By Eric Wamanji
If religious anniversaries are solemn for their fundamental significance; days of commemoration, introspection, and renewal of faith, in Kenya, it’s the opposite. Such anniversaries, instead, produce consumerism, debauchery, and anxiety.
Take Easter for instance, It’s a solemn period. Yet, Jesus Christ is being replaced by a tiny “devil” in form of an automobile that revs, roars, speeds, and whirls some demonic dust on doped, cultic, and jubilant spectators. Vasha, as Naivasha is colloquially known in entertainment circles, has become a pilgrimage site over Easter. Its anything but spiritual as meaning is found in a bottle of booze, a joint, promiscuity, and in escapades of debauchery. This is Happy Valley 2.0. The Rally champions are slowly emerging as saints and the barbecue on offer simply a sacrifice to the gods of rally.
And, clearly, as the rally sensation become a permanent fixture in Kenya’s calendar, so is “Vroom! Vroom!” … “Boom! Boom…” replacing “Hosanna, Hosanna, Hosanna in the Highest”.
Yep. Folks. In Kenya, Safari Rally is eating Jesus for Easter. So, the other day when I realized that the cacophony of the rally is superbly overwhelming, I could not stop to wonder if, for Kenya, the Rally is a fulfillment of Friedrich Nietzsche’s madman observation? Days of yore folks celebrated Jesus’ triumph of death, today, they celebrate the fastest, most theatric car! Vroom!
But to be fair, before Easter, pagans had their own celebrations, as Church historians would tell you. Christians created Easter. The real issue is not the actual dates of crucifixion, death, and resurrection, but the occasion and its fundamental symbolism. That symbolism, now, is being crushed under the tyres of those little rally cars – Vroom!
Hell’s Gate
And now, as if what goes around comes around, today, Easter is receding to the trenches of the secular, in fact, taking place in an eerily named location called Hell’s Gate- Vroom!
The centrality of Easter in Christianity, and Christiaan liturgical calendar is indispensable. Theologians know too well that crucifixion, death and resurrection firmly anchors the Christian faith not only on temporal dynamics but also eschatological and eternity.
Kenyans, having been let down by greedy, cheeky, sloppy, hypocritical religious leaders, are desperately in search of new religions. The Safari Rally sensation is one of them. Set right within Easter, the marketing blitz, promise of thrill and carefree secular life, sanctioned by the state, the Rally is emerging as Kenya’s new totemic ideal with a fanatical following, bordering on the divine.
Safari Rally is a great concept. It’s death many years ago left a huge chasm in our society. Its revival is commendable. Great in branding the country and in uniting folks. But Safari Rally is eating Jesus for Easter. Vroooooooommmmmm!
Mr. Wamanji is a Communication Expert and an analyst of Foreign Affairs. Catch my rants pale X: @manjis