THE HIGHER ART OF KILLING
The sparkle of coalition diplomacy presumes that both Principals will be around at the lapse of the interim period to contest power within a reworked constitutional framework.
These thoughts are wont to fly in the eye whenever a genial photojournalist captures either the ODM or PNU negotiators disembarking from the same plane as if in total spite of the recent history. In 2002, Kenyans were shocked to see a manifest of cabinet Ministers and their understudies crash on takeoff at Busia aerodrome. Graca Machel’s presence also reminds us of her first husband’s demise from a controlled-flight-into-terrain (CFIT) enroute home to Mozambique.
The Marsabit tragedy that killed ten eminent persons on a peace mission was another Narc watch flight that should have served as caution enough. Regardless, it is generally accepted that it was Germanic fascism that made blind obedience to temporal commands the highest virtue of skilled man and put a premium on servility. Most of diplomatic flight is operant in nature the dangers notwithstanding.
It is not enough for us to forget that the Habiyarimana – Bizimungu flight shoot down that precipitated the Rwanda genocide was such a plot. Without mention of Dr. John Garang’s mysterious copter crash, the question begs; who runs the politician’s flight schedule fortune glass?
Legislators have of late invoked a wolf cry demanding twenty-four hour security at tax payer’s expense. The assumption has to be that such threats can only be executed through overt assassinations. Far from it: there is a new theory on the ‘higher art of killing’.
It posits silent liquidations that make death appear as natural as possible. It is derived from the El Nino factor. When warm currents hit continental shore and push away cold water, fish die because warm water has less oxygen. Such water is unable to support algae, the fishes’ vital pudding. While fishermen waste away from low catch, third party birds of prey starve.
Aeroplane flight can become a form of disposal where caution has been thrown out of the window. Derelict aerodromes like the then Busia combined with flamboyant ignorant politicians flown onto suspect runways without stop ways or clearways are an odd combination for unmitigated disasters. Mist (low stratus) offers perfect stealth for induced incursions (runway collisions) on high altitude aerodromes.
Partially depressurized cabins or un-pressurized flight is enough to dispense a known alcoholic into hypoxia stupor. An intoxicated body has low ability to absorb oxygen, a gas that is already rear at high altitude. Politicians who still think that beautiful stewardesses are carried aloft to serve hot snacks at cruise should also ask one to explain what loss of humidity means in flight.
Private jets and their confined cabins are the most vulnerable of cages for a singular target.Where pilots have separate flight suits, emergency descent from 30,000 feet AMSL is a gamble in congested airspace. Nitrogen bubbles might form in a passenger’s blood stream if action is delayed. Besides, these cabins are no less effective than Hitler’s carbon monoxide meat vans.
These options would not be designed to kill. Like detention without trial which can be used to project a stroke, the sole purpose is to induce health deterioration in a maintenance class politician. While a victim is left thinking of post flight blues to be the proverbial jet lag, the mission is deemed a success when it impacts on the target’s health three or four years time. None between supporter or nemesis would be the wiser.Poor health is a disqualifier of political office in any version of constitutional blue print.
Fuel spiking is an old trick. Investigations and autopsy results would only create a martyr out of a perceived traitor to regional peace; traitor, that is, in the eyes of the phantom executioners.
When Yuri Gagarin - the first man in space - crashed in his MiG15 on the Ides of March 14, 1964, another pilot who had zapped Yuri’s flight path creating enough wake turbulence to stall the tiny MiG15 was initially held suspect. Though discarded later, the wake turbulence theory helped Russians understand why world war planes dropped out of the sky without being shot at after encountering the wake of heavy bodied friendly bombers.
Likewise, the first pilot to fly supersonic American Chuck Yeager nearly perished on another subsonic flight. His plane’s controls jammed in a spin. Height and slowed speed - not experience - saved him. Pilots who had died in the same type of fighter had to be exonerated posthumously. Investigations revealed that an elderly man at the assembly line had been inserting a bolt upside down. At certain speeds and attitudes, the controls jammed. Put another way for local politicians, at certain speeds and attitudes the controls of an aircraft can be rigged to jam. Nobody needs an altitude bomb to pull of a Bruce Mackenzie stunt anymore.
Kenya’s first person to die of an airplane accident was Madame Maia Carberry. It happened – again – the Ides of March 12, 1928. This lady of wings was such a polished pilot that at the material time she was giving flight instructions to a student who perished with her. Most settlers and pundits of the Happy Valley set believed she could only have been sabotaged. Short of that they were prepared to credit her cremation within a suicide farewell.
Even without taking issue with our politicians call for more security - they deserve it - personal vigilance is an obligation to base survival. There is no justification for Kenyan politicians to be seen boarding planes as if in contempt of the (2002) Muthoga inquiry. To the average citizen, these sardine flights are becoming a sorry character.
To others it might just be the opportune moment to validate an El Nino stealth run. As discerning Kenyans watch them enplane, they are left with no options but to wish them ‘sera sera’.
Someone just has to say it; Politicians, beware the Ides of Flight!
END.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Death In The Sky..What Kenyan Parliament Need Do!
Marende’s Challenge More Than Kreigler’s Spin.
By Maina Hatchison.
The person and Office of the Speaker of the Kenya National Assembly, Honourable Kenneth Marende, has propelled debate on aviation safety well beyond the writ of the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority’s (KCAA) ambit. It is instructive that his words, concerns and commission from the Chair and elsewhere were not only reflective but attuned to investigation of local aviation both as a mode of (un)safe transport and a vilified industry.
AT THE HEIGHT OF EMOTIONAL lows following the late ‘Kones – Laboso’ aircraft tragedy, Honourable Harun Mwau – Assistant minister, Transport and MP, Kilome – rose in parliament to plead for patience toward awaiting for a procedural post-fatal accident investigation to adduce the chronology of failed aerodynamics particular to that flight. Members of Parliament were apprehensive about a trend all too visible within the preceding decade. However, Mwau knew that the permutations of a single airplane incident or accident are legion.
That Honourable Clement Wambugu, MP Mathioya, was named to the overseer group of panelists was a pointer to the Speaker’s insistence on the professional rethink on our aviation safety and administrative philosophy. Clement is not only a former airline pilot but a former Air Traffic Controller. Both he and Mwau – a pilot in his own right - know the challenges of both sides of the KCAA and Kenya Aerodromes Authority’s (KAA) omissions and their toll on former pilots etched in accident epitaphs since aviation came to Kenya in 1915.
Kenya’s first person to die of an airplane accident was Maia Carberry on March 12, 1928.
This lady of wings was such a polished pilot that at the material time she was giving flight instructions to a student who perished with her. Shocked settlers and gossip pundits of the Happy Valley set believed she could only have been sabotaged. Short of that they were prepared to credit her eulogy within a suicide farewell.
Needless to remind Kenyan politicians, the first accident involving a Boeing Jumbo B747 happened at Nairobi ’s Jomo Kenyatta (Embakasi – HKNA) airport on November 20, 1974. The Nairobi accident - in which 59 people died - crashed shortly after takeoff. Pilots were blamed outright for inactivated slats and the hydraulics that go along with it.
