Those bleating goats were a real nuisance!!

I and my four siblings grew up in a peri -urban area of Nairobi. The family home was on a 5 acre parcel of land as were many of the neighboring properties. The surrounding area also had coffee farms and dams so it was a paradise for adventurous children to walk, fish, ride bicycles and so on. Wild dik diks, rabbits, squirrels, snakes, chameleons, tortoises and monkeys were all over the place including occasional rumors of leopard sightings. In view of the size of the property, my parents kept the occasional domestic animals more specifically cows and goats. Some neighbors even had chickens, pigs, sheep and horses. Like most of the other neighbors, my folks also cultivated maize, beans, carrots, potatoes, bananas, sukuma wiki, spinach etc for home consumption with part of the land left for the cows and goats to graze on the luxuriant grass.

While the cows had an attendant to look after them and to milk them when needed, the goats were another story altogether. During the school holidays and when it was particularly dry the duty of taking the goats out to look for grazing pasture fell on me and my brother and there was nothing as frustrating as this chore which we absolutely hated with a passion!

Much as people say that a sheep could easily be one of the most stupid and stubborn animal alive, I think the goat is a close second if not the outright champion of stupidity. You see these animals would take the slightest opportunity to raid the maize or beans planted in the shamba (usually someone else’s shamba) at the expense of the grass they were supposed to feed on so that we spent a frustrating afternoon shooing them out of the shamba only for others to make their way back the moment our backs were turned.

At the end of a tedious day we would herd the animals back into their shed for the night, single out the most notorious maize grabbing ones and then cane them mercilessly as a punishment for taking us round and round in circles as the others watched in shocked discomfort their pitiful bleating notwithstanding. This apparently did little to change the thieving ways of the diehard goats that would the very next day stray back into someone else’s shamba to run riot on their crops. Day in day out caning did nothing to stop the goats from raiding yet another shamba and we soon saw the futility of it all and just shooed them out of the shamba when the strayed there. We wished death on all of them so that we would be freed from the misery and tedium of herding those damned animals.

Now fast forward 35 years and the same goats are now wandering into people’s shambas and making a beeline for the choicest crops, the low hanging fruit so to speak. Not even the caning that the shepherds are inflicting on them and the uproar that has arisen will get them to see their wayward behavior. Every attempt to tame them has been a miserable failure and they continue to pillage and roam unfettered in the people’s shamba unfazed and unapologetic. We wish them a thousand painful deaths because we are tired of looking after them in their wayward ways and we have been reduced to shooing them out of the shamba but knowing that tomorrow they shall be back to eat to their hearts content.

Who are these goats you may wonder? Off course it is our top heavy political class both elected and rejected who see nothing wrong in taking us round and round in circles blaming each other for their political failures while seeking our attention as they demand more and more from us by way of meeting their expensive habits as they demand recognition, status and more and more bells and whistles to boost their already bloated egos. On top of it all some are beating the drums of a referendum the cost of which shall be met from the public coffers as if we do not have other more pressing issues to deal with such as drought ravaging some in the country, illnesses and disease affecting many, the threats to our tourism industry due to the terrorism threats by Al Shabab and other disgruntled elements of society, good schools infrastructure for our children etc etc.

These goats have even raised uproar in other foreign shambas where they have been declared persona non grata for their cheap theatrics and notoriety as they eat their way through those shambas devouring the best bits as they have been doing while at home and collectively shaming us all.

I wish these goats would all go to hell while the rest of us go on with our lives for surely we cannot be eating, sleeping and drinking politics day in day out as if we have nothing better to do much to the chagrin of many Kenyans who are fed up with the political din and sabre rattling by all these bleating goats!!