The UglyBeautiful Tale of a Stupid, Stupid Heart is a riveting tale of a blind, carefree, yet kindest of the hearts that will amuse and anger, tickle, and unfortunately makes you shed a tear! Set in Mount Elgon, Western Kenya, the book tells a story of two neighboring families (that of Joram and that of Sikowo) hailing from the Bok, who happens to be the majority, and the Ndorobo, apparently a persecuted minority, respectively. At the core of their perennially paradoxical relationship, is the ever-emotive issue in our modern-day Kenya: land.
This is not a love story; neither is it a story about love… The UglyBeautiful Tale of a Stupid, Stupid Heart is a story, fictitious and real yet imaginatively recounted and recreated anew, about living a lie, a day at a time until death suddenly, fiercely shuts its dark door of mercy, and tramples one upon the vast emptiness. This is especially the case when David and Wairimu, apparently engaged in a forbidden passion, unfortunately finds themselves in the unforgivable, cruel and menacing jaws of death in Runyenjes thanks to a bloodthirsty mob that is on a killing spree and eager to avenge the deaths of their fellow tribesmen butchered earlier in Rift Valley, Kisumu and the Coast.
David is a dynamic character whose emotions, attitudes, and temperaments are
unfathomable. After betraying his childhood sweetheart, Chebet, and subsequently
abandoning her in her most needy hour to face an accusing world after an unexpected
pregnancy all by herself, he discreetly falls in love with Wairimu. Wairimu is an exceedingly
beautiful, gorgeous, exquisite, marvelous and amazing young woman whose irresistible
charms, wit and affection takes his life to places unknown…and finally, to his grave!
The book explains how successive regimes helped plant a seed of animosity between
the two Sabaot sub tribes, watered it, and pruned its branches until its fruition stage. After
decades of blatant indecisiveness, Sabaot Land Defense Force was born. The bloodthirsty
militia will eventually set up a parallel government and fronted a leader of its choosing who
won the Mount Elgon constituency parliamentary seat with a landslide in the contested 2007
Kenyan General Elections. The book also wittingly revisits the 2007/2008 Post Election
Violence, why it all had to happen, why it might happen yet again and implicitly offers a
pathway that might save Kenyans from an imminent recurrence. Most important, in detail, it
explains the recipes that often give birth to militias in modern-day Kenya whose illegitimate
tact of trying to solve a legitimate issue is rarely refreshing (as was the case with Sabaot Land
Defense Force).
More so, the book gives you an ideal picture of how it was living through those
turbulent moments when Kenyans maimed, beheaded, evicted, forcibly circumcised, robbed,
raped, and shattered lives of fellow Kenyans. It is a necessary retreat to ‘that’ ugly past that
we would have loved to forget as soon as last year…that past that is indeed a dark chapter in
our history as a country that we must draw meaningful lessons from. We must thus make it
our default duty reminding our seemingly ever-self-centered, crafty, and unpredictable leaders
that never again should they take us back there.
The UglyBeautiful Tale of a Stupid, Stupid Heart is a unique, nostalgic, and candid manifestation of our everyday struggles, challenges, and hurdles in life with self and others. Many a time, such hurdles are direct consequences of personal decisions resulting from the usual interactions and the seemingly never-ending complex relationships with our friends, relatives, neighbors and the ruling elite in our society.
