I traveled to Busia District on the morning of September 4, 2010 to burry my grandfather, the late Mzee Wilson Ouma Mujaro, 63, who was laid to sleep alongside his ancestors at Budungera village, Masinya (former Masafu) Sub-County in Busia District, having lost a protracted battle against throat cancer.

Mzee Wilson Ouma was a clergy who lived an exceptionally exemplary life and left behind a legacy of honesty, hard-work and goodwill. None of his clansmen and kindred would measure to his integrity.

It would not be an exaggeration to assert that he was beyond reproach and controversy in every respect. He was voted by his diocese as the most transparent clergy: he never abused any coin and he followed the church's budgetary allocations to the letter.

He served his parishioners in the humblest and lowliest of circumstances. His cassock was by far as bright as his heart, by the time of his death.      

It was my dearest uncle who sent me that disquieting message of Mzee Ouma's death. A sharp cry of grief tore from my chest through my throat: a joke it had been and perhaps a mistake by the sender, I thought, but, alas, how true it was!

I moved composedly to my uncle to get the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about the old man's death. There lay the truth, as bare as a dog's bare teeth!

In the demise of Mzee Ouma, we, the Badoli clan, have lost a councilor, good judge and good listener. Though death looks-out for the good and bad alike, it has robbed us of a man we all admired and looked to. Rest in peace Mzee Wilson Ouma Mujaro! Well- lived and well-served. As the Good Book promises, we shall all meet there one day.

There was something strange, as strange as a night whirlwind, a night-dancer's handiwork I would say, that tried to dishonour the peaceful and joyous send-off ceremony of my late grandfather.

Something I found not out-of-the-ordinary with the NRM politicians who had turned my grandfather's funeral into a battle ground. Like hungry hounds or vultures cheering over dead carcass, they all came out in a show of wealth, power and pomp flashing their thumps-up signs.

It is not bad for a politician to share a moment of grief with the bereaved, but it is more than satanic to use the occasion to tell lies- moreover invoking the name of the dead!

One of them, a contestant for the district woman MP, committed blasphemy as to tell a lie through her teeth that, before his death, my grandfather had seen her in a vision and subsequently endorsed her as the next woman Member of Parliament for Busia district.

I wondered how my grandfather could say such a thing given his record of not telling lies. Ripping-off the dead!

If my grandfather was not lying there dead, I do not know what lie Barbra would have invented this time round, but all the same she would have invented a lie since NRM thrives on lies.

There was pandemonium when the entire host of NRM, in a show of out-doing and backstabbing each other, hijacked the ceremony and delayed the burial. People who had come from far a field, and needed to travel back as soon as the burial was done, were at a loss of what to do as the politicians were still haggling over voters.

Using my grandfather's funeral as a platform for jostling and scrambling for votes is a deed that even the dead could not contain. In some bizarre instances, what the politicians did would prompt the dead to rise up in fury. Had my grandfather been a chaotic person, I trust his ghost would have arisen to wreck havoc to these politicians who were dishonouring and lying by his name.

I also learnt from this nasty experience that NRM politicians, besides having any slightest regard for any soul, do not hold any respect for even the dead. Their work is to trample over anyone they find in their way, including the dead.

That politician (Barbra) who lied and swore by the name of my grandfather (to the extent of blaspheming that the dead man had seen her in a vision as the next woman MP) is as good as a loser.

Barbra should not think that she can walk to my grandfather's coffin and say whatever rubbish she had to say and walk away with it- the NRM style. She should instead go to my grandfather's grave and sue for peace, if she ever dreams of winning. She should also seek the forgiveness of the Badoli clan members.

Tradition holds that it is sacrilege to disturb the peace of the dead. Disturbing the peace of the dead would be met with dire consequences. And a person who disturbed the dead lived a cursed life, him and his entire household.

It is only under the NRM government that I have seen the dead ridiculed and scandalized. How else could we explain the graveyards that have fallen to the hands of investors?

This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it blog comments powered by Disqus

< Prev		Next >