Kenya@100: The hits, misses and outright blunders

The geographical space known as the Republic of Kenya came into existence by a decree of the King of England on June 11, 1920, which renamed the territory previously known as the British East African Protectorate, the Kenya Colony and Protectorate.

The protocols to register the name of the new territory with the League of Nations (the precursor to the United Nations) were completed on July 23, 1920.

The first British Governor of the Kenya Colony, Sir Edward Northey, insisted the country’s name be spelt with double “e” — Keenya, which was the English pronunciation of the Kamba reference Kiima Kiinya (the mountain that shines), from which came the name Mt Keenya, hence the name of the territory.

It reminds me of the day in December 2001 when a cab driver I flagged down in the Belgium capital Brussels drove away on me after I insisted that he should drop me at the Kenyan embassy, a country he said didn’t exist.

The old pensioner who spoke only Flemish, a concoction of English, French and German, and whose father must have been a lumber jack in the Belgian Congo, thought I was just another of those equatorial forest monkeys stranded in a European capital.

RACISTS

When I finally made my way to the embassy and told a Kenyan official about it, he told me the older generation of Mzungus at the time, many of them condescending racists, insisted on pronouncing and spelling Kenya as “Keena”.

 Forget about annoying Mzungus: On this 100th anniversary, what can Kenyans pick out to be their strongest points as a nation?

First is the recognition that we are one of the few countries blessed with a wide range of amazing and contrasting features. Where else do you find a snow-capped mountain right in the middle of the Equator? Where else do you find a sprawling game park smack in the middle of a capital city?

And where do you find wildebeest crossing a crocodile-infested river in their thousands every year without fail?

On-time Kenya’s Foreign affairs minister, Dr Munyua Waiyaki, used to tell me that he had been to over two-thirds of all the countries in the world and had come to the conclusion that, given a second chance, he would still choose to be born and live in Kenya.

Dr Waiyaki would have turned in his grave last year when some survey found out that three in every five Kenyans were longing for an opportunity to relocate from the country.

A second inherently Kenyan strength is optimism. We believe that even in the darkest of the clouds, there still is a silver lining. Indeed, a 2003 global survey cited Kenyans to be the most optimistic people in the world.

Two years earlier, then Finance minister Simeon Nyachae had publicly stated the country’s economy was “in the Intensive Care Unit”. But, optimistic as they are, in December 2002 Kenyans sang in the streets that “yote yawezakena bila Moi (all is possible without Moi).

President Daniel arap Moi went on retire and his party, Kanu, which had been in power since independence, was sent packing. Sure enough, within a year there was an economic turnaround.

STOLE MONEY

We have to be told where all that Kibaki-era money suddenly disappeared to. Don’t tell us it is because we have a Central Bank Governor who is an Opus Dei Catholic and believes in frugality (the man resides in a hostel even though we pay him Sh3 million a month!).

President Uhuru Kenyatta should bring back the money ordinary Kenyans had in their pockets in the Kibaki era, or else tell us who stole the money and what he has done about it. Short of that, mud balls will be thrown at his motorcade on the day he hands over power in September 2022.

The third strength about Kenyans is how calamity makes them all of a sudden forget their differences and come together. I was among the first to arrive at the scene of the August 1998 terrorist bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi, and was amazed by how Kenyans sprang into action. Injured people bleeding all over were struggling to help the next person who appeared to be in worse situation than they were.

Cabinet minister Joseph Kamotho, although the least popular in his lot at the time, was carried shoulder-high and rushed to Kenyatta National Hospital in a passenger service van. President Moi came to the bomb blast scene riding in the same vehicle as three opposition leaders – Mwai Kibaki, Charity Ngilu and Michael Wamalwa. Yet only eight months earlier the President and his political challengers had been fighting ahead of the December 1997 election.

Actually, at the time of the bomb blast, Kibaki’s lawyers had been looking for Moi to serve him with court orders to respond to a petition he had launched against Moi’s re-election. But on that day no Kenyan was focused on our domestic problems. We were all focused on the external enemy who had bombed us.

The other strong point about Kenyans is their ability to easily forgive, if not necessarily forget. We all saw it early this year when ordinary Kenyans turned up in thousands to pay last respects to the body of former President Moi.

TORTURE CHAMBERS

Except my good friend Koigi wa Wamwere and some haters on social media, everybody else put aside the fact that there had been Nyayo House torture chambers, the Goldenberg scandal, and the Ouko murder mystery. We all wanted the old man from Sacho to meet his maker in peace.

That said, Kenyans too, have their obvious weaknesses. They love shortcuts and are inclined to cheat and forge. It is only in Kenya where people go to court to prove their academic “certificates” are genuine.

Today we have no less than four sitting county Governors with “degree” certificates suspected to have been printed on River Road.

I have closely associated with one of them and can testify he can’t complete three consecutive sentences in English. I guess they printed his degree “certificate” in English but gave him tutorials in vernacular.

In conversation the said Governor keeps interrupting by saying: “Incredible! Incredible!” I came to understand he means to say “amazing”. He reminds one of Ugandan President Idi Amin who, when in a conversation and you said fantastic, he would reply: “Very coco-colastic!”

When the IEBC started nosing around about the said Governor’s academic papers, his friend, who is a big shot with itching ambition to be President of Kenya in 2022, advised him to visit Anniversary Towers at night with a sack-load of cash. The matter of his “papers” died a natural death.

Recently, a friend joked to me that Kenyans are so addicted to forgery and cheating that in future, he won’t be surprised to have people with 2020 KCPE and KCSE certificates, yet Dr George Magoha has told us the two examinations will not be sat this year.

Were you to ask a gentleman called Mutahi Kagwe about Kenyans, he would tell you majority of us are easily tempted to be on the long lane of things. Only last weekend did Senator Johnson Sakaja, then chair of the Senate committee helping us beat coronavirus, was found silly-drank long past mid-night. Worse, intimidated security enforcement officers who came to help save him from himself.

GREAT INNOVATORS

 But Kenyans have a reason to smile. There is every indication that tomorrow will be a better day than today. Kenya’s best days are ahead, no behind us.

Foremost, Kenyans are great innovators. We have bragging patent rights on M-Pesa. I didn’t quite understand it until two years ago when I saw Facebook inventor Mark Zuckerberg wonder at how easy Kenyans were paying their bills at Mama Oliech’s fish eatery in Hurlingam, where ICT Cabinet Secretary Joe Mucheru took him for lunch during his visit to Kenya.

The coronavirus holocaust has also made Kenyans rediscover the creativity in them. University students at JKUAT and Kenyatta universities have suddenly realised they can make ventilators.

Before them, President Uhuru Kenyatta had discovered he doesn’t need to order casual shirts and trousers from London’s Saville Row when better ones are made right here at the Eldoret Rivatex clothes factory.

Happy birthday, Kenya@100!

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