A Place to Call Home

By Dr. Tom Obondo Okoyo

A Place to Call Home is a story of refugees no community wanted to see anywhere close to them, as if they were good for nothing. It is an epic portrayal of a painful dilemma of thousands of homeless internally displaced persons (IDPs) who were victims of the highly contested and disputed presidential election. The novel is a true, tear-jerking reflection of a botched election in December 2007 and January 2008, which culminated into a postelection violence that brutally killed almost there thousand innocent people. Some were burned alive inside a churchGods territory as they calledwhere they had taken safe haven. About seven hundred thousand people were forcibly removed from their homes; some took refuge at police stations, while others fled to neighboring countries to remain alive. Business premises, vehicles, and other properties worth billions of shillings were destroyed, and domestic animals were stolen. This spate of violence happened at a time when thousands of ethnic militias heavily armed with homemade crude weapons were chanting war slogans and singing traditional war songs everywhere in the country. Loyal to their respective presidential candidates, the militias roamed the streets of towns and villages, making every journey perilous. Enemies who got caught were beheaded, and their heads were paraded or displayed on the main highways. Women were seized and gang-raped by the militias and got infected with the deadly HIV-AIDS virus.
Amazingly, communities turned their backs against the combined IDPs who were looking for a permanent settlement, calling them foreigners, invaders, or land grabbers in their own country. Breathing under such horrifying circumstances, all IDPs drawn from various tribes resolved to live together in peace and harmony and to prove to the world that they could live with people from other communities without any problem, in spite of their language and cultural barriers. The idea of living together was instilled in the IDPs by VP Nyandege, who emerged as the leading light in their plight and the quest for what they could call home. VP Nyandege won a special place in fellow IDPs hearts and made them believe that life was worth fighting for. For seven years, these IDPs have been living in squalid conditions or in makeshift camps, waiting to be settled as promised by the ruling elite. The IDPs lived in rough and ready dwellings with no food, water, toilet facilities, social amenities, or sanitation at all. They were living in a world of their own; no laws, rules, or culture to observe. The fate of these IDPs is reminiscent of the Jews when they lived in Europe and were rejected by people in all countries after World War II and consequently had no place to call their home. After seven years in isolated makeshift camps, the IDPs were offered land to settle on by the Biblical Good Samaritan to prove that tribal groups, once sworn enemies, could live together peacefully and harmoniously. And now these IDPs would like to build the countrys first utopia, the same way the Israelis have transformed the desert land of Israel into another biblical Promised Land of Canaan, the land of milk and honey. (This unfortunate event was disseminated throughout the world by the mass media.)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing Africa
• Release date: Nov 20, 2015
• ISBN: 9781482809251

Dr. Tom Obondo Okoyo

Tom Obondo-Okoyo, PhD was at one time an assistant professor and head of Journalism and Media Studies Department at the United States International University, USIU, in Nairobi, Kenya. Dr. Okoyo was a lecturer at the University of Norte West in South Africa, Masahe, Moi and Nairobi Universities. He is a feature writer, film producer, news editor (radio, TV), and scriptwriter. Dr. Okoyo worked in Botswana as deputy director, Ministry of Presidential Affairs.

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Copyright © 2015 by Dr. Tom Obondo Okoyo.

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CONTENTS

Dedication

Chapter 1   Just Solutions

Chapter 2   Happiness, a shared thing

Chapter 3   Good men…

Chapter 4   A Slayer, eh?

Chapter 5   Little things make difference

Chapter 6   Ideas and principles?

Chapter 7   Darkness stronger….

Chapter 8   0 Power!

Chapter 9   Gift of Wisdom

Chapter 10   The living and the dead

Chapter 11   Candidates and Voters…

Chapter 12   Change?

Chapter 13   Boldness conquers fear

Chapter 14   Only two ways…

Chapter 15   Stab oneself?

Chapter 16   Oasis of peace

Chapter 17   Eyes and ears

Chapter 18   Idea and candles

Chapter 19   The fist bump…

Chapter 20   Birthday suit

Chapter 21   Tiny and messy

Chapter 22   Trouble down the line

Chapter 23   Cold Front

Chapter 24   Our ancestors…

Chapter 25   A rock and a hard place?

Chapter 26   Moves into the distance?

Chapter 27   Courage and fear

Chapter 28   Choices we make

Chapter 29   Vision

Chapter 30   By doing?

Chapter 31   Band of brothers

Chapter 32   Protest solemnly

Chapter 33   It’s the devil!

Chapter 34   Reflects Christ

About The Author

DEDICATION

• Mum Sheila Owuoth ‘Njore’ Okoyo

• Heart and Soul of Our Family

I

Her gleaming icon,

Fills our thoughts and hearts,

As an indissoluble part of our feelings,

Our survival and way of life.

Sure, she’s our mother figure, and

The soul of our family.

On this earth-shattering point in time,

Out-and-out to her deathless memory,

She could still learn by heart,

With clear vision of age,

Looking back to the old days,

How she had subsisted on this planet.

II

Now, her eyes are weak, and limbs frail,

But not her recollection of the past, a

Strong, vital nostalgia in an old body,

Is her renitence and atonement.

Now, with the dreams of age,

That had turned her hair to silver,

That had deemed her eyes, and

That had lived in her aching bones,

She prays that if God is just,

Almighty would allow her to choose,

Between breathing and fading.

III

Forever full of old reminiscences,

Her time of penance is almost at an end,

She hopes when she sees her children, and

Grand children, and great grand

Children once again,

She would smile at them and,

Forgive them as young foolish pride.

Mom rises, bending in the wind,

Leaning on her walking stick,

To keep her feet under her and,

Leaves long journeys to young ones.

IV

Whatever joy mom has found in her life,

Has been tainted, always with the sound of whimper.

That’s how, mom finds out the hard way that,

Nothing in life is certain or guaranteed.

When a person turns 94 plus,

It’s her time for reflection,

Time for taking stock,

For not shuddering,

Because old age has crept closer and closer,

Around that blind corner,

For looking back over her successes and failures.

V

There’s no need to summon her courage,

For our venerated natal mother,

Sheila Owuoth Aoko’Njore’ Okoyo,

Known as Nyar Kanyipola-Kamolo,

Owuoth nyar Ahero Nyando river,

The incessant and assiduous soldier!

Is evermore with us as a living self.

