imagination take me as far into the spiritual world of imagination as I dare to go. With my Bible in my hand and God leading the way, I guess I will succeed.

Conquering your doubts at this level of enlightenment is no easy task. I must keep reminding myself that death is inevitable and my final goal is to get to Heaven. A goal that I have set my mind clearly on.

Christians are always saying that with God ANYTHING is possible. So I have decided to let myself go for the unimaginable and let God show me how possible anything really is with Him.

Chapter 73

Mind Boggling
By Njeri Mucheru-Oyatta

Chapter 73

I am amazed by Christians. Christians are people who will tell you, without batting an eyelid that:-

1. There is a Being called God who created us all.

2. There is only one God, the Christian God.

3. There is a devil called Satan. Satan was an angel of God who rebelled.

4. Of the things you can see, they claim that all those things were created before man and man was given power over those things.

5. Of women, they claim that woman was created after man, from a man’s rib but man is superior to woman. You would have thought that woman having been created after man, would be superior to man just like man is superior to all that was created before him!

6. A man called Moses who lived a long time ago split the red sea into two by touching it with his shepherd’s staff.

7. A man called Daniel was thrown into a lions den and into burning fire and came out unscathed because God sent an angel to guard over him.

8. A virgin got pregnant.

9. The virgin gave birth to a boy who is the Son of God.

10. The Son of God rose from the dead.

11. The Son of God saved us from sin.

12. Even though the Son of God was a Jew, he came to save all people of the world and not just the Jews alone. I am a Kenyan woman and yet I am supposed to believe that the Son of my God came to earth as a Jewish man.

These are just some of the unbelievable stuff you get from Christians and they expect you to believe it without proof. They also tell you that if you ask Jesus into your heart, you will be saved from sin. Asking Jesus into your heart entails saying a prayer to that effect and meaning those words when you say them and believing that what you are saying is possible. If you do that, your life will change wonderfully, your sins will be washed away by the blood of the lamb and you will be white as snow!

Obviously Christianity is all about the supernatural. It deals with matters that are completely outside the realm of the world we live in.

The question is: how do Christians determine what is true and what is not since everything they believe in is truly all in their imaginations?

If you tell them that there is such a thing as reincarnation, they say no way, yet they believe in rising from the dead when Jesus comes again.

I think that Christians interpret the Bible too literally. The words of the Bible are not meant to be taken and made to fit into our lives. Our lives are meant to be changed by the words of the Bible. We Christians take the Bible and literally apply it to our lives as if what it talks about is real life yet the Bible talks about spiritual concepts.

There is a limit to how far our imaginations can take us and the limit is the Bible. The Bible is the reference book when it comes to understanding God and the supernatural.

I have written about spiritual identities and been criticized for it as not being in conformity with what Christians believe. I wrote that the spiritual identity of Jesus is passion. Does the Bible talk about spiritual identities AT ALL?

Of course it does! Does the Bible say that GOD IS LOVE? What is love? Is it not a spiritual identity? If God is love, and Jesus is passion, and the Bible tells us that Jesus is the way the truth and the life and no-one goes to the Father except through him, doesn’t that mean that without passion, you cannot find love? And is that not a fact of life?

Is it easier to believe that Jesus is the Son of God than it is to believe that Jesus is passion?

I think that a passion filled life is a life with Jesus. And spiritual identities are essential to a greater understanding of God.

Jesus said that if you have faith the size of a miniscule mustard seed, you can move a mountain. I am yet to hear of someone who has moved a mountain by faith alone. Does that not tell us Christians that we might be going wrong in our understanding of Jesus and who He really is?

If I will ever find my missing ‘something’, I must be willing to see things differently and to find logic in Christianity so that I can find a means to apply Christianity into my life as the spiritual being that I am, created in the image of a spiritual being identified as Love.

