Just an hour earlier, we had been watching a limpid sun sink into scrubby bushes at the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust as we waited for the blanketed baby elephants to waddle in from the bush, gulp down their milk and snuggle up in the straw for the night. Now, we were stuck in a Nairobi nightmare of tooting horns, stalled cars, and rising tempers. A bus had bumped a matatu at the junction of James Gichuru and Gitanga Rd -- a maddeningly anarchic and dangerous junction at the best of times and one that is crying out for a set of traffic lights. The big bus was now blocking the centre of the junction, but Nairobi's drivers were unfazed. Cars, trucks, jam-packed matatus inched their way around the obstacle. But patience is not a valued virtue in this town, and especially not on the roads. So the go-slow soon degenerated into an unbridled free-for-all with the biggest and the ballsiest ploughing their way into the melee, while those of a more timorous bent speedily u-turned out of trouble. My husband is not the timorous kind. Plus we had two just-about-to-turn-cranky girls in the back and only about 35 Smarties left in the giant tube we had brought with us for just this sort of eventuality. No time for seeking alternate routes through to Waiyaki Way. So we edged around the bus in the centre of the junction, only to find five lanes -- yes five if you count the puddled mud path, which several drivers did -- of oncoming traffic sprawled across James Gichuru (usually a two-way road). A bit like Lady Macbeth, we could go neither forward nor backwards. So we cursed and harangued and stubbornly held our ground until a sliver of space opened somewhere, allowing a infinitesimal shifting of metal which let us shimmy through to the clear road beyond. After listening without comment to their father's ranting (which included liberal use of several banned words), our eldest opined in a calm measured tone: "It's a bad night tonight." Not to be outdone, our two-year-old took up the call: "This a bad road, Daddy, this a bad road" she chimed, waggling her chubby fingers at the dark outside the windows.
Indeed. On Waiyaki Way, a Hummer had sideswiped a BMW while crossing from one lane to the next and we nearly met our end when a Tanzanian-registered truck pulled into the hard shoulder before our turn-off and then just stopped. There were no Smarties left at this point.
A slice of life .... or a metaphor for a country where a governmental go-slow is degenerating into a free-for-all where rules no longer exist and the little man is the only victim? I might have to have a few more Smarties before ruling on that one.
There has been no let-up in the steady stream of corruption allegations -- Finance Minister Uhuru Kenyatta is still making front pages over the 9.2 billion shilling discrepancy in his supplementary budget. After first saying there was nothing wrong with the numbers, Kenyatta then said the mistake was due to a typing or computer error. His allies have blamed a plot by political enemies at the Treasury. But President Mwai Kibaki's son, Jimmy, has assured Kenyatta that he has the head of state's backing. The Daily Nation said: Senior Treasury officials who could not be quoted because they are not authorised to reveal the information suspected that the alteration was an outcome of the succession battles enveloping the government and its departments, raising questions over the extent to which politics is affecting the functioning of the coalition government." I would tentatively suggest that the answer to those questions might be: a lot.
I am reading Michela Wrong's "It's our turn to eat" at the moment and among the most startling things, for me, is the way all the names are the same as the ones in the newspapers today. Many of the ministers and political figures implicated in or linked in one way or another to the Anglo-Leasing scandal or the Goldenburg affair are still in the public eye, many even in public office. Yes, some were fired but were soon reinstated. So maybe this coalition government will manage to survive the weekly drip-drip of corruption allegations. Afterall, they are no worse than the previous graft scandals which arguably came with more evidence of wrongdoing. However, I still tend towards the view that a tipping point must be reached at some point -- a place where political expediency for one of the coalition parties will mesh with public frustration and force some kind of change.
4 comments:
Enjoy Michela's book. It was not an easy read for me as a Kenyan, but gave me loads of food for thought.
Her piece about the role of donors,was one of the issues that shocked me.
yes, that part is pretty shocking -- the brazen refusal to acknowledge the reality of events in a particular country and the fact that so many decisions by international donors/multilateral agencies are driven by internal pressures or domestic concerns ie their need to disburse aid because of their own organisation's criteria or the prioritising of domestic political agendas. It's something one has seen evidence of before, and one always suspects such motives may be in play, but it's shocking to see just how great a sway these issues have.
I also enjoyed Michela Wrong's book. Please see my post about the same for some more info. To me it was an easy read, not because of the shocking issues, but because of the language it is written in.
thanks rafiki, I liked your review. Have you decided now what is needed for change in Kenya? (you said you were going to reflect on it having read the book.) As a new arrival, I found it interesting to learn from the book that corruption scandals have been dogging this government since 2002 -- and yet, despite this and the simmering anger among Kenyans about graft and perceived incompetence, they are still in power with few really advocating fresh elections.
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