If the bride is in ICU, should the wedding committee continue planning for the wedding?

In Kenya, the President has been visiting the bride in the ICU and telling her that the wedding plans are in advance stages: The venue is ready, the music playlist has the latest hits and the cake is gorgeous. The doctors are baffled day in day out to see the President talking to the bride this way while on mechanical ventilation. “Is it faith or oblivion?”, they ask. “Does he know how critical the patient is or what are we missing?”, the doctors daily whisper amongst themselves for fear of reprisal.

Does he not know that the patient lives on transfusion by the Kenyan Diaspora who now remit blood equivalent to 10% of this country’s National Income? Does he know if they refused to send money for three months this country would collapse instantly? Does he know the anemic bride lives on borrowed pints of red blood cells from IMF to replenish foreign reserves hemorrhaged by imported goods and foods that can be made and grown in Kenya?

When the President talks of affordable housing for a citizenry who cannot afford food, isn’t he and his government living in an alternative reality than the one obvious to the rest of us? The rest of us who see the bride on life support with the cardiac monitor showing dangerous arrhythmias that point to the coroner.

When the wedding committee is busy building entertainment stadiums instead of job-giving factories, isn’t this tantamount to pulling the plug off the bride’s life support?

When the wedding committee builds exorbitant markets to be stocked with imported goods and foods to be sold to jobless Kenyans instead of factories to make them here, is it oblivion or outright mockery? For a country whose 60% of revenue is going towards debt payment, isn’t the bride lying between somewhere ICU and hospice? For a country whose capital expenditure (development) is only 20% of its grandiose budget but which it finances by refusing to pay private contractors or raiding the banks in Treasury Bills, isn’t the bride not writhing in ICU?

Is it only in Kenya where the government shows up in the ICU with a warm bowl of food for a bride who is struggling to breath even when intubated or this is global best practice? If the bride dies, shouldn’t the wedding committee be charged with gross negligence manslaughter? Should we wait for the bride to die?

When is the wedding again, Mr President?

Written by Robert Mwangi, MBA
Author of President’s Advisor,
Money Circles, Five Fingers
& Dollar Altar Available at Nuria Stores and Amazon. He also composed Ziba Ufa and Bururi Mwonju.