Governance is now a hashtag #KisumuRising,
trending in the clouds while the ground is sinking
We like the progress on a backlit screen,
cropping out the piles of trash at the market’s edge.
The public participation is a Zoom call
with a password only the inner circle knows
We are a county of followers,
waiting for a leader to stop posting
and start planting
The PR machine is a well-oiled engine,
churning out success stories in 4K resolution
they photoshop the poverty out of the frame,
replacing the potholes with digital filters,
If you tweet a complaint, you’re blocked by a bot,
or drowned out by their digital watchdogs
whose job is to paint a masterpiece of everything is fine
on a canvas that is clearly tearing at the seams.
But the Wi-Fi doesn’t reach the bottom of the cooking pot,
and you cannot download a meal from a PDF report.
The youth are scrolling through opportunities
on platforms that require a connection
beyond the 5G signal on their second-hand phones.
Real governance isn’t a live session on Facebook
it’s the weight of the water bucket on a girl’s head,
and the silence of a classroom that has no desks.
-Tuesday.the.great
