The Bahatian

Whoever controls the media controls the kind of narrative the masses will hear. And where the government has a stake, the sheeple have been dumbed down by well coordinated narratives when it comes to discoursing issues of national importance.   For a full week, the Kenyan media was full of glowing tributes with acres of pages or airtime devoted at lionizing the former head of state. Going by the positive reviews our media gives every politician with a large stature upon taking the final worldly bow, it is evident that all the political sins, both of omission or commission, are whitewashed and the departed celebrated as a saint!

That death has morphed into a big industry is not in contention. Funeral homes, crematoriums, carpenters, funeral hire services, to name but a few, are the major beneficiaries. Traditional African setting had a way of dispensing with the dead, and, unlike today, big and elaborate funerals were unheard of. In some customs, the dead were simply tossed in the bushes for the scavengers to do postmortems and inter the remains in their bellies. Not today where the dead are mourned in such a fashion as to leave the bereaved surprised.   Where there is a dead body, vultures will gather. This saying, straight from the Bible, is aptly true when applied to human vultures. Any news of a dead person will bring even those who never knew the deceased to the bereaved home. Real and pseudo mourners will camp there, until the final journey of the deceased into the six feet resting pit.