LOIYANGALANI IN 2013; A brief encounter

In the desert, you see there is everything and nothing…………. …..It is god without mankind                ~Honore De Balzac a view of Lake Turkana

Loiyangalani is perched between the base of an imposing mountain and the sand less shores of a lake, the town lies silently, breaking the sloping base of Mt. Kulal into a gradual flatness that drains into the vast Lake Turkana; the only noises disturbing the silence is the drone of distant generators and those of speeding NGO land cruisers. The many shops aligning the wide road on both sides form the only street in the town. With two barbershops, two M-Pesa shops, one curio shop, one wines-and-spirits joint, a famous ‘fashion boutique’ called Lo-meri meri, two butcheries, one motorcycle and one vehicle garage, four restaurants; Vision, Bamboo-inn, Hope ( which also serves as a church on Sunday mornings) and Cold Drinks Hotel, famously known as Chongo’s because the Somali old man owning it has a cast in one eye, a jovial old man, his restaurant is one of the oldest  in the town and in his own words he had been in the region from the time the sun died (1973 solar eclipse).

A part of the street in Loiyangalani

At noon the town is sleepy; aside from the School uniformed boys roaming the street, moving from shop to shop; from hotel to hotel selling samosas to earn ten shillings to buy two mandazi’s and bean soup before returning to school, people hurry, almost dash from one door to the other. At such times of the day the sun shines down with a purpose- to scorch. The heat is unbearable; dogs run to water pools and lie in the mud to cool their bodies. There are a few trees in the street- all serving as meeting places for town Moran and those from the interior, or where lanky youth- those that have embraced formal education woo young girls coming to town.

The only open market in the unusually long street is the narrow verandah of a building – drab, with the green paints peeling off, its four dirty doors permanently locked and the poles supporting the roof over the verandah all turned black from constant human touch. This market is not a conventional market; there are no groceries, no loud mouthed women, and no earnest buyers jostling for goods or busy sellers haggling for buyers, there is nothing more than half full charcoal sacks, a few firewood sticks lying limply in the sun. White sacks spread on the verandah floor with very neatly tied minute bundles of 5-shillings tobacco, 5-shillings magadi, 10-shillings bundle of sugar, 5 shillings curry powder- this feeds the little pocket and economic capacity of the region.

The sacks with all these paraphernalia run identically from one end to the other, with big stones holding it firmly in place. Besides each sack sits the owner with legs spread on one side of her wares. The owners not minding their buyers occasionally spit from where they are sited, well aimed, tobacco stained spittle, coming out through a hole made just below the lower lip, flying past the buyer landing across the verandah to the dirt beyond with cobra like accuracy.

Women of all ages sit on the verandah beside their white sacks; newly married ones, old and wrinkled faces, energetic and playful ones with red ochre smeared over their partly shaven clean scalps, the thin strip of unshaven hair forming a fancy Mohawk of antiquity- fashionable in a traditional sense. The entire lengths of their earlobes all pierced with several round coils of white aluminum decoratively aligning them. Wide discs of beads around their necks almost submerge the women’s entire shoulders; seemingly heavy, the discs of colorful beads sit on the chests of the Turkana women, giving them a unique beauty, the artistic well from whence the bead design sprung is visibly and richly full and alive.

a young traditionally dresses Turkana Girl

One  woman sits with a child strapped loosely on her back listening listlessly, her sack,  the most stocked with more and longer rows of little bundles tied in transparent paper ; colorful curry, white sugar, brown tobacco, red ochre, little traditional spices, crushed barks of rare  trees- brown and dried bundles of traditional herbs . Dressed in originally red shuka and red leso all brown now with grimy unwashed dirt (ochre and a mixture of oil and dust) strapped on her shoulder and tied at the chest with a thick knot, the woman exudes resilience. Her feet are hard, in equally hard akalas and her calves are thick- she sits strong.

Beautiful Turkana ladies

Young colorfully beaded girls stand leaning on the walls behind the sitting owners and others taller, beautiful and shapely clutch the verandah poles to their bodies like hooker dancers in a nightclub- their necks, heads in new blood-red ochre and well oiled scalps gives them an innocent newness. Their discs of beads unlike those of the sited women are clean and colorfully new. They talk amongst themselves, conniving, pointing at passing young government officers and throwing back their heads, occasionally laugh unrestrained.  Their coy smiles,  eyes hiding mischief,  knowing looks on their faces and shy yet defiant breasts peeping from under their shukas, these girls gather here every day to idle, or display their beauty. Their presence gives the dreary town an erotic tinge and a post card beauty. International camera men have exploited this beauty; taking pictures of the young girls with uncovered, ochre smeared red breasts and hold exhibitions in European galleria; with such themes as Erotic Africa!!

