When we started kindergarten, we sang a joyful song: “Head, shoulders, knees, and toes, knees and toes; eyes, ears, mouth, and nose.” The song represents every visible body part, the basics we should see and touch. As we grow older, we learn about the internal parts we can’t see but are vital: the brain, tissues, blood, bones, gut, spleen, and blood vessels. This simple tune, once a happy memory, now haunts me as I follow the post mortem news of each tragic death that happened during the #rejectfinancebill protests. In the weeks of the protest, the police/state have shattered this innocent narrative. Today, I want to delve into the deeply disturbing reality we now face — our internal parts we can now describe in sight, smell, textures, intimately. We’ve witnessed horrors that should have remained in our imaginations. There’s no going back; there’s no normalising this. Walk with me as I unpack a few things we have collectively witnessed that are breaking my mind.

Mindbreak 1– The Red on our streets

This red is not just a colour, but a sombre reminder of the ultimate sacrifice. It stands for the tragic cost of state brutality and the preciousness of each life lost.

Blood — a vital fluid coursing through the circulatory system of humans and other vertebrates — delivers essential nutrients and oxygen to cells and transports metabolic waste away from them. Blood, often referred to as the fountain of life, is composed of blood cells suspended in plasma.

Blood is sacred. It symbolises life itself, carrying the power to nourish, protect, and heal. Each drop of blood is precious, embodying the very essence of our existence. How then have we normalised the very essence of life, the sacred fluid that sustains us, when it appears outside the confines of the bodies it keeps alive?

In the protests, the sight of blood has become expected when police and goons enter a scene. This normalisation of bloodshed starkly reflects our collective desensitisation. Blood, which should invoke a profound sense of urgency and desolation, now lies disregarded on our clothes, shoes, bandages, dustbins from our makeshift medical centres, hospital floors, beds, rivers, the backs of vehicles, sheets, and ambulances. We walk past people with bloodstains, trickling streams of blood from departed souls, splatters across pavements, and oozing wounds with a detachment that should have been unimaginable.

Consider our national flag, the symbol of our protests, where red symbolises the blood shed by those who fought for our freedom. Red is on our flag precisely because blood should never have been shed. Yet, despite this powerful symbolism, we witness blood pouring onto our streets by the hand of the state, staining our pavements, and soaking into the ground without the reverence it deserves. My mind is breaking.

Mindbreak 2: The Brains

Kenya has 39 qualified neurosurgeons, as per a recent report in the East African Journal of Neurological Sciences, and an additional 40 residents currently in training. Standard procedure dictates that they see a brain within the confines of sterile environments, having taken all possible precautions to ensure maximum patient safety, and with a team of doctors to ensure everything goes as planned. Pray tell then, why we witnessed David’s brains lying on Parliament Road.

We are not surgeons, we are not in Chiromo campus learning to be doctors. No, we are protestors on another day of protests learning so intimately, what the brain of a human being looks like, split into many centres. Every curve, every crevice, different textures and colours, we now know what a brain looks like.

We saw the brain before and after it was squashed by feet and cars; we bore witness to how white, how coiled, how intricate that system is. We witnessed how the brain can separate into different parts, and how hard it is to collect them back together outside the confines of a surgery room.

We measured by eye how quickly a mistake in the surgery room can become fatal. We witnessed how the skull looks like topless, how much blood can ooze out of that orifice. My mind is breaking from the raw and brutal sight of a brain exposed and desecrated in the streets. This is a reality that should remain in medical textbooks and operating rooms, yet here it was, laid bare for all to see.

Mindbreak 3: No one who has died by the hand of the state has died whole

Chinua Achebe, in his novel “Anthills of the Savannah” published in 1987, delves into themes of power, corruption, and the profound impact of political turmoil on individuals and society. He deeply reflects on the cultural and emotional significance of being able to properly mourn and bury loved ones with dignity — a luxury that becomes especially poignant and challenging in times of conflict or upheaval. As Achebe eloquently puts it, “The luxury of death is to bury your people whole… we have robbed our people of that.”

In our communities, body viewings and sharing stories of how people lived and died in eulogies are sacred traditions. They are how we honour and remember our loved ones with dignity. Yet, when the state’s actions lead to the deaths of our children and kin, we are robbed of the ability to lay them to rest whole. Imagine bearing witness to a child being buried with wounds they never had in life — bullet-ridden bodies, shattered skulls, broken spines, and torn vessels. These injuries not only defy our cultural practices but also deepen the wounds of grief. They force us to confront a reality where our mourning is overshadowed by the brutality of the state.

To bury someone whole is not just a matter of physical completeness but a also about their dignity and the respect we owe to their memory. The state’s actions, marked by violence and impunity, deny us this fundamental right. They leave us grappling with the trauma of burying our loved ones with open wounds and shattered bodies, horrendous death stories, scars that bear witness to injustice and a callous disregard for human life. My mind breaks because NO ONE, WHO HAS DIED BY THE HAND OF THE STATE HAS DIED WHOLE, AND AS SUCH, WE ARE NOT HAVING THE LUXURY OF MOURNING THEM AS WHOLE.

Our Grief is our defiance

These moments of profound grief and loss call on our communities to do more than simply mourn in silence. We are compelled to stand in defiance against a system that perpetuates such profound atrocities. When our loved ones are taken from us by the brutal actions of the state, it is not just their lives that are stolen — it is our dignity, our sense of justice, and our trust in those who are meant to protect us. We refuse to accept this injustice quietly. Instead, we raise our voices to demand accountability and transparency. We speak out against the impunity that allows such violence to continue unchecked. Our grief becomes a rallying cry, a force that binds us together in solidarity and strength. We invoke the names of our dead, remind their spirits to not rest.

In our defiance, we reclaim our humanity. We refuse to be silenced by fear or despair. Instead, we find strength in our grief, turning it into a powerful force for change and a testament to our unwavering commitment to the pursuit of justice, accountability and peace.