How devolution kills families

NAIROBI, KENYA: The young may not know that not too long ago, everyone bathed in the river. We were so proud of our bodies that we stripped naked before the entire village, even when there was nothing to write home about our assets.

And then the white man came, ordering us to, henceforth, lock ourselves in tiny rooms, like prisoners, to bathe. Of course, he said it was barbaric to strip nude in public although it was a measure to save missionaries from going crazy after looking at hot ‘native’ women. (The same moralists now have nudist beaches, swimming pools where people swims wearing ‘strings’ and streakers who dart naked onto football pitches...)

I was reminded about bathing and rivers at the UN headquarters in Nairobi, a place you would not ordinarily expect to find teeming with tribal wisdom. A couple of years ago, a brilliant UN staffer ambled over and as happens when two Kenyans meet, our discussion veered to politics.

Teenage boy

“You know, (name withheld) is trying to challenge Jakom (Raila Odinga) but he will not get far. He is like the teenage boy who, while bathing in the stream, suddenly discovers his nuts can fit in his palm and thinks he is man enough to take on village elders!” he announced, a glint in his eye.

And I’m thinking that is how devolution is turning out to be. County reps want to be paid like governors. Governors want to be called ‘Your Excellency’ — a crime that was punishable by death only recently. Senators are dying to be the ‘upper house’, while MPs want to spend the whole day grilling Cabinet secretaries to prove who the fattest mbuta around is.

Circus

Governors are chasing away investors who don’t want to ‘devolve’ something small. Others want to cut ties with foreign governments, sue foreign governments to force them to import chewy twigs, manage doctors, tell off the UNHCR…it’s a circus!

But isn’t that how devolution works out at the family level? Boys wake up one day and suddenly discover their nuts can fit in their palms. Edged on by their conniving mother, and armed with sharp machetes, they report bleary eyed in their father’s hut one morning and demand that the family piece of land must be sub-divided — at once.

It is the moment every old man dreads and when it comes, he must oblige or be declared a witch and roasted live like mutura.

Once every idiot has his own piece, the real devolution begins. One sells it inch by inch to the extent that in three years, he is the landless vagabond roaming at the village market, his dusty backside protruding through a tear on the seat of his pants.

Another leases his piece and drinks the proceeds. Another, bristling with power, threatens in-laws and bans everyone, including his own parents, from grazing or ‘trespassing’ on his land to access the ancient spring. The daftest starts a boundary dispute with a neighbour associated with witchcraft, a neighbour his own father knew to leave alone.

Before you know it, the once mighty family is on its knees, its fortune squandered and stolen.