a young Turkana girl dressed in a traditional style

Their male counterparts less colorfully and creatively dressed are bluntly drab. Black skin in green army fatigues-tacky like boy scouts, the shawls tied around their waist ends abruptly just above the knees- dark colors of maroon, violet and brown interwoven into one. The Samburu Morans who also come out around four when a certain cool breeze from the lake sweeps over the town stand with their legs crisscrossed and nasiggi- that potent traditional snuff is passed around and tobacco  calmly crushed into finer particles. A mingling of friendly enemies is seen in this gathering of young Turkana and Samburu Morans who talk and playfully joke with each other like childhood friends. The Samburu Morans are dressed in a colorful combination of bright red, yellow and white shukas- authentic colors of African flags and there’s a lost state with walking sticks and nut made rungus passing for guns. Their thick calves are hidden in long stripped socks of football players and their feet in white plastic tanga shoes or well worn tyre-made black akalas.

The elderly men in the town have  several  congregational spots; at the junction heading to the DC’s house where an erected shade gives them a space, there they lie talking, each of them with a little stool that also serves as head support- a traditional pillow. These elders talk and talk, they do not go for lunch. They disperse late in the evening and congregate again for the night, recounting stories and more stories as they while away the years of their lives in these prosaic way. Other gathering spots are scattered around the town; the airstrip acacias, the road heading to the police station, just beside Molo Lodge.

The people lead ritualized instinctive lives without necessarily understanding their role and responsibilities to a sovereign state or claiming any of their deserved rights from its formal structures both the government and the faculty of free market; the fisher men everyday throw their fishing nets into the lake without any appreciation that their catch will constitute a crucial part of an international trade with a ready market waiting in Burundi, Rwanda and other East African countries. They will pay the two shillings to the fisheries for every fish caught and go home without complaining of no service or demanding for better services. Young herdsmen tend their goats having little understanding that the meat of their goats will somehow find its way to expensive supermarkets in the Middle East states or in the capital- Nairobi as choma on barbeque grills in Karen or other posh suburbs of the big city. Here, men just live as simply as they can.

A short walk towards the police station behind Palm shade camp site and Moseretu lodge lays a small forest of a few acacias and numerous palm trees and in this forest is a spring of warm clean water called Maji moto (Warm/hot Water). A noon or evening stroll to this site inevitably brings one into contact with the carefree nature of the people of Loiyangalani, among the palm tree fronds men and boys alike undress and shower side by side, all scrubbing without a care for modesty or anything like fear with big black ‘members’ dancing as the splashing of water is frenzied and the water washes away their dirt. These nature of carefree happiness is also seen in the town where naked children stand under taps at designated public water points, with water running over their bodies as they playfully splash, each tap with one child; slightly older girls, either conscious of their bodies or aware of hidden, prying eyes on their nakedness stand under the taps fully dressed, with water drenching their clothes. This playing with water and public bathing sums up the water affair, a handful of people know how to swim and the lake ironically lies just outside town.

At night with stifling heat inside both the traditional huts and modern houses, whole families are forced to move outside; father, mother, daughters and shirtless sons lie on papyrus mats under the stars with a thousand nightly insects chirping the night away and big harmless spiders running all around. The parents talk and the children silently listen asking endless questions after the stories before they all fall asleep, one at a time. Old boys and mature girls secretly escape to agreed locations to pluck forbidden fruits or boys cuddle their girlfriends in dark and narrow paths as they hold long-promise-filled-emotive-talks with the night growing old and the morning finds them seated under those fences.

Loiyangalani; one of the most populous settlements around lake Turkana has a total of sixteen villages, populated by huddled settlements of circular huts, with a sound roundness to every aspect of the hut, arcs of circular short reeds and pliable palm fronds forming elaborate patterns and parts of the circular huts. The final artistic work ends in a complete dome shaped structure jutting out of the ground. The inside feels like a freezer box shielding people from the heat of the outside world. The sixteen villages spread across the vast space were identified, each by the most descriptive traditional name but now that animal that has been robbing Africa of its authentic originality; civilization has caught up with this quarters and is renaming each village by exotic holy and saintly names; (find the list of each village’s name at the end)

