Mr. Lion's Speech

Fellow animals,
Monkeys, chimpanzees, baboons, apes, gazelles, tigers, zebras, cockerels, hens, dikdiks, warthogs, wildebeests, elephants, hares, hyenas;

Dear animals,
Aardvarks, badgers, alligators, barracudas, camels, anteaters, cattle, bullfinch, butterflies, alpacas, blackbirds, coyote, crab, crocodile, gorillas, doves, ducks, goose;

Dear brothers of the feline family,
The tigers, the leopards, the cougars, the cheetahs, the lynx, the caracals, the bobcats;

Fellow animals, the birds,
The buzzard, horned-owl, the pigeon, the falcons, the ring-doves, the cuckoos, the re-foots, the red-caps, the purple-caps, the kestrels, the divers, the ouzels, the ospreys, the wood-peckers;

Our burrowing friends,
The moles, the earthworms, the ants, the armadillo, the bilbies, the cicadas, the desert tortoises, the fennec foxes, the ferrets, the mongoose, the hamsters, the meerkats and the kangaroos;

Our brothers, the reptiles,
The turtles, the lizards, the snakes, the tuataras, the dinosaurs, the geckos, the iguanas, the anacondas, the pythons, the black mambas, the komodo dragons, the leatherback turtles, the kraits, the bearded lizards, the boa constrictors, the bull snakes, the emerald tree boas, the frilled lizards, the king cobra, the rattlesnake;

All the animals, in the sky or underground, on land or in the sea, on the trees or inside caves, living in bondage with man or in freedom;

All fellow animals I have forgotten to mention;

I greet you all.

You elected me as your King to chart the destiny of this Jungle. You still remember how I promised to deliver to you; how I will improve the lives of you folks, the birds, the reptiles, the felines, the burrows and the land brothers.

You still also remember how I promised to fight for your cause and liberation from our common enemy, the Man. That I, your King, with the roar undisputable and the mane that make man dance with fear, will unchain you, fellow animals from the slavery of man.
That I, with the agile claws that can tear a tree-bark into two, will restore the peace that used to reign in our deserts, our seas, our forests, our skies, our caves, our habitats.
That I, your undisputed King of the Jungle, the desert, the skies and the sea, will unite you against man so that never again should man reap from where he never sowed or venture to where he never lives or disturbs what is never his.

My fellow animals,
I read this speech thanks to the help of the feathers of the hummingbird and the watery droppings of the woodpecker. These two friends of ours make this speech a reality. How can I forget the help of our friend the pigeon who scribbled the words using his beak as I dictated to her. I thank the ant too for assisting to lick away misspelled words. Such sacrifice, fellow animals! The woodpecker whispered to me just some few minutes ago that the pigeon deserves congratulations since his droppings were acidic! Never mind, I am just teasing.

I would like to thank our four friends, the geckos, who held every corner of this paper as pigeon was writing it. Thanks, too, for our friend the chameleon for accepting to lend us his many font colours as the speech dictated. Right now he is recuperating inside that cave on the right after donating so much ink for this speech. I wish him quick recovery.

Thanks are also in order for the valiant work of the Anaconda for proof-reading the fine text of this speech as keenly as he could be and providing worthy suggestions. It may please to tell you that our own anaconda used his fangs in circling and underlining ungrammatical words and providing synonyms from our dictionary that our son the parrot wrote two years ago.

Brothers,
You sent me to learn of the ways of our Enemy, the Man, so that we could try to find ways in which we can unchain ourselves. You told me to go and explore his nature, attitude, habits, strengths, weaknesses, tricks, magic.
You sent me to go and find out why our brothers the cats, the doves, the ducks, the donkeys, the cattle, the pigs, the pigeons, and others liked to live with man.
You asked me to go and ask Man why he hated us, animals, as if we didn’t have blood like theirs, skin like theirs, minds like theirs although they think they are sharper than us. You asked me to go to Man and investigate may be what our forefathers did to man so as to ask for his vengeance.
You sent me to Man to ask him why he taught his children not to be as poor as a church mouse or as bald as eagle or as proud as peacock or chattering like a monkey or moving like snail or eating like a pig. You, the moles, the hawks, the parrots sent me to ask man why he said eyes like a hawk, beating around the bush, making a mountain out of a molehill or saying, when they are sick, as sick as a parrot.

