THE MENTAL CAGES OF MARSABIT

I am from a small town, Marsabit , it is a beautiful place, beautiful not in the sense of scenic aesthetics- you know the flowery lanes, clean streets, tarmacked roads and the sort but beautiful nonetheless. The beauty of small towns like Marsabit is its people, the smallness of their beliefs, the depth of their small convictions, the communal sense of being, the extent of their hate and love, their gossip, their pretenses, their lies and truths, laughter and tears- the simplicity of even their complex issues and Ideas, of daily living. The ease with which one can assume many things and just be okay, the seriousness with which even the slightest of things can be brought to life...one minute an issue is just a small murmur in the air, then it becomes a quasi-secret gossip to be whispered, then a few hours later, a full blown concern, truth with people swearing, phone calls are made, and confirmations sought…from the villages where the issue is rumored to have happened, then phone calls from the villages to the town to seek for more information.

A section of Marsabit Town

I am touched by the communal side of my small town. I have on more than one occasion been confronted by people, strangers who have without a care let me in on the darkest sides of their lives, their problems, their challenges and the gate pass into their lives, into their dreams and fears is just their knowing me…knowing somebody I know….knowing I am so and so’ s son, brother, lover, father, mother or niece; friendship is kindled ….with just your name you can have cousins, uncles, clansmen, in-laws materializing out of total strangers. This is community. You can walk into people’s homes and have free lunch, free bed and engage in a long talk with the members of this household and walk out as easy as you came. Or strike lifelong friendships by just a few minutes of talking.

Yet, this communal outlook is this town’s greatest challenge. There is something sinister that lurks behind the welcoming smiles, their too trusting loyalty, and the ease with which people can take in convictions and clasp it tightly with their lives. This loyalty, the undivided love that is offered too freely, it can be seen everywhere, in schools, in the market, in the village, in households- it has been passed on like an infectious flu- like something necessary, like fashion and any kind of dissent is frowned upon- if it’s against the communal think- keep it to yourself.

There is some mild sycophancy, an instantaneous unshakable fanaticism, rumors and speculations, spontaneous worries fly back and forth and in just a few minutes various versions, modified for various ears- the conspiratorial, the impressionable, the doubters, the fanatics each of them blowing like hot airs rife and palpably in the air! The fodder that feeds propaganda and in this way suspicion is bred, nourished and nurtured to live whole lives- lives bigger than human life, and the suspicion supersedes propaganda and transcends into hatred, into blood, into murder, revenge- crosses border and grows into an international crisis- the Oromoland, into the Burjilands, into the Gabra areas of Ethiopia. Cousins and relatives in Ethiopia wonder what is happening in Kenya and send a few guns and horses to go fight off aggression to the respective community- then the buzz dies down, slowly, the angst goes silent for a few hours, a few weeks, months and possibly a few years- then the rumor begins and previous scars are piqued, rancor boils and the suspicion grows into propaganda, the propaganda into suspicion, suspicion into fear, fear into hatred and hatred into impulsive wars and on and on ad infinitum goes the reign of rumor in the land of the gossip. Gossip and rumors have a way of growing wings to fly, have some mutable characteristics in my small town, the capacity to remake itself into funny tales, into shocking news, into war cries, into songs even.

And when my friend often says “you will run mad, reading so many books” I will never take those words seriously than my worry about who hears it because I may wake up two weeks later to people’s sympathy or a distant relative coming all the way from the village  asking my mum

“How is he now? We heard he ran mad after reading so many books?”

Or just wake up a new person, with strangers regarding me in a new light, with awe because they heard that I read so many books and I am supposed to behave in a certain bookish way.

And somehow this communal naivete, this too trusting loyalty is in the hands of a few, it is easily manipulated, it is a switch box that can effectively unleash raging currents of hate, love, sympathy, contempt, love and life- those who thrive on anarchy are using it- a few months ago the local leaders gave a simple decree- do not buy from two communities and do not work for them- then the loyal people, communally decided in that mob way of thinking followed the decree and overnight we had meat, whole steaks, fillets and entire goats rotting in the butcheries and people being beaten by hooded goons in the evening for defying the decree to buy from “marked shops, butcheries, wholesalers” there were hushed whispers, fear of unseen eyes watching, one women was beaten while her husband watched because she had a “concubine” from the “marked” communities,  there were more  cases of tearing of shopping bags and open pouring of purchased goods from the marked shops. The poor suffered, business men suffered, casual workers lost their jobs and daily wages, they returned home to face their hungry children, then slowly life came back and business is now returning almost to normalcy.

