https://nation.africa/kenya/news/cancer-the-enemy-within-adios-rasna-warah-4886818"I also learned that life is very, very short. So we must not postpone the things we need to do. This thing called life is temporary, so enjoy every moment and live each day as if it were your last" ~ Rasnah.
I remember Rasnah Warah for one thing and one thing only.
She wrote an article around 2009/10 in the Daily Nation in which she talked about boarding a plane to London in which plenty of diasporans from both the USA and the UK were alongside her, with their kids in tow. She marvelled at the impeccable accents of the same and somewhere in that article, she dropped a phrase that stuck with me forever. She said something to the effect that "[all those Kenyans] discover the fact that once you board that plane to live, work or study abroad for significant periods of time,
you can never really go back, even if you do so physically," but more on that later...
Life indeed is very short. We don't need to go very far from Nipate and the Kwiinyan cyberspace i
n universum to recognize this truism. From double O on down, very many are six feet under. I was shocked the other day to discover how many in my primo graduating class are no more. Yes, death is inevitable, yet it always arrives as somewhat of a surprise to not only loved ones but also to the victim him/herself, when they discover they have a limited time left on this planet. But why so many, so young? We spend years as deskies and footie buddies with many of them, then, as all graduating classes do, we scatter all over the world and gradually lose touch with them. The years float by, then one day we are told they are no more. A very disconcerting experience that is difficult to adjust to. My high school deskie suffered this fate. Brilliant chap. Died senselessly due to PEV. The same politics-drenched PEV that was fanned from forums like these and others in the Kwiinyan cybersphere, whether domestic or abroad. The guy had a bright future ahead of him. Ended up chopped up with pangas like a goat in a butchery. Very sad end to someone I spent years - literally - next to.
I also remember sitting on a chair in Brew Bistro on Ngong Road back in Dec 2012. Enjoying my usual vacation "flom ablod," escaping the usual harsh US winter for a month or two. Seated with a very pretty local Kwiinyan lass and her friend from the UK with origins in a neighbouring kaundry. Music pulsing, people gyrating to the beat, polite convo and all. Good times. I remember it as if it were yesterday. In the course of our chat, the UK lass - who was about 30-ish back then - narrated to us how, a year prior, she had been diagnosed with brain cancer and given just a few months to live. She had undergone brain surgery and survived. The haunting words she spoke next are still with me;.
" You know it (life) is all very fragile."Indeed it is.
No offense to all but one of the minor regrets I have is that I wasted so many years of my life on forums like these for some hours per day. Nothing wrong with doing so, but what did we gain from it? All the debates with double O, Njamlik et al who are six feet deep?The political discussions. Did they not amount to a heap of dung? I should have spent those years more productively. Out there exploring the world around me. With my kids. With one of my parents who passed away unexpectedly, without me having time to say goodbye. Smelling the roses of life along the way, so to speak. Not stuck before glimmering screens, bottle of alcohol nearby, as time irretrievably slipped away....
If
'all political lives end in failure' ~(Enoch Powell), why then do we obsess over what is not? I get it. It's Kenya's opium. Just like the NFL is for mindless Americans. But the Americans seldom kill over their beloved NFL. But I digress.
I've been reading a lot of books written by the towering icons of Kenya's political and business space over the past few years. Like Kenneth Matiba's "Aiming High" and Goldsworthy's "Tom Mboya, the man Kenya wanted to forget." A common thread seems to twine its way between all of them. The thread of how transient life is. And how - despite our achievements therein - it all inevitably ends in failure - death. And when you die and the funeral speeches are over, nobody will talk about or remember you except in very fleeting moments as in this post. Even Moi himself, who towered over our lives like a colossus for two and a half decades. Yes, even him. No one talks about him any more. Just as happened to Jomo. Just as will happen with all of those we've put on a pedestal. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity!
The moral of the story? I dunno!
I remember how when I was growing up, we'd hear and watch those gravelly-voiced speeches of Mtukufu Rais Moi on TV. With his retinue of political sycophants. The Kuria Kanyingis, the Mulu Mutisyas, the Shariff Nassirs (wapende wasipende!) the William Ole Ntimamas, the Oloo Aringos and hundreds more. All gone.
We would also watch the Vitimbi show with its hilarious characters. All of them gone too.
We also have numerous relatives who are near and far who are all gone.
I will never forget the day I went back to my childhood esto for the first time in many years, hoping to meet the old long-serving very friendly watchman we grew up around. Found he was gone too, a couple of years prior.
Rasnah you were wrong. Yes we CAN come back. With invaluable global life experience and skill-sets that serve not only ourselves and our families but our neighbours, our country and our continent at large. Rasnah, yes we CAN come back. To our drastically changed country, yet still our country nonetheless. Rasnah yes we CAN come back and readjust seamlessly when we put our life journeys into proper perspective. Rasnah yes we CAN come back. To our soil, our roots, our beautiful weather, our lush green landscapes, our strong social ties.
Speaking of which, there is nothing I love more than to wake up late in the morning on my shamba, sit on my chair under the huge canopy of the green tree I planted many years back. Enjoying the cool shade under the emergent African sun. While they bring me my delicious uji breakfast, with lots of organic accompaniments. Brought with respect and honour. With no anxieties of having to go to a job we love to hate. Or frying one's mind at a business making more and more money one will never spend in two lifetimes. Or in politics battling enemies at the gate who give you high blood pressure. Why do we do these things?
I agree with you on one thing though Rasnah. Life indeed is short. Too short in fact. Too short to settle. Too short to fritter away on meaningless activities. Too short not to spend time with friends and family we claim we love and cherish. Too short not to enjoy the land where our ancestors are buried fully. Too short to not enjoy the sun, the open fields, the trees, the food they enjoyed too at an easy stress-free pace before they left us. And soon we will join them too.
RIP Rasnah Warah
Topic: RIP Rasnah Warah. But will Nipateans listen? (Read 1058 times)