Born in 1931, Kibaki served in various roles from Member of Parliament, Cabinet minister to Vice President.
Whatever inspired him as a boy was potent enough to later draw him into the enchanted terrain of politics.
In certain latitudes there comes a span of time approaching and following the summer solstice, some weeks in all, when the twilights turn long and blue... You notice it first as April ends and May begins, a change in the season, not exactly a warming — in fact not at all a warming — yet suddenly summer seems near, a possibility, even a promise... you find yourself swimming in the color blue... During the blue nights you think the end of day will never come. As the blue nights draw to a close (and they will, and they do) you experience an actual chill, an apprehension of illness, at the moment you first notice: the blue light is going, the days are already shortening, the summer is gone... (During the Blue Nights)... I found my mind turning increasingly to illness, to the end of promise, the dwindling of the days, the inevitability of the fading, the dying of the brightness”.
Joan Didion wrote these words using the ‘Blue Nights’ as a metaphor for a dark time — the final confrontation with mortality — when the end unavoidably comes. I thought of these words after I learnt that former President Mwai Kibaki had died on April 21, 2022. My mind also turned to “the end of promise”. End of the rainbow promise?
