It's 5a.m. again and dead silent as is wont to be at this hour. Were this four years ago, the dawn silence would have by now been shattered by squealing children awoken from death-like slumber to go forth and pursue some semblance of schooling. The soft semi-rhythmic lowing of the cows as they were milked wafted slowly across the plains; now all but a distant painful memory.
The rain is at it again as it has been for the past few weeks. It's that time of the year again so we brave it out. In my day as a farmer, that sweet rain would have been music to my ears; the maize and beans would be gratefully chugging down the water from the heavens as the new set of seed in the barn would be eagerly awaiting its turn to be sowed in anticipation of a bumper harvest. Walking down memory lane can easily make the problems of the here and now disappear but for a while. Living in a reverie has its benefits but the doctor says it might on some level be clinical depression. The term doctor of course we use rather loosely; he's the only one with any sort of medical experience on the camp; he was a pharmacist before he found himself here so by default we called him 'daktari'.
The 'drip drip drip' of the puddle forming at the entrance complementing the 'pitter patter' of the rain on the tent shakes me back to bitter reality. I really need to patch that tent up before we swim off in our sleep. I'm not sure it can take too many more repairs before it falls apart but seeing as the Good lord has taken care of us thus far, he must have a bigger plan for us.
The children will up and about soon enough and their mother before them; she will probably be off to cook some porridge off the last of our rations from the government; their generosity has truly been astounding. This afternoon another batch of rations will arrive at the camp accompanied by an update on the efforts of the government to resettle us 'as soon as possible'. How often that tune has been played and how brilliantly it is wasted upon us, but I digress.
Joseph, from three tents down, has a transistor radio which we tend to sit around every morning listening to the news. As soon as breakfast is done and the children are off playing football or some other game, we gather around the radio to listen to the news. The main article was that of a bunch of 'waheshimiwas' had just returned from some court date in Europe.
Heralded as heroes, thousands had turned up to witness their triumphant return to the country.A massive power struggle ensued along the highway as gas guzzler clashed with the next one for road dominance. A 'mammoth prayer meeting' was the buzz word afoot. Apparently, after such a triumphant entry, prayers were a necessity to rejoice for not being locked up in the European jail and to pray for those in displaced camps all over the state. We all wondered why we had not got the memo to attend seeing as we were being prayed for; but of course we would not complain - prayers were the only thing keeping us going in these squalid conditions.
So we listened as the 'prayer meeting' wore on. The 'heroes' were called champions of justice and democracy; speaker after speaker extolled their virtues lambasting all that dared to accuse 'their son' of such heinous crimes - quite interesting how this 'prayer meeting' had panned out. As we sat there, some of us decided to do the maths on how much those trips to court had cost, considering approximately forty 'waheshimiwas' had tagged along to offer moral support to their angelic brothers-in-arms. I figure the airfare of each of these 'mheshimiwas' could buy a small plot of land somewhere to relocate a family from this tented hell-hole we called home; but such calculations only make one sink deeper into despair.
It being 'our prayer meeting' we held onto hope that at some point our plight would be addressed and more empty promises about how our welfare was been looked into would be made and for a second we could pretend to be happy. How wrong we were. The meeting came to a close and we were prayed for in earnest by all the religious leaders present and all dispersed. We did likewise, going to join the queue for the weekly rations. It's maize and beans again - the diet of the abandoned of the land.
It's night again. Once the sun sets, falling off to sleep is what keeps one in some semblance of sanity. As I lay my head to sleep, I wonder what the 'mheshimiwas' who just jetted back in would be doing (save for recovering from jet lag). Would they be wondering what I had to eat today? Would they wonder how we are sleeping in this torrential rain? Would they be thinking about me and mine?
All I can do is hope that they do.
Aluta continua.
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