And just yesterday I was walking around the villages, and the many settlements around town for a simple exercise, a polio monitoring drive. I walked into many compounds and homes and walked out. In all the homesteads I was more than welcome; I was kindly treated, served tea and ate those small tumandazis, popular in our town…sweet. I ate lunch in one of the households and then my host talked about peace in general for a while, then not realizing my feigned interest, she leaned closer and in that conniving way of crafty elderly women she said almost whispering

“You know so many of them have died, everyone is hiding their shame”

Pause

A picture of the backside Marsabit

“I was in Moyale recently, believe me there is more to the war in Moyale than you know…..they are using spirits…jinn…. They tried burning the house of one of them and it could not catch fire…..can you imagine they even bombed it and it could not catch fire…..”

Surprise on my face

“Yes!!….every attempt at burning failed until they had to call the sheikh….a sheikh who came and in front of everyone cast out the jinn….11 of them…can you believe….Jinn…11..”

I listened carefully, putting all the oohs and aahs and mmmhs as demanded by her dramatic narration; she delved into details of exorcising the jinn…she painted the picture of a jar of fresh blood found under the bed….the sheikh standing in the middle of the house while cats appeared and disappeared, with unseen dogs barking from the many rooms….I endured all her talk until the jinn finally disappeared and the onlookers looted and burnt down the house….with just one bomb….boom!!

I sat there trying to act normal, refusing to psycho-analyze her, trying to believe that she too did not believe what she was saying and that maybe she was high on something she accidentally took. That maybe this is a lie….and she may say something like….heyy stop listening…am just pulling your leg. But believe me she is not alone, I have heard this talk more than once but I have always banished it to the back of my mind, locking all those tales into a tight cage somewhere in the past. The other time, a sheikh was accused of casting demons into six madrassa going children, (there is even a video clip of this somewhere), the local leaders, chiefs, councilors and a local MP were present…the crowd was a big one, the sheikh and demon possessed girls sat on opposite sides with the crowd watching them in awe. Then the girls began talking in funny tones and the crowd almost ran away….the demons/jinn in the girls were confessing before a powerful sheikh….how they came from Somalia and they were treated to chicken blood or something like that! And that they were here for some sinister affair!!

Unbelievable is your thought now….but this is something that is happening, this directionless-ness, and confusion, this murky, voodoo, fanatical, primitive, ungodly ways belong to this century. To this present; It is a village in a supposedly post modern city. This village will endure- this traditionalism will mutate into another form, an amorphous state of our backwardness, it is the intersection of primitive traditionalism shifting into something more sinister, more traditional, more backward and obsessive; imprisoning our thoughts, caging our minds into small cages of aggression, irrationality, fanaticism especially of the region-political nature, propaganda, confusion and anarchic gossip. I avoid some of my childhood friends who have stuck in some state of mental quick sand because in one way or the other they will delve into that irksome Illuminati talk, they will vent their anti-west, anti-American supremacy sentiments, talk about the new world order as if that matters then say a few things about Jesus….about Prophet Issah and eventually narrow down and zero-in on me

“Please do not die a Christian” they will say. 

THE DOWNSIDE OF PATRIOTISM

Do nothing from factional motives [through contentiousness, strife, selfishness, or for unworthy ends] or prompted by conceit and empty arrogance. Instead, in the true spirit of humility (lowliness of mind) let each regard the others as better than and superior to himself.
—Philippians 2:3

A few years ago I was in the southern section of Ethiopia and one evening while flipping through the channels, bored by the Ethiopian Amharic broadcasting television stations; I chanced on one broadcasting in English and was enjoying some talk show about something African (I don’t remember what). I became so engrossed and was aroused by the old man who having watched me asked

“Do you understand what they are saying?”

I understood speaking or even understanding good English in Ethiopia especially the southern side is something that is not always seen. I nodded and added

‘Yes I do’                                                

The disbelief on the old man’s face was pardonable

‘…all of it?’ he said with his hand making an expansive sweep.

‘All. of. it’ I answered back

Then the elderly man in a way that has ever since been a part of my thoughts whenever I think of Kenya’s supremacy or lack thereof, or whenever comparisons are made between Kenya and other African states, or whenever any inappropriate comparison is made for the sake of malice or some covert agenda the old man looms large in my mind.