Fellow animals,
You sent me and I went to the Kingdom of man. The Kingdom of Man is a big mess. You don’t hear the buzz of the bee, the twit twit of the birds, the cuckoo of the cuckoo, the coo of the doves, the honk of the geese, the laugh of the hyena, the hoot of the owls or the cock-a-doodle-doo of the roosters;

In the Kingdom of Man , it’s the scream of dying people, the honk of their cars, the screech of their cars, the noise of howl of their drunken fellows, the blare of their sirens, the groans of their beggars, the whines of their battered wives and the deafening noise of their politicians.

Fellow animals, the Kingdom of Man is filled with noise of confusion and smell of bilge. They shake hands without emotions, they love hatred, and they glorify war and constantly plan how to sell us to their Foreign Masters. Dear animals, even the same human beings divide themselves as black or as white. Who has ever seen us calling our brothers the monkeys blacks or our sisters the doves whites?

Brothers and sisters of the Animal Kingdom,
I went to Forest Arena of man (they call it Parliament). It is just like this Forest Arena that I am addressing you from. Man is not creative. He does not have something of his own. One of his parties called Kenya Social Congress has its symbol as a dove. Doves, you are beautiful, nobody should cheat you. They use the symbol of Bee for another of their party called Kenya National Democratic Alliance, and the giraffe for Federal Party of Kenya, and Lion( my own symbol, fellow animals) for FORD-K, and the trumpet for Peoples Party of Kenya, and the Flywhisk for the people's Solidarity Union of Kenya, and leopard for National Alliance Party, and the African Horn for the United Democrats of Peace and Integrity in Kenya, and bull for National Labour Party, and Elephant for the Social Party for Adavancement and Reforms,and ostritch for Kenya citizens Congress. Even the cockerels they so much slaughter during their celebration madness they have even used for one of their parties
called KANU!

They realize the animal power.

They realize the gentleness of the dove, the sweet honey of the bee, the elegant tallness of the giraffe, the ferocity of the lion, the slippery swimming of the fish, the beauty of the flywhisk, the elegance of the leopard, the sweet sound of the horn, the commanding presence of the elephant and the beauty of the ostritch.

Fellow animals, that is why I bring you the message of hope and the rallying call for our unity. Man is divided.
Here, the leopard can rub the shoulder of its cub but in the land of man their children are thrown in latrines and sewages.
Here, the elephant sets out in the morning to look for food but in the land of man they set out to kill, to rape, to steal, to philander, to loot, to destroy, to shout, to revenge, to get more and more.
Here, the monkey eats quavas, mangoes, oranges and wildberries and leaves the rest for fellow animals in the Kingdom but in the land of man he eats till he constipates then throws away the food.
Here, our dutiful birds sleep early and wake up early and chirp to welcome a new day but in the land of man they eat and drink and dance and indulge from daylight to daylight.
Here, we are patient to listen to rhythm of our own hearts but in the land of man they sulk and scowl and sully their faces. They crease their faces against all. They talk in monosyllables and cannot listen for more than one minute. Even his speech of mine, if I were to read it to them, they will sleep and snore.

I don't understand the ways of Man. He destroys the other in rape and war and call it a beastly act. Crazy! Don't we as male animals breathe on the tails of our female counterparts before we can mate? If a lion did that to a lioness and the lioness ran away, did the lion chase her and tear her and hurt her? Don't the donkeys go hee-haw before they can mate? or the owls go tu-whit, tu-whoo to call the other in the quietness of the forest? Why then does man call their acts beastly when as beasts we don't do as they do? And when they throw missiles, tomahawks and bombs at each other and dwindle their number, why do they call it beastly?

Dear Fellow animals, you still remember the affront of man on our dignity when Bird Flu descended on our colleagues, the birds. How they all coughed and sneezed and threw panic to the length and breadth of the Animal Kingdom. How their chirp were reduced to subdued chat on their impending deaths.
The memory is still there, my dear animals, of how man was happy. How man viewed us with suspicion and hatred and contempt. You remember how our brothers enslaved by man were slaughtered in their thousands and buried in deep graves and how man said that this was a ‘security issue’. Which then prompted us to send our Minister for Foreign Affairs, Hon. Pigeon to plead for the lives of our remaining colleagues who were languishing in stuffy wood structures. I feel like to weep, brothers, remembering how man threatened to shoot our very own Hon. Pigeon and make a good ‘foreign dish’. And so we were killed, we were maimed, we were sent to early graves at the altar of man’s arrogance.

Brothers, the Bird Flu came and went an in came Rift Valley Fever. Our brothers in man’s bondage were viewed with suspicion. They needed to be strong every time and everywhere. If they showed dizziness, they were slaughtered and their bodies hurriedly buried.