Not all accident investigations can be expected to touch base with such conclusive realism. Mwau knows that helicopters can crash when the main rotor vortex (down-wash) is deflected by freak winds to the tail rotor. No one would be the wiser if and when a CFIT – controlled flight into terrain – is entered to the disrepute of the pilot.
Likewise Clement knows that in marginal weather while flying in the neighborhood of Cumulus -Nimbus clouds, a pilot – even when aware of local terrain spot heights – may be forced to hug the lowest ‘safe’ altitudes. A singular down-draft (wind shear) might slam the airplane to the ground. Again, no verdict other than ‘controlled-flight-into-terrain’ (CFIT) would suffice there being no evidence of the dissipated CB cloud. A pilot is three times safer flying in the Grand Canyon than entering into an argument with CB clouds. The question begs, why, then, can’t pilots just land at the nearest aerodrome and wait for the weather to improve?
Indeed air law requires a pilot caught up in poor weather to land at the nearest ‘safe’ aerodrome. But do parliamentarians ever take the initiative to force inspection and fund mandatory aerodrome repairs given that they are the ones which enact the Kenya Civil Aviaiton Act in the first place? Isn’t it inimical to cry wolf when one, or two, or a dozen of their own end up victims of omissions fashioned by their ignorance of the aviation tedium?
Kenyatta’s Power and Communications Minister Dr. Omolo Okelo was a pilot. He knew the stakes. He knew that to survive in the air ‘one has to learn how to cheat death on the ground’.
The Honourable Speaker’s initiative should therefore not be left to fizzle with release of the late ‘Kones – Laboso’s report’. The two were victims of our collective neglect. If parliament can concede apprehension from a trend of airplane crashes that threatens frequent fliers in our airspace, why not go the extra mile and constitute a permanent parliamentary aviation commission to outline a continuous vigilance?
Picture this.
In January 1913, a motion was brought before the American Congress imploring the government to form an aviation research body. It was, as expected, defeated because air travel would have threatened the interests of those who had won lucrative long term government and corporate contracts to haul staff, cargo and mail on the courier road, rail and horse trails.
In 1914, World War 1 broke out. Again American aeronautical apologists pointed out how vulnerable America was to attacks from the air. American politicians responded that ‘a European war need not be an American problem’: America had ‘no colonies to defend’ and the Atlantic was ‘buffer’ enough.
The Navy thought otherwise; it was vulnerable at sea!
Navy Assistant Secretary F.D. Roosevelt successfully sneaked back the defeated motion albeit as a military contingency. On March 3, 1915 - under President Woodrow Wilson - an Act of Congress established the National Committee on Aeronautics, NACA.
For the next 43 years, the NACA relentlessly pursued aviation with vigor, patriotism and scientific purpose. It didn’t take long for Americans to dominate not only aircraft manufacturing but air transport and avionics industries.
On Oct 1, 1958, the NACA was disbanded and replaced by NASA, the National Aeronautical and Space Agency. And believe it or not, the NASA story can be articulated on the ‘floor’ better by the Emuhaya MP, Dr. Wilbur Otichilo who believes that ‘by now Kenyans should be launching their own communications satellites.
Were the trio of Harun, Clement and Otichilo given the mandate to jump start our aviation and space pretensions within the 2030 mantra, then the perennial activist and opportunistic opposition fronted by the Namwamba and Martha numbers would no longer bog the nascent industrialization pace of the august House. We must commit ‘this’ parliament to discussing aesthetic and industrial advance. Certainly, it won’t take time before Mwau and Clement build ‘community aerodromes’ in their constituencies. Likewise, if there is a legacy that the people of Emuhaya can grant this country, then it is to prop up the challenge by their two most eminent Sons to give us a new aviation safety formula.
The establishment of a permanent parliamentary commission on aviation is one such.
Mr. Speaker Sir, I beg to move.
END
The writer is a former Air Traffic ControllerKenya DCA (1979 – 87)
now a freelance aviation writer.
By Maina Hatchison.
The person and Office of the Speaker of the Kenya National Assembly, Honourable Kenneth Marende, has propelled debate on aviation safety well beyond the writ of the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority’s (KCAA) ambit. It is instructive that his words, concerns and commission from the Chair and elsewhere were not only reflective but attuned to investigation of local aviation both as a mode of (un)safe transport and a vilified industry.
AT THE HEIGHT OF EMOTIONAL lows following the late ‘Kones – Laboso’ aircraft tragedy, Honourable Harun Mwau – Assistant minister, Transport and MP, Kilome – rose in parliament to plead for patience toward awaiting for a procedural post-fatal accident investigation to adduce the chronology of failed aerodynamics particular to that flight. Members of Parliament were apprehensive about a trend all too visible within the preceding decade. However, Mwau knew that the permutations of a single airplane incident or accident are legion.
That Honourable Clement Wambugu, MP Mathioya, was named to the overseer group of panelists was a pointer to the Speaker’s insistence on the professional rethink on our aviation safety and administrative philosophy. Clement is not only a former airline pilot but a former Air Traffic Controller. Both he and Mwau – a pilot in his own right - know the challenges of both sides of the KCAA and Kenya Aerodromes Authority’s (KAA) omissions and their toll on former pilots etched in accident epitaphs since aviation came to Kenya in 1915.
Kenya’s first person to die of an airplane accident was Maia Carberry on March 12, 1928.
This lady of wings was such a polished pilot that at the material time she was giving flight instructions to a student who perished with her. Shocked settlers and gossip pundits of the Happy Valley set believed she could only have been sabotaged. Short of that they were prepared to credit her eulogy within a suicide farewell.
Needless to remind Kenyan politicians, the first accident involving a Boeing Jumbo B747 happened at Nairobi ’s Jomo Kenyatta (Embakasi – HKNA) airport on November 20, 1974. The Nairobi accident - in which 59 people died - crashed shortly after takeoff. Pilots were blamed outright for inactivated slats and the hydraulics that go along with it.
Not all accident investigations can be expected to touch base with such conclusive realism. Mwau knows that helicopters can crash when the main rotor vortex (down-wash) is deflected by freak winds to the tail rotor. No one would be the wiser if and when a CFIT – controlled flight into terrain – is entered to the disrepute of the pilot.
Likewise Clement knows that in marginal weather while flying in the neighborhood of Cumulus -Nimbus clouds, a pilot – even when aware of local terrain spot heights – may be forced to hug the lowest ‘safe’ altitudes. A singular down-draft (wind shear) might slam the airplane to the ground. Again, no verdict other than ‘controlled-flight-into-terrain’ (CFIT) would suffice there being no evidence of the dissipated CB cloud. A pilot is three times safer flying in the Grand Canyon than entering into an argument with CB clouds. The question begs, why, then, can’t pilots just land at the nearest aerodrome and wait for the weather to improve?
Indeed air law requires a pilot caught up in poor weather to land at the nearest ‘safe’ aerodrome. But do parliamentarians ever take the initiative to force inspection and fund mandatory aerodrome repairs given that they are the ones which enact the Kenya Civil Aviaiton Act in the first place? Isn’t it inimical to cry wolf when one, or two, or a dozen of their own end up victims of omissions fashioned by their ignorance of the aviation tedium?