In 2013 the usual Bamba 20 across Kenya goes for 25, Bamba 50 goes for 55 and Bamba 100 goes for 110, the freedom and equal prices that the market is supposed to provide is not there in this outpost of the Kenyan empire. The kikuyu shop keepers fleece the shuka clad Moran without any care for or appreciation for the ethics of a free market. The corporate mega bodies like Safaricom do not respond to the cries of these people. In Mt. Kulal the same Bamba or airtime scratch card goes for 30, 60 and 120 respectively. One tomato goes for Ten shillings; a one litre bottled mineral water goes for 100 shillings, elsewhere that buys five litres of bottled water. The extra 5 shillings charged on every airtime card not only discourages communication, but will buy enough curry from the verandah market to spice up the meager meals in the kitchen of the Turkana women, the 10 shillings fleeced from the uncomplaining people will have catered for the unavailable treatment by buying the herb bundles in transparent paper, but the market of exploitation does not care for the needs of the lowly.

Despite the numerous challenges and desolate hopelessness of the place, there is a new talk in town, an indefinably hopeful spirit of opportunity, of oil, of investors- Kenya’s future; the Oil wells turning heads and interests in the western powerhouses lie in this desolate vastness. The spirit and wishes of people here are Electric, with an expected employment of 200 watchmen/guards in the biggest wind power project in Africa. The women whose expectations have been raised beyond what they had ever dreamed of are somewhat impatient; they talk at the drab open market, the reed made stalls where they sell miraa and others design bead art and many more just sit gossiping. The old men sleeping at their congregational spots have no worry disturbing their relaxation- knowing that the future of their children is an assured prosperity.

The region has for six consecutive years held successful annual ‘LAKE TURKANA CULTURAL FESTIVAL” – a colorful week of festivities and unrestricted partying both for visitors and the locals. Between 23^rd and 27^th May each year, the town fills with local and international tourists dressed in grey cowboy hats, three quarter shorts and expensive open shoes. Investors and business people in branded polo shirts with big names like Sarova, KCB, Equity Bank stream into the town with planes, private Safari land cruisers and expensive PSVs. sponsor banners are setup giving the town a new look.

Young men with Smart specs, big headphones, expensive cameras accompanied by young, overworked media interns interview wanna-be traditional experts as grey haired mzungus with big sun shades, fancy cameras take pictures. Young white blue eyed blondes, oriental tiny eyed, slit Japanese ones or are they Chinese? Socialize with each other.

Note taking tall folk- the BBC, CNN type, Alex Perry like walk around the erstwhile sleepy town with notebooks as they scribble notes on virtually everything. Government officers, foreign anthropologists, policy makers, Ambassadors, Nairobi folk meet in Turkana to talk about Development, Potential, Economy, Reconciliation as the indigenous communities sit some distance away enjoying the excitement, many many pictures will be taken, 200GB of video is recorded for posterity and publicity. The Camera shutters constantly, long speeches are made by Nairobi people and the locals Clap clap clap clap and clap, then shirtless hollow chested shy morans, fancy hair styled ones are paraded before the audience of white camera flashing tourists…shutter shutter shutter….camera flash flash flash.

People trek back to the show ground; the original arena of cultural custody; traditional songs are sung with a renewed energy and samburu/Rendille morans jump with an energized valor as dread locked ladies appearing as if they’ve been here all their lives rush out as the participants leave the stage to give t-shirts to the group leaders to distribute among their team.  Stakeholders and town Moran holding PC tablets record history!

Mr. Duchler, the racist irate German man running the posh millennium hotel is an old scrawny thing, drinking himself silly and smoking as many cigarettes as he can. He walks arrogantly with his protruding belly presiding him wherever he goes. He is a sorry site and the local Morans laugh the few times they see him and he shouts at them
‘Monkey’, ‘Baboon’
‘Gerr off my property before I shoot you!

Bubble gum chewing, Samsung S4 phone and classy hair styled Nairobi development pundits grace the day! As BiiiiigggGG government and development folks come to discover the region and its people! Imagine that! The biggest untapped resource, it’s going to cost billions, not millions, it will create employment. The minister even mentioned bill gates in his unrestrained eagerness! Stakeholders and leaders shall plant a tree or two….people will drink beer, swim in the lake and eat from the hotels that now have more than doubled their food prices!

The festival ends! As the town lives through a long dreary wait for the next big annual event.

Every evening a spectacular scene beholds and transforms the region into a picturesque beauty as the undying eye of God, a big ball of orange lingers on the lake as if floating briefly before it sinks rapidly and a new darkness engulfs the town.

