Ours is country of contradictions where the rich and poor coexist

Kenya is a confounding country. So confounding that you cannot call us poor or rich without being horribly wrong. No, we are not a poor country. We have the best luxurious getaways in the world. A peek into the details of a political leaders’ payslip will confirm that we pay our leaders higher salaries than they pay the Presidents of the supposedly wealthy west. And guess what, we don’t care how far they went in school or whether they have done anything in the past worth writing home about. We throw money at them and at other top appointees who routinely help themselves into the cookie jar and the world goes on. Why, they manage the country’s vast revenue collection and expenditure affairs. As Achebe would ask, do we really expect those who live next to River Nile to wash their face with spittle?

We are so rich that if we realise that public officers are not performing, we give them some more money to induce them to accept to go home. You see, our people don’t resign empty-handed. You induce them to do so. That’s why there is so much peace at the top that only chicken thieves go to jail. And don’t listen to the tall tales that these people hate jail. What’s more, this week we joined the list of the top 100 country’s where it’s as easy as ABCD to start a business.

You see, just a week after we released some of these chicken thieves on Mashujaa Day, many of them are doing anything and everything to go back. One even casually walked to the church offering bag and instead of dropping some cash in there, he scooped some cash and started stuffing it into his pocket. No, no one can be so foolish, it was all a ploy to go back to jail. Perhaps he was making more money hawking ugali and cabbage soup than at home! And yes, people get richer supplying air to the Government than they make in the fabled California showbiz world. We are rich so long as you confine your study to the leafy suburbs where those who live off the fat of the land live.

But we are a country of great variety. Which means we are also very poor. So poor that our slums attract researchers from all over the world. We are so poor, as evidenced by such facilities as Kisanana Health Centre in Baringo where, according to a story in our sister publication, The Standard yesterday, mothers deliver in the dark if they cannot bring paraffin lamps. Yes, haven’t we brought you stories of hungry people who died after eating wild roots for lack of alternative? Isn’t it also evidence of poverty that some people in Kerio Valley are living in rocky caves with all manner of crawling vermin?

So what do we say about people in the North who are having one meal a day as a result of drought yet the the parched earth on which they walk every day covers millions upon millions of barrels of sweet, black and expensive oil? Why is it that there are so many cases of jobless people suffering as a result of treatable diseases, yet billions of shillings continue disappearing into the abyss of greed that is corruption? How does one steal money from a populace so ravaged by lack of basic drugs and find a wink of sleep at night? Have we become so insensitive and used to spending easy public cash that even for the pettiest offences, our overpaid legislators at the county and national level slap a fine of Sh10,000.

Anyone who is familiar with the situation of the majority of Kenyans, especially in the rural area, will tell you Sh10,000 is a lot of money. Families go for a whole year without getting it all in a lump sum. Once in a while they sell a cow or a couple of goats and get it, but it is all gobbled up by school fees, medical fees or some other burdensome yet crucial expense. How can a country of So Many Hungers (apologies to Indian writer Bhabani Bhattacharya) have a few so filthy rich minority?