Whoever said that Kenya-Stockholm is a complicated arena may have been right. In a case that has stunned a cross section of the community, Kenyans who have been waiting patiently to attend a wedding that was held last Saturday were strategically excluded from the function because they were considered Odiangabuks.
If you are new inna-de area, Odiangabuks are ordinary and worthless people, sometimes considered uncouth and unworthy of attention. They are the kind of people whom President Mwai Kibaki could call Mavi ya kuku (Chicken shit) or pumbaf.
A few weeks before the wedding, the lucky couple and their friends had thrown a Pre-wedding Party that was not just well attended but that gave a clue as to what to expect at the real wedding that was expected in a few weeks.
It was a big shock when some Odiangabuks (who did not even know their status in relation to the wedding) got the breaking news from BBC-Stockholm that the wedding had already taken place. Unlike during the pre-wedding when the “Organizing committee” sent an SMS to Wakenya while a notice was also placed at KSB, there was no single announcement about the wedding as the date and venue were converted into a “top secret” that even the FBI or the M16 could not have cracked.
Since the Muraya and Lissa wedding in September last year, Kenyans have been starved of public weddings and when news went around that a Kenyan man and a Swedish woman had called a pre-wedding Party, both men and women, boys and girls walijiseti and they landed at the pre-wedding in style.
A big factor at the Pre-wedding was that there was a “contribution book” where wedding-lovers could register their names together with the amount they had coughed towards the big day. A Kenyan bachelor who called KSB lamented that after undergoing a serious financial stress to make it known that he was one of the contributors towards the big day, it was a “fore-gone conclusion” that he would be invited to the wedding, so he thought in his amorous bachelor brain.
He was one of the Odiangabuks who was left out and another problem was that the miss cost him a precious opportunity to get close to a cute Kenyan lady he met at the Pre-wedding because they had an agreement that they would deepen their contacts at the wedding where they both expected to be invited. He never took her number and now, she is gone, may be, not for ever.
What has stunned Kenyans especially those who attended the pre-wedding is that when the couple needed their money to organize the wedding, they were treated like Kings and Queens with SMS messages making it to their mobile phones but once the money was in, the couple disappeared to organize a secret wedding somewhere in Stockholm.
PRE-WEDDING COMMITTEE SHOULD ACCOUNT
According to a KSB agent who did make it at the wedding albeit incognito, the event was packed with Swedes with only 5-10 Kenyans blackening the white faces in the crowd.
The situation was serious because even some committee members who were seen working overtime at the pre-wedding appear to have been kept out for unknown reasons. A Kenyan DJ who entertained the audience the whole night during the pre-wedding was among Odiangabuks who were kept in the dark about the event.
The KSB agent posted at the event said that according to information he gathered, the wedding “had been taken over” by the Swedes who organized it according to the “Swedish culture” which has it that only close friends and relatives are entitled to attend such events. “It is possible that this kind of classification could have rendered many Kenyans “strangers” in the situation”, he theorized.
It was even rumored that the Committee which organized the Pre-wedding and which raised funds for the event was given “five slots” ie, allowed to invite only five people. This could be true or false. In case it is true, then the next question that arises is why a group of Kenyans had decided to go public with a Pre-wedding Party to raise funds without informing the audience that they might not be invited to the main wedding because of circumstances.
Kenyans who contributed cash and who were excluded from the wedding without explanations told KSB that the pre-wedding fund-raising might have been a fraud because they cannot understand how the Swedes could have taken over the event to an extent that they decided to keep away people who had contributed money that was being spent at the wedding and without any information whatsoever.
“There is need for an investigation into fake fund-raisings among Kenyans in Stockholm because the matter is getting out of hand”, a Kenyan who contributed at the harambee told KSB.
He is convinced that the Committee walikula pesa, arguing that if it was a Swedish thing as is being propagated in some quarters, the Swedes could not have sent a group of Kenyans to fund raise for them among Wakenya. Many theories by “Kenyan experts” have began to emerge to explain what may have happened and KSB might be full the whole week!
“The Committee of Kenyans which was behind the pre-wedding should not just account for public funds contributed at the event but should also give Kenyans an explanation why people who had contributed money were left out of the main wedding and without a single explanation”, said the Kenyan.
A lady who was at the pre-wedding was so much affected because the people who were behind the pre-wedding “are learned people” whom she respected. “I cannot force myself to someone’s wedding but since I was invited at the fund raising, I deserved an explanation if I was going to be left out of the main wedding after contributing my money. I now feel cheated and exploited”, she said, adding that she will have to be more careful with Kenya-Stockholm harambees.
KSB has gathered that invitation cards were sent to a “special selection” of people although the criteria of selection could not be established. It looks like in future, Kenyans may have to enter into a legal agreement that if a Kenyan attends a pre-wedding Party and contributes, there must be an invitation to the main wedding.
In the meantime, it might take time for some Kenyans to recover after they discovered that they could easily be converted into Odiangabuks after responding to a call to help raise funds so that some young couple could get married.
Okoth Osewe
About the Author
