She stood in a long queue- not as long as the one 5 years ago when the papers did not come as promised, when they had to disperse and come back at 4:00p.m when the election was meant to start at 7:00a.m.

For forty minutes she was the only woman in a line of A-Ms, just as it had been in High School. For all the women of the clans in the Central start with a prefix – Na. It occurred to her that she might immediately be ostracized or distanced from their cause because now they knew she was not a Na. If anything else about her features had not yet pointed it out, her presence in the A- M line would.

She picked her phone from her handbag, relieved that it was a less expensive phone. No one seemed to notice. But she kept her bag close nevertheless, because it had been tugged from her before, by the hooligans, the ghetto dwellers sniping at half open windows of cars.

She took a picture of the line with her face in the corner. She wanted to remember this day. She also wanted to post the picture of the line, and her determination to remain in the line and vote on that cold foggy morning when most of her contemporaries had stayed in bed because, “nothing would ever change”.

In 1996, her mother and her mother’s sister had picked her up early from her Primary One class. She had been in a prestigious school where children of the then leaders and civil servants had been taught. It had once had interviews and perhaps a waiting list, but when the numbers had risen from 40 to 120 students per classroom, the elites had began to move their children to private schools. She had moved too. Today no one remembered it. No one spoke of it. It was a UPE school, no one of substance came out of there.

Her mother and aunt were early because it was the day of elections and the atmosphere was vibrating with excitement. She longed to join in the excitement but she had been timid as a child. Instead of joy, she had been afraid when her mother rounded the small street corners at high speed, hooting the ceremonial horn- Ppi- ppi Ppi- ppi Ppi-Ppi – No change! No change! No change! M7. No change!

Her Aunt had rolled down the window and sat on the car window sill screaming and waving in joyful hysterics completely oblivious to the fact that the car had been weighed down three times by her body.

She was turning 30 this year. And this year, a 38 year old had stood for President. A 38 year old nobody- a ghetto weed smoking hooligan of “unrefined parentage”. His wife was from the Western region as her husband was from the Central region. It was a blood transfused generation. While their parents had married their tribes-mates, they had produced children who had studied with other tribes people and some had married them. Some parents had accepted this new reality- albeit shocked- at this strange new phenomenon- that their child would choose to unite with a culture so different from their own in a land where they had once been foreigners and where their children were now almost natives.

She watched when the head of the committee that had overseen the circus sealed the last documents validating the final outcome. He was quick but forceful, the way he pressed the seal against paper after paper. It was almost as if he wanted to be done with it and then forget that it had all happened.

“I am glad that I represented my generation. This is for all of us who grew up thinking that we were inconsequential.”

The hooligan hailed from a large group of those children who had fallen by the way side within the past 20 years. Three of them, she had known personally. They were the children of her aunt who had danced in the window sill. Two boys and one girl who had lived in a slum all their lives. Their house was rotting with green mold because when it rained the water went up to the window sills. The boys had gone to one of those schools that the elites had left, where the teachers were not paid and did not come to teach, where the rooms were so full that some students had to sit outside, and where hungry children fought with bare hands for hot posho as if it were a life and death situation. Maybe it was. The boys had not been able to make into University. Having barely made it out of high school with an education, they had started smoking marijuana. One of them had tried riding a boda boda, and when that failed, he had escaped into the South African border at the risk of his life by immigration police to do a job that he had never mentioned. The other had probably joined one of those mutayimbwa gangs who took a life for the value of a mobile phone and sold it for more drugs. They had nothing to live for. Nothing to lose. Now one of those hooligans had stood for President and riled up the country – exchanging words with the President’s own Sand Hurst trained son.

They said he was a supporter of culturally vile activities. Some believed it and went away. Then they said he was a foreign agent- it was the oil he was being played for- many believed it and circulated it. Finally they said, it was all for the Central- they were out for blood. It worked like a charm. Who would vote for their own extermination?

No, not here on this part of earth where tribal fault-lines quake and cause landslides that wedge entire peoples into the depths of the soil. Not here. It worked like a charm. He was a rabid dog calling for action. He was full of hate. I choose peace. That was the slogan recited against him. “I choose peace” had cleverly ignited the unconscious bias that exists within us- the age old human instinct of ‘The Other’. White v Black. Central v West.

She stood in a line, took a photo and the man behind her, his home region beforehand unrecognisable, said,

“Madam, you are not allowed to take photos. The police officers there can see you.”

He was from the North. And at once, they were almost like allies. North and West in the Central. It was hard to admit it. She had been afraid to be the only ‘foreigner’ in the line.

Soon after elections, the man from the ghetto was held for days without food, with his wife and a little child. The rest of the country suffered power shut downs and worst of all, to her contemporaries and the generations below- an indefinite internet shut down. The government had not known that a large group of them would never have noticed that elections had even taken place if the internet had not been not switched off.

No sooner had the ghetto man become a prisoner in his own home, than a former Archbishop slept with another man’s wife. It was front page news for two days. The Bishop created a twitter account to apologise to his flock, for a sin, popular among the clergy that people no longer cast stones for. Everything was back to normal.