The sixteen villages of Loiyangalani, the meaning and their new Christianly names;

1.    Soweto - st. Paul  
2.      Town - St. Paul
3.   Kula pesa – carol lwanga
4.   Kula samaki- Alamano
5.  St. martin
6. Kula Mawe/ kokote- Magdalen
7.    Kilama mbogo – consolata
8.  Nakwa Mweki (white thorns)- Teressa Villa
9.  Dikil Kimat (wayward women)- Legio or Veronica
10. Nawapaa- Bernadette
11.  Nagaan- St. Peter
12. . Kiwanja Ndege- Yohane Mbatisaji
13.  Nawei Torong (juu yam lima)- St. Joseph
14.  Layeni (El-Mollo)
15. . Komote- Dominico Savio
16.  Nachukule (Inside a ditch)

This is experimentation with words and development of observational writing from my visit to Loiyangalani, a town on the sandless shores of Lake Turkana between 5^th and 27^th May, 2013

The deception of devolution; Kenya

On a cloud lined Monday morning, with a heavy mist hanging low I walked into an old office, a little, cramped space. The office had nothing more than a very old mahogany table, old tables and a rusting metallic drawer. An empty, dusty little box sits besides the file cabinet with a bold label on the side-Books.

When I walked into the office I was confused, trying to fit the man and the space he occupies-the office in the corner, the big talk he gave us every day at the local pub. It was all a show. Sitting before me, with the open lie now between us, the man did not know how to behave.

 ‘welcome welcome…you have come eh?’ he rubbed his hands- anxious, fidgety his eyes darted from me to the chair and to the rug lying on the file cabinet and with one quick dash he took it and dusted a chair for me.

‘Sit, sit…welcome…. don’t worry, these government offices… they will fix it’ 

He looks down as if trying to hide from the lie that he lives. I was both amazed by the length one could go to hide a lie, an apparent attempt by a senior county officer to match his status with the lie before a young man as me became a source of curious joy. The man tried on different personalities like a rapidly color changing species of a chameleon, he smiled, guffawed, creased his brow with a serious frown and adopted an impatient tone.

I sat down trying hard to hide the shock, curiosity, and the disgust that it finally turned to. If he had the means the old hog before me would have dismissed me from the pathetic life he lived- the county lies. But he thinks I should be tamed by subtle lies and promises for a better tomorrow.

The old man before me is an old relic from the old regime. That long gone age when we had mzee in leadership; around the last time the sun died and people had waited for the mzee to explain it to them. He was, even then, a working man, married with kids growing up. And 40 years later 2013- the year the sun died again the old man in his present state of “dementia senilis” was a rebranded, repackaged civil servant, the sorts that stay so long in service and let their grand children die from job-seeking stress.

Do you feel short changed?

I do. Like so many others I though with devolution things will change; we will have equal representation, equal resource distribution, accountability, transparency, justice, timely service delivery and opportunities for everyone. But across the Kenyan state we are getting more than we bargained for, least in the positive. 

The national recycle bin

The Kenyan devolution has brought blessings to the worms in the Kenyan belly and in each county retired men from previously failed regimes have been resurrected from prosaic wastage to spearhead the dream of the new Kenya. New posts are created and new office spaces sought, and the office it gave the man before me is an old store in a 55 year old building. The very space and face of oppression is now the vision of power in people’s hand. For 50 years those doors had been locked and no one ventured beyond the rusty lock on the door. On the wall is a 1962 calendar with a picture of a beautiful deer, next to it sits a 2011 calendar with its some its months having a scribbles above it; Months in 2013. The ingenuity of a recycled mind had made a calendar of the past to be a present with dreams and an assured claim on tomorrow.

The digital craze

When devolution came it was popularly ran on the slogan of a digital team that sought to replace the analogue generation; the scorn of the ‘haves’ of the scientific age, globalized sons of Kenya on the ‘have not’ generation Kenyans. The ‘team digital’ confirmed the marginalization of the majority-analogue which in this context passes as a synonym for the poor and the semi-literate; those without access to any of the digitalized scientific faculties of iphone applications and without the technical capacity to comprehend visualized data.  The entrenchment of an elitist thesis on the common locals who watched Uhuru with profound awe, as a son of a former president confirmed to the world that a Kenyan version of ‘Obama’ was here- copy pasted mannerisms, elegance and style-shirt sleeves rolled with youthful robust. This was new in Kenya; the theatrics of youthful presidential aspirant inspired dreams in the delinquent youth and with innocent candor we listened as Kenya was unlatched into a new era of freedom on our TV screens. What we missed in oversight was posted on face book pages and other funnier clips found its way on you tube. The digital team confirmed the decree of our erstwhile African Big Brother now turned a grumpy African elder-KANU would lead for 100 years. 

