How to win a Nobel Prize, Kenyan style

By Ted Malanda

Despite what the pundits have been saying, Ngugi wa Thiong’o has failed to win the 2010 Nobel Prize for Literature.

If he had, Kenyans would have drunk and danced themselves sore to celebrate his exploits. That would have brought our total tally of Nobel Prizes to two, enough for us to forget Luis Moreno-Ocampo for a week.

Still, I have a little quarrel with the people who hand out this Nobel thing. The way it is structured, Kenyans just can’t win it. And it isn’t fair since a Nobel comes with a lot of dough that one could use to buy plots, matatus and initiate many other development projects.

Yet no Kenyan stands a snowball’s chance in hell of winning a Nobel for Physics, Chemistry, Biology or Mathematics. That’s why our foremost intellectuals are either in politics or working for the Government as Permanent Secretaries.

Democratic space

But if the Nobel people could get realistic and enhance the democratic space, Kenyans would win that thing left, right and centre. Look, not long ago, we had a Form Four leaver who bought university degrees on River Road and lectured at a top public university for years. In fact, he was only nabbed when he got too ambitious and applied for a fellowship to a foreign university whose experts were shocked that they had never seen the refereed papers cited in his CV.

That a Form Four leaver can teach people much smarter than him and get away with it is a reflection of our collective genius. Who would begrudge him a Nobel for power without reading?

Mind-boggling

Also think about the many Kenyans who manufacture ‘planes’ from scrap metal and motorcycle engines. Well, the decrepit things may not fly an inch off the ground, but where else can anyone attempt such a feat and have TV crews running all over in excitement?

Let’s not even mention our herbalists. While top medical researchers still can’t figure out whether HIV has a tail or a head, our ‘professors’ have been treating the mind-boggling condition for years. They fix cancer, joblessness, recover lost husbands and offer good luck. If there is any Nobel Prize winner who can achieve such feats using a few herbs mixed with concoctions from the private parts of a dead man, let him step forward.

And in matters of theft, our experts are way ahead of the competition.

Loaded rifle

From making billions out of procuring hot air for the Government, we now have hospital sweepers who carry out brain surgery at their privately owned clinics.

Meanwhile, only our police have the ability to seal a crime scene, carry out detailed forensic investigations with a loaded rifle and discover a dead man on the allegedly sealed crime scene 24 hours after a bomb blast.

Most annoying, however, is that no one has deemed it fit to award the late Akuku Danger a Nobel or two when not even the Americans can match him, nuclear power or no.