Chapter 72

Mind Boggling
By Njeri Mucheru-Oyatta

Chapter 72

Today I discovered something very interesting that left me more enlightened than anything else I had thought of previously.

I came to a realization that whereas intellectual growth teaches us new things about ourselves and our world, there is nothing new in spiritual growth. Spiritual growth is about learning the obvious about your life. It is about learning simple truths which surprise you by how obvious they are and make you wonder why you could not have seen them before you took the time to think about them.

I had been asking myself for a few days why it is that we break God’s commandments with such impunity that they have become almost meaningless. The answer I got to this seemingly complicated question was a very simple one. We break God’s commandments with impunity because we do not think about the devil. In all honesty, I do not remember a time when a thought of the devil has actually registered in my mind and been assessed for longer than a few seconds. I realized that I think about God several million more times than I think about the devil. In fact, it seems that I am afraid to take time to think about the devil. Almost as if I think that thinking about the devil will cause something evil to happen to me.

Does the devil deserve serious consideration in our lives? Could not thinking about the devil prevent me from finding my missing ‘something’? The answer to these questions is a big YES!

Why is it important to think about the devil? About Satan? Because he is the reason why you break God’s commandments and he plays a vital role in preventing you from following Jesus.

But how can one take time out to think about the devil? It does not seem to matter whether or not you believe in the devil. It is the belief in God that matters. The devil is such a despicable character, thinking about him makes me feel like I am polluting my mind. It took me a long time to find a way of convincing my mind to accommodate any thought of the devil for longer than a few seconds.

Questions were many in my mind. What do you call a person who believes in the devil or one who doesn’t? Is a person who believes in the devil called a Christian? Is one who does not believe in the devil called an atheist?

I could not run away from the fact that as a Christian, I have to accept the role of the devil in my life. Accepting the devil as part of my life was like accepting that I was infected by a life threatening illness like HIV and I did not want to think of telling anyone about the devil’s role in my life. People are always testifying about what Jesus has done in their lives and declaring how great and wonderful Jesus is. I have never some across a person who has testified about what the devil has done in their lives. We all assume that when we are breaking God’s commandments, we are acting on our own volition in the absence of God. We think that it is our choice to sin. Is it really our choice? Are we not inherently sinful? Is it not true that when we sin, we are choosing to follow the devil? I think so.

I think that in this life, we do not truly have free choice. We are not free to choose for ourselves. Our choices are influenced either by the devil or by God. Never by ourselves.

To enable me to think about the devil and ensure that I recognize his presence in my life at all times in an effort to avoid his influences and act in accordance with God’s commandments, I went back to the concept of spiritual identities. In considering the question of the devil, I came to a fuller understanding of the importance of spiritual identities. If Jesus is passion, what is the devil’s spiritual identity? It’s a simple truth, an obvious one that surprised me and made me wonder why I did not recognize the devil before in my life. The devil is SELFISHNESS.

Money is definitely not the root to all evil. Whoever said that was thinking shallow. Money is a thing, it cannot cause us to do anything. It goes without saying that indeed, the devil is the root to all evil. Selfishness is the root to all evil. What was making me refuse to give way in traffic or in the lifts? What makes me refuse to give when an opportunity presents itself? What was making me refuse to forgive or to believe in God? It was selfishness. How? Selfishness was making me love myself more than others.

Passion makes you act in the best interests of others while Selfishness makes you act only in your own best interests.

The source of jealousy, envy, hate, hardheartedness, pride, fear, all the demons that prevent us from finding our trees of life and pursuing our passions is selfishness. I have decided to turn away from selfishness as much as I possibly can. I have come to a realization of how powerful the devil really is. Selfishness is a formidable force to reckon with. If you take the time to think deeply about the devil, you will realize (like I have) that everything unpleasant in your life has been brought about by selfishness i.e. acting only in your own best interests.

You will also realize that resisting selfishness and choosing to follow your passion is what spiritual warfare is all about.

A simple obvious truth.