I was born in Garissa, the epicentre of the deadly terrorist attack on Moi University, Garissa campus.
This is where 147 young, beautiful ambitious college kids were slaughtered. They were seekers of knowledge, full of dreams & hope and majority of them were the only hope their families had to get out of a vicious cycle of poverty. The ruthless barbaric Al-Shabaab terrorists suddenly snuffed out their lives.
And my hometown became the scene of a massacre.
When the news broke, I remember muttering under my breath, "oh no not again". Then I was transfixed on TV channels, twitter handles and anywhere and everywhere I could find an update. Each update that came with a rising death toll sank me lower. As the hostage situation was unfolding, a glimmer of hope lit inside me whenever I heard the government saying, "We have cornered the terrorists". The hope would suddenly fade, when the realization hit me that terrorists do not give up easily. They come to die and they make sure they die having taken as many lives as they possibly can.
I have no words to describe how sad I have been feeling for the past six days. I am all cried out; my tears have stopped flowing. I have stopped asking why my government's security apparatus failed the hostages. Why it took 17 hours to end the siege. I have stopped asking how many more lives could have been saved had the government acted in time to bring in the Recce Company - a specialist unit trained for counter terrorism.
I have stopped being a security expert.
Instead, now I am asking myself, how could this have happened in the first place? What could I have done as an individual, as a Kenyan Somali to stop it all? Somewhere deep in my heart, I blame myself. I blame myself for being angry when Somalis from Somalia were rounded up at Kasarani. I blame myself for defending people who would hurt my countrymen. I blame myself for not choosing sides, for not sticking to the Kenyan side.
Why do I blame myself?
There is no two ways about it; I can choose to be a real Kenyan and not sympathize with terrorists & their uncles. Or I can be unknowingly, silently aiding them. If I am silent, I am an accomplice in the atrocities of Al-Shabaab, who by the way, have mastered how to hide behind me. They have easily acquired the Kenyans IDs that I, as a Kenyan, have to jump loops to attain. And they speak better Swahili than me. Thy have also learnt to recruit my brightest son. When I am silent about my son’s radicalization, I have played a part in their killing spree. That’s why I blame myself. Because of my silence, people of my lineage, people of my religion, keep killing Kenyans like flies.
It is heart-breaking living with the fact that the terrorists stayed at a hotel in Garissa town - probably with their Armour - before they began their slaughter. Whether directly or indirectly, I must have seen something somewhere; if I just dig on my memory a little deeper, I am sure I saw something. But I did not say anything. If I was just a little bit more patriotic, if I cared just a little more, I would have seen the movements of those terrorists, I would have smelled their intention and I would have said something. But I did not, so I blame myself.
The blood of 147 lives is now in my hands.
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| My message @ #147notjustanumber Night vigil at Uhuru Park |
Kenya is my only country; my great grand parents were born in Kenya. My grandmother used to tell us a story that happened in their village way before British colonialists arrived in North Eastern Kenya. She used to tell us of a particular incident when her mother - my great grandmother - fought Italian settlers who raided their village. She described of a battle between her mother, and an Italian man who tried to rape her. She said my great grandmother leaned against thorny shrubs to cover her back, as she kept the Italian at bay. I was very young when she used to tell us this story.
The significance of this simple story is to remind my fellow Kenyan Somalis that Somalia is not our country; Kenya is. We may speak the same language as Somalis from Somalia but we are not they. We are we - Kenyan Somalis who are Kenyan first, then Somali by ethnicity second.
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