The dust settled on our feet. Our eyes were already strained because of staring at a blank tv screen for days on end. It was as if we were in a labour ward. Maybe we had misplaced expectations, or maybe selfish and wrong expectations altogether. Even with hindsight we were still unrealistic.We had not slept for days. The denouement dulled our emotions. We missed watching football and wrestling and betting and making love. That evening we decided to catch some sleep, crumpled newspapers clumped between our thighs. We snored until sunrise.It was like two days straight of sound sleep. Our sedated emotions migrated in the opposite direction unrelated to politics. We had wet dreams. And we felt pretty filthy. Did we curse? Instead we laughed like teenage clowns.Then we went fishing to pass time because we had wasted time on a futile exercise which was none of our business. We used locusts as bait to catch tilapia, but we ended up with shrimps in our kiondo bags.We conversed among ourselves in low tones as we faced the gray river in the late afternoon. It was warm without the sun being visible. A lone figure balanced his buttocks on an exposed root of a mango tree. He was smoking a bundle of a joint without a care. He looked beyond the river, beyond the hills, beyond the new government.It was business as usual. Again!That lazy Saturday we sat under a nim tree fully dressed in green fatigues. We drank coffee, surrounded with the metallic spirit of dead cars - the original owners having rushed to claim new cars for having sung loudest during the long wait.A lad in sagging pants diverted our thoughts and preoccupation by playing loud Sudanese Arab music. He wanted to return where we left. Some people have a strong cultural attachment to a past they can not return to except in a slave mentality thought, his sagging pants a clash of cultures. Yesterday, today, or tomorrow, music reminded him of past deeds or misdeeds of which we were not part.Our collective past seems to be mirrored in wholesale suffering and trauma, we only wish it away by listening to the individual music in the rhythm of our hearts.The last time we checked our pulse it was way above normal, on the threshold of artificial madness because our thinking was pigeonholed.We wanted to live like human beings again, think, eat, play, laugh like mere mortals.We descended from the fantasy of our ivory towers. But like the selfish tortoise which went to a wedding in heaven on borrowed wings, we broke our backs upon landing where we were. We picked the pieces and patched our misery.For a smooth transition, or a return down to earth, we would have watched a good movie or a comedy for that matter. But, boy, we were tired of staring at the blank tv screen.We played scrabble and did the crossword puzzle, deliberately forcing the word love in Japanese. I'm yet to find a Jap who speaks Japadola, Dodoth, Ik, or Toposa.Hand them their job description. Let them start real work, the big women especially must show us that they can do a better job than the men. We are tired of war and unending stories of corruption! Are women also corrupt? Let's go dancing!
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