We may have a chat about Mom,

It does not really matter,

Whether the occasion is anniversary,

Of her date of nativity in November 1918,

At the end of First World War,

The very same year South Africa’s

Nelson ‘Madiba’ Mandela was born,

Now celebrating her 94 birthday.

VI

We make it neither a festivity,

Nor a funeral hymn.

We simply use this as a chance,

For lionizing her words once again,

Through the words of her vision.

Often we meet face to face with Mom

In all the charm and deeds

Of her intellect, and/or

Her charisma and feat,

Character, moral fiber and traits.

The split second we attempt to voice

Our thoughts about Mom,

The distance between us becomes

Interminably and forever inhibitive.

Yes, for fifty plus years, and

Oh, yes, for all those years,

Mon is the light of the family, and

The Soul of Abudo Lore Family.

CHAPTER 1

Just Solutions

• Where people of goodwill get together

and transcend their differences for

the common good, peaceful and just

solutions can be found, even for those

problems that seem most intractable.

-Nelson Mandela,

former President of South Africa,

and prisoner for 27 years.

• A home, where one begins, and hopes to end…

• ‘God places the solitary in families,’ comforting words from the Bible…

S OON after Vitalis Paulus Nyandege woke up at cock-crow that nippy Sunday in December 2007, sleep had left behind a deposit of uneasiness, discomfort, and above all awkwardness in him. All was not well in the legendary republic of Migingo. The re-election of the incumbent president, Kyalo Kalulu was causing ripples everywhere to the extent of tearing the republic of Migingo wide apart and sharply dividing the citizens along ethnic silhouettes. The botched presidential election answer was at the core of the ongoing ethnic belligerence.

Fears grew as the country’s vote started spiraling into dissent. Ethnic divide between the supporters of rival candidates had overshadowed what was supposed to be a historic vote. The optimism and pride that marked the democratic General Election had faded before the votes were tallied, as late results showed the two candidates, the incumbent president Kyalo Kalulu or KK and the main opposition leader, Gala Gala or GG were in a tight race, prompting both sides to accuse the other of fraud and heightening tension in a nation that had never chosen its leader freely, VP Nyandege recalled.

Once, not so long ago, some eminent American and European connoisseurs eulogized the nation state as an isle of peace and tranquility, and more so the pearl of the African continent. Wow! Nothing could be better than that accolade. And the very same country had now turned into an island of rivers of human and livestock blood, vexing pain and anguish.

Toweringly flamboyant, imposing, and strongly put-together like fellow apt Nilotes, VP Nyandege was in his early fifties, and to be exact 52 years old, with graying hair, an enormous presence and self-esteem to match. He seemed uniquely soaring away from other average people. His legs were long, thin, hard, always dry and corpulent below the rotund knees.

Lines of muscles on his legs stood out visibly from toes to knees and were fashioned like those of fishermen in Kano Plains on the shores of the western side of the great Lake Victoria.

A man of good reputation, outgoing, calm, iron-willed, well composed, and sociable, VP Nyandege considered his own horror-struck reaction when he first heard on radio and viewed TV broadcast the news of messed up presidential election, followed by ethnic bloodbath in the country. On the other hand, VP Nyandege was undeniably an excellent man, a thriving entrepreneur, straightforward, afraid of nobody, happily married, and above all else, deferential and courteous.

VP Nyandege was celebrated by many people as a man of great charisma, persona and veracity. In fact the character of VP Nyandege and traits of VP Nyandege himself, were so much like his own.

‘When a person turns fifty years and above,’ VP Nyandege said to his wife, Adah Akinyi, ‘it’s the time of mirror image, and a reflection for taking stock, not only for alarm because old age is already knocking on his or her door, but also because life is moving furtively and much closer around that venetian blind corner.’

‘Yes, at fifty plus years, a person looks back over his comings and goings, his successes, and failures,’ Adah Akinyi his wife said. ‘In our case, however, we have achieved a little here and a little there without regrets. But despite all this, age is sitting heavily on you and me, and would soon sit even heavier still.’

The country’s constitution stipulated loud and clear that any citizen could subsist anywhere in any part of the country and was also entitled to acquire property in anyplace within its borders. And the same constitution was not only the Christian Bible and Moslem Quran, it was also the law of the land itself. VP Nyandege was a full blood citizen of Migingo, born and brought up in this republic.

Anybody branding him a foreigner was gravely mistaken. In spite of this factual evidence, VP Nyandege and his family had to face the penalty of being outsiders and in addition, pay for the cost of voting for their sworn enemy. In Kiswahili language the said, siasa mbaya, maisha mbaya, or bad politics rough life. This was unquestionably bad politics.

At the thought of this, VP Nyandege closed his eyes for several minutes like a patient plagued by a doctor’s needle-sharp syringe penetrating piercingly into his buttock.

And when he opened his eyes, he stared for the longest time without breathing out a word. Then from nowhere, two streams of tears began to roll in parallel lines down his cheeks. He looked like the Caribbean zombies or dead people who had come back to life. Yes, VP Nyandege gave the impression of being pale, so much unlike the image every person had of him.

At this time, nonetheless, VP Nyandege was the Chairman of Bwanda Town Council Businessmen Association, BTCBA, and also Chairman of Elders Council of Unity, ECU. From time to time, harassed street hawkers approached him to help restore harmony between them and the Town Council askaris or security guards.

VP Nyandege had confirmed his suspicion by the way those unfamiliar faces standing in groups sneaked glances at him intentionally and personally. It seemed they were backbiting him or talking about the removal of those they called ‘foreigners’ who owned immense wealth, and he was one of them. Or maybe they were repeating the same old adage that forty days of a thief were over. But so called foreigners were not thieves or he was not a thief, and had never had any crime record in his life.

The people portrayed as foreigners and invaders, squatters and land grabbers, opportunists and insatiable similar to looting hyenas, as well as marauding lions, living in the Dell region were their own fellow citizens. But they originally came from other regions of this homeland christened Migingo.

VP Nyandege was the owner of the well known Masogo supermarket in the centre of Bwanda municipality. When it was opened for the first time many years ago, it was the talk of Bwanda town and Dell region as a whole. This modern superstore impressed everyone who saw it for the first time. Supported by his billionaire father-in-law Thomas Gogo, VP Nysndege bought a plot of land and built the huge three storey supermarket that could accommodate thousands of people all at once.

One day VP Nyandege talked to his workers – cashiers, attendants and casual workers at the entrance of Masogo supermarket. They were standing outside in groups, and chatting, while waiting for him to come and open the superstore doors. The main door of the shop had an intricate locking system, though it looked simple from the outside.

