Gikonyo Gitau
6 November 2009
opinion
Kenyans are dreamers. Everyone knows what dreams are, but the thing with dreams is that sometimes they make you wake up smiling and feeling peaceful, like that of the famous Martin Luther King. Others make you wake up grumpy, and yet others screaming and sweating all over. Dreams combine verbal, visual and emotional stimuli into a sometimes broken, nonsensical but often entertaining storyline.
Dreams are interesting, yet indescribable things that are part of our everyday life. But their origin remains mysterious and unknown. In ancient times, the Babylonians and Egyptians believed that dreams were either messages from the gods or from the dead.
One of the most prominent dream theories today was postulated around 1973 by two American researchers -- Allan Hobson and Robert McCarley -- who thought that random bits and pieces of our memories and experiences were taken and thrown together to create each dream. I too have had big dreams and I wish I could share some with ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo and Kofi Annan.
But Kenyans dream more than expected. At any one time, we are doing either of two things or both -- proud of being Kenyan, or dreaming. Take the Obama presidential candidacy, for example. He was glorified as a Kenyan with very high expectations on his victory. Kenya was soon to be annexed by the US, and we would need no visa to travel to Obama land. Today the story is different, with our leaders being denied entry into America.
The other day we had nice dreams about Migingo island, but that is also gone now. Then there is the Mau Forest -- quite a dream. We have dreamt of people vacating the forest at once with no compensation. Then the dream changes to nobody is going to be evicted without being compensated. The other day, a 14-day ultimatum was issued, but before it expired, minister Wekesa, the issuer, was on record as saying that they are not in a hurry to kick people out of the Mau.
But the good thing is that dreams are not confined to the ordinary people. Even the powerful and mighty have their own dreams. One such happened almost two years ago when the man from the lake side saw a deer in the field and shot and killed it. Afraid that he would be arrested, he hid the deer and covered it with banana leaves.
He was pleased with himself. Immediately he forgot the hiding place, and thought that the whole episode was a dream. On his way home, he kept telling himself that it was only a dream. As he mumbled to himself about his dream, he was overheard by the man from the slopes.
The man from the slopes thought about what he had heard and figured out where the deer was hidden. He found the deer and took it home. He told his friend from Kambaland that the lakeside man dreamt he killed the deer and forgotten where he hid it.
He reasoned that since he had now found the deer, the dream must be true. The man from Kambaland wondered aloud: "Was there really a man from the lake side? Or did you dream him? Since you now have the deer, doesn't it mean that your dream is true?"
But the lakeside man had another dream that night about the man from the slopes who had heard him talk to himself and then found the hidden deer. Next morning, following his dream, he found him and the deer. So he took him to an arbitrator at a different village for the recovery of the deer.
The man from Kambaland said the deer belonged to the slopes man as the lakeside man thought it was a dream. However, the arbitrator held that the deer belonged to no-one and was to be divided equally between the two men. That is how we ended up where we are as the two dreamers have to share the deer.
Today, all this talk of The Hague, reforms, corruption, vision 2030 and so on will remain dreams that one day we will have a new constitution. When that day comes, we will start dreaming about why we really needed a new constitution. This is because instead of really getting to the bottom of things, we pick up songs from our political leaders.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2009 The Nation. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
