Friends, patriots, children of this Kenyan soil, lend me your ears.
I come not to praise Raila, nor to curse him.
But to lay wreaths of truth upon his long, arduous road.
He was Jakom, the people’s leader.
Son of Odinga, heir to the unfinished dream.
When Moi’s shadow fell like a drought upon our tongues.
He rose, flame in hand, with Matiba, Rubia and others beside him.
Their names carrying in whispers within cells that had no light.
He fought for our voice, when words were contraband.
When to speak was to disappear, he was my hero then.
Freedom arrived, laced with the smell of tear gas and the scent of hope.
As the second liberation marked our warriors in bruises; mental and physical.
But tell me friends, what becomes of heroes when they sit to dine with the kings they once defied?
When he clasped Moi’s hand, I felt my heart stammer between betrayal and belief.
For I had learned resistance from him.
How to endure, how to dream, how to dare.
I was dumbstruck as I watched his iron will bending into hot negotiations.
Disillusioned by freedom’s father, a child, I lost faith in the breaking dawn.
The people grew up to love and hate him as these words will be.
But just like a work of art, he still hang around as the public’s mirror.
To some, the fiery fire of freedom; to others, ambition’s smoke.
They tried to read his soul, see all the cards Agwambo held.
Liberator, dealmaker, the proverbial prophet.
But how do you predict a storm that keeps returning, even within the calm?
Villains only rise when people view once through hero-stained glasses.
When they confuse mourning all the memories with worship.
That’s why I dare to embrace him and still confess his undoing.
He who won wars without a crown, routed regimes with rallies and resolve.
He who left footprints where presidents feared to tread, from the ballot to the barricades.
Always a breath short of power, always a heartbeat away from victory.
His last walk, his last stroll, he fell into his last deep sleep on foreign soil.
Another Kenyan son lost abroad, as her womb labours under broken hands.
So today I weep not only for Baba but the national dream that limped beside him.
I remember him as our fight, our fault, our forever flawed argument.
He changed the shape of power, even when it refused to wear his name.
What is his legacy?
Perhaps it is the loudness of this silence we now share.
Half gratitude, half grief.
Perhaps it is the knowing, that we may never see such defiance again.
Go well, Jakom.
You walked through prisons and parliaments alike.
And though your crown was made of promises unmet.
You wore it with the dignity of a statesman.
Sleep, son of the soil,
For even in contradiction, you were ours.
The Divine Bandit™ 