Random Blues: At the 'hat' of Kenyan politics

 CORD leader Raila Odinga in a hat. Photo: uhuruspirit.org

Despite the present cold, during which every Kenyan within the country’s borders is wearing a jumper, scarf, gloves and a Siberia bearskin jacket, Kenya is generally a hot country. It sinks slap-bang on the equator and rolls around space like the outermost piece of meat on a kebab spit-roast. Consequently, the expatriate will find that he needs to wear some sort of shading hat to protect his protruding white nose from the harmful effects of solar radiation.

But, in his attempt to avoid skin cancer, the expatriate should nevertheless take other cultural precautions. For, while wearing a simple piece of clothing such as a hat might seem like an innocent act, in Kenya, it is fraught with dangers and associations beyond the expatriate’s own personal control.

Take, for instance, the ‘cowboy hat’ or stetson. The American expatriate might reasonably assume that this is a sensible piece of sun-protecting headwear, and yet in Kenya, this hat has real significance. Wear it, and a significant portion of Kenya’s population will start thinking that you’ve become a member of one of Central Kenya’s excellent ‘mafias,’ as Kenyans are wont to call those groups of folk who, in business or politics, move that region’s politics

The stetson in these areas comes from the historical influence of American country music, yes, but has mixed wonderfully with the ‘boss manliness’ that the cowboy represents, and that JR Ewing exuded in that god-awful series about oil wealth, Dallas, which was apparently a hit here in Kenya during the glitzy 1980s.

Or perhaps the expatriate, hearing that the stetson is a no-go area, will opt to wear a baseball cap; and, being part tourist and part Kenyan resident, perhaps the expatriate will consider wearing one in the red, green and black of the national flag. Well, no: he shouldn’t. The baseball cap, which is now thankfully slipping once more out of fashion, seems to have acquired a symbolic association with politicians of another stripe.

Our present Deputy President used to be a keen wearer of one in this red, green and black, prior to the last elections. Now, a baseball cap is pretty innocent in itself; as, one assumes, is the Deputy President. And yet, in the eyes of some less compromising Kenyans, your wearing of this item will suggest your political bias as an expatriate.

Which brings us to that classic of British headgear, the ‘flat cap.’ That’s what you used to call it in the UK, where it was the working man’s hat, signifying good hard work and social conscience. Okay, but...here in Kenya, it’s called the ‘Raila Hat,’ and you’ll find that if you wear it, you’ll be read very differently in very different parts of this very diverse (read, ‘fractured’) Kenyan society.

Indeed, the privileged and snooty expatriate is best advised to either just wear the usual beige, floppy-brimmed ‘bush hat’ that all whiteys here seem to wear, or else the top hat that he secretly yearns to wear. Everything else is just too risky.

 

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