My son, I look at you now, with that same hopeful glint in your eyes, and a part of me aches, knowing what shadows might yet fall across your path. I suspect I know your despair, for I too was once there. In 1982, I first discovered Kenya was not special. The illusion of an island of peace shattered, and the country spiraled. I remember the silence that fell over our streets, the distant burst of gunfire and the frantic whispers of my parents. It was then, seeing the raw terror in their once-assured eyes, the whisper of civil war, a phantom thought, rooted itself in my young mind. The idea that even neighbours could turn in a moment of rapture. The 1982 coup attempt burst my bubble of assumption; I saw real terror and helplessness in my parents.

After ’82, a heavy, unspoken blanket descended upon our home, and indeed, the whole country. It wasn’t just that no one spoke of it; it was the way conversations would abruptly cease when a certain date was mentioned, the way our elders’ eyes would glaze over with a pained look while watching a political rally on TV. The most potent memory: a history of hangings, the death penalty, and broken men returning as ghosts. 

From then on, life was different and we had to piece this brokenness together for ourselves. What was the root of this unspoken fear? How did we sense its presence in the air from the words of our leaders? Words were no longer words. We found an understanding of oppression in books and plays long before we learned to see and recognise what it looked like. My loss-of-innocence decade was the 90s: the Saba Saba demonstrations, the ethnic clashes – a benign term for state-backed tribal militias burning villages, killing, and displacing “outsiders”. The St. Kizito school tragedy, a horrific incident where male students invaded a girls’ dormitory, resulting in the rape and the deaths. It was the decade that Robert Ouko was murdered. The gruesomeness of it all. A prominent and respected foreign minister. One of the boys. Why did he die? Envy I heard, he forgot his place. 

We never processed these collective national tragedies. It was easier to suppress memories, which is why I keenly recall what shattered my illusions.  Fear became the air we breathed, a constant, low hum beneath every interaction. Anger simmered just beneath the surface, a fleeting spark that, once expressed, vanished, leaving only a hollow ache. I had to make sense of it all and I found some understanding of oppression in the literature of the scholars. Ngugi wa Thiong’o urged decolonization to see our recreation. Chinua Achebe described the knife put to what held us together, causing us to fall apart. From Grace Ogot, I found Tekayo – a monster who couldn’t contain its demons, living among us, one of us.

To live under oppression is knowing who you are not allowed to criticise. It means understanding the untouchables and unknowables.From our elders’ veiled quiet, we discerned the depth of their unspoken losses. The only thing we never seem to lose is our fear. By university, I knew the country was unsafe for youth. Tito Adungosi, Solomon Muiruli – bravehearts who died young. My own brief dance with fearlessness, buoyed by the righteous mob, didn’t last. I remember the blunt, unyielding force of a rungu missing my back by inches, the acrid bite of tear gas in my lungs, and the blank, bloodshot eyes of a police officer on the prowl. In that moment, I finally understood what my father could never articulate: this system, this monstrous entity, wasn’t just uncaring; it was utterly, coldly indifferent, crushing anyone who dared to stand in its path.

Millennials have their versions of lost innocence: 2007 and 2017, the seismic years of post-election violence. And now, watching you Gen Zs, I see that same flicker of dawning realization in your eyes, perhaps heightened during the June 2024 Anti-finance bill demonstrations. I  see your fears through the frames of abductions, forced disappearances and the deaths of your peers. We feared police informers infiltrating our safe places. You face Pegasus technology, living in devices, marking the daring for abduction, torture, even death, for speaking too much truth. Every generation, my son, faces its own moment when the world, once a boundless canvas of possibility, shrinks and reveals its harsh truths. 

Each generation believes in a hierarchy of suffering, mine worse than yours. Yet, my son, what truly unites us across these turbulent decades isn’t just the memory of struggle, but a shared, profound grief. Each generation may believe its suffering is unique, but deep down, we grieve for the same things: lost opportunities, fractured dreams, senseless loss of life. We speak as survivors which indeed we are, because so many slipped through the cracks of a broken system. So many are still lost to illness. Healthcare costs are a constant stalker; no family avoids the exorbitant bill standing between a loved one’s life and death.

As you get older, my son, you might find cynicism a steady, albeit bitter, companion. All the vibrant hope, once a roaring fire, might feel like it’s been slowly extinguished, only for the same old problems to return, dressed in new, deceptive costumes. The saints of yesterday, you’ll discover, often become tomorrow’s sinners – a conversion so remarkably consistent it’s almost a cruel joke. This is why these days, my peers sigh and say, ‘We don’t have a country here,’ and the resignation is palatable in our voices. 

 Every next conversation begins with, things are hard. You watch the desperation: a population surviving on handouts, living hand-to-mouth, paycheck-to-paycheck. Lives stripped of dignity. No income, no economic security. 

I am 50 already. No chance of joining the privileged classes, nor do I fantasize anymore about ‘my turn to eat’. There is no individual accountability or need to worry about a good name. Look at the police service. A few good men tried to reform it but the thugs in uniform multiplied like amoeba. It’s a system that takes our own, twisting them into instruments of fear against the population they once belonged to. 

