We didn't have wood.We didn't have money.We barely had strength.But we had cardboard.And we had rage.Achieng's body was buried by her family in Kisumu.But in Nairobi, we held our own funeral.Not with priests or sermons.But with tape, markers, and scraps of silence.We built twenty-seven small coffins.One for every name on the list.
Some were stained with red paint.Some had flowers drawn in the corners.One had "I WAS ONLY 17" scribbled across it in shaky handwriting.We laid them outside Parliament gates.Quietly.As if we were tucking in ghosts.
A woman walking past covered her mouth and said,"Hii sio Kenya nilizaliwa ndani."I wanted to tell her:
"Then maybe you were born in the dream. We're living in the nightmare."The police came and kicked the boxes aside like trash.One officer even laughed.Another stepped on a box with the name "Brian Odhiambo" and crushed it flat.They said we were "causing fear."We weren't.We were holding a mirror to the country — and it flinched.That night, none of the TV stations aired it.But someone's TikTok went viral.And suddenly, the world was watching cardboard coffins scattered across Nairobi tarmac like fallen truth.We didn't have wood.
But we had memory.And memory doesn't rot.
Next: Chapter 6 – "The Boy With a Bullet in His Voice"
Drop a name in the comments.someone you carry in your heart.
This chapter is for the fallen. May cardboard be louder than coffins.