Kenyatta’s Power and Communications Minister Dr. Omolo Okelo was a pilot. He knew the stakes. He knew that to survive in the air ‘one has to learn how to cheat death on the ground’.
The Honourable Speaker’s initiative should therefore not be left to fizzle with release of the late ‘Kones – Laboso’s report’. The two were victims of our collective neglect. If parliament can concede apprehension from a trend of airplane crashes that threatens frequent fliers in our airspace, why not go the extra mile and constitute a permanent parliamentary aviation commission to outline a continuous vigilance?
Picture this.
In January 1913, a motion was brought before the American Congress imploring the government to form an aviation research body. It was, as expected, defeated because air travel would have threatened the interests of those who had won lucrative long term government and corporate contracts to haul staff, cargo and mail on the courier road, rail and horse trails.
In 1914, World War 1 broke out. Again American aeronautical apologists pointed out how vulnerable America was to attacks from the air. American politicians responded that ‘a European war need not be an American problem’: America had ‘no colonies to defend’ and the Atlantic was ‘buffer’ enough.
The Navy thought otherwise; it was vulnerable at sea!
Navy Assistant Secretary F.D. Roosevelt successfully sneaked back the defeated motion albeit as a military contingency. On March 3, 1915 - under President Woodrow Wilson - an Act of Congress established the National Committee on Aeronautics, NACA.
For the next 43 years, the NACA relentlessly pursued aviation with vigor, patriotism and scientific purpose. It didn’t take long for Americans to dominate not only aircraft manufacturing but air transport and avionics industries.
On Oct 1, 1958, the NACA was disbanded and replaced by NASA, the National Aeronautical and Space Agency. And believe it or not, the NASA story can be articulated on the ‘floor’ better by the Emuhaya MP, Dr. Wilbur Otichilo who believes that ‘by now Kenyans should be launching their own communications satellites.
Were the trio of Harun, Clement and Otichilo given the mandate to jump start our aviation and space pretensions within the 2030 mantra, then the perennial activist and opportunistic opposition fronted by the Namwamba and Martha numbers would no longer bog the nascent industrialization pace of the august House. We must commit ‘this’ parliament to discussing aesthetic and industrial advance. Certainly, it won’t take time before Mwau and Clement build ‘community aerodromes’ in their constituencies. Likewise, if there is a legacy that the people of Emuhaya can grant this country, then it is to prop up the challenge by their two most eminent Sons to give us a new aviation safety formula.
The establishment of a permanent parliamentary commission on aviation is one such.
Mr. Speaker Sir, I beg to move.
END
The writer is a former Air Traffic ControllerKenya DCA (1979 – 87)
now a freelance aviation writer.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
KENYAN APOLLO 11 TWIST
NO.001
THE EAGLE HAS LANDED.
Various claims have been made that the Apollo II moon landing was stage managed or faked. The skeptics are no more than opportunists who capitalized on anti government (GOP) syndrome or sentiment to mint money from illiterate anti-science audience especially Christian fundamentalists.
See the following pages for scientific explanations of the disputed facts.
http://pirlwww.lpl.arizona.edu/~jscotti/NOT_faked/ APOLLO HOAX DEFENCE
***********************************************************
NO. 002
KENYA'S OWN APOLLO 11 TWIST.
Kenya has its fair share of strange history. The landing of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon July 1969 coincided with the slaying of Kenya's best known Kennedyte, T.J.Mboya.
Buzz, Neil and Collins were all born same year 1930, a few months before Mboya. As they ascended to the 'heavens', T.J was 'descended' to the grave.
***********************************************************
See http://history.nasa.gov/ap11ann/astrobios.htm for Neil, Buzz and Aldrin's biographies. Alternatively, go directly to Nasa homepage.
http://www.nasa.gov/home/index.htm for Apollo 11 story from Nasa website. In the search area, enter 'Apollo 11'.
***********************************************************
No symmetry here you might think. But those who were old enough to suffer the political fall-out each have a story to tell.
Don't ask me: I was only 10 years old then. Better ask the born again revival Christians a.k.a 'Balokole'(i.e. the redeemed ones) or take my juvenile recall here below.
[Check/artistic license.] ============================================================
THE APOLLO 11 - T.J POLITICAL FALLOUT.
By Maina Hatchison
___________________________________________________________
One week to rocket launch, Kenyan cabinet Minister Thomas Joseph Mboya was assassinated in broad daylight on a Nairobi street. Some claim the killer was apprehended on the spot, others believe he was caught later. What followed thereafter was a virtual nightmare for Kenyan born again Christians.
I'll tell it my own way.
I have often heard tales of Kennedytes having been consumed by their own logistical Frankensteins. This talk revolves around political assassinations of the dark Sixties. Headlines and newswires were every other month inked in blood of slain activists be they political capitalists or social pacifist crusaders. There was death in America, slaying in Ireland, killing in South Africa, genocide in Vietnam not to forget the Soviet death mills of Siberia.
Newly independent African states were easily swept up in this game. Not only was it crossfire from the cold war, more likely post imperial turf wars being fought out by European colonists to tame emerging American liberalisms.
No doubt those who were assassinated were victims of covert boardroom adjustments. Others - and this is where the Kennedyte theory thrives - are said to have fallen to Uncle Sam's internal adjustment hiccups switching from the Democratic (Kennedy) era to the grand old party's Nixonian entry.
The story goes - albeit a very tall one - that known Kennedyte cronies, both in America and globally, had to be neutralized, or, silently silenced.
However, there is a claim that this culture of silent liquidation was just a continuation of a covert network perfected by Kennedy himself. It is this network that is suspected to have outgrown it’s detail to consume not only the itemised enemies of the Democratic regime, but the very architects of it's creation. Hence the Frankenstein quip.
Nobody can know for sure whether these were the motives behind the Sixties bloodbaths. What is not in dispute is that a tidy score of African Kennedytes were dealt and aced to their fate. One such was Kenya's cabinet Minister Thomas Joseph Mboya.
T.J. - as he was popularly known- was a pole positioned pro- Kennedy pretender to the high stakes of Kenyan politics. At only 39 years of age, the dashing prodigy was easily stalked down the streets of Kenya's capital Nairobi, in and out of a main-street pharmacy, and, in broad daylight, shot and critically wounded July ,1969.
He died on the spot or, on 'his way to hospital'.
Political assassins are commission artists. When a job is done, it no longer matters whether it is a clean strangle or a sprawled messy corpse. The essential part is that a target has been disposed.
Those killed are obliged to make two contributions. They ought to find it easy to make great international headlines helping spread the finality of their demise beyond speculative rumor. Second, victims are obliged to stay permanently killed.
Killers on their part make no apologies or regrets. However, they should be crafty enough to create mysteries as to whether they acted alone or were recruited by third parties. T.J's killer - a tribesman of the President's central Kenya stable - was even said to have smiled off cross-examination and final conviction to hang.
