Philip Ochieng
22 June 2008
column
Nairobi — When he was based in our capital in the 1960s, the Rev Andrew Hake - an Anglican minister with a keen interest in town planning (and a good friend of mine) -once lamented that none of Nairobi's teeming millions is committed 100 per cent to the city's welfare and development.
In the metropolis - as we heard during the S.M. Otieno burial case two decades ago -most of those who claim to be Nairobians live in mere "houses." Otieno's real home, we were told, was in Nyalgunga, the bucolic setting in gichagi (upcountry) where the lawyer was born.
Probably, that is why the Sierra Leonean poet Lenrie Peters - referring to his own similarly situated Freetown -comments that we live in a house without a shadow. We are like ghosts in the gloaming of twilight, neither here nor there, uncommitted to anything except the self.
Certainly not to Nairobi. We build our castles in ushago (the Sheng version of the Gikuyu word gichagi). That is where they send their children to school, where the extra wife lives, where, whenever we take leave, we announce for the whole world to hear: I am going home.
That is where we periodically send money to take care of this or that interest of the extended family. The upshot is that few Nairobians really invest any money or idea or energy in Nairobi.
To paraphrase John F. Kennedy, we expect huge returns from the city without making a single input into it.
This is why I congratulate President Kibaki on appointing a whole new ministry called Nairobi Metropolitan Development and my boon coon Mutula Kilonzo as the minister. I know Mutula to be a workhorse, one with many intellectual resources into the bargain.
Nevertheless, I must ask: Will he be equal to it? I ask because the task is like one of those "Labours" to which the Titan Heracles (Hercules) was condemned.
Will Mutula be able to divert the course of the River Alpheius to clean up the layers upon layers of bovine filth which had accumulated in King Augeus' stable for decades?
Collision course
I think so. However, a few things disturb the mind about the appointment. One is that there are now at least three ministries concerned with developing and giving sheen to Nairobi. The two others are John Michuki's Environment and Musalia Mudavadi's Local Government.
The indefatigable old John has already made statements on the Nairobi River for which we must pat him on the back but which might set him on a collision course with Mutula.
For his part, Musalia has a special local agency called City Hall which might also object noisily to Mutula's activities.
Such conflicts would consume so much ministerial energy and other resources as to vitiate their several or joint efforts. True, we sympathise with the extraordinarily difficult political circumstances that forced the President to make these contradictory appointments.
The task now is to manage them in such a way that they do not clash gratingly and with internecine effects. His determination, we must assume, is especially to clean up the Nairobi River, bring aesthetical ambience to its course and use it to restore the Arcadian kingdom of Elis to its pre-Augean glory.
Therefore - like the Moon Goddess lurking behind the titan's miraculous successes against 12 whole such Labours - the President must commit himself to lending Mutula, Musalia or John every assistance in their particular areas in the task of resuscitating the City in the Sun.
Public statement
He can start, I suggest, by making a public statement as clear as a beacon drawing demarcation lines between the three ministries, affirming which ministry is in charge of what in the city- an unmistakable division of labour. Yet - come to think of it- in the end, all three are parts of a single government.
I see no reason they and other relevant ministries - like Education, Health, Housing, Information, Labour, Roads and Tourism - cannot form joint committees on particular Nairobi problems.
If we are to tackle the Nairobi River, for instance, we shall require a whole concert of minds, hands and other resources from all walks of life.
There is also the question I began with. How to develop a culture of full-time personal commitment to the city so that as many of us as possible can invest as much as possible in all these ventures - business, the professions, politics, entertainment, sports, whatnot?
Musalia, John and Mutula - with President Kibaki, Premier Odinga and VP Musyoka as the guarantors - could organise urgent conferences on "The Nairobi We Want" from which to work out a comprehensive policy on how to give a vital new fillip to our capital city.
It would make Andy Hake so happy for our Nairobians.
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