By Edward Indakwa
It is actually easier for a Kenyan who lives in Arizona, USA, to meet, talk to and ask our leaders questions than for ordinary Kenyans who live right here.
That’s not to suggest that we never meet our leaders. We do. In traffic – from a distance – because we must stop when they pass. They think we are crazy enough to kill them.
But they have no qualms meeting our brothers and sisters who live in USA. They respect them so much that they even discuss issues with them, unlike us who only watch them dance and hear their rants and insults. You would think British leaders visit Naivasha to listen to what the Delameres think.
I bet it’s because these Diaspora people struggle heavily to develop this country.
They send quite a bit of chink back home – to pay school fees, fix a water tank for mummy, and buy a matatu and so forth. I hear that money amounts to US$2.5 billion, a huge chunk of bread which the Treasury uses to plug up the perennial hole in Kenya’s trillion shilling budget, which is financed by overseas loans anyway.
Political rallies
I guess that gives them the bargaining chip to call our leaders to account. The workers in Nairobi, whom leaders never meet because most political rallies are often staged during working hours, wouldn’t dare make such demands.
After all, Nairobi City only coughs up half of Kenya’s GDP, money that ends up lost through bribes, outright theft, alcohol and sex, unlike the billions that our brothers and sisters overseas religiously send home each month.
Interestingly, it is not quite clear whether Kenyans who reside in Russia constitute the Diaspora. I haven’t seen politicians falling over themselves to visit and chat with them.
Perhaps they don’t exist because so far, they haven’t made any demands. As a result, no one is quite sure whether they will vote, or if they want to vote for that matter.
And you know something? People in Nairobi have the audacity to consider those who live in the Diaspora as patronising and condescending. Yet the hilarity is that that’s precisely how brothers and sisters who live in the village view Nairobians.
Just because a Nairobian sends home Sh2,000 once every six months, that gives him unrivalled access to the chief — without having to doff his hat like a peasant. He can discuss education issues with the local headmaster, the CDF committee seeks his opinion about where a bridge he will never use should be built and he calls the shots in a home he only visits on Christmas Day.
It is a mockery of devolution. While we cheat villagers that we have devolved power and resources to the grassroots, it is Nairobi people who want to eat by becoming governors and senators.
Similarly, Kenyans who live in the Diaspora ask probing questions about political party manifestos, yet it is the ruffian who stones the opposition who elects and is led.
See how reformists gather
Its crazy the way the 2013 general election keeps shifting ground. At one point, it was simply a slugfest between the young and old.
Remember those heady days when young Eugene Wamalwa was the rave – racing from one town to the other while older leaders spat at former a US Ambassador for interfering in the internal matters of a sovereign state?
Now it appears Eugene began the race too fast, like it was a sprint race. It’s turned out to be a marathon and while he insists he is going all the way, I’m yet to see a single campaign T-shirt declaring “Eugene for President”. His must be the stealthiest grand match to State House.
Now, when it became evident that Eugene was running out of gas, the youth thing quietly faded off the agenda and was quickly replaced by reform. It was in black and white: The 2013 race was between reformists and those bad people – non-reformists. This is a bit dodgy considering that the Second Liberation has been around since 2002. Ten years is a pretty long time for non-reformists to hang around when government is firmly in the hands of reformists.
But then, what is a reformist? In the narrowest sense of the word, in Kenyan terms that is, a reformer is someone who was once teargased, beaten up, jailed or even detained in the search of that elusive ‘Second Liberation’.
How gratifying it is to watch such reformists gathering, holding meetings, talking about forming coalitions, ensuring to herd their tribes into a winning outfit. They must be in government. They are itching to reform government. One thing is odd though. In one year, Willy Mutunga has reformed the judiciary upside down. What have these reformists been doing for ten years?
Bits and pieces
Fifty pieces of silver
The current Traffic Commandant is the immediate Western Provincial Police boss. That means he might have heard a rumour that matatus plying the Bungoma-Kakamega route carry four passengers per seat. Matatu crews simply stick a piece of wood between the seats along the isle to create room for an extra passenger. I doubt they set out to break the law with impunity. Everyone is milking them dry.
Local councils have erected rude barriers along the highway to form toll stations, never mind that the benefits that matatus accrue from councils in small village markets without a public toilet are zero.
To be fair, there are several traffic police roadblocks dotted along the highway. And in a lovely spirit of community policing, they stop overloaded matatus, exchange greetings with the conductor and wave the driver on. I used to wonder why they flagged down matatus just to say jambo, until one driver stopped metres from the roadblock — to allow the conductor to retrieve a Sh50 note without haste.
I think those officers deserve a fatter bribe. Sh50 is honestly too little in these harsh economic times.
Brain and brawn
Did Makadara MP Gideon (spelled Gidion) Mbuvi aka Sonko whack Attorney General Professor Githu Muigai across the face? We will never know. The person who should have been the primary witness has retracted his statement — for reasons only known to him and Sonko.
It is also fair to assume the police will not be charging him for issuing a false statement. But what I have issues with is the assertion that Prof Muigai and Sonko had an argument. How? Githu, he of felicity of diction, argues with logic and facts. Sonko argues with a clenched fist. Weird pair to have an ‘argument’.
Poor Pan paper
When the Webuye Pan Paper Mills was working, local residents hated it because it spewed noxious sulfurous fumes, which can be as odorous as a high school pit latrine. But how they must miss that stink now...
The factory has been shut for years, only re-opening for an hour or two before an election for obvious reasons. I think the people of Webuye should forget that thing and move on. Maybe put up a bar with nyama choma on the premises, or set up a maternity hospital. Those are the only things that don’t go under these days.
Changing times
A university student who was jailed for five years when a cache of arms were discovered in his room is re-admitted to complete his engineering course nearly a decade after his unceremonious exit.
Meanwhile, the Engineers Registration Board (ERB) is told off by the High Court for purporting to have powers to decide what should constitute a university’s engineering course curriculum.
This country is changing faster than we can blink. In another time, the ex convict would have languished in the village as a small time carpenter, and the nabobs at ERB would have destroyed young lives and got away with it.
Rapes and apes
First things first. Apes don’t rape, much as they might hiss, rave and rant like savages. But man rapes, much as he pretends to have superior intelligence and a better sense of oral hygiene compared to his closest cousin. And rapists, for reasons that scientists have yet to unravel, abound in DR Congo.
How do sweet tongued bolingo men who compose such beautiful songs about love and romance rape 5,000 women in one year? Kenyans shouldn’t gloat though. The number of women raped here could be higher. It’s just that relatives shush up the victims.