Look how much we’ve lost. Our cherished cultural values, the hallowed traditions of utu, are now paper-thin, leaving nothing to show for those grand words of uprightness. There was a time when people, strangers even, could get together to send a child to university overseas. There was a time you could knock your neighbours down to ask for salt. There was a time in this Nairobi, boys could catch small fishes in its rivers. 

The theft of government funds for personal gain is so normal, we would certainly be offended or suspicious if a newly appointed governor remained modest and didn’t seem to have any visible investments to show for their time in office. How do they expect to help their people? 

Pilfering public funds, once mastered, becomes addictive. If there was ever a case of honour among thieves, our political class and their cronies in the private sector, epitomise it. The trust is completely broken. Like the partner caught in repeated cycles of infidelity, it is safer for sanity to assume guilt until proven innocent. Too many clean men and women have entered leadership positions and turned like werewolves, infested by the grip of power and the code of survival. 

So now, when we hear of morals and ethics, it’s the government pleading with citizens to moderate anger after a violation. ‘Respect the law. Don’t joke with stability.’ Irrespective of power’s actions, only citizens are accountable. 

The law has its untouchables. Those who must be forgiven for excesses of power. After all, as the colonialists taught us, Kenyans are hard headed people. Authorities have to be firm with them. We view institutions as facades, for we are entrapped in a cycle of despair, disconnect and apathy. 

What shall we do? The children look at us and they can see our brokenness, the easy resignation, and everything that we compromise in exchange for peace of mind. It stems from exhaustion. Those continuous tiny stabs eventually take a toll. In this state of despair, we become vulnerable to new fears, and old patterns of thought re-emerge. Remember when the rise of ‘terrorists’ became a tyrant’s convenience, a tool to drive citizens back into their fold Like abused children, we became a case study of Stockholm Syndrome – explaining our abusers’ anger, even seeing their side of the story. 

This is a natural response to the possibility of death. When we feel threatened by something from outside our realm of familiarity, we cling to the things that give us our meaning and stability. Within our in-groups, anything threatening stability must be attacked. I don’t have to look too far, that fear lives in me, the future, unpredictable again. Hope is dangerous. Fear is a better compass in this territory. Assume the worst. Like a child fearing the dark, visualize your nightmares. Then, walk through life, seeking their confirmation. 

This isn’t crazy talk. The algorithm tells me more of my kind exist, a tribe seeing the same threat, even if politically incorrect to voice. We have history with our threat and we never forget our place. Don’t be like yesterday’s immigrants: once a societal necessity, now a menace to be shown no mercy, treated as an infestation calling for fumigation. Have we always been this easy to divide, you may ask? 

The elites, the overlords, their gatekeepers, are better at identifying the threat. What about the rest of us? What to do with our training in hate and our fears of the unknown. Whose turn to be dehumanized? Whose story must be forgotten, unseen, so as not to disturb our peace? Change takes time, so we’re told to be peaceful even facing violence. Pacifism doesn’t guarantee your security because that long arm of oppression knows no bounds. Better to be unseen, lie low like an envelope was the cultural wisdom of the old. 

Dashed hopes crush us, prompting us to share this pessimism, to moderate expectations of change. You weren’t very different from us. We were once starry-eyed, hopeful, until adulthood arrived without ceremony. What to make of my life in the past decade. Nothing to show, other than a child that I can barely afford to feed. Be kind to us. Allow us to nurse our traumas in peace. No one understands unless they’ve been with us; it’s an inescapable feeling. You too must become like us: embrace this emptiness of unfulfilled potential and learn to survive. 

That is what we all do; it keeps us grounded and united in purpose. You may think of running away to a different country where they respect humanity and harness potential. We know many who did and still got lost, because these monsters lurk everywhere. Choose carefully what and who you cry for.

This is why we remain polarized, divided. How else to address collective trauma and grief without my group’s support? Those who understand me. Those who speak my language. This is the cycle we’re caught in: grief and division. 

Are there any healers on the horizon? We know they won’t come from the authorities or those ‘beautiful’ institutions we pay for. Who are the new leaders? How do you recognize them? How can you be sure they won’t be like the rest, like all the great hopes my naive younger self rested upon? Where are the artists, the novelists, the musicians. Please give us the words to express this grief. 

I am not crazy, my son. I am just tired of being told to be ‘resilient.’ Tired of patching over the wounds. I don’t want to move on. There is nothing truly ‘on the other side’ if we don’t first come to terms with this grief. At least this sadness is real. It is something I can hold onto, something that connects me to others. Perhaps, what we learn—what I hope you learn—is to embrace this void of not knowing, not as a weakness, but as a space where something truly connecting us can begin to breathe. Like a young person, unafraid to walk into the dark, knowing that even in the shadows, there is a path to be found, even if it’s one we forge ourselves.

P.S. This reflection on grief’s inheritance is drawn from my reflections on the ones we lost and meditations on grief, and healing. It forms part of a series of insights drawn from my upcoming book, Strength and Sorrow, where I delve deeper into these universal experiences and the pathways to finding healing amidst loss.