Snapshots: Why Obama should not plant another tree here

 A section of Nairobi where the Kidero grass was supposed to grow. Photo: Nairobi.go.ke

It’s been years since I stepped into Nairobi National Park. Shame, really, because it doesn’t cost much.

But I am not in the minority. I know of many city residents who irrigate millions down the pub urinal and crap tones of roast meat annually, but they have never set foot at the Animal Orphanage.

Some even drive down to Mombasa for ‘holidays’ and spend days marinating livers at a famous pub next to a petrol station. But they would never drive into Nairobi National Park because it is ‘expensive.’

Anyway, back in the day when I used to pop in and out of that park, I recall an annual ritual where a paint company would plant trees at a section of the national park. I always wondered why they bothered, yet that place has never had trees since the days when white people used to engage in wild sex parties peppered with bangi in a place called ‘Wanjohi Valley.’ Perhaps long even before Timbuktu became Timbuktu.

They would plant trees year in, year out, but each time you drove past, you would not see an emerging forest. Could it be, I always asked myself, that maybe the soils there are too crappy to allow for tall trees to grow? Or did the seedlings fall victim to a peculiar Kenyan curse?

I would be quite eager to know if the seedlings we planted in Mau Forest when Mwai Kibaki was the boss are still breathing. I fear we could have abandoned them immediately after the cameras flashed and the big men and women hopped aboard their big cars and zoomed off.

We sort of do that every time we have a senior guest. He or she plants a seedling, waters it, the cameras flash, a handy man installs a ‘this tree was planted by so and so to commemorate this or that on this date’ sign and then everyone claps and takes off. In all likelihood, that could be the last time that wretched seedling ever sees water or some lazy worker ambles by with a jembe.

I know President Barack Obama is here to talk very serious stuff. There is a chance that in between hopping to Kogelo to chew Mama Sarah’s chapati, he will hold fruitful discussions with our leaders to discuss matters affecting our two extremely friendly nations. Never mind that we’ve spent the better part of two years telling him to go to hell.

But as a measure of whether what he will be saying will be entering through one ear and exiting the other, he might want to visit each of the tree seedlings he planted when he toured Kenya as a ‘mere’ Senator.

Mama Sarah’s tree could still be intact but only just because the old lady sits nearby, swatting away goats, chicken and kids with evil intentions.

But I wouldn’t be surprised if the other seedlings suffered the fate of many of Kenya’s children; killed by malnutrition, one disease or the other, witchcraft, jiggers, dirty water (if they are so fortunate to have it), or plain neglect.

Welcome home, sir!