I know it sounds weird, but I couldn’t help admiring the load of timber that I saw on a pickup truck last week.

“This is good stuff!” I told the driver. “Where is it from?”

He agreed that it was indeed good stuff and that he bought it in Meru.

“They get it from Uganda,” he added.

And I thought we only smuggle brides and maize from Uganda! Good to know we are now exchanging miraa for timber in the old barter trade of pre Vasco da Gama Africa. Problem is, what happens to Kenyans who cannot travel to Meru to buy timber from Kampala?

There has been a ban on logging for ages, one that Dr Noah Wekesa has been pleading with the Cabinet to lift for eons. But I guess there are many more urgent matters to sort out.

Misguided view

The end result is that people spend as much as Sh600,000 on roofing timber in Nairobi. That is a little cruel considering that Soita Shitanda is going nuts encouraging people in towns to borrow and build homes in a country where lending rates are so wild that loan sharks are no longer considered expensive.

More hilarious is that when that Sh600,000 worth of roofing timber isn’t smuggled in from Uganda – or Congo as I suspect – it is harvested from underage trees that Wekesa has been pleading with us to plant in honour of Prof Wangari Maathai. Meanwhile, ancient lumber worth billions is rotting in State-owned forests.

I know there is a misguided view that forests bring rain, probably one panicky reason we still hoard those over aged exotic trees in Government forests. But that is a fallacy because as you recall, a former minister made it clear rain comes from the sky.

But even if rain did miraculously emerge from forests, it wouldn’t be cypress and blue gum. Mono-cultural and exotic tree plantations have massive commercial value but their ecological might isn’t worth a farthing. Do you picture an elephant hanging around a cypress bush? What for?

I suspect rain would emerge from our indigenous forests, which are rich in biodiversity, complete with little ponds and noisy birds.

But in our wisdom, we have deployed armed forest guards to protect decaying cypress and blue gum plantations. Meanwhile, agile villagers and a few crooks gleefully convert our few indigenous forests, which manufacture rain, into charcoal.

Be that as it may, something else rankles. If your grandfather in the village wants to cut a tree that he planted or one that grows wild on his farm, he must seek permission from a petty bureaucrat in the village – like we live in some communist little State. And petty village bureaucrats don’t lick empty hands or give permission just like that.

Now of what use is Katiba when a man can’t cut his own tree or walk to a hardware store and buy cheap timber to roof a house for his fifth and latest wife?

In defense of our young daughters

You may not like Education Minister Mutula Kilonzo. Mr Miguna Miguna even accused him of being a good crammer and not a good intellectual in his book. But you can always trust Mutula to tell you as it is. Rave and rant all you want. Like he gives a hoot. 

So last Thursday, when, as Minister for Education, he supported schoolgirls who were demanding shorter skirts and scolded us for trying to turn our daughters into nuns, national uproar was immediate. Come on! Most high school students strike because teachers are too strict (read dictatorial), the food stinks (it often does) or because of ugly uniform (oh yes!).

In my school days, we almost went on strike because our new games t-shirts came emblazoned with the words ‘Kakamega High School’. What sort of rubbish was that? Wasn’t the headmaster aware that it was ‘The’ Kakamega High School? Parents don’t know it but teenagers in high school take their self-esteem to hormonal heights.

And self-esteem – at that age – is based extensively on how you look. Sadly, you cant look good in a long, poorly tailored ugly skirt. We know it. The girls know it. We only pretend otherwise because in our warped parental thinking, we assume that a 14-year-old girl in a short, well-tailored skirt will get pregnant. Nonsense! Prim and proper grandmothers, who are now in their late 60s and early 70s, went to school in miniskirts and they didn’t get knocked up all over the place. In South Africa, primary schoolgirls wear skirts yet the ugly headlines are from here. Yet the last time I checked, randy teachers here were impregnating primary school girls dressed in drab ankle-length tunics. Humph. Kids who feel good about themselves succeed. So let our daughters look pretty.

Bits and pieces

Signs of the times

When a benefactor turned up with blankets and food for the aged, the wisened ones scrambled and shoved. One granny, 83, fainted. She hadn’t eaten for days. Now contrast that story with another where a college-going man, who happens to have a wife – damaged his father’s car because the old man – rightfully – had declined to give him Sh2,000 to pay his wife’s medical bill.

The old man (thumbs up, sir) called the cops who hauled the future leader to court. He was fined Sh60,000 or a three months jail term in default. Don’t pay that fine, Mzee. Let that boy eat boiled cabbage for three months. That is the only way he will learn that his wife is his responsibility, not yours. Hopefully, that might also teach him that he should be taking care of you, not smashing your car in a fit of a rage like a two-year-old baby because you refused to buy him sweets.

You know, people used to take care of their parents. These days, 50-year-old men beat up their toothless mothers for food.

Salary underdose

The Government recently announced a pay hike for civil servants. I couldn’t help noticing that whereas top civil servants walked home with tens of thousands, the miserable lot at the bottom of the food chain only received a few hundred.

It is nutty economics because when you earn Sh5,000, you desperately need a Sh40,000 pay increase – urgently – unlike the boss who has access to fat ‘deals’.

Most hilarious is that it is entirely possible that a permanent secretary who takes home Sh800,000 and his office cleaner probably take their children to the same ‘high cost’ national school.

An old sore

If the British Government can be believed, the Mau Mau were tortured by their lackeys – the home guards – and not distinguished British citizens. I thought only banana republics in Africa were capable of that sort of warped thinking.

The Kikuyu did not employ or elect home guards. They had no need for them and would have gladly chopped their heads off – and they often did – were it not for the fact that it was illegal. We are still quite ticked off about British misadventure around here and it doesn’t help when they recklessly prick that old sore.

Understanding ISO

Now that the dust has settled over the City of Nairobi’s phantom ISO certification, lets bring a few things into perspective. ISO certification does not in any way make an institution a ‘world leader’ or many of the hollow lies that companies stick in their Missions Statements.

ISO simply means you have a nice document explaining in smart English how to collect garbage and dump it in Dandora.  It needn’t mention that you have no intention of doing so or that the Dumpsite got filled up before I went to college in 1989.

Friends of Miguna

Miguna Miguna may be a brilliant lawyer, but he is a hopeless politician. When he was launching his book, Raila supporters turned up to picket with placards. The next morning, a mob burned his effigy and called for his banishment from the community, punishment reserved for murderers and child rapists.

Yet so far, no lobby group has sprung up in support of Miguna. There are no Friends of Miguna or the sort of shadowy groups that politicians cobble up for the purpose of heckling and stoning political enemies. Didn’t this man learn anything from ‘comrade power’ at the university?