Like Nero, Mr. Mutua fiddles while Kenya burns, terming what was happening as 'isolated' cases of violence. Despite aerial views being broadcast of burnt homesteads from Mt. Elgon in Kuresoi to Eldoret and Kericho, Kisumu to Nairobi and down to Mombasa. It was near-anarchy. 200,000 Kenyans displaced, more than 500 dead and thousands flee as refugees into Uganda.

I wish he could just quit and concentrate on producing the second season of his debut detective series 'Cobra Squad.' I fear for my daughter and other children who play outside and we can't wait for them to go to school on Monday, already a week late.

My neighborhood - Mikindani situated in Mombasa West - is a shell of its former glory. Supermarkets were looted, completely destroyed as marauding youths broke down concrete walls and iron burglar proof grills, stole electronics some of which were fixtures and selectively torched shops known to belong to Kikuyus and Merus - the two ethnicities deemed to have voted en masse for Kibaki.

We were virtually under 'House Arrest' for all of two weeks- woe to people who had not stocked the refrigerators and pantries!

Many estates have been affected by the skirmishes and looting. Many residents are left without food. Food stuff in the markets and supermarkets have shot up one hundred percent and the worst affected sector has been tourism with tourists vacating beach hotels enmasse due to the negative travel advisories given out by their countries and consuls.

In the aftermath of this post-election violence, an uneasy calm is slowly returning to the coastal environs maybe due to the fact that Ghanaian President Kufuor, who is also Chair of the AU (Afrcan Union) arrived in the country a couple of days ago to mediate talks between the two main protagonists, President -elect Mwai Kibaki and ODM Presidential candidate Raila Amolo Odinga, but left the country when he encountered an impasse with the Government accusing the ODM of refusing to come to the mediation table and ODM accusing the Government of refusing to certain concessions.

Several Mombasa residents I have talked to term it as bad faith on the part of the President to go ahead and name half of his cabinet when President Kufuor had just arrived for mediation talks.

Though the swearing in of President Kibaki was hurriedly conducted, I was albeit impressed when in his characteristic off-the-cuff Swahili address he said 'Tumesikia yale yote mumesema' alluding to more than half the nation's registered populace who voted for Raila.

It is believed that the majority who voted for Raila are the poor and low income earners who are not feeling the effect of the 6.7% GDP economic growth that the Kibaki government is flaunting. The masses' salaries are stag nant for the past five years or most are jobless - yet the prices of basic commodities have shot up. I understand where they are coming from. Between August and November 2007 the price of a dozen eggs shot up to about 100 Kenya Shillings (Approximately US$ 1.50) A loaf of bread had shot up to almost twice the price and the staple maize meal and wheat flour almost tripled.

During the swearing in, the president was in such a hurry that he said 'Nitatenda kazi kwa UHALIFU' (Lawlessness) instead of 'UAMINIFU' (Trustworthy) - a slip of the tongue which he swiftly corrected.

On a lighter note though, the country has been stupefied by goings-on in Mombasa. televised on several channels as looters in Kisauni and Mwandoni in North Coast of Mombasa returned looted property after one business man engaged a Muslim elder to invoke an Islamic prayer called Al Badiri.

Tales had already emerged of one looter in Mombasa West who had been in a gang that broke into a popular pub and carried away electronics and crates of beer. The proprietor of the pub (an aspirant for MP in the just concluded General Election) allegedly warned looters not to dare touch his electronics and beer or they would suffer dire consequences. The looters did not heed the warning. Many of them were hospitalized with food poisoning and the most intriguing case was of a man who carried a large flat plasma screen on his back and it got stuck there. For days. Not even family members could take it off his back. He roamed around estates with the plasma screen stuck to his back for days like a mad person, sleeping at night while standing and he eventually keeled over and died!

[The Al Badiri prayer is said to be invoked by people who are wronged in order to seek justice from God. It is one of the most feared curses here in coastal Mombasa as it is believed that it brings calamities to those it is directed at.]

