When Truth Is Buried, Even Owls Refuse to Sleep
In Adipo Sidang’s Parliament of Owls, the night is never silent. Beneath the moonlight, the owls hold meetings not to serve, but to survive. Laws are passed, dissenters are exiled, and dreams are bartered for crumbs of comfort. Yet even in that darkness, there comes a stirring—a whisper that refuses to die: truth.
Sidang’s owls are not just birds of satire; they are our reflection. Their sleeplessness is not caused by wisdom, but by guilt. For when truth is buried, conscience becomes the ghost that won’t stop knocking.
A Parliament of Shadows
In Act II of Parliament of Owls, the so-called Moonlight Law is passed with thunderous applause and empty conviction. The Speaker, Money Bags, draped in a lion’s mane, silences the voices of reason. Iron Lady, Straight-Eyed, Feathered Beak—those who dare to question—are cast out like unwanted dreams. The loyalists cheer, mistaking fear for order.
It is an unsettling image because it mirrors our own corridors of power. The show goes on, the motions are observed, and yet beneath the applause lies moral rot. Parliament becomes not a house of debate, but a theatre of deception.
The Weight of Silence
Sidang’s message is clear: corruption does not only thrive on greed—it feeds on silence. The tragedy of the owls is not that they lack wings, but that they refuse to use them to rise above the rot. In many ways, the play becomes a meditation on our collective complicity.
How many times have we, too, chosen comfort over courage? How often have we let “Money Bags” voices dominate the room, dismissing the Iron Ladies among us as troublemakers?
When truth is buried, it doesn’t die—it decays. And decay, left unchecked, poisons the air we all breathe.
Dreams as Conscience
Money Bags’ haunting dream of Oyundi and Osogo—two rebels rising from their graves to confront him—is not mere fantasy. It is the playwright’s poetic justice, a reminder that truth has a way of returning, even through nightmares.
Sidang uses this dream to peel away the mask of political arrogance and expose the fragile human beneath. The guilty sleep poorly, because truth is the one enemy that darkness cannot silence.
Owls as a Metaphor for Kenya
In African folklore, the owl often symbolizes wisdom—but in Sidang’s world, wisdom has been perverted. The owls have knowledge, but no moral compass. They see in the dark, yet pretend to be blind. It is a striking metaphor for our nation’s paradox: a people rich in intellect, yet too often poor in integrity.
Our crisis is not one of talent or resources—it is one of truth. When truth is silenced in classrooms, in courtrooms, in parliaments, and in pulpits, the nation begins to lose its moral sleep.
The Flock That Must Rise
By the end of the play, when the Flock of Birds emerges—a group daring to sing against the darkness—Sidang gives us hope. It is a subtle yet profound message: Kenya’s redemption will not come from those in gilded chambers, but from those willing to risk their wings in pursuit of light.
Truth is not convenient, nor is it safe. But it is the only thing that keeps societies from collapsing into madness.
A Call to Conscience
Sidang’s art disturbs because it demands that we look inward. Each reader, each citizen, must answer the quiet question the play poses: Am I awake, or am I one of the sleeping owls?
When truth is buried, even owls refuse to sleep—because deep down, every creature knows that lies are a form of darkness too heavy for the soul. Kenya, too, must wake before the night becomes permanent.
Closing Reflection
Adipo Sidang’s Parliament of Owls is more than literature—it is a lantern for a generation standing at the edge of moral twilight. The message is as political as it is spiritual: truth, once buried, will rise in rebellion.
And when it does, may we not be the owls who only wake to mourn what we could have saved.
0 Comments