Kenya: The fools’ paradise, where everyone, everything could be fake

Let’s face it, ours is a country of fakes. A woman marries a man, masquerading as a businessman, only to watch him on TV as he is clobbered senseless in a mob justice, with reports indicating he is a notorious pickpocket.

Forged academic papers are the order of the day around here. Some of the lecturers at our universities are cons, with counterfeit PhDs they bought along Nairobi’s River Road.

When you drag all ‘your’ kids to a hospital for DNA tests, it is very likely that you are not the biological father to all of them. The games our wives play! I won’t even get into the secret parallel families most men run.

Meanwhile, all the people media keep referring to as a “prominent city businessman” are actually con-men, whom journalists fear referring to as such, lest they sue them!

What we eat, drink, smoke, wear, the music we listen to, the people we employ and even marry are likely to be fake. Need I mention the reliability of the weather forecasts we get?

The men and women we plan to elect into office in the up-coming General Election are not genuine leaders either. Some either have fake academic papers or they not only rigged their way through the party nominations, but also plan to do so on August 8.

Heck, even the women masquerading as prostitutes are not genuine peddlers of flesh. Most are pickpockets or gangsters who hide under the ‘prostitution’ tag to sedate and rob victims.

Good Lord, even the money we use for all these bogus goods and services could be counterfeit. Anybody with a hovel where he cons gullible Kenyans in the name of ‘sadaka’ will proudly masquerade as a pastor.

He becomes “bishop” the moment he opens yet another mabati shack down the road, where his wife or partner in crime runs the show under his supervision. The miscreant graduates to “prophet” the moment he starts to perform fake miracles or opens yet another shack elsewhere.

On our TVs, we now have so many talking heads, lording it over everyone as they claim to be experts on everything. One day they are busy discussing politics, the next the cholera epidemic and the next urban planning.

Ask them why the grass Nairobi Governor Evans Kidero planted refused to grow, they will break it down like agronomy experts.

Take, for instance, this gentlemen who is always on heavy rotation on TV stations, analysing security. The chap left the force decades ago, before cyber-crime, terrorism and related new-age crimes became a reality. But toss at him a question on such matters, he will parrot to no end on what our security agents need to do.

The same has been going on when our so-called experts are asked about the biting shortage of unga. I have waited for so long to hear from the real agriculture gurus and food security experts on the matter, but none is coming through.

All we are treated to are political hacks who have been jawing it to no end on how this or the other side of the political divide is to blame. Besides the pedestrian drought and famine theory, I have waited in vain for a proper explanation from experts, say, linking rise and rise of boda boda business and the decline of agriculture in rural Kenya.

I know for a fact almost at every shopping centre you visit in rural areas in this great nation, there are able-bodied young men who used to actively participate in agriculture but are now boda boda riders. A bulk of these riders not only used to supply manual labour in farms but also practiced as farmers. But with the rise and rise of the ‘nduthi’ business, these young men have been slowly abandoning farming and agriculture in general. Dung has now hit the fan and we are all clueless of how we ended up with the biting food shortage.

The agriculture sector that used to employ over 80 per cent of rural folks is no more. The village economy is almost dead. To, for instance, get change for Sh1,000 bob at the local market, you have to spend the better part of the day, asking around. If you are not careful, crooks can even kidnap you to separate you with that bank note.