‘You know the Kenyan education system is good BUT their military is nothing’ he said, and the way it came out was more than disparaging, it was both a mocking sarcasm of Kenya and a confirmation of the supremacy of Ethiopian Military. Coming from a history of militarism and protracted civil war I just shrugged the old man’s sentiments as just a rash conclusion without any relevance whatsoever to how my understanding English was a representation of Kenyan education system.

Other instances have taken place since then, all adding in one way or the other to the growth of an idea at the back of my mind. One such instance was that of my Ugandan schooled Kenyan roommate whom we often in friendly verbal plays disregarded as just another kid who schooled in ‘a very third world state-Uganda’ with Museveni’s militarism being infused into him through the school curricula.

And on another instance in a weekly evening poetry/spoken word session in one of the varsity lecture halls one blogger stood up and going by the weekly theme of “paying tribute to Kenyan Defense Force”, he made some positive remarks which eventually shifted to the Kenyan regional supremacy.

 “Kenya is a super power” he said and went on to bash Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, the two Sudan-s, and Ethiopia. He created such a negative picture that made Eastern Africa states such tiny names that clung to the mighty Kenya-Dwarfs that need not our attention.  I sat there thinking How naïve!

But in mid last year, a young beautiful Belgium lady came to Kenya from Ethiopia through Moyale and on a journey to Lake Turkana we had enough time for interaction. Whenever she talked about Ethiopia and how good it was I subconsciously found myself telling her of similar better things in Kenya. Had it not been her pointing it to me, several days later, that I seemed to be selling Kenya as better than Ethiopia, better than anything Ethiopia could offer, while I hadn’t even seen the part of Ethiopia she was referring to. I wouldn’t have known the shit that my patriotic zeal was painting about me-about Kenya and Kenyans. It was such a blind groping that never thought that there could be other better things, places than Kenya in such “backward” places as Ethiopia.

I have over the years come to regard this with some seriousness; I am not, most of us are not any different from the Ethiopian elder in the remote Oromo land. The blogger in our spoken heart I have referred to because One’s state encompasses the very ideals that constitute ones identity, the body of pride and all that is good in any state elicits the same kind of response all across the world- the flush of patriotic sentiments, both sadness and joy. And it is part of this patriotism ingrained in citizenship through years of socialization that manifests when ‘others’ seem to invade, to supersede the complete body of beliefs and attitudes one holds about their state.

I have made the conclusion that patriotism is on a large extent negative... bear with me…I am making my case.

But what is Patriotism?

The standard dictionary definition of patriotism reads “love of one's country.”  Patriotism can be defined as love of one's country, identification with it, and special concern for its well-being and that of compatriots.
(read more)

Patriotism is negative

American political theorist George Kateb, argues that patriotism is “a mistake twice over: it is typically a grave moral error and its source is typically a state of mental confusion”. He further argues that patriotism is “a readiness to die and to kill for an abstraction … for what is largely a figment of the imagination” (Kateb 2000, 901, 907). Kateb conceives a state as “it is also constructed out of transmitted memories true and false; a history usually mostly falsely sanitized or falsely heroized; a sense of kinship of a largely invented purity; and social ties that are largely invisible or impersonal, indeed abstract …”

Patriotism is deceptive; it is a farcical self flattery

Leo Tolstoy found patriotism both stupid and immoral. Despite this, patriotic deception is alluring; it is scurrying away from truth in matters dealing with our realities – our identities. It often entails lying to yourself. Isn’t it baffling when eventually the scurry from the truth, reality reaches a point when it can no longer hold together- when the deception “self-consumes” and self abashment begins in bitter earnest when like Morgan “you do not see nothing to smile about”- the dawn of reality on the prison of lies. This reality becomes a guarded entity- we can self condemn, poke fingers in our affairs and yodel all we can but one statement made even in jest, or anything that seems to slight the spirit of our state from the outside, from other people, from other states will break the self bemoaning about our inadequacy to proclaim a mighty stance of self flattery; a patriotic zeal in which we find ourselves in a narcissistic self adoration. The state becomes a neo-liberal fetish, a glowing jewel that is to be guarded and protected. This self adoration surrounding the state by its citizenry is informed by thoughts like “we are good, they are bad”, “our bad are better than their good” which is an extreme form of patriotism whose mantra is “Our country right or wrong”.

