With the leaders we have, it is not a surprise that things aren’t going well

What you need to know:

  • If Ms Mbura had her way, all the women of Mombasa, Kwale, and Kilifi would enter the flesh trade, as she apparently believes that tourists are more interested in sleeping with the local women than sunbathing or snorkelling at our beach resorts.
  • In the old days, when breasts were not considered sex objects by traditional African societies, it was perfectly acceptable for women living in scorching heat conditions to walk around near-naked.
  • Talking of retrogressive senators, could someone please tell Senator Mike Sonko that he was elected to improve, not privatise, public services in Nairobi County.

When a senator urges her female constituents to bare their breasts to boost tourism, you know that there is something very wrong with our leaders.

Last week, nominated Mombasa Senator Emma Mbura urged Mijikenda women to go topless and wear just a leso around their hips.

She argued that foreigners used to come to Kenya’s coastal region specifically to look at naked African breasts and that the recent practice of covering them had kept tourists away. She believes that if more coastal women walked around topless, tourists would come in droves to Kenya’s beach resorts.

Going by her logic, it would be perfectly acceptable to legalise child prostitution to increase the number of foreign paedophiles who enter the country, or to brand Kenya as a sex tourism destination to attract sleazy foreigners who cannot get sex in their own countries.

If Ms Mbura had her way, all the women of Mombasa, Kwale, and Kilifi would enter the flesh trade, as she apparently believes that tourists are more interested in sleeping with the local women than sunbathing or snorkelling at our beach resorts.

SEX OBJECTS

In the old days, when breasts were not considered sex objects by traditional African societies, it was perfectly acceptable for women living in scorching heat conditions to walk around near-naked. Today, obscenity laws forbid women from walking with their torsos uncovered.

Besides, which woman would want to be ogled all day by lecherous men with bad intentions? Does Ms Mbura really believe that the coastal women’s main job is to provide sexual pleasure to tourists?

The senator should be looking at the real causes of the slump in Coast tourism. She may not know this, but the threat of terrorism and adverse travel advisories have kept foreign tourists away from our beaches.

Instead of encouraging local women to become sex toys, she might want to address the issue of how poverty and marginalisation have bred radicalisation in the Coast region which, in turn, has become the fodder terrorists use to gain new recruits.

If she is really interested in uplifting the living standards of coastal people, she should set up a fund to pay for the hundreds of primary-school-age children who are currently out of school because their parents do not have the money for uniforms and activity fees.

COASTAL ECONOMY

She should be working towards diversifying the coastal economy so that it is not entirely dependent on tourism. How about finding investors to build a state-of-the-art university in Malindi or fruit juice factories in Kilifi?

Talking of retrogressive senators, could someone please tell Senator Mike Sonko that he was elected to improve, not privatise, public services in Nairobi County. His job is not to provide personal ambulances and funeral services to Nairobians. If he wanted to provide free services to the people of Nairobi, he should have started a charity or an NGO.

People are elected as leaders so they can devise policies and pass laws that make better use of public funds. Besides, I do not know of any politician who uses his or her legitimate earnings to fund harambees; harambees feed corruption in Kenya and that is why the Narc government banned them. They are now back with a vengeance in the Kanu-rebooted regime of UhuRuto.

CORRUPTION SCANDALS

On a related topic, with corruption scandals dominating the front pages of our newspapers, it is unfortunate that an alarming story about nearly 2,000 doctors quitting the public health service last year because of what they perceived as poor treatment by county governments has barely made news headlines.

If doctors are leaving the public health service in droves, what are the counties doing about it and why is there no national outcry about this impending health crisis?

Meanwhile, rumour has it that some doctors in district hospitals are asking for “facilitation fees” to push a patient’s name to the front of a surgery queue.

Similarly, someone told me recently that when he went to a police station to report his aunt’s murder, he was told to part with 5,000 shillings before he could record a statement.

Where are we heading?