The hardware dealer in Mwandoni in Kisauni constituency who had lost timber and furniture worth thousands of shillings had last Friday issued a one-week ultimatum to all who had stolen his goods to return everything. He had vowed at the end of the ultimatum to invoke the special Islamic prayer.

One self-confessed thief said he returned 20 planks of wood he had stolen after learning of the ultimatum.

''Despite the fact that I was turning myself into a laughing stock, I returned the planks I had stolen for fear of what might befall me.''

Another one said, ''What drove us to this point is a rumor doing rounds that one man dropped dead as he carried away a stolen TV set.'' Said another looter ''Why wait for such a fate to befall me yet there is a deadline I can beat?''

Some hired handcarts and returned the goods in the dead of night.

According to local residents, such prayers, probably already resorted to by many others, actually do work and some people complain that most natural functions like bowel movements and passing of urine becomes impossible.

Many residents sacrificed their sleep and spent the night at several premises to watch the unfolding scenarios. It is said that some looters confess that items they stole like sofa sets, seatees and beds have caused them untold suffering as they see strangers sharing the beds with them - in most cases men sharing beds with strange men. Talk of Mombasa and djinns!

Back to the political impasse ...

Maybe what most pundits and political analysts are concurring on is that power sharing is the way to go and maybe they are right.

As resilient as ever, Kenyans have already coined new jokes. We jokingly tell one another to lie low like a 16A (The electoral tally form returned by each constituency, many which are purported to have been altered or altogether missing from the final count). We joke about the Kivuitu effect (which turns internationalists, Pan-Africanists, fervent advocates for the dissolution of borders into nationalists who cry at the first verse of the national anthem.)

And for that, I give you below the first stanza:

'Ee Mungu nguvu yetu, ilete baraka kwetu,
Haki iwe ngao na mlinzi, natukae na udugu,
Amani na uhuru, raha tupate na ustawi.

('Oh God of all creation, Bless this our land and nation,
Justice be our shield and defender, may we dwell in unity,
Peace and liberty, plenty be found within our borders.)

It doesn't seem to help matters that as I file this article several dailies have a headline quoting the ECK [Electoral Concil of Kenya] Chair as having disowned poll results purported to have been released by the ECK and published in yesterday's dailies.

As I file this article, its in the prime news that ODM have promised a showdown in the August House come Tuesday as they claim they are the legal Government and are going to sit on the Government side - the right hand side of the National Assemble speaker. On the news it's also been confirmed that Raila Odinga has said that the opposition rally postponed last week is back on at Uhuru Park come next Wednesday.

In the run-up campaigns of the just concluded General Election, the slogan and rallying call of PNU (Party of National Unity) Kibaki's party was 'Kazi iendelee' (Let the work continue.) ODM's was 'Pamoja Tusonge Mbele' (Together. let's move forward.) The opposing parties have both come to naught as Kenya has been set back economically just like it happened during the 1992 Molo ethnic clashes and the 1997 Likoni upheaval.

Despite the three-days mass protests called by ODM where lives have been lost, Kenyans have been called upon to be patient, dignified and to look for solutions that are in the best interest of the majority.

It is time for our leaders to engage in the process by seeking explanation and accountability and to be guided by their own sense of civic responsibility. Our leaders from across the divide have been called upon to seek reconciliation and resolution of the current crisis for the sake of the country.

We need an immediate ending of violence by the security forces and all other parties. Whilst many of us recognize that the security forces have a role to play in maintaining peace and order, we condemn the disproportionate and excessive use of force by the security forces against unarmed civilians that has been manifest over the last few days and wonder why the police do not use rubber bullets.

Former African Heads of States including Joachim Chissano of Mozambique, Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia and Benjamin Mkapa of Tanzania came and left the impasse as it was.

Mwai Kibaki yesterday appointed a group for the mediation table headed by his 'Vice President' Kalonzo Musyoka, and others from 'his' cabinet including hardliner Martha Karua (You all heard her on BBC "Hard Talk" last week) Raila refused to sit down with a group headed by Kalonzo terming him 'Judas Iscariot' - after all Kalonzo late last year could not 'mediate' at ODM when tension arose over their presidential nomination and broke away to form ODM-Kenya, and after getting a paltry 800,000 votes in the General Election has accepted the VP's post, a move many see as a betrayal.

