We were promised a future with no compromise. After the chaos we suffered by the same creation of Tariku Negasi. We were offered freedom, but in the true sense of it; that was just the beginning of our slavery.

With fear and pain, I write this letter from Tomorrow, from Development! Our heritage is lost, our cultures—buried in the shadows of the memories we once had. This isn’t the life I dreamed of, this isn’t the utopian world our forefathers laid up their lives for.

Now we hide in the shadows, because that is where we’re now trapped. The human mind is now an open book, or the latest news report. Our rights being violated, people being harassed, was this how a better tomorrow was supposed to be? Negasi has taken control, and he has forgotten his origin. The thirst for power and control has beclouded his judgement. We are not safe.

And I fear that if this letter gets into the wrong hands, that would be the end of me. They have taken everything away from me! My family is gone, and everything I knew alongside with it. The torment this new system brings. Life itself has become the synonym of the word ‘unbearable’.

The minds of the vulnerable are trapped and they have no control over their own actions. Only a few of us can reason with the sanity we still have left. But we can’t hide for long. Or else we will be found and killed, because one thing Negasi doesn’t want is an army ready to start a revolt against him. But for how long shall we continue in the shadows? The shadows of our voices lost? The shadows of no memories? The shadows of no identity?

We cannot continue like this. And we will not continue like this. That is why I write this letter. Because this is the beginning of our revolution. This is the beginning of our future—not this nightmare we call Development.

Please, my people on Earth, we must stop this chaos before it’s too late. Enough lives have been lost, enough resources gone. We say enough to this evil! We must rise to fight for what truly belongs to us! We must bring back our heritage. We must bring back our culture. We cannot lose our ways to the corrupt creation of one man! A man who has made many homeless, many jobless, many widows and widowers!

We must end Dev! And I honestly cannot do this on my own, we must all come together and break out of the shadows…

Time Tales: Letters from the Shadows.

—The Imaginator.

© Preye Stephanie Okiemo

Written by Stephanie Johnmark