To enlightened citizens, whether the killer was hanged or not made little difference. The fact remained that Mboya had been permanently deleted from Kenya's political scene. (Today's generation might say there is no recycle bin to political assassination). T.J simply ceased to exit. He had made his date with destiny.
Citizens, as political animals, could not be expected to have swallowed hook, line and sinker such sleight of hand hoodwink. There had to be fallout; an outcry of foul play.
Hundreds upon thousands stood up to mourn Mboya. The westside quarter of Kenya's Luo enclaves went abuzz with agitation for settling scores in lieu of their fallen hero. For President Kenyatta's 6 year young government, reality was turned upside down. Talk of Cain and Abel started doing the rounds.
At only 10 years of age - a primary five grader - I couldn't claim to have mourned the minister. I didn't even know who he was. I was the typical native molded on a plastic bag of European myth, fable and legend; Horatio, Alexander-the-Great, the brave 'seven at one blow' tailor, the Spartan boy and the fox, not forgetting the biblical narratives.
It would only have been a black day for me if our noon-time heroes - Olympian athlete Kipchoge or East African safari rally driver Joginder Singh - had as much as been reported glazed in a freak accident. These were the village heroes who captured our imagination. In any case, our curiosity was held to a new kind of appeal. Our teachers were always reminding us that Americans were going to the moon.
At least I couldn't doubt this because that is what our big hi-fi Grundig radio kept talking about. News briefs had become all too predictable. Local clips were typically cantered with presidential briefs; party disclaimers, Mboya updates; then Dar-es-salam, Lagos, Pretoria with Cairo rounding off the African slot. International clips would quote London, Moscow, New York, then Saigon and, of course, Washington: Apollo 11.
Apollo 11 was launched July 16, 1969. World attention would henceforth be riveted skyward. Mother would even call us late evenings to listen to crackling 'live' feeds of astronauts talking from space. As the trio of Buzz, Neil and Collins floated in zero G, we were too young to grasp the gravity of their scientific achievements. If the killers had phased this euphoric trance as an opportune window to fade out T.J backlash, they were mistaken. In fact it helped fuel it.
In our particular village a lorry appeared. It started picking up men and women taking them to undisclosed destinations. Those who wished to go along rode the lorry by day; those that dithered were given a discreet option to ride by night.
The difference was the same. To be counted as 'having gone' was the end in itself. And lest tribesmen mistake what lorry was taking people where, a bright white sign was painted aft-top the driver's windscreen against a black background. It read; APOLLO 11!
Anyone could thus climb up the back of the lorry without uttering a single word to those one found there but with the knowledge that Apollo 11 would take you wherever it was that tribesmen were being taken.
The tempo later turned nasty. People started being jacked out of their houses at night. Men and women were walked to neighborhood rendezvous with local stand-in moguls.
We, the children, were spared the hustle but our fear grew that should our parents be targeted we might perish with them. As good Christians, we were supposed to die gallantly more so like those who had braved the Nero purge - if not buoyed by Spartan courage - whichever was the greater. I was not so sure about that. Neither were the other kids. Hence every other day almost every child had a story to tell. I had none; I simply listened.
One thing baffled us though; whereto were people being taken?
Some children said their Aunts claimed they had been 'taken' to drink 'tea'. Uncles punctuated it better saying 'they had gone' to collect 'tea leaves'. Yet others claimed there was a massive land demarcation program where every tribesman and loyal tribeswoman was to get a free title deed provided it was collected individually.
But we had to contend with that village lorry and it's rowdy choir. Theirs was a different song of improvised lyrics. With fists banging on the lorry's woodworks, they proclaimed in loud voices;
We have gone to the moon,
Have you gone to the moon,
Come brother, Come sister,
Apollo 11 will take you to the moon,
And bring you safely back home.
That last line would have made Kennedy proud. But he, like T.J, had bit the dust long before Eagle's engines started burning.
We began to see the lorry in new light. We learnt to dive under road culverts whenever we heard any engine that snarled like the dreaded 'Thames Trader' truck.
Then our english teacher, a lanky man in his late twenties, took us a step closer to defining the mystery of the moon rakers.
'Anyone ever heard of the Khu Klax Klan?', he asked one late morning after the class had watched Apollo 11 rabble itself up a distant ridge.
Primary school buffs are amazing lads. Not only did someone know about the Klan but chose to digress about Martin Luther King Jnr . King had been killed a year earlier February of '68.
'People who don't like other people start civil wars'. He said to no one in particular but with a tinge of contempt.
He'd said this looking out the window in the direction of Apollo 11. Most of us wrote down 'civilwar'. It was a new english word or words or double-word.
'Civil wars kill people needlessly' he added. There was a sad tone to his voice. I jotted down 'needlessly'. I would sure use it later in a composition.
He then asked us to write down the longest english word we knew. The bright fellows wrote 'Mediterranean' while I thought of 'Mississippian'.
He shook his head, picked up his chalk and wrote on the board in block capitals; ANTIDISESTABLISHMENTALIANISM! He read it out loud, flawlessly.
We clapped and applauded. By the time we were through with our attempts to pronounce it, he had picked up his books, duster and chalks and hurriedly left for the staff room.
I looked at my notes; Elizabeth Fremont, Khu Klux Klan, civilwar?, needlessly and antidisestablishmentarianism. He had even demanded that we learn to pronounce 'Fremont' with a french accent; 'fghe-moh..'.
I understand it was British Prime Minister William Gladstone who coined the 28 letter word. What he meant I know not. I don't even know who the Queen's prime minister was at the time Mboya got killed. But newspapers were now filing stories that made Britain's former colony look as if it was headed for a post-independence Belgian Congo encore. Some legislators thought this a national fiasco and raised the question in parliament; was the government abetting a crisis that could send the country into civil war?
Africans, that is, black Africans, for all their brotherhood, rhetoric and Diaspora solidarity, have a very low integrative quotient. Tribe, ritual and custom are what define value in many of our communities.
A 'born-to-rule' complex pervades most tribal-centric politicians who define independence within a herrenvolkist subordination of other communities: that to 'rule' and 'wisdom' can only be inherent within their tribe's values.
This could be said to be the original sin of African ruler clans, tribes and, without exception, of Kenya's central Bantu tribes. Parliament knew this. It decried the clandestine nature of these underground campaigns. Government denied these claims. But on the ground, 'tea drinking' and 'moon journeying' continued unabated.
Someone had to act, and did.
Kenya's chapter of East Africa's famed revival believers - otherwise called by their Ugandan acronym 'Balokole'- protested. These born-again evangelicals (near puritan) who preached redemption and public confession, boldly described the underground heist as not only unchristian but clandestinely evil.
Balokole insisted that a young country like Kenya could not afford to go back to the days of 'night' diplomacy. They were people of the light not darkness. They were always called upon to walk in heavenly light not chase shadows of earthly ethno chauvinism.
Rumors started circulating that prominent clergy had 'gone' to get their 'title deeds'. Slander even claimed that top balokole on the convention circuit had gone to the 'moon' and were safely back preaching salvation without intimidation.
This brought balokole into direct conflict with the ethnic merchants. Considering that a top Anglican cleric had been so visible as translator in Billy Graham's early 60's crusade in Kisumu, Kenya, the very tenet of administrator commitment to the revival spirit was being challenged.
