By M. Sabastian
I keep looking for comfort from you my land of Tharaka, sitting pretty in the palms of Tharaka land but with heavy unsettled heart because of pervasive abandonment.
You see me crying on the behalf of the voiceless majority , Inside you our clueless leader know that I’m dying economically and socially and my identity and actual location at stake.
Don’t you see these tears flooding the border points ?. Tears that had continuously trickled out for 24 years since 1996 to date.
Don’t you feel the hurt from so many years, you unconcerned Member of parliament bestowed mantle of leading the community ?
Are you seeing the little girl /boy that is being hurt so badly by academic confusion by attending a school deep in the interior of Tharaka community but forced by quagmires of social injustice to be reporting to far away County.
My leader requires rocket science to sort this out and in a country with well organized education hierarchy all the way to CS Magoha he can’t find an amicable solution.
Assistant Chief needs office deep interior of Tharaka community to serve no defined population and comfortably a government employs two administrators one with defined population and another with a population that exist in a fullscap composition explanation.
My leader needs a prophecy in demanding real answers from the regional county commissioner and the Minister in charge of coordination of Government.
Is now 24 years old and utterly sad, when we were chased away like desert locust, I remember I was a student at Mpunguru Pry school in Machabini we were invaded chased away by armed GSU Officers, school torched into ashes I ran away never to return to date.
Take note the land Adjudication being talked about isn’t covering areas we were forcibly evicted Machabini, Kioru, Kianyungu, Kindani and Rakathi. No mention of those areas whether Tharaka will be the beneficiary as original and the true owners.
My heart can’t heal it’s bleeding with pain. Feeling abandoned for 24 years in the middle of the forest and am now a grown up squatter in my motherland living in lowland plains of Kathangachini.
To-date it’s being argued it’s the same Government officers Guarding controversial construction of Kiembeni Chiefs Camp at the heart of Tharaka Land. Again feeling abandoned in a weary land by my own Government.
My leader’s are unable to ask Government why is Government using Tharaka population corrected taxes to pay officials who are being deployed to punish them?. Why use state resources to molest one community ?. There is a feeling on ground of abandonment by Government that should be a neutral arbiter.
The typical Tharaka man laments ” am feeling hurt, the pain and anger won’t go away
I wonder who “loves me” and will turn their back today, I can’t explain how I feel inside me because feelings of abandonment rush in me like the sea tides”.
Another lady from border points of Gatithini cries, “Ghosts haunt me no matter where I go, am feeling abandoned by leaders and government I trust who will take away my pains, so that I can have life to gain again”.
A Tharaka internally displaced person who relocated to Gaciongo “Until that day I shall get a leader not public relations Gymnasticians for now all I feel punishment of abandonment and utter neglect with Zero representation on things that matter”. Our leaders only pays PR visits to hoodwink us.
Along with those never-ending feelings of abandonment I trust only in the lord as our misleaders keep enjoying a seriously suffering and a vulnerable population . Curtain fades !
(Mwangangi Njagi Sabastian is a Social Scientist scholar who comments on emerging issues in spheres of social-political life)
