Cowards live longer

History is full of heroes. Everywhere, new ones are born. The price they pay is too much for any normal person. In spite of the challenges involved, the world is not short of people who would do anything to get the ticket to heroism.

Barely two months ago, we celebrated Mashujaa day and appreciated the surviving MAU MAU fighters and sang praises to those who died.  Were it not for them, we would not be where we are today.

Trailing the lives of the freedom fighters, that of their children, and the people they died for, the whole struggle seems to have been in vain. 50 years later, we say with Oginga Odinga, Not Yet Uhuru.

It is surprising to see civil activists today and many other people fighting for the masses waste their time, energy and resources for a cause which, needless to say, will bear no fruit. One wonders what these late comers to the struggle, struggle so much against unchanging odds. Why would they hope that one day, they would grasp water with their hands?

Perhaps, there is something spiritual about struggle. Those of us who heard (and maybe read) the accounts of Jesus Christ would attest to his desire to save the world. It is such a pity that a man so noble had to die at the tender age of 33; at the prime of his life and  at the threshold of his successes and yet he had to die.

There is no doubt had he lived longer, raised a family, and grew wiser; the world today would have been a better place. Many miss him; worship him, as if they had known him in person, maybe they have. There is something about heroes and heroines that connect us to them on a spiritual level. We speak of them as if we struggled by their side.

It is no wonder most of the people who inspire us are heroes. Mandela, Dr King (MLK), Nyerere… back home, we have the legends of MAU MAU, the thousands of men and women who died for us to live.

This day, 40 days from the day we celebrated them, our gratitude to them is as present as ever. We can never thank them enough. A child can never repay its mother’s milk.

But somehow we feel that hadn’t they fought so hard, they would have lived to suffer another day. Many managed that way. It’s better to live than to be a carcass for hounds. The cowards indeed lived longer to see their mothers while the brave lay dead unburied in the forests.