We only have one skin that’s now badly bruised by poverty

Dear President Uhuru Kenyatta,

I come to you in good faith, knowing I have no other choice. No one can fight the Commander-In-Chief of the Defence Forces and still laugh all the way home, unless you’re the Deputy President and you own God and the people.

Mr President, you left Twitter years ago, complaining about the bullying, which was worse than what most of us faced in high school. We had hoped you’d return to collect your Twitter leaving certificate but it seems you’re still on psychosocial therapy over the bad things you saw.

Since you left us to talk to ourselves, Kenyans have been wondering whether you also stopped receiving direct feedback from other sources on the state of our wellbeing.

We might be blaming you for being happy with our suffering, only to discover the State House printer broke down and you haven’t been able to read our tweets.

Mr President, being cognisant of your busy schedule, and knowing the love you have for this country, today I volunteer to clear that backlog in your in-tray without asking for payment because my reward is in heaven.

Mr President, your people are suffering. Crops failed the harvest exams this year, hungry livestock are trespassing into farmlands with ruthless guns, the heat is killing seasonal rivers, as your government officers wait for the referee’s whistle to provide water to cool fiery tongues.

Pound of flesh

Everywhere you look, there’s apprehension. If we aren’t dying of Covid-19, it’s hunger, or taxes, or school fees – and just when we thought we had seen it all, fuel prices came round the corner this week asking for its pound of flesh.

Mr President, we have been twisted and turned and left for dead, but each time we pick ourselves up to go and pay taxes; because we fear the taxman more than your government officers fear resigning.

We might blame Covid-19 for the poverty in our pockets, but those who went to school to study economics say things were bad even before we let Covid-19 fly into the country without a Visa.

 Mr President, everywhere you look, there’s weeping and gnashing of teeth.  We’ve started wondering whether you’re the Prophet the Lord sent to test our faith in him.

We wouldn’t have complained about your silence on our suffering had your Cabinet been out on the road handing out handkerchiefs to prevent our children from seeing the brutality the government dispenses on us every day.

CBC monster

Mr President, we know we don’t have PhDs, and we might have seen the blackboard only on TV, but kindly tell your Education CS to speak to parents like that.

When parents ask questions on the competency-based curriculum (CBC), they don’t mean to step on the wires that connect the ego of Prof Magoha to the microphone. They’re genuinely concerned about the CBC monster threatening to eat their children alive, because they’ve been taking photos of the monster every day.

Kindly tell Prof Magoha parents aren’t his foes. We’re all going through a lot, but we’ve never loaded our personal issues onto other people, for fear of being arrested for operating loading machines without requisite licences.

Mr President, if humility tastes like bitter herbs to Prof Magoha, kindly free him and give us a CS who can interact with parents without reminding them why they couldn’t afford to go to school.

We need you to stand between us and that arrogance. It’s unhealthy for our children and its hurting cooperation between parents and teachers on the CBC rollout. Parents can’t be harassed by CBC homework and the Education CS at the same time.

The Education ministry should decide which one of the two to unleash on us, because we only have one skin and it’s already been bruised by the high cost of living.

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