Kenyans on twitter

My thoughts on the portrayal of “our supremacy”, or “patriotism” as a negative thing has often been amplified by Kenyans on Twitter. Not in a positive way but a very negative line of subtle #self deception.

The Kenyan rampage on twitter on any African states that provokes, bursts their sentimental patriotic bubble is a threat that should be eliminated with ridiculous hash tags #someonetell………. and at best the mob psychology that lies dormant even in the highest circles of our most respected i.e. the #culturecreators in the Kenyan society including both its elites and politicians becomes alive, it possess them in showing solidarity in attacking covert enemies from trying to mess with us.

c'mon 

Finger pointing, name calling or mocking banter of the inadequacies of others in Africa is not on the western scale of specks and logs in eyes but a famous adage of a baboon that not seeing its own ass laughs at and ridicules other baboons’ asses and in Kenya we have reared a baboon, and the finger of the famous baboon is #someonetell……hash tag. The claptrap banter of an egoistic citizenry expressing their patriotic sentiments and conceptions of ‘Kenyan supremacy’. The total disregard of existing realities, absolving our own weaknesses; showing our strength by pointing to the weaknesses of others is what the declaration of our ‘supremacy’ is pegged on.

And just the other day I came across an article by Kingwa Kamencu on Why Nigerians are miles ahead of our writers in the Daily nation of Friday, October 25, 2013. In this article Kamencu tries to draw a comparison on why West Africans are excelling in the literary world while East Africans are trailing behind. She asks

So, why aren’t East African writers hitting the jackpot of fame, analysis, money and acclaim like their West-African contemporaries?

She quotes Parselo Kantai who in self flattery says “The East African project is in a way more interesting than the Nigerian one.”

The article is apt, it is timely too but Kamencu spoils it when she subtly brings out the comparison like it is a battle, a sort of competition, a war that Kenyans ought to win

Even with the understated war for supremacy between Nigeria and Kenya seen on internet spats, Nigeria is in truth not the only country our writers need to fight.

What Kamencu in her article did was give a voice to ‘our’ belief. The belief that we are better than Nigeria and we could outdo them by just putting in place a few things; a vibrant publishing scene, Good PR for our writers, I searched the article to try and see if she has recommended learning from Nigeria or west Africa. But there is nothing like that, since she already has declared a war between our literary scene and the Nigeria one, she thinks there is not a chance for a collaboration between Kenyans and Nigerians working to improve each other. This is further amplified when Tony Mochama nails it

Mochama suggests looking further afield for challenge and inspiration. “We could look to the US where they have set the bar because of their dominance. They have an exciting tradition of literary magazines - The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Dog And Pound and others.

But couldn’t we look up at Nigeria and West Africa for this inspiration and challenge you may want to ask!! And here Mochama says

….As a third world country, India would be an example of how to write in an international language but still break away from the West,”.

I am not trying to belittle Kamencu or Mochama but they seem not aware of the negative connotation that seems to lurk behind the comparisons being drawn and the recommendations being put forth or if they are, there is a deliberate pitching of the East against the West in the African literary scene. There is an underlying patriotic tone that is tied to Kenya and East Africa in this piece. It is not on the extreme end of patriotism since Kamencu has been careful to notice and acclaim the superiority of Nigeria without lying.

How do we as Africans view each other in the face of Patriotism?

Each state has a single one sided story of the other, when it comes to self comparison. We can’t detach Biafra, Boko Haram, the con men, political upheavals when we think about Nigeria. Or fail to see hunger and starvation, press censorship in Ethiopia. Or when we think about Somalia all one sees is the war, the famine and big bellies. Problem steps in when we fail to transcend these “single story” about others in our outlook. When we start sweep our own murk under the carpet.

This distracted and divided image shapes our perceptions of the ‘African problem’. No one feels like part of it, we thus end up conceiving the continental problems as outsiders, as if we are not part of the murk. How do we deal with regional integration, pan-Africanism or the unity of Africa? When we envision the African problem not as a single bloc but fragments of the otherness informed by the convictions of one’s own superiority?

And if you had not noticed most people when thinking/talking of African problems rarely consider their own state, this is always a thing that comes with human nature; wanting and wishing to distance themselves from problems.

Can’t each one of us disavow and just tone down the superiority of the other? Couldn’t we instead work with each other, to learn from each other? Re-conceptualize our image and our problems, Collaboration instead of Competition.

 “The love for one's country is in many cases no more than the love of an ass for its stall” J.B. Zimmermann

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.