Then newspapers reported that a prominent proponent of the evangelicals had been fatally assaulted for refusing to accompany the night monguls. His wife was critically wounded but survived to testify.
Her photograph was carried in the local dailies. Mother said we ought to know her since she was a regular visitor to one of our Aunties. I remember looking at the picture but couldn't recognise her. But again, how do you identify a face mourning a killed husband?
Balokole deaths can never be anonymous. Death is either celebrated as 'passing to glory' or condemned as damnation for those who have died without committing their lives to Christ. Matters religious and matters redemption were not synonymous.
Worse, the assailed couple hailed from the president's district. If brother could kill brother and the president's men stay aloof, (sandwiched between a distant truth that the president had a family affiliation to the Roman Catholic Church) and that the slain believer was a mainstream protestant, theorems of betrayal became most appropriate within an Irish internecine frame.
Villagers even floated that charge that if the Anglican head of the central Kenya diocese did not speak to condemn the slaying of a Presbyterian brother, then it could only imply that he had 'Nicodemusly' gone to the moon.
Others defended him stating that since he was related to the president by marriage, he could not be expected to stoop so low as to partake so petty a pledge of loyalty to a in-law kinsman.
The church however needed to talk with one voice to ally fear and slander. Since balokole operated within the protestant mainstream - unlike their pentecostal and independent secessionists - something had to give lest a new Irish twist develope to overshadow the real issue.
But what was the real issue?
The real issue was that with T.J's killing, sectionalist animosity between western and central Kenya tribes threatened civil war. This had become the moonrakers item; should war break out, every loyal central Kenya tribesperson would be called upon to selflessly defend the land against aggression.
It was this loyalty that every 'tea' partaker had to define by pledge at the risk of being counted a traitor. That reference to 'land' was also a cryptic call to protecting of perceived 'right to rule' of the land called 'Kenya' not necessarily enclave interests.
However, land politics or its defense was not Balokole priorities. They had a clear line defining secular obligation and matters heavenly. Born-agains had no room for security in worldly returns. They coined enough vernacular translations of the western classic 'This world is not my home' as popularized by the late Jim Reeves who had died three years earlier in an airplane crash.
There was no room for tea in balokole anthems. Indeed, the East African revival movement is said to have originated in Rwanda, strengthened eastward through Uganda before taking firm hold in Kenya's and Tanzania's Anglican, Presbyterian and Methodist protestant communities.
By 1957, the protestant churches had witnessed so much killing worst of all the 1948 Rwanda-Urundi bloodbath between Hutu and Tutsi tribes.
Kenya had also just gone through an independence war where British soldiers decimated over 13,000 Africans with 37 whites butchered in cold blood.
Hence the balokole decried any move that would send East Africa back memory lane to more hatred, mistrust and political mischief. Singing their powerful Luganda adaptation 'Tukutenderesa' (we praise you Lord) - off the song ‘Glory to the Lamb' - they left no doubt where their loyalties lay. (They sing it, in Luganda, to this present day, 2004.)
'Oh the precious blood has washed me,
Glory glory to the Lamb.'
They went around preaching deliverance though operating within ambit of their mainstream mother churches. They did not dwell on the conflicts so common among born-again puritans or pentecostals nor decry church catechisms, doctrines, nor invoke wasteful doctrinal arguments as to the role of nominal affiliation of proselytes.
Every soul on the pew was deemed a soul to be claimed to the fold. Redemption was for each and every that so willed through forgiveness. Debates over use of church administrative symbolisms were not prime to this message of redemption.
Rather, they opted to use every open avenue to proclaim Christ the redeemer while involving themselves with the humanitarian commission of social appraisal of their localities especially school building projects. They used every opportunity given them by the administrative pulpit, home vigils and open air crusades to proclaim Christ.
Their hallmark signature became the Sunday afternoon - and mid-week Wednesday - exclusive born again meetings where they met to appraise each others' burdens through sharing of testimonies, public confessions, fellowship, sharing the 'light' and prayers. Thus they came to be known variously as the Balokole, Tukutenderesa or 'People of Burdens'.
The death of their Presbyterian brethren was one such burden. It sent their resolve to new heights.
Administrative and revival bind; nominal and committed faithful interests merged in a need to extricate the church - especially the protestant mainstream - from rumors of having been compromised by the evil hand. Unholy schemes had to be condemned and exorcised publicly by unanimous ecumenical and catholic affront. A christian rally was called.
Church history records that this meeting was held at the Anglican St. James-and-all-Martyrs cathedral situated in the sleepy town of Fort Hall - now Murang'a - 100 kilometers north of Nairobi.
This was in itself a political statement in that this was the ancestral home of the great Kikuyu tribe from whence the epicenter of oathing had spread. Over 30,000 believers attended, a crowd not even the president could command in his rare off-beat visits to the district.
What at first looked like a random revival convention or out-air meeting sent shock-waves round the country. Not only did the mainstream clergy deny all claims of compromise, they fearlessly condemned any system that could 'substitute faith in God for security in man'.
There were bitter testimonies of intimidation of believers. Brethren exchanged hushed testimonies of personal experiences. No doubt consensus had to prevail that christians have but one enemy; the evil one.
This accuser, the devil, was not short of agents. The christian part was to pray such be convicted unto repentance and forgiveness, and, eternal life.
"Stand firm rooted in the faith of your calling; suffer trials and contempt from worldly rebuff but in all things give thanks to God and claim your victory. Why. count it joy when you fall into diverse temptations....."
Tukutenderesa.....
'These are our people invoking conflict; Brothers, Sisters, these are our children at risk; our church, our fellowship, our nation. Was that what Christ pledged to us on the cross?'
John 14:27.
'My peace I give unto you'; and wasn't he called the prince of peace? We have thus but one pledge to make in return. We must heed his voice calling this land to healing and repentance.
'No more shall it be said of this land that man has substituted himself for God demanding burnt offering by day and killing brethren at night. In the name of Jesus of Nazareth we rebuke the evil that seeks to destroy our tranquil land. God be our witness here today that we proclaim victory in Christ Jesus; there is no more King , or slave; Jew or Gentile. We are all one; in Christ Jesus'.
Tukutendereza...
My mother attended the meeting. She came back home to witness to those who had not made the trip. It was now clear that the movers and shakers of the political center had no choice but to concede their project vain and untenable. Going against a vocal and defiant church was no longer a political option.
Local radio started giving more prominence to the far abroad items from the ever volatile Saigon - Washington quagmire. It must be at this time that the names Henry Kissinger and Gromyko gained prominence.
Moon talk fizzled.
And so 'Apollo 11' disappeared for a new coat of paint. Young as I was, I knew that the storm had passed. But I could not lie to my self; the fear had been real.
And with it's passing , I had to rediscover my former soul of introvert solitude. In everyone's word of honour, consensus had decreed that bygones be bygones; in Jesus' name.
I went back to my East African Safari rally fair.
