Occupy all streets

By CHIQUITTA

So the price of fuel has gone up, tariffs have gone up, food is expensive and Kenyans finally feeling the pinch of inflation. It’s no longer a graph with squiggly lines or a bunch of figures full of percentages and decimal points, it’s as real as it gets. While it used to be just the jalopies that caused traffic jam after running low on fuel you can now find Mercedes Benzes getting the mutungi treatment on the side of the road. Kenyans are no longer trying to go full tank, half or a quarter will do while others are happy to run on fumes– it’s called living dangerously.

As for food, we could always adapt the new Western trend known as ‘freeganism’ a movement that advocates eating only discarded or left over food, kind of like being a chokora who has money but still scavenges for food. I wonder if these Freegans would survive an African left over diet.

Another movement Kenyans might be interested in, is the Occupy Wall Street movement that saw huge crowds pitch camp at major business districts not only in New York, but also in, other major world cities to protest economic inequality, corruption, corporate greed, fraud and so on. For obvious reasons, the same might not work in Kenya. Nobody would leave their cosy house to go live on a street willingly, unless of course, they don’t have a home in which case, the occupy all streets demo has been going on for a while. Anyway, if it were to happen how would it look?

Occupy Moi Avenue

If there is one thing Moi Avenue is famous for, it’s the chips and chicken outlets that entice people during lunch and evening hours with their oily aroma. Then there are the countless stalls selling Chinese clothing. An Occupy Moi Avenue movement would probably be in protest of chips being sold at Sh70. Why? And chips are viazi?

The protest could also be filled with people who have bought Chinese clothing that developed a tear or aged drastically after the first wash or just hate the fact that a cheap cotton dress costs Sh5,000 and all the clothes look the same.

Occupy Parliament Road

Of course for obvious reasons, we seem to be in a right mess no matter how you look at it. Houses are being demolished, the roads look like under-cooked ugali, and Al Shabaab is threatening us on the BBC… Obviously Occupy Parliament will be a major fail because anyone pitching a tent would be branded an Al Shabaab insurgent and thrown into jail.

They will probably end up being questioned about their apparent tent making skills.

Occupy Woodvale Grove

If this happens, idle people protesting prices of beer will occupy Electric Avenue the party central of Nairobi.

Teens, who have just completed high school ,will protest age discrimination aka being frozen. Others will have beef with the music played in some clubs being a replica of a cheap music VCD in town, or the fact that despite the nickname Electric Avenue, electricity is sometimes interrupted for hours on end.