July 1969 was a month when history changed forever. For much of humanity, eyes were firmly fixed on the skies. Far above them, for eight days starting on the 16th, three men left the bounds of earth, on their way to set foot where no human had ever been before. And on the 20th of July 1969, two Americans – Neil Armstrong and Edwin (‘Buzz’) Aldrin – stepped out onto the surface of the moon while a third, Michael Collins, sat in orbit. It was a mission that shook the world, shattering notions of what was possible. There was, for once, no hyperbole in speaking about a ‘before’ and an ‘after’ – a before of earthbound possibilities, constrained by the limits of science and the human imagination, and an after (though all to brief) of possibilities without limit.
In Kenya, though, eyes and thoughts were not cast skywards. Ten days before the moon landing, all attention was on a little patch of ground on a small island on Lake Victoria. On 10th July 1969, Tom Mboya was buried on Rusinga Island. Five days before that, on a Saturday afternoon in Nairobi, Tom Mboya had walked into a chemist’s shop. He had bought a bottle of lotion and chatted to the Chhanis, the proprietors of the pharmacy. He had then stepped out, straight into a gunman who fired two bullets into him. Mboya was dead within the hour.
Full post at https://www.wgkantai.com/post/shooting-a-star-mboya-in-life-and-death
Comments
Post a Comment