Traditionally, Kenya's easter weekend is - was - rally time. The FIA calendar had put paid to sentimental local timing. Joginder Singh let me down. One Edgar Hermann navigated by Hans Schuller made it two in a row before Hannu Mikola and Gunna Palm made history in 1972 giving overseas drivers a first win in a Ford Escort RS. No more TJ headlines. In it's place were bold headlines heralding a rhetorical question; 'What will the Ford men say?'
I don't know what they told the world. All I recall is that somehow nobody was telling anyone anything meaningful. Village life amazingly went back on cue to the rhythms of God's wonderful sunset and sunrise.
Night times, I would still look up the sky and remember the real Apollo sojourns. Sadly, on 7th December 1972, Americans sent up Apollo 17 and proclaimed to the world there'd be no Apollo 18. Astronauts Eugene Cernan, Ronald Evans and Harrison Schmitt returned safely to an epoch ender splash-down 19th December 1972.
That same year I sat my seventh grade, passed to gain that most coveted high school status where I later joined the astronomy club.
And likewise it came to pass that three years on from the day TJ's fatal bullet was fired, the field simply went mute!
........................END....................
P.S 1: There is a famous girls school from the Mount Kenya region which has the Apollo 11 painted on its port lower front in bold text aka AL 27 3U.
P.S 2: There are some caves excavations in Namibia which were discouvered around the same time Apollo 11 landed on the moon. They were aptly named for that particular ’lunatic’ feat. The paintings found therein were brought in from somewhere else but are said to have been etched around 25,000BC - 23,000BC.
THE EAGLE HAS LANDED.
Various claims have been made that the Apollo II moon landing was stage managed or faked. The skeptics are no more than opportunists who capitalized on anti government (GOP) syndrome or sentiment to mint money from illiterate anti-science audience especially Christian fundamentalists.
See the following pages for scientific explanations of the disputed facts.
http://pirlwww.lpl.arizona.edu/~jscotti/NOT_faked/ APOLLO HOAX DEFENCE
***********************************************************
NO. 002
KENYA'S OWN APOLLO 11 TWIST.
Kenya has its fair share of strange history. The landing of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon July 1969 coincided with the slaying of Kenya's best known Kennedyte, T.J.Mboya.
Buzz, Neil and Collins were all born same year 1930, a few months before Mboya. As they ascended to the 'heavens', T.J was 'descended' to the grave.
***********************************************************
See http://history.nasa.gov/ap11ann/astrobios.htm for Neil, Buzz and Aldrin's biographies. Alternatively, go directly to Nasa homepage.
http://www.nasa.gov/home/index.htm for Apollo 11 story from Nasa website. In the search area, enter 'Apollo 11'.
***********************************************************
No symmetry here you might think. But those who were old enough to suffer the political fall-out each have a story to tell.
Don't ask me: I was only 10 years old then. Better ask the born again revival Christians a.k.a 'Balokole'(i.e. the redeemed ones) or take my juvenile recall here below.
[Check/artistic license.] ============================================================
THE APOLLO 11 - T.J POLITICAL FALLOUT.
By Maina Hatchison
___________________________________________________________
One week to rocket launch, Kenyan cabinet Minister Thomas Joseph Mboya was assassinated in broad daylight on a Nairobi street. Some claim the killer was apprehended on the spot, others believe he was caught later. What followed thereafter was a virtual nightmare for Kenyan born again Christians.
I'll tell it my own way.
I have often heard tales of Kennedytes having been consumed by their own logistical Frankensteins. This talk revolves around political assassinations of the dark Sixties. Headlines and newswires were every other month inked in blood of slain activists be they political capitalists or social pacifist crusaders. There was death in America, slaying in Ireland, killing in South Africa, genocide in Vietnam not to forget the Soviet death mills of Siberia.
Newly independent African states were easily swept up in this game. Not only was it crossfire from the cold war, more likely post imperial turf wars being fought out by European colonists to tame emerging American liberalisms.
No doubt those who were assassinated were victims of covert boardroom adjustments. Others - and this is where the Kennedyte theory thrives - are said to have fallen to Uncle Sam's internal adjustment hiccups switching from the Democratic (Kennedy) era to the grand old party's Nixonian entry.
The story goes - albeit a very tall one - that known Kennedyte cronies, both in America and globally, had to be neutralized, or, silently silenced.
However, there is a claim that this culture of silent liquidation was just a continuation of a covert network perfected by Kennedy himself. It is this network that is suspected to have outgrown it’s detail to consume not only the itemised enemies of the Democratic regime, but the very architects of it's creation. Hence the Frankenstein quip.
Nobody can know for sure whether these were the motives behind the Sixties bloodbaths. What is not in dispute is that a tidy score of African Kennedytes were dealt and aced to their fate. One such was Kenya's cabinet Minister Thomas Joseph Mboya.
T.J. - as he was popularly known- was a pole positioned pro- Kennedy pretender to the high stakes of Kenyan politics. At only 39 years of age, the dashing prodigy was easily stalked down the streets of Kenya's capital Nairobi, in and out of a main-street pharmacy, and, in broad daylight, shot and critically wounded July ,1969.
He died on the spot or, on 'his way to hospital'.
Political assassins are commission artists. When a job is done, it no longer matters whether it is a clean strangle or a sprawled messy corpse. The essential part is that a target has been disposed.
Those killed are obliged to make two contributions. They ought to find it easy to make great international headlines helping spread the finality of their demise beyond speculative rumor. Second, victims are obliged to stay permanently killed.
Killers on their part make no apologies or regrets. However, they should be crafty enough to create mysteries as to whether they acted alone or were recruited by third parties. T.J's killer - a tribesman of the President's central Kenya stable - was even said to have smiled off cross-examination and final conviction to hang.
To enlightened citizens, whether the killer was hanged or not made little difference. The fact remained that Mboya had been permanently deleted from Kenya's political scene. (Today's generation might say there is no recycle bin to political assassination). T.J simply ceased to exit. He had made his date with destiny.
Citizens, as political animals, could not be expected to have swallowed hook, line and sinker such sleight of hand hoodwink. There had to be fallout; an outcry of foul play.
Hundreds upon thousands stood up to mourn Mboya. The westside quarter of Kenya's Luo enclaves went abuzz with agitation for settling scores in lieu of their fallen hero. For President Kenyatta's 6 year young government, reality was turned upside down. Talk of Cain and Abel started doing the rounds.
At only 10 years of age - a primary five grader - I couldn't claim to have mourned the minister. I didn't even know who he was. I was the typical native molded on a plastic bag of European myth, fable and legend; Horatio, Alexander-the-Great, the brave 'seven at one blow' tailor, the Spartan boy and the fox, not forgetting the biblical narratives.
It would only have been a black day for me if our noon-time heroes - Olympian athlete Kipchoge or East African safari rally driver Joginder Singh - had as much as been reported glazed in a freak accident. These were the village heroes who captured our imagination. In any case, our curiosity was held to a new kind of appeal. Our teachers were always reminding us that Americans were going to the moon.
At least I couldn't doubt this because that is what our big hi-fi Grundig radio kept talking about. News briefs had become all too predictable. Local clips were typically cantered with presidential briefs; party disclaimers, Mboya updates; then Dar-es-salam, Lagos, Pretoria with Cairo rounding off the African slot. International clips would quote London, Moscow, New York, then Saigon and, of course, Washington: Apollo 11.
