Mortician Anne Mwangangi Photo/courtesy.
By IP Reporter
Mortician Anne Mwangangi never imagined she’d become Gen Z’s go-to “last responder” — but in the hours leading up to the June 25 demonstrations, she’s been flooded with mobile money transfers and chillingly light-hearted messages from young Kenyans preparing, half-jokingly, for their own deaths.
“Preserve me well if things go south,” one sender wrote, dropping KSh 1,000 into her M-Pesa.
“Na usiniweke karibu na ukuta.” Another requested lip gloss and a ring light for their body, adding, “Even in death, I must slay.”
To the outsider, it sounds absurd. But behind the laughter is a generation staring down the barrels of rogue police guns, many deployed to guard political compounds and government-protected zones—not public safety.
They joke because they know it’s serious. They pay a mortician in advance because, for some, it’s no longer unthinkable.
Humour has become Gen Z’s coping mechanism. They meme death, mock power, and plan protests between TikToks and mobile money transfers.
It looks unserious—but it’s dead serious. These are young people willing to risk their lives for a country that often doesn’t recognize their voice, let alone their vote.
And while they prepare to face batons and bullets, the silence of political elites is deafening especially galling is the absence of opposition leaders’ children—many of whom are holed up overseas or tucked safely in posh Nairobi estates.
They are not the ones being teargassed, shot at, or disappearing into unmarked vans yet their parents issue statements, call pressers, and enjoy political capital built on the backs of other people’s sons and daughters.
If tomorrow’s march is about reclaiming Kenya, then those who shout loudest in press conferences must lead from the front—not from balconies in Karen, Muthaiga,Runda or Zoom calls from London, or Twitter spaces.
The children of those who call themselves “the people’s leaders” should walk with the people too.
Meanwhile, Anne Mwangangi will continue preparing for a day she hopes never comes.
The irony is, it’s not just the police we should fear—it’s the systems that keep young lives expendable and the privileged comfortable.
In that world, the mortician becomes a confidant, and humour becomes a will.
Ends.
