Makokha's Memo

Hunger’s in the slums and not the dry areas

Most of the 10 million Kenyans threatened with starvation are not where you thought they would be.

They are not in the drought-stricken rural areas. They are, instead, in the country’s urban centres, huddled in the informal settlements famously known as slums.

A new official report lays bare the reasons for Kenya’s hunger— and they go well beyond rain failure. Drought is only one of a growing number of causes of the hunger threatening nearly 10 million people in the country.

The Kenya Food Security Update — released early this week — says that the highest number of people who are likely to starve are low-income earners who live in urban informal settlements.

According to the February 2009 survey, 4.1 million people in Nairobi and Mombasa slums are threatened with starvation because of reduced earnings resulting from the loss of employment after the elections violence.

Matters have been made a lot worse by rising food prices. In the slums, 37 per cent – or nearly four in every 10 — of the households reported having only one meal a day.

And adults are required to be of good behaviour by restricting the food portions they consume. People are running into debt, moving elsewhere or selling whatever belongings they have to survive, according to the survey.

Ironically, this population is receiving the least help from the government, aid workers and Good Samaritans who are lining up to give donations everywhere.

“The unfortunate reality is that intervening organisations tend to respond to emergencies fairly quickly and have less enthusiasm for funding and implementing non-food interventions that are, at the minimum, mitigative in nature,” says the report.

It is jointly published by the government, the World Food Programme, the United States Agency for International Development and the Famine Early Warning Systems Network.

As the global economic crisis bites and its effects are felt at home, it is unlikely that the rains – in whatever quantity – will alleviate the suffering of the urban hungry. The army of manual workers, domestic and office support staff, security guards and idlers is hungry.

If they are not fed – and urgently, too — Kenya’s urban middle class can expect a spike in larceny and other petty crimes, all to their detriment.

Not to forget the public face of the famine, those affected by the extended drought season are only 2.5 million — and they have among their number some 850,000 school-age children.

Another 1.9 million people are faced with starvation because they are affected by HIV and Aids — either directly or have lost a breadwinner to the condition.

A shocking admission in the report is that there are 150,000 people displaced after the elections who are in transit camps close to their homes but cannot return or farm. This number receives food rations from the UN World Food Programme’s Emergency Operation.

Officially, the government claims that it has moved 255,000 people out of camps for the displaced. With 150,000 depending on donor dole, the resettlement effort has only benefited 105,000 people.

This number constitutes 16 per cent of the revised total of 663,000 displaced people, which is the official figure from the Ministry of Special Programmes.

Obviously, truth is something that makes the Coalition Government extremely uncomfortable that it spends most of the time sugar-coating it.

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You can’t kill the memory of a good man

Leadership, or lack of it, is beginning to pepper conversations everywhere in Kenya. It may be an honest expression of disillusionment or the duplicitous criticism expressed to dilute anger.

Om Sunday, the starkest reminder of the leadership Kenya could have had will be brought to the fore when the long-awaited Murumbi Peace Memorial is unveiled at City Park in Nairobi.

The memorial park honours Joseph Zuzarte Murumbi and his wife Sheila nearly 20 years after they died — and it is not by dint of official effort.

It is by the people who still remember the Murumbis for their patronage of the arts, their love for culture and their common decency.

Besides Alan Donovan, Hilary Ng’weno and Pheroze Nowrojee, world renowned art professor and sculptor Francis Nnagenda will be there. Elkana Ong’esa, John Odochameny and Expedito Mwembe, too, will be there.

And so, too, will their sculptures.

Yet, Murumbi was no ordinary man. He joined the Kenya African Union, and after Jomo Kenyatta’s detention, found himself thrust at the head of the party.

He, too, had to flee into exile to India and then to England where he created numerous links with pan-Africanists. He would become independent Kenya’s first foreign minister, outlining policy as well as setting up consuls, high commissions and embassies.

Appointed vice-president after the resignation of Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, he became disillusioned by politics after the assassination of his friend and mentor Pio Gama Pinto and resigned. The only public position he would hold would be as chairman of the Kenya National Archives.

Though remembered more for his support for the arts – by putting together and preserving what has often been described as Africa’s most important art collection, Murumbi has booked for himself a place in history that cannot be destroyed by wilful or official embarrassment at his principles.

His art collection, which is now in the Murumbi Gallery at the Kenya National Archives artefacts and stamps, while the National Museums of Kenya in Nairobi, will soon be the home of his collection of rare books and other artefacts that were on the verge of being shipped out of Kenya.

Murumbi co-founded African Heritage, and it will be making a big comeback with the African Heritage Night at the Hotel Inter-Continental where my old political science classmate Agnes Alando makes a comeback as a model, and Mickey Ragos (aka Mr Kenya for 22 years) comes out of retirement to join his son Fred Sanya, who is the reigning heavyweight Mr Kenya.

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Uniform at university

Despite the denials, it is now quite clear that the leadership at Kenya’s top performing state corporation is intent on changing its management style.

Kenyatta University, more renowned for being a well-run state corporation than a university, is determined to earn another first by introducing uniform.

It is just that they are using loads of English to describe it as a dress code.

A friend of mine who teaches at the university is contemplating sudden departure at the prospect of having to not only purchase an ugly T-shirt, but also wear it on Friday as part of a dress-down.

That is part of mandatory regulations for teaching staff, complete with philosopher’s degrees. There is no telling what will happen to support staff.

The students, too, are expected to dress decently because their representatives, who constitute less than 10 per cent of the university senate, will have a say in the matter — even though decisions are made by a show of hands.

Were it that the university concentrated on what is in the students’ and lecturers’ heads rather than their outward appearances, it would be closer to fulfilling the requirements of its charter and the law that set it up.