VP Nyandege always locked the main catacomb or spring, checked and double checked the door before leaving for home in the night. Whenever he went away on trips, he gave his wife, Adah Akinyi the keys with specific instructions, lest she forgot.

Customers across the board were ostensibly fond of VP Nyandege as a personality and his Masogo supermarket as a heart-soothing business enterprise. The provisions were reasonably prized and the service was excellent, and customers said was second to none. Some businessmen would even prefer teaming up with him as a business associate. VP Nyandege had a business bible or some reference point. He lifted his business catchphrase from a transcript which he had written and pasted it on the wall of the supermarket for customers to read. It was his business motto. With glue, he pasted it at an eye-catching or conspicuous spot right at the entrance.

• May we achieve with esteem

• May we work with valor

• May we attain modesty

• Yes, we can…!

            -V.P. Nyandege

            Proprietor

Snooping customers who came to the supermarket’s doorway, paused and read it, and after that nodded their heads in approval of this irrefutable verity.

‘I like your business catchphrase,’ a customer said to him one day.

‘Some people have their doubts about the truth of that statement,’ said VP Nyandege.

‘But why?’

‘Because most businessmen are known to be charlatans of the first order. They have the habit of increasing prices of commodities to make more money.’

‘True,’ said the customer.

‘I’m an honest businessman,’ said VP Nyandege as he walked around the counters until nothing separated them. ‘You see I’ve a standard to maintain or to improve on. And there are things other than account books I also think about.’

‘There’s a man called Mogaka Nyakundi who can help you with auditing,’ he said.

‘I know Mogaka Nyakundi,’ said VP Nyandege. ‘He’s my friend. He’s the one handling my account books here’

VP Nyandege and his wife made huge profits in their business without resorting to ploy, or deception or subterfuge, by working hard and honestly. In fact, their Masogo supermarket business had been a roaring success right from the beginning or the day it had first appeared in Bwanda town.

Theirs was the first full fledged and modern supermarket to be established in this municipality. But why? Because the price of the goods they put up for sale was cheaper than those found in ordinary retail shops.

All in all, it was a superb achievement for wife and husband. Yet of late, they had lost much of their former enthusiasm. ‘Adah,’ he lamented the other day, ‘business is not what it used to be. Nowadays you have to be either cagey, secretive, or furtive about making money.’

‘Absolutely,’ she said, ‘effort, success and good kismet or fortune have turned out to be misdemeanor. Each successive government controlling our cost-cutting measure or rather economy has tried to liquidate the prosperous and apposite fruits of their toil, as if by making the moneyed poorer, the poor become wealthier.’

To some people, especially business foes, the write-up positioned on the shop wall sounded like a campaign gimmick or a crusade against vices such as dishonesty, shoplifting, bribery, sleaze or fraud that was notoriously out of control in the country. People were pilfering left, right and centre with impunity.

And so they said the honest and candid people who would abhor corruption and other vices might be born in the next millennium, that is, a thousand years from now,’ VP Nyandege had said.

Up till then, business adversaries of VP Nyandege who read the business catchword said; ‘He, VP Nyandege cannot claim to be a person of exceptional holiness. This kind of plea is meant for saints only,’ said Sonko Sonko, a rival and fellow businessman who was envious of his progress. ‘VP Nyandege is not a living saint and will never be one after all.’

‘That’s true,’ VP Nyandege said when he heard such negative comments. ‘In business, there are no honorable people. Rascals think that they can outwit anybody. The moon turns loyalty from convenience into a blazing ideal.’

The insiders labeled them what on earth was considered iniquity and evil, and VP Nyandege was without a doubt not left out. He was right inside and at the centre of that harassed and beleaguered group of people. And yet the Dell region had been the whole of the world to VP Nyandege and countless other people living there.

Despite these new developments, the outsiders said they hadn’t seen a heavenly place like the Dell county. Wow, a place beautiful as the sunset or as end of the day, so they said repeatedly. To most of them, however, the Dell county was like the Biblical land of Canaan, the land of milk and honey, and the land of immense opportunities.

During violence ridden electioneering campaigns throughout the country, arms and legs were broken, teeth blown off, eyes gouged-out, ears slashed off, and mouths torn apart. The foot soldiers said they had done the job they had been assigned to do, and they did it in a clean manner, but to them that wasn’t enough.

The militias were armed to the teeth with homemade crude weapons. They made use of rungus or swags, Somali swords, pangas or machetes, razor sharp butchers’ knives, bows and poisoned arrows, axes, spears and other do-it-yourself weapons to commit such heinous crimes.

The warriors said that was just the beginning of the conflict, and that more damage to the outsiders was yet to come. And that was to say, the Post Election Violence, PEV, flames were now burning ferociously everywhere, from one corner of the country to another. And the combat, VP Nyandege observed, was as true as day and night.

VP Nyandege as he was universally known, was in essence a flourishing superstore entrepreneur in Bwanda town, the provincial capital of the war ravaged Dell region. And he knew right away that he could lose all the property he had acquired through his own endeavor, his own toil and his own blood. He had neither cheated nor swindled anybody, or his prized and cherished customers either through the now rampant hoarding of retail goods or black marketeering. Nothing could be further from the truth.

And yet under the current widespread circumstances, he could be forced to leave Bwanda town where he lived, and the Dell region and return to his original home area in Kano Plains empty handed, just the same way he had come to the region with nothing many years ago. Oh, God forbid! Now VP Nyandege admitted that he had neither wit nor the will to do anything to save his own skin as well as skins of thousands of others threatened by the ominous conflict.

The Dell region was in the center of Migingo republic where VP Nyandege and his entire family had lived for many years, not as migrants or unlawful residents, but as full blood bona-fide citizens of this country. It was the only place he had always called his home. The home where his heart and soul truly belonged. The home that had been full of glow and where he had wished to stay put. And the only place he called his home address.

Wow, the Dell province was enticingly beautiful. The county was a land of mountains and green valleys. It was a terra firma of rain forests that supplied colossal water to 22 snow-white rivers that ran through dry areas all the year round into Lake Victoria. Of course there were as well a few waterfalls.

This vast span where VP Nyandege had lived, was a county of fertile prime fields for commercial agriculture and for rearing beef cattle. And not to forget, it was as well a land of millions of wading flamingo birds. Those birds with pink-and red plumage and downward-bent bills for tourists attraction, and also a land of both small fresh water and salty water lakes.

