Dire straits

A boda boda operator captured in Kakamega town ferrying bananas to unknown destination. Businesses rely on them for transportation.[File, Standard]

Kenya is a country where our prison warders live like the prisoners they guard. A country in which traffic police can’t afford cars, and the richest man in most villages is a chief.

A country where the only rich people we know are thieves, or the sons and daughters of thieves.

A country in which not being a thief is strange and being a thief is leadership. A country where when we fight corruption, politicians run for the hills and our import market collapses. Even worse a country where civil servants have no idea how to do their jobs sans corruption and bribery.

Our nation is a country where if you earn more than Sh100,000 per month you are in the top 4 per cent of the country’s wealthiest. Our tax bracket is so small it is more like a full stop. With less than 4 million who pay taxes as opposed to the 20 million who are potentially capable of paying tax.

To add fuel to our fire, unemployment is easily above 50 per cent, reaching up to 80 per cent among the youth in areas such as Siaya. If we were to count under employment, we would be hitting the 70 per cent unemployment mark.

To put this in perspective, European countries with above 10 per cent unemployment are considered superbly poor, and the US goes into a panic when unemployment plays at 6 per cent.

Our debt is huge, whether manageable or not it remains huge. A Sh4.6 trillion debt is huge by any standards, to put that in numbers we can all understand you, your children, your grandchildren owe Sh100,000 shillings to our debtors. Among the debtors we owe is the People’s Republic of China, a dangerous entity to owe.

I am reasonably informed that they have no issues at all repossessing the debts like banks do. Meaning that they have no shame in coming to own and operate the SGR or the Lamu Port should we fail to pay.

We in effect will be a province of China, and in proper perspective we will be 21st century economic slaves. We will slave for the profit of another, having only food for our stomachs to console us and nothing by way of dreams and ambitions.

Make no mistake, Kenya is teetering on the edge. Dancing dangerously on the precipice to oblivion. The proverbial fat lady is about to sing, the bell is about to toll and we do not need to ponder much for whom it tolls. It tolls for us, and that toll is looming large.

What is worse is our youth have lost hope, our universities are in disarray, the job market non existent and they have little room to make money by way of innovation.

As musicians, they will earn little, as dancers they will earn nothing, as painters they will only be paid to paint walls and not murals.

Their art is graffiti wasted on walls dotted in words warning male Kenyans to behave, as if they know what civilisation is.

The giant

If Kenya was a patient, it would be a patient in ICU. Yet some just joke about it and we assume that in the region, we are kings. We are the wealthiest of the poor, the freest of slaves and the fattest of the thin: Kenya is the giant of the dwarfs; Togo’s $7 billion GDP is ten times smaller than Kenya’s.

This is such a small consolation, it is a knit bracing that you got the VIP ticket to the sinking titanic. You will still sink.

We should all be scared. The price of fuel is about to go up, sugar is about to be taxed, food is about to be more expensive, and if they could, they would tax our air too.

We need to be sad, but we also need to be mad. We need to be mad enough to do something. That thing is one; deal with the thieves that got us into this mess. We need to deal with the corrupt, who by the way, have Sh600 billion in their pockets every year while you and I strive while starving for bread for our kin and kith.

Sure enough

These are the people who kept maize farmers waiting while they ate the national cake. If we don’t eat the fat cat, then Kenya will be dead and buried. Like Argentina we just need to default on paying our debts once and sure enough our currency will devalue, we will be in a sudden crisis.

Do not think Kenya is too big to fail; Argentina was once one of the wealthiest countries in the world. It was swallowed whole by the greed of the Peronians.

Kenya is at the same place: the greed of the policeman who asks for a bribe, the politician who takes money to subvert justice, the judge whose scales of justice are weighed by money and not by truth and evidence, the minister who ministers to his pocket and not the nation.

They are eating our country whole like anacondas. We are like the frogs which were slowly boiled in cold water. We think we are in a jacuzzi when we are really in a sufuria. Get angry Kenya, or die.

Mr Bichachi is a Communication Consultant. [email protected]