I'm sitting here at my desk...and I have this amazing window seat...from my vantage point I can see the traffic as it speeds down from wayaki way to town. I imagine the people in those cars, their dreams, their hopes...their fears. I wonder about their families, do they have love, do they laugh and cry as we do in our family. Are they afflicted by turmoil, do they share in each others suffering. Are they a family like my family?

Outside my window... I can see a wall. This wall is like any other boundary wall you would see surrounding a house in Kenya...but this wall is special to me. I have sat by this window for three months and I still can not get used to what I see when I look at this wall. What you ask is so special about my wall...along this wall I have a friend. A special friend. I don’t even know his name but he lives on the wall...yes I think you could say he lives on the wall. When I first saw this wall it was like any other to me.... there were some palm tree cuttings and some logs leaning against a wall. I wondered to myself why anyone would bother to arrange tree cuttings so well against a wall...beyond that I ignored it.

I can still remember my shock that morning. I was passing by as I usually do on my way to the office. It was chilly outside and I was rushing to get inside to the warmth of the building, when I heard someone talking. He had an amazing command of the English language. He almost sounded like a Briton. I looked up puzzled wondering who that could be as he was talking rather loudly only to see a head peeping from the tree leanings on the wall. I stood rooted just staring. Not because I have never seen a man who has no home (after all I grew up in a developing country) but because this man seemed normal to me. well yes he was wearing an old dirty plastic raincoat to protect himself from the rain I assume, and the fact that he was talking waving a stick in all directions made me realize at once that this was not a man normal like you and me. There were people there talking to him. I was so shocked I did not catch a word they were saying but they seemed to be having a conversation with this man and once in a while they even laughed together.
I had to go soon after because I was running late for work.

When I got to the office I stared out of my window. There was no man on the wall. The leanings were quiet now. No head, no voices. I was wondering did I imagine it. I asked my colleague is their man who lives on the wall… I’ll never forget his response… “Which wall?”…the wall right outside our window I retorted… “oh! That man yah he lives there its weird right” and back he went to his work!

Why should such an incident impact me so much that I would write about it… simply because of this… this man on the wall is clearly educated. What triggered him to this level of depravation? I wonder every time I pass there. He has become my friend now. I take him food and he calls me “miss”… it makes my day to talk to him! He loves biscuits this friend of mine on the wall. I don’t know his name I’m afraid for he can not tell me.

Yet my president and members of parliament spend their time politicking. Fighting about who deserves to be the next leader of my great country. They tell us this leader is lying to you and I can bring you great things. My country is about to exercise its democratic right to elect a new president in less than six months yet I hear only the same old rhetoric. I look at my leaders and I fear, for if the system that they have fostered leads to the depravation of intelligent men such as my friend on the wall; is there hope for us. They have promised great things in the past and yet they have delivered none in totality. My friend to me is a representation of us ordinary men. Those of us who have no way to grab power and sort out the mess our leaders have created. This man must have had dreams like the people in those cars I see speeding down the highway outside my window. He must have had a family that loved him and shared his aspirations. What led him to this point in his life. Frustration, anger pain… I can only guess.

I can see him even now. Its cold outside and I can see he is freezing. Every now and again he bursts into song probably to keep warm… yet within the corridors of power my leaders are politicking not about how they will improve the lives of Kenyans such as these but about who has the right to be president. Who deserves it. Real issues have been forgotten. I once read a story by Ken Saro-wiwa: Africa kills her sun.

How long will be silent… tomorrow you might be that man on the wall.