After seeing on prime time news two days ago a police officer shoot to death at point blank range two unarmed youthful protestors in Kibera and then kick the dying boys, I was sickened, pained and cried. To make matters worse Police spokesperson Eric Kiraite. being insensitive, said on live TV that KTN had used computer graphics to generate the sequence of events and it was like another RAMBO film he had watched! The human collateral damage of ECK's decision.

The EU and observers concur that the voting process was above reproach, but the problem arose at the ECK nerve centre at KICC where many agree that an electoral injustice took place. We all saw 16A forms which were altered visibly.

The Commonwealth Observer Mission releasing their report in London last week said the ECK have not succeeded in establishing the integrity of the tallying process. The LSK (Law Society of Kenya) has said that they do not recognize Kibaki as the President of Kenya. The Civil Society has said that they consider Kibaki to still be in his first term of office. The KNCHR (Kenya National Commission on Human Rights) has also questioned the announcement of Kibaki as president as they say it is very hard to determine who won this election.

ODM's Kenneth Marende is the Speaker for the tenth parliament, he beat the Government's and incumbent Speaker of fifteen years, Francis Ole Kaparo. (In the ninth Parliament Kibaki survived by poaching MP's (Members of Parliament) from all parties and blurred the line between Opposition and Government.)

On the other hand, Kibaki has people who surround him who do not help his cause at all. Government spokesperson Alfred Mutua is a person who says funny things indeed. In a recent CNN interview during the violence, Mutua said that the Government would not negotiate with losers, the ODM. You cringe and squirm when he opens his mouth to speak.

In September 2006, when Senator Barrack Obama was visiting and asked the Government to act decisively on corruption, Mutua went on the defensive and said, ''It is now clear that Senator Obama was speaking out of ignorance and does not understand Kenyan politics.'' Apparently in the Government Spokesperson's world, corruption and Kenyan politics are intertwined. He went on, ''It is very clear that the Senator has been used as a puppet to perpetuate opposition politics, which is very shocking because he is supposed to be an intelligent man... we forgive him because it is his first time in the Senate and he is yet to mature into understanding issues of foreign policy.''

The crisis has left the country divided in the middle politically. Even quarters I cannot name here have taken sides. No matter what the NSIS (National Security Intelligence Service) formerly the Special Branch tells Kibaki. In Kenya there are usually no rumors what you hear is the truth or it is bound to happen.

The West, which we challenge over and over again with increasing weariness, the international media coverage that presents this as "tribal warfare", "ethnic conflict", for an audience that visualizes Africa through Hollywood - "Hotel Rwanda", "The Last King of Scotland", "Blood Diamond" - can now script up one more in honor of Kenya.

As I file this article, Koffi Annan and any of the Imminent African Personalities are yet to show up. The glimmer of hope Kenyans had seem to be dimming as it is being undermined by internal and external factors that militate against the attainment of resolving the stalemate. Internal factors are an example of the hard-line stand of some of Kibaki's inner circle and the hurried co-habitation between Kibaki and Kalonzo's ODM-K.

In the palm of my hand I turn my mementos over and over again. Spent catridges I have collected outside our home. Knowing that the bullet could have hit me, my daughter, my brother or sister.

I pray that we never witness such dark days in Kenya again. It has been far much worse than the 1982 coup attempt. All we want is our old Kenya back. The one we struggled so hard to bring together five years ago where tribal and ethnic faultlines were disappearing.

Even though this time round national broadcaster KBC are not airing the matches live, I hope and pray that as the Africa Cup of Nations kicks off in Ghana today, many of our youths in the informal settlements will use their pent up energy and time to watching the African bonanza showcasing Africa's cr&eaciute;me de la cr&eaciute;me. Even if shown a day later! Unless they have a relative who has pay TV like DSTV or GTV.