LAST WORD
On Open Gaols
A
s a young person Ochieng could
not understand the contradiction
of teachers exhortation that they
should read a lot and widely but were
at hand to confiscate comics which they
seemed to loath in direct contrast to how
much Ochieng loved them.
Come to think of it there were the
educational comics that taught how the
world works and the funny ones that made
one smile but the teachers would have none
of that and not only confiscated the few
copies that found their way into Ochieng’s
backyard but were immediately destroyed.
This of course had the expected effect
of making a comic a sought after item in
school and the student that could smuggle
this now precious and rare literary item
could even charge a small token to allow the
sharing of the forbidden treasure.
fictional heroes, could it have been that
they were admitting literally that there
was nothing heroic about exterminating a
local populace of indigenous people armed
with bows and arrows. one, to look up to and it helps to shape
their ambition and that is when Ochieng
wondered who qualifies as a Kenyan hero
that we could have emulated to create a
basis for a national ethos.
Or could it be there was also nothing
heroic either in lording it over slaves
who were treated worse than their horses
and perhaps to escape the guilt that
they communally felt they had to create
fictional heroes that would distract them
from the reality at hand. Of course Ochieng grew up with
the legendary stories of his ancestor
Lwanda Magere who was believed to
have had super powers and was a terror
to his neighbors the Kalenjins but
colonial schooling and Christianity had
conspired to discredit the character.
The one positive trait that the comics
inculcated in Americans was that anything
was possible and this was mirrored by
the super human abilities that the comic
characters had that were used to save the
world from a milliard evil forces bent on
destroying it. Judging by the emptiness of the heroes
corner on Uhuru Gardens it is perhaps
instructive that we seem to find it hard
as Kenyans to agree just who exactly is a
hero and the only people that seem to be
in consideration seem to be politicians.
But which politicians merited the hero
mantle?
Ochieng particularly liked the super hero
comics and he was enthralled by his drawn
heroes that included Captain America,
Wonder woman, the hulk, the fantastic four,
spider man of course the black panther to
name a few. In reality America evolved into a super
cop trying to save the world from the
evils of socialism and communism and the
intricacies and spy adventures of the cold
war era found their way into the comics
as the American way of life mimicked the
comics.
Ochieng was to later in life wonder why
Americans spent so much time creating Lately Ochieng has been thinking that
every child needs a hero, even a fictional
A new trend was being set where jail was
no longer the place for miscreants and
scoundrels but a place that those fight-
ing for justice and independence would
expect to find themselves. The stigma of
jail had been removed by the political in-
carcerations.
94 MAL32/19 ISSUE
The earliest group would have been
the Kapenguria six who were arrested
in 1952 and incarcerated in Northern
Kenya accused of agitating for
independence. They were Bildad Kaggia,
Kungu Karumba, Jomo Kenyatta, Fred
Kubai, Paul Ngei and Ochieng Oneko.
Unfortunately this first batch of would
be Kenyan heroes did not see eye to
eye and although they were in jail for
the same reason, Jomo Kenyatta was
not a bona fide independence agitator
according to the other five and they went
as far as attempting to try to kill him in
jail.
The Mau Mau who had forced the
declaration of emergency in Kenya
had nothing to do with the imposter
Kenyatta and did not recognize him but
as fate would have it, it was Kenyatta
who would ascend the political ladder at
independence.