Good baddies: I salute the young female protesters (2024)

• I am a testament to the organisational power of a united people.
• I salute everyone who showed up to challengethe government.

Brethren, women will save this country. Wallahi.

Si I was at this maandamano thingie on Tuesday and Thursday, na si Kenya has good baddies?

My God. I was about to be distracted then I remembered that condoms are now more expensive, making sex a luxury, and forcing us to have unplanned babies, whom they are already taxing diapers for. Hapana buana!

At least this morally bipolar government has awakened emotions in me I didn’t know I had. I mean, as a self-diagnosed recluse and a reticent participant in the arena of public relations, you should have seen me leading the cardio sessions of the Anglican Rastafarian ground battalion with “steam steam panda! Steam steam panda panda! Steam steam shuka!”

But this is not about me. Let’s give it up to the baddies. They showed up. They have developed resistance to teargas, these women. Perhaps that is why gava banned shisha. Short women. Medium. Military height. Black. White. Chocolate.

Heck, even the baddies from Roysambu were around. I was shedding tears, partly from the teargas, but mostly from the optical nutrition that assaulted my eyes.

Everyone was here, Bobo “Jicho Moja”, my nduthi guy without portfolio, Mama Caro wa Ebenezer Flats (House 4B), John “Just Call Me Jonte” Otieno who owns a nail parlour, I mean, even celebrities of varying intelligence.

Of course, our reasons for being in the protest are different — I heard one of the ladies complain that wamegusa kaquarter. She was not talking about meat.

Or that 50-by-100 plot in Kamulu-Joska. She might as well have had. We, however, stand guided by our mantra: injustice to a baddie anywhere is a threat to baddies everywhere.

I was there because I used to wake up to, “Babe, would you like your pancakes in bed ama utaniflip kwanza?” Now I wake up to a baddie asking me to reject!

This is not the first time baddies have come through to save the country. I am reminded that on February 28, 1992, Mothers of Political Prisoners — our grandmothers — presented a Petition with a list of 52 political prisoners demanding their children be released.

Nyayo was in charge then, and the 11-month protest ended in January 1993, and with it, the streak of political prisoners in Kenya.

I am reminded of the late Professor Wangari Maathai, also known as “shawry for the trees”, when she stood up to the late President Moi who had been fluttering his eyelashes at Uhuru Park to erect a Kanu Complex vanity project.

Maathai said, “Haiwes mek, bro,” and Nyayo took a few steps back. Because of her, we still have Uhuru Park where I first took someone’s daughter for an ice cream date. She thinks it was romantic but I was just poor.

Perhaps the baddiest baddie of them all is Field Marshal Muthoni Nyanjiru who in March 1922, following the arbitrary arrest of Harry Thuku, joined 7,000 people and pitched camp at Kingsway Police Station (now Central Police Station) on Kingsway Road (now Harry Thuku Road).

Field Marshal Muthoni who had walked from Weithaga in Murang’a was not impressed by the lackadaisical nature of things, not least because she had left shughuli moja, mbili, tatu back home unattended.

Being the baddiest baddie that she was, she stood up, pulled her dress over her head and shouted, “You cowardly men! Take my dress and give me your trousers then! Kwani who is the man here?” Bad*ss. But, kikawaramba. Things bit each other. And Muthoni was shot dead — but she lives on in this page.

There are many others: Nyanza, had Moraa Ng’iti, that defiant Gusii heroine who came to the British colonialists and faced them mano a mano.

Among the Aembu, there was Cierume the dancing warrior who came to you as a woman and said kama mbaya, mbaya. Do I really need to talk about Mekatilili wa Menza? We covered this in school, ama ulikuwa umef*ckuziwa school fees?

Marxism posits that the struggle between social classes — specifically between the bourgeois, or capitalists, and the proletariat, or workers — defines economic relations in a capitalist economy and will lead inevitably to a communist revolution. In case you stopped reading, I mean to say, “Wametuzoea!”

I am a testament to the organisational power of a united people. I have been added to Gen Z groups from a remote place as far as Kisii; a multiethnic, metropolitan “Occupy Kileleshwa Baddies” (it’s not what you think), and under duress, I have also joined a Gen Z WhatsApp group in Roysambu too.

I can neither confirm nor deny if I have been invited tonight for a bad manners party where I am instructed to come alone and with an “open mind”. Anyway, treat this as urgent, but does anyone know gari za Roysambu zinapandiwa wapi?

Perhaps our ruling class has the noblest intentions. I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt but I realised why the doubt was there in the first place. After all, if intentions dictated the morality of action, there would be no villains in the world.

Speaking of, the other two baddies, Number 1 and Number 2, whom we did not vote for, are awarded hundreds of millions of shillings for their divinity activities. Isn’t it ironic that the more they pray for this government the less faith we have in it?

Perhaps this protest will serve to remind us brethren that our lives, despite what that intellectually innocent MP says, are still in our hands. We assess and see what we’ve achieved in our weeks of revolt, that stomping boot in which we shall now live our lives.

My country, Kenya. Those who came before us, asked, if you sell your father’s land to buy a trumpet, where will you stand to blow it? These are the prime years of our lives; they have robbed our pasts and they are busy killing our futures.

They are gambling on our present, taxing the poor so the rich can spend. They have chipped away at the hope of a better tomorrow, less and less and less and less till we become hopeless — they are in a conspiracy to control the history and future of Kenya — which we are told is all about them, their daddies, their cousins and lovers and Mrs’s and in-laws and mtu wetu.

They say this is Kenya Ltd, a government of shares. Kuna wananchi. Na wenyenchi. Kuna watu, kuna viatu.

On the stereo, Tracy Chapman lends her voice in Talkin’ Bout a Revolution. Kwa ground, I salute everyone who showed up, who challenged the government to be better, who reminded it that power can only be rented, never bought. And thus got it to concede.

For with their budgeted corruption, they throw extra shillings on the floor for us, so we can bend over and get violated to the soundtrack of wounded patriotism.

Not anymore. Haiwesmek, bro. The wind has blown and the backside of the chicken has been exposed. There is nowhere to hide.

It is our elders who said when a man wants to go for a short call, he does not take off his trousers entirely. This is our country too. And we shall occupy it.