Now that the very Rift Valley, home to mankind, has groaned and shuddered. For a while, it seemed about to faultline again for the first time in a few million years, and drown this nation in a red sea. Now that planting is paralysed; national schools are balkanised; a city burnt down, “foreign” wives evicted to home areas. Now that whole slums of Nairobi packed up their paper bags and corrugated iron to move elsewhere; now that landlords evicted Luo tenants before asking who would come and rent; now that rich St Mary’s yuppies who once played rugby with chemical perms – have met in a chi-chi Nairobi bar to raise millions of shillings for a panga wielding militia to defend the honour of their “elected” president…
After all that.
We find one thing has not yielded. Every single Kenyan has had to make room these past few months: to lose homes, incomes, supermarkets, shares, land, hope, faith, schoolfees, food, jobs, whole industries, your oldest friends, many in-laws. Rich, poor, middle-class, rural, urban – we carry heavy shitty costs.