They arrive early
the youth
bright shirts, louder laughter,
summoned not by voice
But by optics.
They fill the frame.
They raise the chants.
They become the evidence
of a future that is never invited inside.
For the cameras,
They are everything.
But when the doors close
heavy, polished, inherited
The room rearranges itself
back to its original owners.
There,
in the quiet arithmetic of power,
grey hair leans over maps,
whispers redraw loyalties,
and decisions are signed
in a language the streets never hear.
The youth?
Left outside
still clapping for a photograph
already taken.
And the party
Ah, the party
It walks like a giant of yesterday,
breathing through borrowed memory,
speaking in echoes of a man
who once made it thunder.
But echoes do not build futures.
They only remind us
that the sound is gone.
So now they must perform youth
not embrace it.
Display it
not trust it.
Because real inclusion
would mean surrendering the table
To the power yearning youth.
And history whispers
that the table has never been shared.
So they walk together
The Governor and the boy
one carrying the state,
The other is carrying its illusion.
A perfect picture.
A perfect lie.
Okombo Kasera is a political scientist and adjunct lecturer at Maseno, Rongo, and the University of Kabianga.
