Pain and Pleasure Negotiations

I avoid politics and corona as much as possible because many people look at them only using their lenses and so will be outrightly biased toward their side. In short their minds stop thinking beyond what they want to believe or even consider anything the ‘enemy’ is saying.

But at times I am forced to give God’s message in this mad context and today is one of those days.

Two things.

A leader is qualified by having followers. It thus means that if a leader has nobody following him he has stopped being a leader.

Let me give my observation.

During the first lockdown, people followed rules. Only very few broke them, and even then for really pressing and genuine needs which were not considered essential by the law. Even the protocols were observed religiously in homes.

People believed what leaders were telling them.

But look at today.

It appears as if nobody cares. People are crossing those barricades and borders as if no laws exist. Even the police manning them do not seem to mind. They just need something small (sometimes very small) to allow you to break those rules.

I have been in matatus so packed with unmasked passengers and a policeman comes and greets them and waves the driver to drive on. In town you walk around an upcountry stage and you are bound to be approached by conductors asking you whether you are going to Kisumu or Mombasa or Narok or anywhere else the government has closed to vehicles and people. In short people are traversing the country as if no lockdown exists. Only the fares have been increased to make the policemen smile at the law breaking.

And of course the recent event when hordes of drivers were stopped for breaking the curfew that even emergency services couldn’t move because the ‘lawless’ were too many that they blocked major highways.

This is heightened by the fact that tourists are able to access any part of the country, parts that are locked to the citizens, as if the virus can differentiate the locals from outsiders. Yet it was the same outsiders that exported the virus to us.

What am I saying?

The government has completely lost its leadership. And I repeat completely.

You might cite me for sedition but I will still say that the president has lost his position as our leader. Because, who listens to him? In fact you will hear people on the street asking when next we will lose our temper to mean when the president addresses the nation.

And why?

Corona has demonstrated that our leaders are extremely greedy. We were introduced to Covid billionaires who were to be caught and punished in two weeks yet nothing has been done a year later. And of course the fact that the curve has always depended on the kind of money being looked for and coming to the point that the average Kenyan can tell you how the figures will come out depending on the funding on the way.

In short, the normal Kenyan knows that the government and her leaders care NOTHING for the person on the street and so run their lives with that understanding.

The leaders are therefore leading themselves and grabbing as much as they can in the process. And that is what defines and guides their leadership.

The second observation flows from the first.

They need to legitimize their greed and base it in the laws, especially because those positions will not last forever. They must therefore protect their loot against leaders who will replace them.

Two things have a capacity of making someone very unreasonable. In fact they make them to stop using reason altogether. They are pain and pleasure.

The desire for pleasure can make someone forget everything they know to achieve it. It is called throwing caution to the wind.

Or do you not wonder why all those dangers, from pregnancy, to STDs and HIV are unable to make people put a stop to sexual sin? That the consequences of adultery, from divorce to death when caught, are unable to make one faithful in marriage?

Those few moments of pleasure cloud and obliterate all the facts and evidence against sin. Of course sex is not the only pleasure that produces that though it ranks very high.

Pleasure is what many women use to bargain. Even corruption is fed by the pursuit of the same.

The other day we were on a matatu and my son asked me.

What was that girl doing in a matatu?

I wondered why.

Her phone, whose value is close to a hundred grand really does not fit in public transport, and the place she alighted.

Can someone buy a phone whose value is equivalent to a few year’s rent?

Of course that could be the price of pleasure to somebody else, just speculating.

Of course we know about torture.

Pain has a way of focusing all our effort, all our being to look for a way to alleviate it.

Its positive is discipline, especially to children. That cane (others use the belt or switch) literally chases away the devil.

In pain we are unable to see anything else apart from pain and think of nothing but a means of eradicating it. That is why it is used to get confessions (some fabricated) to close criminal cases.

Our leaders are using pain to blind us to their schemes to literally sell off or buy our country from us.

As we painfully fend for our families under the circumstances they have set, we will be unable to see them changing our laws to buy us off our heritage since there is pretty much little we can do as we have no time beyond time for looking for food.

And that is what corona has done for them. It has given them a blank cheque to do what they want by simply varying the narrative to give them time to do what they want with our country.

They have killed parastatals so that they can then buy them for a song among other evils. And parliament is busy changing the laws to facilitate those schemes, either because they are part of it or they have been bought like the MCAs with cars were to pass the BBI.

Waendelee tu.

But I will fail my duty if I do not introduce the God dynamic.

God hates oppression. God hates it when someone lords over somebody else for evil and selfish purposes. And God will fight for the weak and oppressed.

They will pay. And we will see it.

In a very short while God will reverse, underline reverse, all their schemes, to their pain.

Just look at their generations.