And because of the naivety rife in the Kenyan (African) landscape, we forgot the frivolities of the yesteryears, where the analogue elder ruled- our digital visited the grumpy elder for advice or was Moi the analogue rogue of the wasted Kenyan holding on to the digital team of the 21^st Century Kenya? As some of our youth raped goats and molested chicken, our wealth was divided. All before our eyes because even in campus the bug of vogue optimism was biting, in a little room I joined my roommates and neighbors waiting for the epic judgment to be passed by the studded chief justice.

What we lacked in reality, the digital team made up in nationwide dreams and the digital generation was good at embracing the resultant virtual reality. The very idea of being Digital was a reason enough for us to rally around the young prototypes of the new breed of African leaders.

Our fascination with emergent novelties whet our development appetites) i.e. Oil in Turkana, the biggest wind power project in Africa, large underground water aquifers, severing links with the western neo-colonialists, going East or defying the entrenched social orthodoxy of holding on and waiting for the bad to change to good. All this promised an unprecedented potential for Kenya. I felt like a “Kenyan”, the critics in us overnight camouflaged into patriots, patriots borne by hope, by pride- the pride that Kenya and its beauty and new dreams instilled in its sons sent their expectations so high and now that reality has struck us in the face we have become doubters, and we can never trust ourselves with pride again, knowing that it bears, within its five letters both life and death. 

Deception rearing its head

Robbing the true custodians of their right to implement the new dream, team digital and its governors are employing generation analogue and paying them with NGO level PERKS and PER DIEMS. New posts are created and filled by relatives, clansmen, bigots, incompetency, recycled minds, colonial guards. That was why I was disgusted by the old things heading the process of change in the Kenyan devolution process. Across the country you will not avoid feeling short changed, cheated and robbed. The new era of governors it is unlimited the extent they can go to (one even slapped a public officer in a public office) what more do you expect? Isn’t that totalitarian enough?

Like a child learning to speak, the old man before me was babbling words, picking up new vocabulary; transition, devolution, first quarter, vision, democracy, constitutionalism. Yes that too. Internet. Connection. Email. The Kenyan child trying to speak the devolution language is overgrown and retarded. It has been living in that stage of growth for far too long and is still learning language when it ought to be expressing its ideas and solving other bigger problems. The nation builders without a solid foundation are still building; we do not know what floor of the many dreams storied building. 

Teething problems? Nay!

‘We are undergoing change; it is phenomenal what Kenya is embarking on’ that’s how we lie to our selves, that every major stage of development is preceded by myriad challenges. We have been here before!!

Yes we will pick up faster than many African economies. Kenya the land of safaris and hospitable people, the hope that came with devolution is dashed, stubbed to death by new spates of ethnic wars- Tana, Bura, Baragoi, Moyale, west gate, by new VAT tax imposed on basic commodities-milk, by the oil prices going up and the budget of running the county being just too much. We are starting on a wrong footing- we have devolved corruption, devolved nepotism, devolved ethnicity, devolved incompetency, and devolved everything that we need to avoid.

Claiming the second decade

Devolution is our claim on the 2^nd decade of the 21^st century. It is severing links with the past. It is spearheading the vision of the new Africa. It should not be a rebirth of the old Africa. It should not be the regurgitation of old solutions. It should not be about recycling worn out stereotypes. It should not be deceit. It should be about reform, it should be about accountability, about transparency, about timely justice. Not about additional taxes or squeezing wanjiku dry.

And in certain quarters people are even more afraid of dying because dying will mean another taxation burden to those left behind. A brother can’t slaughter his chicken and enjoy it without someone thinking of snatching that enjoyment by imposing a tax on the chicken’s neck and the knife that slaughters it…where are we headed? Honestly this is more than we had bargained for.

Disgruntled

I sit across from the old man in this county office and try hard to feel like a hopeful youth in Kenya. Trying hard not to believe that we should be on different sides of the table-  He on my side and me on his chair. Waking up every morning not knowing what to do, every day I try hard not break from the pressure. Walking dejectedly from one office to the other and never losing the enthusiasm of applying to long-ago filled vacancies. Hoping that none qualified is openly denied a chance to work. 

I am KENYAN YOUTH!!! I STILL HOPE!!! Coming up with slogans to keep me going #Hustle ni hope, kelele achia wabunge!!  #Mwanaume ni effort.

Kill the Goons | ON THE SPOT

Kill the Goons | ON THE SPOT