VP Nyandege, and about a millions of other people who lived in the Dell region were in a belittling language classified by insiders as insatiable and superfluous outsiders because they came from other regions of the country. And those ethnic communities that inhabited this country from time immemorial, were conquered and ruled for centuries by those mite-like fleas called jiggers.

The parasitic fleas settled inside the people’s toes. You couldn’t imagine that these people were persecuted and exploited by the simple vermin called jiggers! The jigger fleas neatly buried themselves inside wananchi’s or people’s feet, then spread out to their buttocks. Not satisfied, the parasites spread out to their fingers!

The jiggers noshed on their flesh and imbibed their fresh and pure blood from one generation of wananchi to another, leaving their flesh stone dry. What a tyranny? What a domination and brutality lashed out on them by jiggers! Oh, what a hell of life? Their bare feet looked like those of people wading a thick mass of muddy water.

The arrival of the British colonialists in the 19th century, however, displaced the totalitarian one-party ‘jigger regime.’ The parasites were like a defeated candidate in a mudslinging and throat-cutting parliamentary election. And as a parable says that if you want to kill a dog, give it a bad name. They cursed and called jiggers all manner of death-defying names. After that the jigger population was left out in the boondocks, or in the wilderness like HIV/AIDS orphans to fend for themselves.

The new rulers from Europe didn’t come empty handed after all. The fact of life was that these foreign persons with white skin pigmentation and long hair, were heavily armed with an in-built brown envelope baptized Western Civilization that would help make sense and create awareness among the people of Africa. The envelope was stamped with a red seal by none other than Queen Victoria of Great Britain which was no longer great, but limping like a wounded antelope.

It contained some kind of development package, aimed at civilizing the uncivilized black race group in Migingo republic which at that time had no unifying official name and no map. But they named western part of the country Victoria Nyanza.

Concealed inside this essential envelope were a variety of bits and pieces of information. Among the items was education they used as a piece of soap that swabbed Africans’ lack of knowledge or ignorance. Christianity took precedence over the ethnic traditional gods, such as the god in the mountain, the sun god in hope, the moon god, the lake god, the river god, ethnic totems for ritual associations, etc.

Also in that British brown envelope was modern or contemporary agriculture, aimed at educating wananchi or natives how to grow crops for food and business. Then the judicial system or law courts for law breakers to curb rampant impunity. Yes, there was conventional medicine to replace traditional herbal medicine and to train doctors and nurses to take over from unschooled traditional healers and witchdoctors.

But when it came to community health care, wananchi or citizens did very little, or nothing at all. They continued to sneak into the bushes day or night to help themselves. Sometimes they found themselves squatting on coiled snakes. And furthermore, they had no clothes to wear. Before this time wananchi walked stark naked like wildlife in the jungle; the same way they were born. Pooh! The British colonialist brought garments for wananchi to conceal their nakedness and weather beaten swarthy looking bodies.

At the very beginning, they couldn’t recognize the difference between inside and outside of a dress or a shirt, or a pair of short khaki trousers, even when the clothing had distinct pockets. Imagine these people put on the clothes inside-out even when going on long journeys, VP Nyandege recalled these changes before and after the coming of Western Civilization to Africa, then called a dark continent.

And after many years of majestic autocracy, despotism, or imperialism, the white rulers were finally forced out of the country by African freedom fighters. They fought these foreigners left, right and centre. While some black freedom fighters skirmished guerrilla warfare in the bush, others fought inside the National Assembly.

Wow, what a liberation struggle in Migingo! What a country of revolutionaries! What ethnic unity of purpose! Ha! The colonialists became sick and tired of administering, supervising, and controlling country’s united forty two plus tribes.

Ultimately the British colonialists said enough was enough, and raised the white flag of surrender. This meant uhuru or freedom, or independence for the citizens at long last. They wouldn’t continue to have authority over bolshie’s people like these! So they gave pungent farewell to the newly born republic of Migingo, and swore in the name of Almighty God, that they would never come back. And if they happened to come back, they would only do so as visiting tourists.

VP Nyandege recalled some of those fireside word of mouth stories when he was young. Now the jigger fleas again, saw the loopholes and the tantalizing opportunities and bounced back like the twinkle of an eye, and this time decided to stay put. The jiggers had been left out in the wilderness for so many years, starving and dying.

And this time round they would like to increase their ever growing populations. The so called anti-jigger campaigns in the country has had very little effect on the victims. The fleas had now moved from human toes to human buttocks and spread out to hands as their domains.

However, that was yet another story all together. The story at the moment was about post election belligerence in which so called ‘aliens’ were being forced to leave the wealthy Dell region, never to return. They were expected to pack up their belongings and go for good, and VP Nyandege was among them.

Many years ago, these people had left behind their friends and relatives in their individual provinces and came to this place to settle and do business that would make them rich. They left friends and relatives under a hex of sleep that kept them unaware, and when they woke up at the crack of dawn, others had disappeared in thin air, and didn’t even know which route they had taken.

And once they had amassed wealth they had come to look for, they changed their minds and declined to go back home where their umbilical cords were some time ago buried as soon as they were born. They lived large and flashed their ill-gotten wealth. Their friends and relatives would grieve, but these people in the Dell region totally refused to go back to their original provinces. And they could not, and would not turn from the path they had chosen to follow, that was, the path that had led them to the Dell region.

This large group of people asserted rightly or wrongly that when they got to the Dell region in the first place, they found the indigenous people just peeing on top of massive riches buried deep underneath the soil, and these people were not doing even a single day’s work. But years later, they were overwhelmed and terrified by these strange people they identified as outsiders.

These outsiders with unceasing appetite for wealth were grabbing everything, left, right and centre, and had left them with close to nothing. They claimed, for instance, that if you gave the outsiders a piece of land near your house, the next day you would find them right inside your bedroom, cultivating it to plant their seeds, and not leaving you a single space to sleep. What kind of people are these, eh? People like these outsiders! the insiders speculated.

As a result wenye inchi, or the owners of the land or local people demanded more share of the national cake which were resources and above all else, absolute political power where one of their own was a presidential hopeful.

And when the treasures they sought for was not accommodating – i.e. memorandum of agreement on historical land injustices was not honored, and most of all the agreed political power sharing not respected, hostilities began. And with that belligerence came death, treachery and terror as the only option.

