Kenya too soft on foreigners

By Edward Indakwa
When terrorism started becoming a global phenomenon, one of my bosses was invited to attend an anti-terrorism course in the United States.

But when he went to be interviewed for a visa at the US Embassy in Nairobi, the first question he was asked was, “Why do you want to go to the United States?” He blew his top.
Problem was, being a senior military officer he was accustomed to being asked questions by only five people – three bosses, his wife and six-year-old son. A clerk at the US Embassy was not among them.

So he got angry. “Look here,” he raged. “I don’t want to go to your country – it is you people who want me to visit your country!”

When I was thinking about this little episode, I remembered an event in 2004. Our plane was preparing to land at an international airport in Malaysia when the pilot announced that the laws of the land required that we be sprayed with some chemical. Fumigated is the word in technical parlance.

Chicken farm
Apparently, when you come off a chicken farm, your clothes could be full of organisms that can kill their chickens or something.

So picture me then, a proud father with a long career ahead as a clan leader, a man who occasionally takes his showers seriously, being fumigated in a foreign aircraft lest I foul the air with my bacteria upon landing.

I’m digging up these old sores because it just occurred to me why President Kibaki has never visited the UK – where he studied – since he assumed office.

You see, in the event that he chose to, he would need to upload a long Visa application form online – probably five pages of deep, searching and personal questions. 

They would want to know his wife’s name and occupation, the number of his children, maybe his education and professional background as well and – this is critical – how much he earns.

In fact, they would demand that he attaches his bank statements, meaning total strangers would be marveling at the amount of money that he pays out to Bunge Cooperative Sacco for that small loan he took to start off a stalled chicken project in Othaya. 

Even then, he would have to present himself at the Embassy where they would ask, “Why do you want to go to Britain?”

You can picture their quiet scorn when he answers, “To see Prime Minister Cameron.” They never believe a word you say, these embassy officials. They assume you want to go wash dishes out there and never return, even when you have a PhD.

Now contrast this with what happens when an American or Briton who dropped out of kindergarten wants to visit Kenya.

He buys a ticket, answers five questions on a yellow form inside the plane and lands at JKIA to a mursik bash with female traditional dancers wriggling their bottoms in honour at the runway.

Long live the Queen!

Why Egypt should let Pharaoh go
If there is such a thing as overkill, it is happening in Cairo. The Egyptians didn’t have to hunt down former President Hosni Mubarak in a culvert. He handed over power to the army when things got too hot.

Egyptians, far from letting the matter rest, took him to court and charged him with murder – an old geezer with many of body organs way past their expiry age.

In court, where he appeared in a cage like the old trapped lion he is, he lay on a stretcher where his former subjects stared at him with the curiosity and contempt with which a lynch mob looks at corpse whose owner they have just stoned to death.

Last week, the court found Mubarak guilty and sentenced him to life. The old geezer is 84 and his heart keeps creaking shut like an old window.

Why, in one day, they had to arm-twist that aged heart back to life twice by shocking it with electric shocks (In Kenya, he would have died because a power blackout would have ensued just when the doctor was about to do his thing).

Now, I have no idea how many evil things Mubarak did, but I have a feeling he feels quite remorseful about most, if not all of them. In any case, being out of power must be more punishing than spending the rest of his life behind bars.

Here, I think, is where Egyptians need to grow up. Mubarak, for all his failings, wasn’t such a monster. Africa has seen worse. He served them well, if a little too selfishly and with too much zeal (he wanted to install his son as his successor).

You can’t build a nation by angrily jailing an 84-year-old sick man for life. Let Mubarak go.