On the two occasions when we beseeched man to let us have the bodies of our fallen brothers and sisters to be buried in animal dignity near the graves of their forefathers, man just laughed and cursed and said: When did animals bury their dead? When if I may ask? So they never knew that we too respect our fallen ones. They never knew that the birds sung dirges for the entire period when their brothers were being slaughtered by man. They never knew that the animals here in the forest walked with lowered heads of sorrow, shame and mourn. They never knew that in my heart I was weeping for the lives of our very own birds and cows. And man says, when animals buried their dead.

We continue to be exploited. We are milked dry by man. Our brothers remain imprisoned in man’s forest. Our brothers eat their own grass, drink their own water, live their own lives. But man, and he thinks he is kind, showcases us to his friends all day all night and he is paid for that! He reaps where he doesn’t sow, I told you. For the worth of his barbed wire fence, man drives near our brothers when they want to mate and procreate, peeps t them without shame and even honks at them. When our brothers want to get out of that prison, when they try to jump out in order to meet old friends and broken kinship, man’s fence hits him back hard into the prison. We did the burial of our own, the Elephant, Margarita, when his tusk broke because of this, rotting several months later and causing his death. Man disturbs us from the sky when he counts us aerially, blaring his machine on our ears, our spouses, our offsprings.

We, animals, have the power to unchain our friends in the slavery of man. Our friends in the captivity of man regard us as barbaric and uncouth. They talk in their noses. They don’t chew hard grass, they want soft ones planted by man. They are lazy and pampered. They are still our own, lazy or not lazy, nonetheless.

Our brothers, the donkeys, deserve special mention. They carry the sacks of man on their frail backs from the time the birds chirp in the morning to the time the forest full of cricket sounds! They wag their tongues all day long and pant in short, warm and bloody breathes, they are whipped and chased around. And man, in his kindness, calls him the beast of burden. What’s with man with beasts, beasts. Here, our brothers the donkeys bathe in sand and run happily in freedom. But I tell you, fellow animals, the Kingdom of man wages full war on our brothers the donkeys. When they get sick they are sold to crooked butcheries to be slaughtered, cooked, sold unsuspiciously and eaten by other hungry men. So for the dutiful service of carrying man’s burden and yoke, they face the butcher’s knife. A perfect retirement package indeed!


Fellow animals,
I called you here to show you that we need to be united in order to defeat man. He's too pre-occupied with many things. If he's not campaigning, he's dying of hunger, if he's not raping, he's bashing his wife, if he is not looting, he's killing.

That's why we need the agility of the monkeys to be Traffic Policemen, the Baboons to be Security Guards, the Giraffe to be the Tour Guide, the elephants to be Vehicles, the doves to be the Receptionists, the frogs to be Alarms, the leopard to be the Finance Minister, the Anaconda to be the Internal Security Minister, the pigeon to be the Minister For Foreign Affairs, the Cow to be the Minister of Livestock, the Tilapia to be the Minister of Fisheries.

We need the fox as our Government Spokesperson to spin good tales about the Animal Kingdom.

We also need the Chimpanzee as the Speaker of the House. We will find him an equivalent for man's spectacles made from cowrie-shells.

Fellow animals, I want us to unite our twits twits, peep peep, croaks and honks, brays and coos to unchain ourselves from Man. In solidarity we will forge forward. In the Animal Solidarity we will oust man.

So fellow animals, sharpen your beaks, train your fangs, deepen your roars, train your claws, increase your speeds;

Monkeys, increase your tricks of jumping from one twig to another;
Snakes, train to slither on pavements- the Man's land is no grass;
Birds, learn a trick or two from the woodpecker-I want your beaks sharp and strong
Eagles, fly ever high and double our visions-your work will be to spot where man is so that the boa constrictor does something to him;
You pigs, don't embarrass me. Man has a lot of garbage so don't your snouts on them- our mission will not be eating but sweating!
And as for you the Owls, it will be hoot, hoot, tu-whit, tu-whoo till man faints from the noise.You get me?
You the birds will attack man from the skies-fly in a swarm and aim the aeroplanes. Some can sacrifice to be sucked into the engine for our cause. You falcons, don't betray us!
Our burrowing friends will attack man from under the soil and the reptiles will dominate the see.
On land, flat as it is, leave it to us the lions, tigers, jaguars, cougars, cheetahs, lynx, caracals and bobcats

Power to animals! Power to the Animal Kingdom!