“That’s not what we said. We’re about building relationships as our primary strategy. First, we need to reestablish relationships with one another. The very idea of a Night Train should be ludicrous. We should be able to talk to and reach our own. Second, we establish authentic relationships with other communities. All other communities. No one should be off the table. In the face of challenges, we can’t lose sight of the fact that we do transformative work. War is easy. Transformation, now that’s the motherfucker right there.” Wachiru bobs to his own internal beat, almost unaware of the chorus of approvals he receives.

Waiting for the cries of support to die down, I circle the table before speaking again. “Relationship on their terms I have no interest in. We do not long for them or their ways. They want us to be reasonable. To seek the values … of their dream. Values they aspired to, but never lived out. What they actually want is to not be knocked from their place of comfort. They want convenient discourse. But to have any discourse, there’d have to be a meeting of the minds. But if one starts from a place of our dehumanization, halfway doesn’t make us whole. To believe otherwise is the way of dreamers and madmen.”

“Which do you call me?” Wachiru asks.

“I call you what you are: not ready.” Mindful of who he is and what he represents, I near him. “In fact, I’d go so far to say that you are the voice Muungano needs to walk us into the future. One day. However, today—right now—the community requires the voice of experience and…”

“… wisdom?” Wachiru doesn’t hide his sarcasm.

“Pragmatism. We’ve done things the Adisa way for a long time. Where has that gotten us?”

“You walk a dangerous path. Yours are not the Muungano way.”

“Ways change. Do not make the same mistake O.E. does thinking that our way of moving through the world being different marks us as weak. We change with the times and the circumstances.” These are uncertain times. The only way through is by carving to the heart of their doubts. Expose their fears for what they are: chains. “I don’t have Wachiru’s gift of reading people’s sabhu or Bayard’s for probing the spirit, but my emi knows the way of battle. There are difficult choices to be made in the coming days. Sacrifices we will have to call on our people to make as we move forward. We need the voice of righteous anger, not that of a legacy dilettante who’d rather play music than lead his people.”

“Maulana.” Selamault’s cautioning tone rings like a warning shot. One I choose to ignore.

You failed Fela. You failed all of us, I hear Wachiru say.