And now unlike some other days, helpless people wept to see their bomas or homes, business premises, farms and livestock in them, factories, fleets of commuter transport vehicles set alight and razed to the bare ground. Everywhere in Migingo was stained with human and animal blood. Those ever green valleys echoed with the cries of the those caught up in the middle of cross fire, as well as cries of the abandoned children, the sick and the elderly men and women.

And now the whole country and more particularly the Dell region, which was known as a beckon of peace had turned out to be a theatre of war, excessive greed, cupidity and covetous materialism. The local people who claimed the right ownership of the place, and who had inhabited this region for centuries now, had sought more and much more share of the country’s wealth.

And once they failed to get what they wanted from their own popularly elected African government, they asked those they labeled outsiders to leave the place. Immediately; there was no turning back. The outsiders had put their money and sweat and invested heavily in this land.

But the insiders said they had no business hanging about there or squatting on other people’s ancestral property. Yes, they believed, the land was exclusively theirs. VP Nyandege himself had bought and developed a piece of prime land with cattle grazing in it.

Just a few days before the Polling Day, VP Nyandege become aware of some chary young men and women who gathered in small groups of four to five people, and overheard them speaking in a mixture of English, Kiswahili and the newly fashioned manner of speaking christened Sheng language. These groups of so called insiders spoke in low tones, just above whispers.

Out of curiosity, VP Nyandege noticed sighs here and murmurs there among the people in those groups. And when some of them entered his Masogo supermarket along Julius Nyerere Avenue in Bwanda town, they continued to gossip in the same stumpy voices, avoiding to be heard. Sometimes they shushed …‘shsssss…’ the moment they saw someone moving closer to them. Out of the nosiness VP Nyandege wondered what could actually be amiss. This kind of tête-à-tête seemed to be out of the usual run of things, he thought.

And this went on and on ad infinitum, as if that self-appointed American clairvoyant, had once again made broadcast announcement that from the bottom of his very heart, and beyond any reasonable doubt, the whole world would be coming to the closing stages any time now, and cautioned people of the world that the clock was ticking.

And that all people of good faith should see some sense in what he had seen in his dream. That anybody and everybody should on the spur of the moment, sell all their material goods they had toiled to acquire on this wretched earth, in a frantic bid to become licensed to meet the criteria for entering the kingdom of Almighty God.

But if the property was put up for sale who would purchase it in view of the fact that the whole world was coming to an end for all those living on earth? Some reluctant people had argued. But this was not the case here right now. The prophet was in the United States, not here. The prevailing belligerence was caused by bungled presidential election, and many other issues attached to it.

Some other people VP Nyandege saw had been milling along Julius Nyerere Avenue and also within his spacious Masogo superstore. They used a combination of their own style of traditional body language and contemporary sign language. These people, young men and women, twitched and yanked their mouths, opened and closed their eyes, and winked countless times.

Many other people heaved and hauled their shoulders up and down to emphasize some points and convey some urgent message VP Nyandege himself never understood anything. And yet some other strangers swayed their hands this way and that. He saw two or three young men curve their fingers like the beak of a bird and wrote some figures and letters with these fingers on the air. Only those among them could read and understand those figures, and letters written on the air.

VP Nyandege who could read and write understood nothing, suspected something. As soon as a suspicious character moved closer to where they were standing and chatting, they all of a sudden became as silent as grass. VP Nyandege saw all these comings and goings in Julius Nyerere Avenue and inside his shop before his own very eyes.

Alas! What was going on here? VP Nyandege took another a keen gaze at those movements and actions, and concluded right away that something like bad news was noticeably in the offing not only in Bwanda town where he lived now, or the Dell region where he was, but Migingo republic as a whole.

Or they meant enough was enough of this domination of treasures in their Dell region. Or they might be saying –‘you outsiders, we’ll teaching you a lesson that you’ll never forget for the rest of your life.’

Before this time, wenye inchi or insiders had claimed rightly or wrongly that outsiders were grabbing anything and everything in their own backyard at a time when they, the insiders stood helplessly watching the illicit practice.

The outsiders had grabbed their prime land, taken their women, bought out their once insolvent business enterprises, and some other undertakings within their reach. But why? Just because they did not have the necessary requirements to be able to qualify to obtain bank loans and at the same time they didn’t have the required immense capital investment.

Above all, in their veins, flowed business blood. What was more, however, was that outsiders had their own commercial banks from which they could obtain loans for buying land and running businesses. Now the insiders or locals were left empty handed, and had nothing at all to call their own possessions, VP Nyandege recalled what he had heard many times before, the cause of the problem.

In view of these new-fangled developments in Bwanda town and other parts of the Dell province, VP Nyandege concluded right away that there could be something more grave and bubbling in the background that could cause more political upheaval than anything the recent whispers could let loose. And as it was now the outsiders in Bwanda town and hence the entire Dell region, were busy reviewing how they could ensure their survival and safety.

Under these overwrought state of affairs, irrespective of which side outsiders took in the fracas, VP Nyandege was told on cell-phone by a confidant, a London trained garment stylist, Kamlus Wetang’ula that signals were mixed and confusing. Kamlus Wetang’ula was the owner of Kimilili Tailoring Shop, a top fashion clothing store and a high-end boutique in Bwanda town. It seemed some frightened outsiders wanted to run away with the leaping and bouncing rabbits and at the same time they wanted to hunt with the chasing dogs.

Others felt they should stay put, come rain or sunshine, instead of running away when their homes and other properties were already on fire. Yes, the fearsome outsiders were burning the midnight oil, calculating how they could get out of this marinate. But VP Nyandege himself toyed with the idea of forming what he called ‘Elders Council of Unity, or ECU whose main aim was to bring together all the ethnic communities in the country.

Was this idea feasible? But the town walls continued be scarred as ethnic foot soldiers smeared buildings, using graffiti. In the night, they crawled in the cover of darkness and carried out their mission with nauseating ineptitude. The owners of premises left the walls clean in the evening, but by morning the entire town was littered with hate slogans and abhorrence messages.

Now in his residence in Chepalungu suburbia, Bwanda town, VP Nyandege could summon up in no uncertain terms those undertones and connotations, those hints and mumbles, those burbles and hums, those graffiti in public domains, and those wild rumors he had heard before.

He thought of this as he paced the master bedroom he had once considered and treated like a palace. And now, he had no choice but to be more watchful and more nosy. Yes, there was trouble in the country right now. And the core of the problem at the outset had something to do with the passionately contested and exceedingly undecided presidential ballot vote.

