Devil on the Cross

Our people think: I , Wangari, a Kenyan by birth - how can I be a vagrant in my own country as if I were a foreigner.

What Waringa tried hard to avoid was looking at the pictures of the walls and windows of the church. Many of the pictures showed Jesus in the arms of the virgin Mary or on the cross. But others depicted the devil, with two cow-like horns and a tail like a monkey's, raising one leg in a dance of evil, while his angels, armed with burning pitchforks, turned over human beings on a bonfire. The Virgin Mary, Jesus and God's angels were white, like European, but the devil and his angels were black.

As she stared at them, Waringa noted that their skins were indeed red, like that of pigs or like the skin of a black person who has been scalded with boiling water or who has burned himself with acid creams. Even the hair in their arms and necks stood out stiff and straight like the bristle of an aging hog.

This country, our country, is pregnant. What it will give birth to, only God knows... Imagine! the children of us workers are fated to stay out in the sun, thirsty, hungry, naked, gazing at fruit ripening on trees which they can' t pick even to quieten a demanding belly! Fated to see food steaming in the pantry, but unable to dip a calabash into the pot to scoop out even a tiny portion Fated to lie awake all night telling each another stories about tears and sorrow, asking one and other to guess the same riddle day after day: "oh, for a piece of one of those" 'Ripe bananas!' Wangari replied, as if Muturi had asked her a real riddle. 'Oh for some of that ' Muturi said. 'Fresh, cool water in a cave that belongs to another,' Wangari replied again.

Hoy a los niños se les enseña a cerrar los ojos y a bloquear los oídos para que nunca vean las necesidades del pueblo ni oigan sus gemidos. El que solía oír, hoy se ha convertido en sordo. El resultado de esos colegios son aquellos de quienes se dice: «¡Lástima de esta generación, porque tienen ojos y no pueden ver, y tienen oídos y no pueden oír!». Porque se les ha enseñado a ver y oír un solo mundo.

Our lives are a battlefield on which is fought a continuous war between the forces that are pledged to confirm our humanity and those determined to dismantle it; those who strive to build a protective wall around it, and those who wish to pull it down; those who seek to mould it, and those committed to breaking it up; those whose aim is to open our eyes, to make us see the light and look to tomorrow, asking ourselves abut the future of our children, and those who wish to lull us into closing our eyes, encouraging us to care only for our stomachs today, without thinking about the tomorrow of our country.