Miguna’s Return to His Pays Natal, August 16, 2012*

Miguna’s Return to His Pays Natal, August 16, 2012*

Miguna arrived back in Kenya to a tumultuous welcome back home from a throng of rambunctious youth from diverse backgrounds- women and men; Muslims and Christians; Luo, Gikuyu, Kalenjin, Luhya, Somali, South Asian and all ethnic points in between. Some of them came with their banners, songs and chants. The media was there-television cameras, microphones, and notepads. Airport security was all over the place, barking and yakking into their walkie talkies.

And how we waited. And waited. And waited.

Many of us, like me, were there by seven.

The KLM flight from Amsterdam had been scheduled to touch down at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport at 20:15 East African Time. Then we saw it was held up by twenty five minutes. But even after it was confirmed that it had arrived; even after the jet lagged and bedraggled contents of that flight had ambled wearily past us jamming the Arrivals lobby, there was still no sign of the lanky son of the Nyando people making his rambunctious appearance.

Finally, a flurry of activity.

At first, a sour puss of a middle size security dude in an almost ill fighting jacket made a futile attempt to dismantle, not physically, but verbally, the bank of stationary television cameras set up by the well-known media houses by diverting them to the nearby security offices. Not one of them budged an inch. The excited and increasingly restive semi-spontaneous, curious youth "welcome committee" withstood mild harassment from the airport security platoon which was trying to push them out of the way.

Pause.

Out of the seemingly blue, Miguna strides through the exit doors accompanied by what to me looked like his own security detail. He does not have a trolley packed with suitcases, carry on bags and the usual traveler’s paraphernalia. His wife and daughters are nowhere to be seen. He does not leave the building.

Instead, he approaches the electronic viewing and recording contraptions assembled before him. He clears his throat above the din and says several things that I do not hear because I am way, way, way back in the crowd almost outdoors detached from the madding crowd as Thomas Hardy would say.

My extremely cheap cell phone announces an incoming call with its usual obnoxious ring tone. The number on the call display is unknown to me. The stranger on the phone calls me by name, wondering where I am. I instruct him to seek me by seeming to walk out. In a few seconds he sees me and I too, in a flash of recognition, realize he is one of Miguna’s drivers. He hands me a blue plastic KLM “shopping in the air” bag containing the Bvlgari Jasmine Noir perfume I told Miguna to bring for my beautiful young wife. The emissary tells me that Miguna’s phone went dead and that is why he could not call me himself. The driver goes back to where Miguna is addressing the media.

Abruptly the way is being cleared by some burly men who build a cordon around the author ofPeeling Back the Mask as they quickly cut a swath through the crowd to a three vehicle convoy parked outside to my left.

Before you can say “Come Baby Come” Miguna Miguna has left the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport and disappeared into the dark night of the city in the sun.

I look at the time on my phone.

It is about seven minutes past two hours before midnight here in the Kenyan capital.

Onyango Oloo
Nairobi

* The title is a riff on Aimé Cesaire's long poem,Cahier d'un retour au pays natal(Notebook of a Return to the Native Land).

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