This particular place - the Dell region – where VP Nyandege and his family lived at present had given him all that he had prayed for, and all that he wanted in his life as a blessing from God Almighty. Over the years, he had tirelessly traded his own muscles and sacrificed his own sweat for the growing reassurance of his business empire, and of course for the convenience of his regular patrons who frequented his supermarket. Fair enough, over the years, the Dell region had become part of VP Nyandege’s life, and more so part of his whole world here on earth.

VP Nyandege took reasonably a long nostalgic account; ‘At times life in the Dell region had been mysteriously dark, taking a sort of perilous course. And at other times, though, life here had been festive, dappled with cuisine, victuals, gastronomy, etc. And lo, and behold! Most of the times it was like bathing in the warm and saccharine morning sunshine.’

Everyone was for himself or herself. Only the evil spirit was left behind to hold the tail. ‘Wow! We never got tired or got bored with the place. And we took pleasure in knowing that the region – Dell - also had an insatiable appetite for us, so called outsiders.’

VP Nyandege considered, ‘At some other times, however, we felt as though we were going to devour the place like a delicious rare repast. Even though, the writing had long before been scrawled up clearly on the wall by piti-piti night runners. It was like some sort of graffiti one would always find in public toilets or on walls of buildings, or scribbled on perimeter walls or inside bars and hotels. Their operating hours overlapped those of night runners, only that their mission was divergent.

The piti-piti hooligans smeared buildings, flyovers, and underpasses with gargantuan political slogans such as ‘Outsiders Must Go.’

‘We spat at the writing on the wall, calling it illegal hate speech, and ignored this stern warning altogether. But why? Simply because we had never warned ourselves before this time, that one day, which of course is today, hell may break loose. The militias have sprang out of their cocoons like the dangerous snake called cobra, hissing, loosening and spewing out venom,’ VP Nyandege recalled the sweet past which was gone, never to return.

And not so long ago, a fellow businessman, an outsider for that matter, and one of his close confidants, Njoroge Waiyaki, 53, had described VP Nyandege as a tall man whose knowledge and understanding of public life had made him strong enough to bend without breaking his back, or without infringing his spinal column. That of course meant that VP Nyandege was a man who could withstand any somber conditions, the same way the conditions were today.

And in the very same vein, it also meant that VP Nyandege knew all the tricks of business acumen, the know-how and expertise that had made his business blossom and outshine others.

So for that plus his public relations and dealings as well many other reasons, he created uncalled-for jealousy among fellow businessmen and women. They wondered why customers were not flooding their business premises like VP Nyandege’s. Why? They asked many questions and found no rejoinders.

Always busy in his Masogo supermarket, VP Nyandege built from the ground up through the years, the superstore that had become more than just a blossoming big business. It was now a symbol of hope and independence to him, and also to his wife Adah Akinyi he shared the shop with. Their three children, Daniel Osije, Magdalene Achupa and Christine Achunga were still young and were in boarding schools.

And for VP Nyandege’s exceptional success, based on personal solid achievement, and without being involved in the now rampant corrupt practices, another business colleague who well-liked him, Mogaka Nyakundi described VP Nyandege as an ostensible future of business industry in Bwanda town. But now, right now, Bwanda town and all the people living in it, were beleaguered and under attack by the local foot soldiers, and VP Nyandege knew straightaway that he couldn’t fight this looming mêlée.

Today was nothing like any other day. The brave VP Nyandege trembled at his own fears. Definitely his future was no longer here in Bwanda town in particular and the Dell region in general. And he wasn’t strong enough to face the intimidating Post Election Violence, PEV, that had just began with extreme vehemence. And unlike other days, he also felt quite vulnerable. In fact, VP Nyandege was deeply wounded at heart, and defenselessly too.

The perturbing nightmarish had left a trail of restlessness in his body and mind, and at this moment; yes, at this very flash, this awfully sec and this dreadful jiffy, he could clearly see that his own right hand couldn’t in all probabilities discern what the left hand was essentially doing, and verse versa.

And many times during the troubled electioneering campaign rallies, foregoing the polling day, VP Nyandege and Mogaka Nyakundi witnessed armed supporters of Pepe Party led by the incumbent president, Kyalo Kalulu met face to face with equally armed cohorts of Paradiso party fronted by Gala Gala What a horrifying brawl! What a blood-spattered scene!

They began by hurling earthy, rough and ready insults at one another. And at the height of it all they resorted to physical violence. They rained stones and heavy blows on one another. In some places, they used machetes and rungus or swags. And the result was devastating. Arms and legs of some victims were broken, and teeth thrown out.

Many youths bled profusely from severe head injuries, homes in rural villages were set alight and razed to the bare grounds. This happened anywhere and everywhere in Migingo while their leaders stood watching like incompetent soccer referees, arms akimbo.

The president in office, Kyalo Kalulu, was an engineer, a great politician and an indefatigable crusader, who was also reputed for being a great schemer. He was charismatic and compelling, and was hailed by his ardent cohorts as an insurmountable, unconquerable, unbeatable, and other words closely related ‘uns.’ Using his kazi iendelee or work continues campaign slogan during campaign period, the Pepe pary leader was the man to beat in the race. Soft spoken and charming on the surface, his interior was rock-solid.

On the other hand, president Kyalo Kalulu’s main rival, Gala Gala was a land surveyor, most people at grassroots level pronounced it as ‘land surbeya.’ He was described as a grand politician who could make grand mistakes by error of judgment. An unflagging and tenacious politician, only comparable to Germany’s 19th century first Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, Gala Gala wanted to unify the incongruent and copious Migingo ethnic communities.

In fact, he knew what was considered necessary to be done and did not bother to inquire about public opinion before embarking on the alliance process. For his ardent supporters, Gala Gala was popularly known as ‘God’s project’ or the ‘People’s Project,’ in his desperate bid to capture state house seat.

This time round, the word ‘project’ was on everybody’s lips. Others pronounced it as ‘oporojekti’ the same way they pronounced the word campaign as ‘kopen.’ Excellent on the dais, Gala Gala was supreme and unparalleled hoi-polloi rouser, a shrewd party organizer and a throng puller who was fond of using metaphors and parables, as well as other wise sayings. Not a soul in the times gone by in the country’s multi-party egalitarianism, could stimulate and inflame the masses like the soft spoken party leader Gala Gala.

