Slow March

The elephants have no bearing to anything here, but it is a beautiful picture isn't it?

Last night I was in a tea induced state of sleeplessness. I had nothing to do but think as I waited for sleep to catch up with me. So I thought of how long March was. It was so long to me that my mind made an executive decision to cross over into April. The result was that I was wondering how I had missed deadlines like 31 March 2013 and I was also busy telling my brother how April has been a long month for Kenyans. I told him this twice, but he made no response hehehe. My mind was making these executive decisions because March exceeded its allocated quota of events. If days were soldiers, then the days were in a slow march.

For Kenyans especially, all we did was wait. We waited for March 4, so we could vote. Then we waited in line to vote. Well, I didn't, seeing as I went at 4pm when there was no queue. I'd advise you all to do the same but I won't because if we all did that, then the queue at 4pm would be equivalent to the circumference of the Kenyatta's farms and lands. Where was I? We voted, then we went back home (as advised in the numerous advertisements) and waited for the results to start, as journalists say, streaming in. As we waited, we had to watch all the political commentaries and tolerate the music played by most TV stations as we watched that screen from Bomas. That is where the choirs should have come in. We waited for IEBC officials to read out the results and for these results to be updated on that screen. Finally the results were in the millions and the spoilt votes in their hundreds of thousands then they stopped coming in. Then they stopped the tallying and we waited for IEBC to say why. The tallying started all over again. And we redid all the waiting. TV stations tried to make the waiting easier though I am not sure they succeeded. Kanze and Lulu did their best though.

I suppose you all remember waiting for the IEBC Chair to come and declare one or the other as president. Then after he came in, we had to wait for the choirs to sing. In IEBC's defence, I suppose they did not want an audit to reveal that they paid a certain choir a significant amount of money to sing, 'You Raise me Up' and it did not sing it. Transparency and accountability etc etc. So they sang and finally the announcement was made. Well, the wait was over, not! We waited for Raila's speech, then Uhuru's speech. 

Now we waited for the Supreme Court. For Raila to file the petition, for the court to set dates. So much TV watching. And meme making.Then the proceedings started and we waited once more. We were used to waiting now. My mind does not agree. But I overrule it. Affidavits were thrown out. Advocates spoke for hours on end. We waited for Nazlin to sit down, for rulings, for the final ruling, especially for that final decision. Waited all day. I was afraid that if I took a nap, I'd miss it all together. It came finally. At 5pm and after five minutes (anti-climax no?) Kenya exhaled. Some were happy, some sad but all relieved that we waited no more. 

Let me give this story a moral. We have to wait for stuff in life. The question then is, what do we do when waiting? Watch analysts? Stare at the new studios rustled up by TV stations? Work? Work actually worked best for passing the time. Enough moral for now! Let me leave some of my (limited) wisdom for another post!

Of course, we are still waiting for IEBC's ink to fade...