We returned the next day with our letters of resignation, and proceeded to demand our salary for the previous week's work. However, we had naively failed to consider that injustice can also fight back. Payment was delayed for 10 days and we spent the while walking the streets looking for other jobs while surviving on bread and milk.

Lesson number one learnt is that injustice will always fight back. The truth will set you free, Jesus told us. However, he omitted to say that it will first of all make you miserable and burden you. There is a price to be paid for taking a stand, and denial and compliance are frequently the easier options.

These memories came back to me as I reflected on the fiasco that was the Kiambaa funeral service. I felt angered listening to one group of politicians give pathetic excuses for their failure to attend, and appalled by the other side's "holier than thou" stand as they hijacked the mass burial. We are a long way from reconciliation in this country.

State of denial

In fact, the undertones coming from the Kiambaa experience is that we are very much in a state of denial about the post-election violence.

Denial is an unconscious defence mechanism for coping with guilt, anxiety or other disturbing and painful emotions. We would prefer to block out information that is unthinkable and unbearable than face up to the demands of truth.

That is why we are witnessing such revisionist thinking about what happened in Kiambaa, Naivasha, Nakuru and elsewhere. The latter of course is not unconscious denial but open political denial that is cynical and calculated.

Such denial is not confined to our borders. Between 1915-17, one-and-a-quarter million Armenians were massacred by the Turkish army. Despite thorough research and documentation on the same, the Turkish Government continues to date to deny that the massacre ever occurred. Similarly, research done among villagers living near the Auschwitz concentration camp during the extermination of hundreds of thousands of Jews in the Second World War showed another form of denial. Locals admitted that they heard rumours, saw smoke coming from the furnaces but claimed they did not really know what was going on. Is it any wonder that the Austrian and German parliaments have passed legislation that criminalises denial of the Holocaust? At times, we must be forced to admit and acknowledge painful truths and to remember what we would prefer to ignore or forget.

We all know of examples of denial in our communities; the alcoholic in denial; the woman in an abusive relationship who protects her husband. These examples demonstrate how we choose to live a lie. That is why so many object to opening up old wounds in Kenya claiming that the truth will hinder reconciliation. Denial, however, may postpone the pain but cannot remove it.

Messy stage

Still, the Kiambaa burial and memorial has definitely sparked debate about denial, memory and reconciliation. Perhaps we are only at the first messy stage of arguing about a hierarchy of victims. Even claiming that "our people" suffered more than "your people" at least is an admission that there are victims on all sides.

No single community has a monopoly on "victimhood" and every life lost in political violence is a tragic loss to the whole country. There is no possible justification for the killing of a single individual. Could we begin by acknowledging this?

To admit that you and I are both hurting is a necessary first step in a long slow process of healing. We really need to debate as a nation about what happened after the elections and why, what have we have learned from that experience and how we wish to memorialise it in a way that is satisfactory to everyone.

That could be a very healthy, rigorous debate providing it is neither initiated nor dominated by the political class. The denial, revisionism and trivialisation of the post-election violence are very much structured to protect political interests.

In the process, whole communities are stigmatised and condemned to protect the interests of mtu wao. Put another way, denial benefits the perpetrators and planners of violence but further alienates the victims. I think that there are enough good people out there who can lead that debate and they should initiate it long before the TJRC process begins. The truth will indeed set us free and it is worth suffering for.

My two friends and I never regretted our decision, and Kenyans won't either if they just begin to talk and listen to one another.

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This piece was first published in the May 29th edition of The Nation. It is republished here with the author's permission.