And for these new developments, and also for the first time, other tribal communities came out openly, strappingly and stalwartly and said without mincing words that they were sick and tired of the frequent squabbles and violent power struggle, oath taking to appease ancestors, and clinging to power, using swear words, wrangling and backbiting between the two ethnic communities where Kyalo Kalulu and Gala Gala beyond doubt and rightly belonged.

‘Hey, enough of this perpetual ethnic bickering,’ VP Nyandege had heard this copious times. ‘Today, they grumble over this, and tomorrow you hear objections and protests there throughout the country.’

‘Frankly speaking, only the main ethnic communities right here in Migingo nation state, are a thorn in the wounded flesh. They are known to be causing incessant headaches and disorders year in and year out. The other communities, have always lived peacefully, sociably and graciously with one another. But these two arrogant bigheaded tribes! God forbid!’ VP Nyandege heard from people.

VP Nyandege was talking to himself about this like a mad man, and yet he was obviously infuriated by the present variance to the extent of becoming mad. Imagine that each of the two tribes could not sleep a wink at the thought of the other taking away all resources in the country. Or if they were drowsy, worn-out, and sluggish these twosome tribes slept with only one eye wide open because of the horror of the other! Pow!

You could see this even in your own mind’s eye, that one tribe claimed to have massive wealth, some of it buried deep down underground somewhere, hidden in their farms. And some other booty pickings was quickly wired abroad and stashed safely in secret foreign bank accounts either in Europe or in the United States using phony names. But why? Well, in case something… yes, incredible thing like bad premonition happened.

And yet the other ethnic group, their sworn enemy, boastfully talked of massive and first class brainpower, not obtained on a silver platter, but through many years of book learning culture. And now as they were marketing their superior knowledge through in many countries around the world in exchange for diminutive money, their unfortunate academicians, in villages splitting firewood for an illiterate chang’aa or an illicit alcohol brewer to earn a living because they could not find jobs under the sky.

An unschooled village woman had created a job for a professor, as a casual worker, to eke out a living! Wow! Western mode or concept of education, VP Nyandege thought was an embarrassing failure in Africa.

Really between the professor who split firewood into bits and pieces for making kumi kumi, or ten-ten shillings brew a glass, tidit or whistle blowing, or even kill-me-quick distilled home-made brew and the woman entrepreneur who had nothing in the head, but had become a job creator and an employer of the renown professor. Really who should idiosyncratically and uniquely be called a professor? The woman or the scholar? VP Nyandege wondered.

He had heard all these interesting palavers as diffused by word of mouth in social joints and also through the mass medium during the electioneering campaign rallies, when the presidential hopefuls traveled across the country in convoys of caravans, dressed fashionably in bright colored party uniforms.

Migingo republic - other communities pronounced it Migingo because they didn’t have letter ‘g’ in their alphabet - was the only country in the whole world where money and brain were used as ‘weapons of mass destruction’ to fight one another and to compete vehemently in the election to outdo one another.

They used money and brain to acquire elective positions in councils, parliament and state house and also in other certified and cerebral, or bookish disciplines for them to live in comfort.’

VP Nyandege recalled what he had personally heard and even seen in the full glare of many other people during the campaign period. The candidates dished out money treated with charm from witchdoctors, and thought that this once stunning country Migingo was going bananas.

Another day, VP Nyandege heard right from the horse’s mouth a pot- bellied billionaire who was wearing a pair of short khaki trousers, a t-shirt and blue rubber sandals, saying boastfully and swaggeringly in conked out English; ‘Oh, I’m money, I’m sky scrappers, I’m supermarket chains, I’m a fleet of buses and a chain of hotels, and if don’t forget I’m a chopper. I can employ those people, so called arrogant professors and pay them well and better salaries than their employers.’

And in the same vein, a professor from a rival ethnic group, claimed he had not only a chain of degrees, bottom up, and to be more specific seven degrees. That he had worked with the United Nations in Europe, Africa and Asia and in many other countries around the world. Hence, he was loaded with unmatched experience, intelligence and superior brains.

The guy was again heard pompously, conceitedly and sanctimoniously saying; ‘I didn’t see you at Harvard University in the United States, or at Oxford and Cambridge Universities when I was a studying in the United Kingdom. So note that right inside your head there is nothing but an empty cell.’

‘Oh, people like these communities! Oh, these arrogant whistleblowers proud of their education and money! People who’re full of themselves, fond of taking oath against other tribes. People fighting at the expense of others! Tribes like these rival communities! Certainly this kind of behavior is only akin to either unacceptable and pointless aplomb, but more so akin to total discomfiture and gracelessness!’ again voice whispered within VP Nyandege. ‘Unnecessary self-importance, and excessive greed. Over ambition to achieve this or that thing must be outweighed by the Biblical plea of love thy neighbor as thyself.’

‘So you think so?’ his wife asked him.

‘So I don’t think so, but I know. I’m very much on familiar terms with what’s going on in our country, Migingo. Oh, Migingo, this nation state is a land of dreamers, and a land of rebels. There are times for merriments and also times for mourning the dead. You see, Adah, God gives people wealth and brains, but how they use those brains and wealth is not up to Him,’ said VP Nyandege to his wife and went on.

‘Some wealth is ill-gotten, and the culprits go unpunished and end up leaving behind empires of stolen wealth. It’s up to the recipients who are their children to make use of the wealth and brains given to them on a silver platter,’ he said.

‘Sure, yes,’ she said.

‘Therefore, it’s hard to believe that this is the very same message we often hear the bleating goats at Ahero trading centre and Marigat market place have been trying to convey to the general public, in spite of the fact that the actual message delivered to the public by God is either unclear or incomplete,’ said VP Nyandege and paused.

His wife Adah Akinyi heard him mumble some words and saw him shaking his head violently in disapproval of what was happening in the country.

‘The goats eat maize, oranges, and bananas gluttonously on top of lorries because the drivers of the vehicles can come any time to drive them away with the produce. Or it’s the same thing as saying that the hungry domesticated beasts at Marigat market would climb on top of the pickup trucks, using their little brains to get to the leaves of the greenest shrubs on the trees above the pick-up. And each effort gives the goats absolute buoyancy and self-assurance,’ he said to her.

