Nyayo philosophy should spark rebirth of a great nation

During my pre-teens, I stayed with my father in a bed-sitter in Githurai, Nairobi. Life was so difficult that we initially used to cook in a tin since my father didn’t have money to buy a new sufuria.

All the utensils had been left in our rural village where my mother and younger siblings were staying after our parents’ early retirement from the Prisons Service.

Indeed, the train of our life was screeching towards a bleak, unknown future. Then some bright light appeared at the end of the tunnel when my father got a job as a gardener at State House in Nairobi.

This job gave him a front row seat in President Moi’s presidency and changed our lives.

The departed President (pictured) left a lasting mark on this country. For me, this mark is personal at the family level and on the environmental scene.

He provided presidential leadership on the conservation agenda especially by spearheading soil conservation, wildlife conservation and tree planting.

All Kenyans who were of age during his reign vividly remember the gabions that he personally championed to prevent soil erosion. President Moi’s fight against soil erosion was informed by science and fueled by passion.

In February 2007, Robert B Dunbar of Stanford University together with his colleagues published an unprecedented study. Using coral samples from the Indian Ocean, they created a 300-year record of soil erosion in Kenya.

They discovered that, ‘The peak in suspended sediment load and hence soil erosion occurred between 1974 and 1980 when there was a five to tenfold increase relative to natural levels. This is attributed to the combined effects of dramatically increasing population, unregulated land use, deforestation and severe droughts in the early 1970’s.’

Against this backdrop President Moi toured the length and breadth of Kenya initiating projects for preventing or reducing soil erosion.

Unfortunately, his conservation agenda was stained by the Mau deforestation that began under his reign. A lot has been said about the genesis of the Mau debacle.

Irrespective of the factors that led to Mau’s excision, the fact is that Moi was President when this excision began.

An incident from my teenage years helped me to understand how a great conservationist could be caught up in the decidedly anti-conservation excision.

When I was still in secondary school, I composed and presented a shairi (poem) to the President during one of his many school tours.

Entitled, ‘Moi Rubani wa Amani,’ the shairi resonated so much with him that he offered me a scholarship to study in Australia.

Unfortunately, a Cabinet minister from Eastern rerouted my scholarship to his preferred student and I never got it. In that instance, it’s clear that the root of the problem was with the politician, not the President.

It seems that the Mau excision started in a similar manner of deeply flawed advisors running amok in executing their own unsound agendas in the name of the president.

As regards Mau Forest, the lesson for current and future regimes should be that natural resources like forests and rivers are sacred and should never be part of a political calculation.

Maya Angelou the late American Poet once said that, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

For many Kenyans, President Moi was a towering, yet loving father figure who made them feel like Kenya was one big, united family.

Interestingly, his famed Nyayo Philosophy of Peace, Love and Unity seems to be finding a rebirth through the latest Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) that is founded on the quest for unity and stability.

Soon after President Moi retired from politics, I was privileged to visit him at his Kabarak home. He was such a warm and gracious host.

Before I left, he looked at me in the eye and told me in a calm, yet authoritative voice that for the sake of peace, we should all work closely with the government of the day. Former President Moi will forever remain an asset to mankind. Let us honour him by thinking green and acting green!

– The writer is founder and chairperson, Green Africa Foundation. www.isaackalua.co.ke