Wambua Sammy
23 October 2009
opinion
Nairobi — Want to be viewed by the Kenyan press, NGOs and the clapping class as a nationalist and "the voice of reason"? Mount the rostrum and, froth issuing from the mouth, condemn tribalism.
It will not matter if you do so from a fatally misinformed perspective. Don't stall your ambition, for only a few of us will mind your drinking hooch while preaching water. It is that easy to go places when the difference between appearance and reality is the same.
And now my sermon: Contrary to received opinion, tribalism is not the biggest threat to Kenya's national cohesion and statehood. Failure to appreciate the reality of it is.
It so happens here, as is the case elsewhere in Africa, that language groups inhabit a specific region. Barring minor class differences, such groups have common problems and aspirations. Grant major opportunities to their elite and goodies, even if they are crumbs, they will trickle down to the village. (The big eating will have been done elsewhere).
The PS, for instance will employ his cousin's nephew's half-sister's mother as a tea girl, who otherwise might have remained jobless. Since such "economies of affection" are replicated in all sectors of the economy, and all communities are tribalists, isn't it time employers were forced to strictly adhere to legally set tribal employment quotas? Over to Parliament.
Whenever I try to put in a good word for the Nairobi City Council, my tongue goes numb. The same thing should happen to you. If it doesn't, chances are that you are privy to something we don't know. Alternatively, you could be riding on the gravy train of City Hole.
Since I love Nairobi, not even the alacrity with which some of the rogues in yellow coats clamp your car when, in the first place, there was no parking attendant to buy a ticket from, will stop me from dishing out advice to, my foot! City Fathers.
If these paragons of civic duty took time off from their perennial plotting and counter-plotting and drove along all the feeder roads to the left of Enterprise Road from the city centre, their eyes would open: at the dead ends of the roads are nicely done but rotting colonial-era canteens/eating houses.
Rehabilitated, these disused facilities could make life easier for factory workers, my men of the people. However, fully aware of the dangers that lie in alerting you about unexploited opportunities, I suggest that, once rehabilitated, the facilities be let out to the poor women who sell food by the road. This way, no chairs will fly. Hope I am not giving you ideas.
Far away, in Britain, another City Hole is sinking taxpayers' money into a sex guide for citizens aged over 50. A witty writer with the Daily Mail newspaper notes that, although "pension sex -- you get a little bit each month, but not enough to live on -- may be all the rage," the city has bigger, non-sensual problems. "On the corporate desk of the Manchester City Council sits a thick complaints file concerning the state of routine services such as schools, rubbish collection and public amenities," reports the Mail. Who will save cities from their governments?
After watching me fork out money for newspapers every morning, a three-year-old in my house concluded that I wasn't the sharpest member of the clan. Fed up, she patiently waited as I sent her sister for a Sunday Nation. I then disappeared upstairs and resurfaced waving an ancient copy of the Daily Nation. Apparently, she didn't understand why one must buy a new newspaper everyday when there was a big heap in the house to pick one from. No wonder, the era of the paperless newspaper is kicking in so fast.
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