AUGUST, THE KENYAN CURSE

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assacre at dawn’, screamed the headline in Thursday’s Daily Nation. Such was the gravity of the Tana Delta bloodbath that it overshadowed the passing on of multi-party crusader, Martin Shikuku.

We are still reeling from a week that turned out to be agonizing to the entire country. Three major events had spoiled the tranquility and calmness of an otherwise terror-free week! Terror because it has turned out to wreck havoc in the country’s capital or somewhere else in the country, often with devastating and chilling repercussions.

 A single day robbed us of renowned multi-party democracy champion and the self-proclaimed ‘People’s Watchman’ of Kenyan politics had passed on at Texas Cancer Centre in Nairobi. Sad indeed that a man who weathered fierce storms against the Moi regime, had succumbed to the cruelty of death. Prominent and tens of other Kenyans were dead in a day. One of the darkest days in our county!

Josephine Michuki, the public shy widow to the late Environment minister and Kangema legislator, John Michuki had died earlier on the same day that Shikuku passed on.  It is a day that the entire nation bore the brunt of a gory bloodbath in Tana River County, in which scores of civilians were massacred. Disputes pastoralists and farmers had degenerated into deadly clashes. Less than 72 hours later, about eight angels were burned to death in a dormitory fire in Asumbi Girls Boarding Primary school. This incident rekindles memories of the 2002 gruesome Kyanguli inferno where about 60 students were burned to death.

The death of the country’s founding father, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta on August 22 1978 in Mombasa, apparently marked the beginning of this black month in the country’s history. Barely four years after his predecessor, former president Moi took over, a botched attempt to overthrow his government left in its wake, deaths of hundreds of soldiers and innocent civilians. Hezekiah Ochuka, a Senior Private in the air force wing of the Kenyan Defense forces and leader of the botched attempt, had rule for six hours before fleeing to Tanzania. He was later extradited back to the country, tried and found guilty and consequently hanged in 1987.

Terror reared its ugly face in the country on August 7, 1998, when hundreds were killed in bombings in the American Embassies in Nairobi. A calm Friday mid-morning was suddenly interrupted by the explosions that shook the entire city, resulting in pandemonium never again witnessed in the country. Five years later, the country was robbed of her Vice- president, the late Michael Kijana Wamalwa who died on the 23^rd day in the month of August, at the Royal Free Hospital. He had lost a battle with kidney complications. The Vice- president in the post Moi era had sadly not lived to enjoy  the wave of optimism and renewed energy that the newly elected NARC government, under President Mwai kibaki had brought to the country.

Four aircrafts crashed on Kenyan soil this month. Three Russian-made Ugandan military helicopters came tumbling down in the dense Mount Kenya forest. At least eight soldiers were killed. Agonizingly, two weeks later, a commercial aircraft crashed in Mara with tourists aboard. The road carnage is on the upswing. The list of tragedies is just too much and unbearable. We must do something.

These ugly incidents best describe what the month of August has been heel-bent on causing tears and agony to our country. Disasters have plagued us since the death of the country’s founding father. 34 years down the line, the August curse is still ailing us, leaving anguish, agony and distaste in its wake.

But do we blame the gods for such tragedies in this month or is it that Kenyans are architects of their own misery? Nature and the fallible hand of the human race share this blame. We can work on the latter genesis and make sure that it does not forever return to haunt us. However, ‘natural deaths’ that have robbed us of nationalists like the August 14 deaths of Masinde Muliro and Bishop Alexander Muge, in 90 and 92 respectively, call for divine intervention! Let us appease the gods and let them spare us their wrath! At this rate and sad trend, this month will one day wipe out the Kenyan population!

Thankfully, we are only days from saying Au Revoir to the Kenyan August curse!