‘So what do you really mean, VP?’ she asked,

‘What I mean is that at the end of the day, the animals eating fruits on top of the trucks climb down one after another and leave the scenes at Ahero market and Marigat more informed and more educated and bleatingly satisfied than those who claim to be learned and wealthy. What happens in the process is that the goats wait for other trucks and pick-up vans to arrive at the same fruits later in the day, or the next day to eat and gorge themselves without paying for them, and without raising hell,’ VP Nyandege retorted. ‘What I mean Adah is simple - that the adversary communities in this country Migingo should follow in the footsteps of the goats because they have no sense of thinking and feeling like human beings, if not…’ he said.

‘If not what?’ she asked.

‘If not, these bothersome tribes should be forcibly removed from the country, the same way a disgusted farmer wholly uproots weeds with the entire roots that choke his maize or sorghum crops in his farm and throw them into a huge heap of rubbish, and set them on blazing fire,’ said VP Nyandege with tears in his eyes. ‘Do these tribes think they own the whole country? Do they think they are more important than others? And even before God, we’re all equal. So they shouldn’t think that they own other forty plus tribes in the country, and that without them, other citizens cannot survive.’

‘I heard some of them boastfully saying that they are in possession of the entire country as employers and landlords. Others said they owned this nation by imparting knowledge into every daft and empty heads, and that all the people in it are in their pockets,’ she said. ‘Even some Members of Parliament say immodestly that they were not elected by the voters.’

‘Lo, and behold!’ he wondered. ‘Not elected by voters? So who elected them to the esteemed National Assembly?’

‘The MPs say they were elected by their own money,’ she said.

‘Money not voters?’ he wondered.

‘Money, not votes.’

Some eligible voters, sold their own sacred votes and souls to the highest bidding candidates for little money that disappeared within moments before the Polling Day. The wealthy candidates bought them like a trader buying cattle at an auction for slaughter at the Migingo Meat Commission, MMC. Earlier on, the voters had bargained by shouting; ‘Jatelo or leader, set me free and I’ll also genuinely set you free,’ as the common expressions in rural constituencies implied.

The voters said; ‘Yours is mine, or ‘chuth ber’ or tumalizana hapa hapa, which meant ‘let’s conclude the deal here right now, once and for all, then unnecessary chitchat would be over. The wannabe candidates understood the language of the electors’ on the ball and it was also a tempting language. The candidates dug their hands deeper and deeper into their pockets – the way a builder digs the new foundation under construction - and coughed out outsized sums of stolen money which had also been enamored by witchcraft so that they could be duly elected to parliament.

The stark naked and elderly witchdoctor put the money is an open gunia or sack, danced around the money, swaying a flywhisk, and enchanting words in a ‘foreign’ language as he communicated with ancestors in the full stare of the prospective candidate. Sometimes the tricky gamble worked for the MPs like magic, sometimes it never worked even a bit, VP Nyandege brought that to his mind.

‘This means our country is a ‘madiba’ Zulu word for swamp - of course not nickname for Nelson Mandela of South Africa, but a swamp of deeply rooted corruption - dishonesty, carrot, lying, bribery, etc,. And in the swamp, or madiba, we know, there are deadly creatures like marauding crocodiles, venomous snakes, pillaging hippos, and what have you,’ VP Nyandege told himself.

So in any election process, and more so in the republic of Migingo, it was nothing but money speaking its single and only one of its kind language. It was now, the preferred language of the people during this election time. Everybody understood and spoke eloquently this new found language. Those who couldn’t speak it were unfortunate. It didn’t matter whether you were schooled or unschooled. The language was designed and produced for anybody and everybody across the board.

It was also the time when no voter within his or her right senses wake up at dawn, walk in the rain or through the thick mass of mud, go to a polling booth and vote for a shrewd university don without money. The scholar who had spent many years in institutions of higher learning as a student and as an academic to achieve that honor would unfortunately not see inside parliament, if he failed to dish out the much sought for commodity called money. And as in parliament, ‘Nay had it.’

Scholastic and intellectual honor for that matter was earned as a great compliment, while politics was like street vending business where sometimes you either sell counterfeit and cheap goods from China or you don’t need permanent premises. Oh, yes, politics in Migingo was in itself money. Money, money, and money. Nothing else, but money.

Who in his right senses would elect a contender for council, parliamentary and state house seats without money exchanging hands? Who without money attached, or with empty hands? And of course don’t ever forget this Kiswahili language parable that mkono mtupu hailambwi, that’s, even if you stick out your tongue at its full length, you can’t get the better of the open swipe of the palm if it’s practically empty.

And yet again a voice whispered within VP Nyandege; ‘I suppose that God Almighty should not bother to find the middle ground because things in this country have gone out of control. The best thing the supernatural being can do right now, is to banish these two wrangling tribal communities from this beautiful land, Migingo, the same way Botswana’s founder father of the independent nation, Sir Seretse Khama, was banished by his Bamang’wato tribe as a chastisement for saying I do to a white English woman, Lady Khama.

Alternatively, he thought, these bigheaded, high and mighty tribes should be expelled from Migingo, the same way King Pharaoh of Egypt drove out the Israelis led by Nabi or prophet Moses at the same time with members of the Luo tribal community from the land of Egypt.

The Israelis took forty years to arrive at the Promised Land of Canaan, the land of milk and honey, while the Luo sojourners led by their ancestor, Ramogi Ajwang’ accompanied by his eight wives, took unknown or nameless years to reach Imbo Kadimo on the western shores of Lake Victoria.

In that case, though, VP Nyandege earnestly pleaded with Almighty God in his zealous, passionate and hushed prayer to help take these two haughty and supercilious tribes very far away from this country to leave others stay in peace. Almighty could squeeze them in one basket like a fisherman hauling and transporting those tiny little omena fish in a net.

Or carry these tribes like a swarm of bees, air lift them like an over swollen balloon, the same way Tom Mboya airlifted the great Prof Wangari Muta Maathai, Hussein Onyango Obama, father of US President Barack Obama, Odinge Odera, and others to the United States for further studies. Or leave them alone in a place like island countries like Cyprus, Australia, Indonesia, or New Zealand. Or simply fashion one new island country for these trouble makers and drop them there with a big bang and let them fight and slay one another there until the last person. That’s all, VP Nyandege thought.

And other tribes, hopping mad and furious, shouldn’t be allowed to gang up against these wrangling communities and shouldn’t even take part in any way. And if that wasn’t the best way, nonetheless, the tribes shouldn’t be allowed to continue causing chaos and mayhem here because development reforms were very important to the peace loving people of this country. In that case this country would be a better place to live in, or would remain serene and calm