The ultimate sacrifice is death for a worthy cause

Several years ago we had a tragedy of a stampede — a football matter — at the Nyayo Stadium in which a number of people died.

Around that weekend I did a reflection in this column on the reality of death. At that point my position was that we Kenyans can sometimes be rather casual and even careless about this very important and quite unavoidable reality of our existence.

Today, I go back to that theme of death again for a different reason. A good number of our heroic men in the Kenyan Defence Forces have been killed in Somali.

Others have been wounded and the fate of many more of them is yet to be known. Why did they have to die or to be wounded and so on?

What pain are their families, relatives and friends going through? These are all good questions for us commentators and politicians but not so for those close family members.
But whatever the case, those gallant soldiers were our men out there on duty to make sure we are safer, that our university students in Garissa and other places will not live in fear and that worshippers will not worship their God under the watch of police officers.

That simple people who try to do their small businesses will go about their work with confidence. We all need to stop for a minute, keep quiet and honour those heroes. We also need to reflect on the pain that their relatives and friends are experiencing.

RESTORE PEACE

Kenya is part of an international team of soldiers who have been in Somalia for a number of years trying to restore peace in that country.

Even America, the biggest military power on earth, did try at some point but after suffering some setback — they lost less than 20 soldiers — they gave up.

Other countries have lost their own. As it is, right now, it would seem that Kenya has paid much more than anybody else has had to. Our soldiers’ deaths are not in vain.

There are deaths that have value and others that have not. Take those fellows who are killed by the police because they are robbers.

How about those young people whose lives are messed up by people who sell drugs to them? That is death. And of course we know about other Kenyans who keep corrupting every moment of our national unity. That is death too.

I wish to celebrate Salah Sabdow Farah, the former deputy headteacher of Mandera Township Primary School. He succumbed to injuries he sustained trying to protect his Christian fellow passengers when they were attacked by Al-Shabaab.

Fr Wamugunda is dean of students, University of Nairobi; [email protected]