Lucy Oriang'
9 July 2009
column
Nairobi — Michael Jackson's death and his immediate remaking as a saint will go down in history as one of the most momentous events of our times.
Some smart college will probably dedicate a course to his music and his life, and someone really intelligent will earn a doctorate for analysing this conflicted soul to the last glitter in his famous glove.
There is something truly fascinating about the relationship between these two sides of the same coin, life and death. It is as if you are remade and purified the moment you breathe your last. People who would not give you the time of day suddenly discover an all-consuming love for you.
It is not the done thing to speak frankly about the dead. Here was a gifted but deeply flawed man who lived out his last years in solitude and under a cloud of suspicion, seemingly out of touch with reality and heavily in debt, earning him the Wacko Jacko tag.
In death, he dominated the news for all of two weeks. His fans set up a rallying cry that translated into a spike in the sale of his music. The world worshipped at the altar of his genius and cries of "we love you, Michael" filled the air.
Had he been Kenyan, we would have paused for effect and added the rider, "...but God loved you more".
I used to think that this way of doing things is just another of our peculiarities. But here was evidence that shunning people in life and lionising them in death is a collective human failing. This is no consolation, though, when we have so shamelessly failed our heroes in life.
Take the case of Kisoi Munyao, the man who hoisted our new flag on top of Mt Kenya on the eve of independence. He fell off the radar until his death at Kenyatta National Hospital on March 22, 2007, upon which the Who's Who in Kenya, from President Kibaki and his Cabinet down to top-level civil servants, discovered a conscience and rallied around long enough to give him a decent burial at his Makueni home.
We could make a case for better late than never but for the fact that the man died destitute. Munyao had lived such a hard life that he had once been thrown out of his humble abode in Nairobi's Jericho estate for non-payment of rent. He was also reportedly held hostage at some point at Kenyatta National Hospital and was released only after a Good Samaritan cleared the bill.
We are selective about who becomes a hero and who gets shafted in the honours stakes. It is not so much what you do but who you are. We have placed shady characters on a pedestal and continue to do so despite evidence that they are murderous so-and-sos.
Hospitals, schools, roads and even innocent children have been landed with the names of political leaders who should never have been put anywhere near power.
What is it with us, for pity's sake? Women sing and dance themselves lame for people who make stupid and derogatory remarks about them, all because they have been given a few shillings that are not even enough to buy them a packet of unga.
Men take up arms and kill total strangers who have done them no harm in the name of politicians who have no reservations about stepping on their heads to get power or keep it.
They rape women old enough to be their grandmothers and infants in diapers in the pursuit of power for people who soon forget them.
We are not alone in the madness stakes. When President Omar Bongo of Gabon died recently, impoverished women in the oil-rich nation were reported to have collected money to buy flowers, even plastic ones where they could not afford the real thing, to be laid on his grave.
This was the same man whose daughter-in-law once appeared on a real estate television show shopping for a $25 million house in up-market Malibu in the US.
There is still time for us to show due respect for our living heroes and heroines. It took the world to honour Prof Wangari Maathai with the $1 million Nobel Peace Prize, and the Japanese to award Prof Miriam Were the $1 million Hideyo Noguchi Prize for her work in medicine.
We do not have to wait for the world to take the initiative, or for our superstars to die, to recognise the great and the good among us. And, no, those capital letters that come after the names of political appointees are not good enough.
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