Apollo 11 was launched July 16, 1969. World attention would henceforth be riveted skyward. Mother would even call us late evenings to listen to crackling 'live' feeds of astronauts talking from space. As the trio of Buzz, Neil and Collins floated in zero G, we were too young to grasp the gravity of their scientific achievements. If the killers had phased this euphoric trance as an opportune window to fade out T.J backlash, they were mistaken. In fact it helped fuel it.
In our particular village a lorry appeared. It started picking up men and women taking them to undisclosed destinations. Those who wished to go along rode the lorry by day; those that dithered were given a discreet option to ride by night.
The difference was the same. To be counted as 'having gone' was the end in itself. And lest tribesmen mistake what lorry was taking people where, a bright white sign was painted aft-top the driver's windscreen against a black background. It read; APOLLO 11!
Anyone could thus climb up the back of the lorry without uttering a single word to those one found there but with the knowledge that Apollo 11 would take you wherever it was that tribesmen were being taken.
The tempo later turned nasty. People started being jacked out of their houses at night. Men and women were walked to neighborhood rendezvous with local stand-in moguls.
We, the children, were spared the hustle but our fear grew that should our parents be targeted we might perish with them. As good Christians, we were supposed to die gallantly more so like those who had braved the Nero purge - if not buoyed by Spartan courage - whichever was the greater. I was not so sure about that. Neither were the other kids. Hence every other day almost every child had a story to tell. I had none; I simply listened.
One thing baffled us though; whereto were people being taken?
Some children said their Aunts claimed they had been 'taken' to drink 'tea'. Uncles punctuated it better saying 'they had gone' to collect 'tea leaves'. Yet others claimed there was a massive land demarcation program where every tribesman and loyal tribeswoman was to get a free title deed provided it was collected individually.
But we had to contend with that village lorry and it's rowdy choir. Theirs was a different song of improvised lyrics. With fists banging on the lorry's woodworks, they proclaimed in loud voices;
We have gone to the moon,
Have you gone to the moon,
Come brother, Come sister,
Apollo 11 will take you to the moon,
And bring you safely back home.
That last line would have made Kennedy proud. But he, like T.J, had bit the dust long before Eagle's engines started burning.
We began to see the lorry in new light. We learnt to dive under road culverts whenever we heard any engine that snarled like the dreaded 'Thames Trader' truck.
Then our english teacher, a lanky man in his late twenties, took us a step closer to defining the mystery of the moon rakers.
'Anyone ever heard of the Khu Klax Klan?', he asked one late morning after the class had watched Apollo 11 rabble itself up a distant ridge.
Primary school buffs are amazing lads. Not only did someone know about the Klan but chose to digress about Martin Luther King Jnr . King had been killed a year earlier February of '68.
'People who don't like other people start civil wars'. He said to no one in particular but with a tinge of contempt.
He'd said this looking out the window in the direction of Apollo 11. Most of us wrote down 'civilwar'. It was a new english word or words or double-word.
'Civil wars kill people needlessly' he added. There was a sad tone to his voice. I jotted down 'needlessly'. I would sure use it later in a composition.
He then asked us to write down the longest english word we knew. The bright fellows wrote 'Mediterranean' while I thought of 'Mississippian'.
He shook his head, picked up his chalk and wrote on the board in block capitals; ANTIDISESTABLISHMENTALIANISM! He read it out loud, flawlessly.
We clapped and applauded. By the time we were through with our attempts to pronounce it, he had picked up his books, duster and chalks and hurriedly left for the staff room.
I looked at my notes; Elizabeth Fremont, Khu Klux Klan, civilwar?, needlessly and antidisestablishmentarianism. He had even demanded that we learn to pronounce 'Fremont' with a french accent; 'fghe-moh..'.
I understand it was British Prime Minister William Gladstone who coined the 28 letter word. What he meant I know not. I don't even know who the Queen's prime minister was at the time Mboya got killed. But newspapers were now filing stories that made Britain's former colony look as if it was headed for a post-independence Belgian Congo encore. Some legislators thought this a national fiasco and raised the question in parliament; was the government abetting a crisis that could send the country into civil war?
Africans, that is, black Africans, for all their brotherhood, rhetoric and Diaspora solidarity, have a very low integrative quotient. Tribe, ritual and custom are what define value in many of our communities.
A 'born-to-rule' complex pervades most tribal-centric politicians who define independence within a herrenvolkist subordination of other communities: that to 'rule' and 'wisdom' can only be inherent within their tribe's values.
This could be said to be the original sin of African ruler clans, tribes and, without exception, of Kenya's central Bantu tribes. Parliament knew this. It decried the clandestine nature of these underground campaigns. Government denied these claims. But on the ground, 'tea drinking' and 'moon journeying' continued unabated.
Someone had to act, and did.
Kenya's chapter of East Africa's famed revival believers - otherwise called by their Ugandan acronym 'Balokole'- protested. These born-again evangelicals (near puritan) who preached redemption and public confession, boldly described the underground heist as not only unchristian but clandestinely evil.
Balokole insisted that a young country like Kenya could not afford to go back to the days of 'night' diplomacy. They were people of the light not darkness. They were always called upon to walk in heavenly light not chase shadows of earthly ethno chauvinism.
Rumors started circulating that prominent clergy had 'gone' to get their 'title deeds'. Slander even claimed that top balokole on the convention circuit had gone to the 'moon' and were safely back preaching salvation without intimidation.
This brought balokole into direct conflict with the ethnic merchants. Considering that a top Anglican cleric had been so visible as translator in Billy Graham's early 60's crusade in Kisumu, Kenya, the very tenet of administrator commitment to the revival spirit was being challenged.
Then newspapers reported that a prominent proponent of the evangelicals had been fatally assaulted for refusing to accompany the night monguls. His wife was critically wounded but survived to testify.
Her photograph was carried in the local dailies. Mother said we ought to know her since she was a regular visitor to one of our Aunties. I remember looking at the picture but couldn't recognise her. But again, how do you identify a face mourning a killed husband?
Balokole deaths can never be anonymous. Death is either celebrated as 'passing to glory' or condemned as damnation for those who have died without committing their lives to Christ. Matters religious and matters redemption were not synonymous.
Worse, the assailed couple hailed from the president's district. If brother could kill brother and the president's men stay aloof, (sandwiched between a distant truth that the president had a family affiliation to the Roman Catholic Church) and that the slain believer was a mainstream protestant, theorems of betrayal became most appropriate within an Irish internecine frame.
Villagers even floated that charge that if the Anglican head of the central Kenya diocese did not speak to condemn the slaying of a Presbyterian brother, then it could only imply that he had 'Nicodemusly' gone to the moon.
Others defended him stating that since he was related to the president by marriage, he could not be expected to stoop so low as to partake so petty a pledge of loyalty to a in-law kinsman.
The church however needed to talk with one voice to ally fear and slander. Since balokole operated within the protestant mainstream - unlike their pentecostal and independent secessionists - something had to give lest a new Irish twist develope to overshadow the real issue.
