In The End You Are Alone.

After handover of the presidency in 2002, the late Mzee Daniel Arap Moi left state house unceremoniously. Power had exchanged hands and so was loyalty. Probably since the early sixties, Daniel Toroitich Moi had never been ‘alone.’

And after a long stint at the presidency, his right hand men might have promised him bliss even after him handing over power to his successor, one Emilio Mwai Kibaki. But on that afternoon Mzee must have realized that he had been seriously duped.

Any promises of reaching Canaan must have been thwarted by a people so close to him, who only left Mzee and his men, those who carried his staff and interceded with him, to cross over to Canaan which wasn’t the Canaan he expected probably.

Truth be said, Daniel Moi took us over on our slight way out of Egypt and made sure he returned us there. The people thought he would listen to them and lighten their Yoke but alas, like Rehoboam, he listened to the advice of the young men and multiplied their misery.

You see, King Solomon, symbolic to our founding president Jomo Kenyatta put a heavy yoke on the people he inherited. After his death, people sighed that his son Rehoboam would listen to them when they pleaded with him to lighten the yoke his father the king had imposed on them.

Instead of listening to the advice of the older men who served before his father King David that indeed he should lighten their yoke and that they would serve him faithfully, he hearkened to the advice of the young men who were his friends to make the Israelite’s yoke even heavier.

So, shortly after Jomo’s death, the people realized they were on their own. They had been left alone. And because humans are human, in 2002 they made sure they chanted, ‘all is possible without Moi.” Prior to this historic 2002 change, people sang in the tune of Psalms 109:8, “Let his days be few, and let another take his office.

Presumably, people left Mzee all alone because he had left them all alone too. Former senior public officers understand too well what it means to say that at the end we are all alone. The life that revolves around you when you are somebody fades away into oblivion as soon as you are sacked.

If you are unprepared about it, death knocks on your door very quickly. I realize Moi somehow understood this and that is why he has battled it bravely into 2020. Almost two decades after retiring from the presidency. Much more, he might have understood that we can never change the past neither can we run away from it.

I am sure with all the history and secrets he went to the grave with, he knew so much about the very many wrongs he did to other people, the ignorant political moves he took as well as the economic injustices he did this country. He lived with all these but found solace that he had sought forgiveness from those he had wronged even though it was too casual. At least he said sorry.

But we should understand that this issue of being alone is not left to the rich and famous alone. It spirals even down to us. I have seen people lament how they were left alone by the people they trusted so much. In fact I read a post from a friend at the start of this year lamenting how he was deserted by those he thought could stand for him. I pitied him. I pitied myself.

Pitying myself not because it was about me, simply because I have never realized that at the end it is all about me. In high school, we were always reminded that we reported to school alone and that we would leave alone. I have come to live with this mantra.

I don’t take to my head or heart the singing and words of people often because I know they don’t mean them. This has led me to a quieter and satisfied life. In the face of death, everything deserts you. In the grave we lie with solemnity of a principle we never gave credence while we lived.

Remember always that at the end you will be left alone. Parents take care of their children and then they leave them alone as they mature into adulthood. We love people with all our hearts and they leave us all to ourselves. We work hard to make friends and maintain friendships only for us to be left on our own when social stratification knocks on our doors.

Let’s us remember always that we are meant to drive ourselves, cook our own food, manage our own time, be happy in our own way, belief in ourselves, do our own things and stick with our families and loved ones by extension. Everything else is to be treated as excipients and should never enter our hearts and minds and stay there. Soon they may go and leave us alone.

At the end of the day, we all come back home to the smiles of our families and even when they too desert us, in our loneliness, we have a divine being to turn to. God never deserts us, we desert him and so he is ever present for us.

In the end you are all alone before men, but deep inside God is with you. It is the truth that is running the world otherwise in our loneliness and when we desert Him, we are indeed on our own. With this loneliness comes our hopelessness, living in denial, feeling betrayed and we soon depart to the  world beyond the living in complete solitude.

End

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