A Kenyan Tragedy

Just seen a disturbing documentary straight after prime time news on KTN made by Mike Sonko showing him dishing out wads of money Moi-style to victims of the Loreto bus accident. He visited each of their homes to give them cash, went to weep at the gravesides of those who died, took all the families on an excursion to Lake Nakuru National Park and on helicopter rides, and then for dinner at The Carnivore.

The families seemed truly pleased and heaped praises on their beloved Senator and the President who apparently had also sent Sonko with Ksh. 600,000 to distribute to the families. The documentary, whose executive producer was Sonko himself, reminded me of the KBC weekly program 'Yaliyotokea' which used to showcase a summary of the public events that Moi had attended  during a particular week.

While one cannot blame the victims' families for accepting the freebies, it is disturbing that no one asks where all this money is coming from. Even more disturbing is the fact that instead of finding a long term policy solution to the carnage on our roads, our leaders wait for people to be killed and maimed and then go and cry crocodile tears while making documentaries of themselves to campaign for the next election. A uniquely Kenyan tragedy.

The arc of the moral universe it long, but it bends toward justice.

The rich and the powerful of this world may use their money and power to subvert the institutions of this world and to trample the rights of the poor and the powerless and deny them justice. They may use their money to get the best legal representation money can buy. They may kill, disappear, intimidate or bribe witnesses. They may use their positions of power to mobilize hoards of supporters and rally fellow rich and powerful people to their cause. And for a time, they may appear to have prevailed, but only for a while. For the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. 

Ole Nkaisserry for Ole Lenku: Same cake, different icing...

Substituting one Joseph for another (Nkaissery for Lenku) in the Security Docket does nothing to improve our security if the underlying issues of an unreformed, corrupt and inept security sector are not honestly and seriously addressed. This is just Uhuru Kenyatta finding an alibi in advance to explain the abysmal failure of his government to protect the Kenyan people when the time comes to campaign for re-election in 2017.

He is in effect telling ODM: "You've been complaining about insecurity, I am now appointing one of your own, a (nominal) ODM politician to be (nominally) in charge."

But once the false trappings of power lose their allure for Nkaisserry as they did for Lenku, he will realise that he has been handed a poison chalice; when it becomes clear that it's a no win situation for him, he will either resign or be fired. By this time it will be close enough to the elections, and Jubilee can take advantage of Kenyans' short memories and claim that it was actually ODM that was in charge of security at the time when insecurity decimated Kenya.

The struggle of people against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting. Amkeni ndugu zetu.

What's in a Name?

Today our daughter Nashipai celebrates her one week birthday. As we mark this milestone, one thing we are quickly finding out is that if you are to swim against the current, be prepared to answer questions at every turn. In our case, her name Nashipai Katindi Njonjo has been the subject of many conversations and curious whispers. The most interesting being, since traditionally our middle name is usually regarded as our 'real' name (the first being the 'given name' and the last being the surname), then, 'Why is she being named after Katindi instead of after my mother according to the Kikuyu custom?' And we have to explain that her name is not Katindi, it is Nashipai. Katindi Njonjo is her composite surname, although not hyphenated. Then instead of using the Kikuyu naming pattern strictly under which she would have been called Nyambura after my mother, we chose a name that reflects a character quality that most reminds us of my mother, hence Nashipai. Which is also controversial to some, since it is neither a Kikuyu nor a Kamba name (it is not even a Kiswahili name like Baraka or Neema - which many regard as fairly neutral and safe in our ethnically sensitive culture), but a Samburu one. Nchipai means happiness and also praise. Nashipai is the female name of the one who brings happiness and also an expression of praise in a divine context. My late mother, even with her modest education, was never shy of breaking new ground. She was a trade unionist in the factory where she worked even before I could walk. I am sure she would have been proud of both her latest grandchild and the names that she bears.

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING: KENYA’S HISTORIC AND COSTLY NON-EVENT

Kenyans learned a very expensive lesson this week: that the President is like the Titanic, very difficult to turn around. Or, to put it more accurately, that eating presidential humble pie can be a costly national exercise.

For whatever spin politicians try to put on this week’s bizarre events, they amount to little more than so much pomp and circumstance to justify Uhuru Kenyatta’s having to eat humble pie and appear before a court he dismissed barely a year ago as “a pantomime, a toy of declining imperial powers”.  

Kenyatta had invested over a year of his presidency badmouthing the ICC and sending his ministers crisscrossing the globe in search of allies to back his impunity bandwagon. He had staked his diplomatic reputation to mobilize fellow African leaders to answer his call to arms against the ICC and they had dutifully played along, going so far as to swear that no African head of state would ever appear before the ICC and to amend their own laws to provide that they could never be prosecuted before a regional court yet to be created.  And yet on the date that he should have been toasting to Uganda’s independence anniversary with his comrade-in-arms, Yoweri Museveni, Mr. Kenyatta sat subdued in court, expressionless and mute, as if dutifully playing the lead role in a pantomime.