But what was the real issue?
The real issue was that with T.J's killing, sectionalist animosity between western and central Kenya tribes threatened civil war. This had become the moonrakers item; should war break out, every loyal central Kenya tribesperson would be called upon to selflessly defend the land against aggression.
It was this loyalty that every 'tea' partaker had to define by pledge at the risk of being counted a traitor. That reference to 'land' was also a cryptic call to protecting of perceived 'right to rule' of the land called 'Kenya' not necessarily enclave interests.
However, land politics or its defense was not Balokole priorities. They had a clear line defining secular obligation and matters heavenly. Born-agains had no room for security in worldly returns. They coined enough vernacular translations of the western classic 'This world is not my home' as popularized by the late Jim Reeves who had died three years earlier in an airplane crash.
There was no room for tea in balokole anthems. Indeed, the East African revival movement is said to have originated in Rwanda, strengthened eastward through Uganda before taking firm hold in Kenya's and Tanzania's Anglican, Presbyterian and Methodist protestant communities.
By 1957, the protestant churches had witnessed so much killing worst of all the 1948 Rwanda-Urundi bloodbath between Hutu and Tutsi tribes.
Kenya had also just gone through an independence war where British soldiers decimated over 13,000 Africans with 37 whites butchered in cold blood.
Hence the balokole decried any move that would send East Africa back memory lane to more hatred, mistrust and political mischief. Singing their powerful Luganda adaptation 'Tukutenderesa' (we praise you Lord) - off the song ‘Glory to the Lamb' - they left no doubt where their loyalties lay. (They sing it, in Luganda, to this present day, 2004.)
'Oh the precious blood has washed me,
Glory glory to the Lamb.'
They went around preaching deliverance though operating within ambit of their mainstream mother churches. They did not dwell on the conflicts so common among born-again puritans or pentecostals nor decry church catechisms, doctrines, nor invoke wasteful doctrinal arguments as to the role of nominal affiliation of proselytes.
Every soul on the pew was deemed a soul to be claimed to the fold. Redemption was for each and every that so willed through forgiveness. Debates over use of church administrative symbolisms were not prime to this message of redemption.
Rather, they opted to use every open avenue to proclaim Christ the redeemer while involving themselves with the humanitarian commission of social appraisal of their localities especially school building projects. They used every opportunity given them by the administrative pulpit, home vigils and open air crusades to proclaim Christ.
Their hallmark signature became the Sunday afternoon - and mid-week Wednesday - exclusive born again meetings where they met to appraise each others' burdens through sharing of testimonies, public confessions, fellowship, sharing the 'light' and prayers. Thus they came to be known variously as the Balokole, Tukutenderesa or 'People of Burdens'.
The death of their Presbyterian brethren was one such burden. It sent their resolve to new heights.
Administrative and revival bind; nominal and committed faithful interests merged in a need to extricate the church - especially the protestant mainstream - from rumors of having been compromised by the evil hand. Unholy schemes had to be condemned and exorcised publicly by unanimous ecumenical and catholic affront. A christian rally was called.
Church history records that this meeting was held at the Anglican St. James-and-all-Martyrs cathedral situated in the sleepy town of Fort Hall - now Murang'a - 100 kilometers north of Nairobi.
This was in itself a political statement in that this was the ancestral home of the great Kikuyu tribe from whence the epicenter of oathing had spread. Over 30,000 believers attended, a crowd not even the president could command in his rare off-beat visits to the district.
What at first looked like a random revival convention or out-air meeting sent shock-waves round the country. Not only did the mainstream clergy deny all claims of compromise, they fearlessly condemned any system that could 'substitute faith in God for security in man'.
There were bitter testimonies of intimidation of believers. Brethren exchanged hushed testimonies of personal experiences. No doubt consensus had to prevail that christians have but one enemy; the evil one.
This accuser, the devil, was not short of agents. The christian part was to pray such be convicted unto repentance and forgiveness, and, eternal life.
"Stand firm rooted in the faith of your calling; suffer trials and contempt from worldly rebuff but in all things give thanks to God and claim your victory. Why. count it joy when you fall into diverse temptations....."
Tukutenderesa.....
'These are our people invoking conflict; Brothers, Sisters, these are our children at risk; our church, our fellowship, our nation. Was that what Christ pledged to us on the cross?'
John 14:27.
'My peace I give unto you'; and wasn't he called the prince of peace? We have thus but one pledge to make in return. We must heed his voice calling this land to healing and repentance.
'No more shall it be said of this land that man has substituted himself for God demanding burnt offering by day and killing brethren at night. In the name of Jesus of Nazareth we rebuke the evil that seeks to destroy our tranquil land. God be our witness here today that we proclaim victory in Christ Jesus; there is no more King , or slave; Jew or Gentile. We are all one; in Christ Jesus'.
Tukutendereza...
My mother attended the meeting. She came back home to witness to those who had not made the trip. It was now clear that the movers and shakers of the political center had no choice but to concede their project vain and untenable. Going against a vocal and defiant church was no longer a political option.
Local radio started giving more prominence to the far abroad items from the ever volatile Saigon - Washington quagmire. It must be at this time that the names Henry Kissinger and Gromyko gained prominence.
Moon talk fizzled.
And so 'Apollo 11' disappeared for a new coat of paint. Young as I was, I knew that the storm had passed. But I could not lie to my self; the fear had been real.
And with it's passing , I had to rediscover my former soul of introvert solitude. In everyone's word of honour, consensus had decreed that bygones be bygones; in Jesus' name.
I went back to my East African Safari rally fair.
Traditionally, Kenya's easter weekend is - was - rally time. The FIA calendar had put paid to sentimental local timing. Joginder Singh let me down. One Edgar Hermann navigated by Hans Schuller made it two in a row before Hannu Mikola and Gunna Palm made history in 1972 giving overseas drivers a first win in a Ford Escort RS. No more TJ headlines. In it's place were bold headlines heralding a rhetorical question; 'What will the Ford men say?'
I don't know what they told the world. All I recall is that somehow nobody was telling anyone anything meaningful. Village life amazingly went back on cue to the rhythms of God's wonderful sunset and sunrise.
Night times, I would still look up the sky and remember the real Apollo sojourns. Sadly, on 7th December 1972, Americans sent up Apollo 17 and proclaimed to the world there'd be no Apollo 18. Astronauts Eugene Cernan, Ronald Evans and Harrison Schmitt returned safely to an epoch ender splash-down 19th December 1972.
That same year I sat my seventh grade, passed to gain that most coveted high school status where I later joined the astronomy club.
And likewise it came to pass that three years on from the day TJ's fatal bullet was fired, the field simply went mute!
........................END....................
P.S 1: There is a famous girls school from the Mount Kenya region which has the Apollo 11 painted on its port lower front in bold text aka AL 27 3U.
P.S 2: There are some caves excavations in Namibia which were discouvered around the same time Apollo 11 landed on the moon. They were aptly named for that particular ’lunatic’ feat. The paintings found therein were brought in from somewhere else but are said to have been etched around 25,000BC - 23,000BC.
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