Some people read stories the way I imagine history should be read. They read the final pages, just to know how the story ends. They read to eliminate the suspense that is an essential part of the story. That way, in spite of the plot twist, they still manage to read the story in a straight-line. They read the story of Maribeth’s journey with pregnancy, well aware that she did not abort her child but instead went to the delivery room ready to donate the child to the donors waiting outside. They then read the story from the begining, to understand who Maribeth really is. Then jump to the middle to know how she got pregnant in the first place.
History, I assume, should be read that way. We read history in bits starting from the present. We understand that Raila is the father of the second liberation so we want to know who fathered the first liberation. Then we read about the assassination of Tom Mboya and that takes us back in the search of historical injustices metted upon Dedan Kimathi, then Tom Sankara. Before we know it, Bob Marley is raising our curiosity with chants about soldiers likened to buffaloes, African strong men that sailed across the Atlantic Ocean in boats to pick cotton in a land that has come to be dubbed as the land of opportunities.
The Atlantic Ocean that swallowed the Titanic with all its massiveness, these Africans crossed in boats. Yet, history has more records of the white history in the Titanic, a drawing of a naked woman with an expensive necklace, than that of the African slaves. Then you read of the richest man that ever lived. A man with so much wealth that the gifts he gave to Egyptians on his way to Mecca caused an severe inflation in the land that is home to the pyramid of Giza.
You wonder how a kingdom with such wealth could also have men desperate enough to jump into an ocean on pieces of assembled wood dubbed boat. Forced? Maybe, but how in such a strong kingdom? Or is it a case study of JM Kariuki’s ‘forty millionaires and forty million in the category of others’? Maybe, maybe not.
Recently, I saw a picture of showing the path followed by an eagle for over twenty years. For twenty years, the eagle crossed from South Africa to Russia over the African and Asian continents. For twenty years, the eagle seemed oblivious, or cared less, of country borders, crossing without passports and visas. Perching and eating and mating with other eagles and bringing forth eaglets and making a home wherever it pleased. That is an eagle whose strong feature is eyesight. Then there is us, human beings, whose strong feature is brains, creating boundaries to limit our interactions. Requiring passports and visas to travel the world. Maybe the division we have faced throughout history was merely as a result of barriers that we, in our wisdom, create.
Maybe we need to learn a thing or two from the animals or from our history.
Also, remember to plant trees, indigenous ones to carry our history and to be tall enough for eagles to perch on their way to the places we’ve restricted ourselves. I recommend mangroves to increase even the ocean population.
Wanyiri 