But to justify why he was now going to travel to The Hague and appear before the ‘toy of declining imperial powers,’ President Kenyatta had to first make a big show of temporarily handing over power to his Deputy, “so that Kenya’s sovereignty is not subjected to a foreign jurisdiction.” And so various organs of state had to be convened in emergency sessions including the Cabinet, the National Security Council and Parliament to be informed that the President of the Republic was donating his ‘P’ to William Ruto and becoming a mere Resident of the Republic, or an unPresident if you like, so that he could travel to the ICC in his individual capacity.

And we all played along. We pretended not to remember that Mr. Kenyatta was charged before the ICC as an individual because the ICC only prosecutes individuals, not presidents or prime ministers. We pretended that had he traveled to The Hague without all the fanfare of signing legal instruments handing over power to his deputy, power would still have been automatically transferred to Ruto as it always is every time the President travels abroad. We pretended that our sovereignty was now safe and secure at home in the hands of Ruto and forgot that our sovereignty was never vested in Uhuru Kenyatta in the first place; it always vests in the people of Kenya.

In other words, just as Uhuru Kenyatta was signing an instrument to temporarily hand over power, we collectively also seemed to temporarily take leave of our senses. At least the MPs did, and the Cabinet, and the National Security Council, and the media who faithfully reported this farce, this melodrama from the theatre of the absurd, as if it was really news and analysis.

But as Uhuru Kenyatta took back his ‘P’ from Ruto, it is my hope that we too resumed our senses. For only then would we realize just what an expensive melodrama this was when we calculate just how much this latest chapter of the ‘personal challenge’ actually cost the taxpayer. From the recalling of Parliamentarians from recess to witness a constitutional non-event, to flying the whole House to make a spectacle of themselves in The Hague, to flying unPresident Uhuru and unFirst Lady Margaret out and flying back President Kenyatta and First Lady Margaret, to blocking Nairobi traffic for seven hours, to paying off hysterical praise singers.

More importantly, it is my hope that as we resume our senses, we will also remember to whisper a prayer for the souls of the 1,133 Kenyans who could not be present to witness this costly non-event because the events of 2008 permanently removed them from our midst without giving them the option of coming back from the grave and resuming their personhood at a time of their choosing. 

You don't have to be mentally ill to suffer from mental illness.

In a period of just one month, my wife Katindi Sivi Njonjo and I have lost two dear friends to depression, and the world woke up today to news that depression had also claimed one of its most beloved entertainers, Robin Williams.

The grief of those most directly affected by these tragic deaths is unimaginable. But what is truly tragic is the utter neglect of mental health by both policy makers and society at large; the assumption that those who suffer from mental illness are somehow to blame for their misfortune for being weak or failing to just 'snap out of it', as if being mentally ill was something they accept by choice .

And yet it is the case that you don't have to be mentally ill to suffer from mental illness because all of us have a family member or a close friend or know someone who suffers depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, or some other form mental illness. And with all the pressures of modern living, mental illness is reaching crisis proportions.

And so as we mourn the passing of Robin Williams, let us take a moment and consider what we can do, individually and collectively, to be the agents of healing for those suffering in our midst by fighting stigma, advocating for the necessary resources by government, and by being there for those who, due to no fault of their own, find themselves alone and trapped in the prison of their own minds.

Being His hands and feet...

Yesterday, Day 4 of the Citizen Mobilization Conference, participants went on a field trip to visit the J.L. Zwane Memorial Church and the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) in Guguletu. The J.L. Zwane visit was as humbling as it was inspiring. Under the leadership of Rev. Spiwo Xapile, the church has become a beacon of hope in the impoverished community ravaged by poverty and HIV/AIDS. The local congregation broke ranks with the denomination leadership to embrace the needy in the community, joining hands with TAC despite the latter being associated with gay people and prostitutes. J.L. Zwane opened its doors to the suffering and cared for the dying. Today, it hosts a hospice and has trained social workers and care givers to walk with the HIV/AIDS victims in their last days. Some of the lessons we learned from J.L. Zwane:

- We must allow ourselves to trust even the untrustworthy, for only then do we create space for transformation.

- The local church must support and cover those that step forward and go and serve in the front lines. The church should be a refueling station where members come to recharge their batteries before going back to the battlefield.

- We must deconstruct church hierarchies and make church relevant to the people’s lived experiences.

- We must be willing to go beyond all boundaries. Having suffered exclusion ourselves, we should not exclude others.

- Need to link grassroots actors with policy actors.

- We cannot commit to winning an argument and losing a person.

- God needs a person to go for Him, and I'm that person.

As we left J.L. Zwane, we left behind a beehive of activity. A TAC workshop on sexual and gender based violence was underway in the hall, children in the after school programme were enjoying their lunch in the courtyard, some women were singing melodiously in the sanctuary, and the sick and dying were being cared for with dignity in the hospice.  In other words, the church was doing what the church was always meant to do – to be the hands and feet of Jesus Christ, engaged in the work of healing the community, feeding the hungry, spreading hope, and reconciling people to one another and to God.