Philo Ikonya
Philo Ikonya is a writer, journalist and human rights activist from Kenya. Her articles and books often cover the current political situation in Kenya. She was the president of Kenya's branch of PEN, the international association of writers. After several arrests for her activism and a severe beating in 2009 while in police custody, she left Kenya in political exile.
Quotes
[edit]- On my cell-phone the time is 3.00am. I am not holding a religion in my hand to check the hour, just a cell phone to orient me. This is a June morning and it is cold here. I turn in my bed and close my eyes. The map of Kenya appears first vaguely on my mind. It has no in-land features but this shape I see is definitely hers. Burning borders. Red inside. It is not the red of wine or even Christmas. We are not in celebration. Inside burning borders she is a deep reddish brown color; angry red. Coffee red. It is a red which disturbs my mind. [....] The taste of injustice is bitter. It kills the minds and souls of the living. How do we close chapters of the pain of a nation without closure? You are new. I know you. I love you, Kenya. From your earth, your soil, I was created because it is your earth my parents ate. Yet still, I have to ask you if I can step on your soil today. If you can please accept me to walk on you here and there, for this I will always plead. My feet you see, are my heart! They love you. I feel your pain directly from the soil into my heart when I walk on you. And you have been hurt so many times.
- beautiful my beloved,
The sun rises and sets in you gently, over rivers and valleys and desert, sea and mountains. You are so wonderful my country, You allow me to walk on you, you make me. The moon of change rises and sets in you…
Change will melt in, and rise again…to meet the stars… And I wish you to marry, and if you would, marry mi. But the pain of estrangement is hidden in your eyes.
Why this map of pain? Kenya, will you marry mi? My happiness would fill the earth and the seven seas, and we could take away the pain if you marry me. But how will you marry mi, if they mutilate you and mi so? Tell them to leave your body alone. I cannot live and watch you marry violence. You marry pain, I would you married mi, Change whilst changing. I died the death of love- change, only together can we both rise again. Change. I have put, a triangle across Kenya, uniting people and people, sharing land and resources. And mixing peoples, with different genes and stories.
Kenya will be home when you do this. The North can have part of the South, who said your compass cannot dance? The east can have a part of Central and North.
Who said you only knew one chance? But here: It is my warning before your eyes with red and yellow phosphorescent lights it blinks so that you do not have another nightmare, accidents you have had none it was in designed.
Stop. And think. Before the politician, takes music and makes it his. Takes the church and makes it hers. Takes your granary, and eats all your maize. Takes your vote, and turns it into hate blood. Takes your dreams, and turns them, into nightmares. Look. See. You might see me in the wind. and think you know me. Like a whirlwind that begins to gather dust at your feet, dancing a little bit, blows and is over, and you say you have seen me, but you have not. You might see me in papers that come out freshly from a printing press with words impressed on them like kisses, and, after many years of fear and pain, talking, and say you have seen me, you have not.
You might see me in the rain after a drought. You might see me in a river that washes its banks as it shrinks year after year and say you saw me. I am not here. Know my name. I want you to. Know who I am so that you will know me, when we meet.
I introduce myself early, to wipe out confusion. Names are important to me, call me by my real one. There are too many fake ones floating around.
You tired of hearing the word Change I take particular care, Change is my name.
My name, like it or not gets mutilated often. You can hardly recognize her, for all the circumcisional cuts.
In the mouth, You tell her not to speak. On her body not to move. On her head, you take her hair off, damning her river of reason, you cut her again. My name, you ban. My hands you restrict to my own body. From my feet you cut moves.
And in my heart you mutilate my love. And I come back proposing anew. I am made of love. My brain is all over me. My feet can tell you, I must move, I must talk. See Change.
Don’t mix me up with coins or even bank notes, that a fat politician brings you for an election talking about an erection.
I am not bar change. Am not shop change. Be they big or small. You laugh. That is what you make me when you see votes. Small change, big only in money. Destructive.
I am Change, Not in a language that means turn the other side, of the same coin. I am change not in languages that mean replace. I take new forms, and walk through them alive, like fire that welds not burns to ashes.
Like Mau Forest, I shed all my moisture, to Trans-Nzoia river, I want to pass by and leave new shoots of sugarcane. In leadership too, the Nyando flows.
From Kipkarren to Koru, I will re-fly my works. In the Tana, new life without crocodile messages of death.
Mbagathi will go to Athi and will listen.
I do not have many rivers embrace me now, before the Nile leaves you and Sango laughs. Atrocity to behold nyawawa defeated.
Let me re-make my lakes. the Nile, must do that in Africa.
When they say I have come, I have not, till the people you see, rise and embrace me.
When I come, like for new shoots of cane, there will be songs, sang in every mat and hut, that remain of the past chewing me. Look me as a people, all eyes and ears. I am not one person, I must sit tall in institutions, beginning with the matatu. Universities respected and learning.
If you want to know when freedom is about to die, look there in those two places, and at police in attitudes with class, bodies most holy; trashed with laughter and cheer.
Look at State House; it is built on a wetland. Relocate it. Take it to dry lands, Or lake lands.
Look at dead words in the palace of parle, Parliament. Move it. And at best, build it on the Athi that flows, so it sees Kilimanjaro and is reminded of Nyerere, as it passes through our villages and speaks our hearts,
as it flows through deserts, and feels our pains. I told you when you marry mi, You will not need to be told, How sweet I can be.
You will show it, in your own smiling fields, pregnant with crop and honey money.
In ringing freedom in the media, where the machete of tongue and pen hide. Before you fail to see me Look how beautiful you are, in the mirror of change. Change. Love mi.