REPORTAGE
03-02-2014 by Freddie del Curatolo
It 's rare to see so many sad stares all together, if they are those of a people who are used to waiting the fatal destiny of the signs as natural events that regulate always the life of human beings, like plants and animals.
Uncommon to see older women, usually mute and granite as baobab, crying and screaming with acute and subtle voice that seems to pierce the bright sky of a hot day in the hinterland of Watamu.
Rare but not amazing, if we see the funeral of the eldest, authoritative and beloved among the "gohu", the priests ethnicity Mijikenda.
Mzee Katana Kalulu, murdered at age 93 by hired assassins paid by one of his sons, was a leader without ever wanting to be, an icon fouled by modern times, by this time when Kenya is looking ahead and want to forget the good that it is hidden in its ancient traditions.
Even so his killing becomes a metaphor, a terrible litmus test of fast and relentless disappearance of an entire people, comprises nine tribes stationed on the coast of Kenya for more than thirteen centuries.
The new generations are appropriating their supposed heritage, vehemently and without any respect for their fathers. The land, especially the land is what matters. The greatest treasure that the elderly have been able and willing to keep, yielding only if forced to flattery translated into hard cash by western or emerging rich compatriots. The new religion which we have already revealed its flaws colossal, is making proselytes among young people who do not know even more about being Mijikenda. Money, cursed and immediately what they ask. With hunger, with arrogance. Come to accuse of witchcraft the grandparents who took care of them by small with wild herbs, which soothed their stomach pains with decoctions and were saving their life with natural medicines when they were bitten by the black mamba. They are after him as if they were demons, and slay them as pigs to seize their assets. They engage killer, paying them less than one thousand euro. This is true of a man ninety life.
Some of them are here, at his funeral. Drink beer at 10 am, come and go on noisy motorcycles, raise their eyes in front of anyone. On the other hand, today, we are all there. James Karisa Mwarandu, the Giriama lawyer who founded the Malindi District Cultural Association, of which Mzee Katana Kalulu was a fervent supporter, Peter Shee, elected Member in Ganze constituency, Kilifi hinterland, and appointed community leaders. White dresses khanga ancestors and head wearing a headdress of bird feathers and skin warthog. From Kaloleni arrived Wanje, the son of Simba, the last King of the Mijikenda. There are twelve or thirteen other "gohu" arrived from every corner of the coast. Together they make over a thousand years. There is the whole history of an ethnic group, blood books that tell themselves in their language of legends, struggles and extraordinary survival stories. File past the coffin of their brother, while the women dance and sing folk dirges he sang himself. The least among the elders of Madca followers raise the cash and carry in a clearing in the bushes of the land where Mzee Katana used to wander in that area of ​​the house he had built at the dawn of independence of Kenya. He had fought for his country and denied that the British had to take the driver's license and used it as a driver. He had formed an alliance and friendship with the Mau Mau movement. Today is the President of the Association of Veterans of the Mau Mau, Kahengeri. And 'her the most touching speech.
Beside him the Governor of the County of Kilifi, the former minister Amason Kingi, with other local politicians. Now they count less than others. The ceremony is all for those who have decided to dress like he used to Mzee Katana. But it is a de Profundis, the painful farewell to what was one of the last tiny handful of the earth, who lived, prayed and did force each other in a way that someone decided was retrograde, indecent, inhumane. Just as in the early years of the last century they had established that a matriarchal society of the mold was not serious.
We, complicit in this and many other happy exports for the benefit of aficani, we can only assist inert to one of the most inhumane relieving watches.
Kiuye Uye.
MOURNING
by Freddie del Curatolo
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