Choosing a whore

For those who have never visited a brothel or wives who wonder why their men are mystified by the daughters of eve like Okot p’ Bitek’s Lawino, maybe this would give you an insight.

Maybe you’ll find like we have human beings where we expected beasts, or I expected a beast. I walked down Latema road late one evening. I was tipsy or I would have never dared, Dutch courage you know it makes you grow balls, literally. As I passed Tsavo lane I went to a hawker or someone who was selling a few assortments in the open.

You know my predicament whether he was a hawker or not lay more on his open shop. Hawkers shops are more mobile, more of boxes so huge they must have carried analogue TVs. These are easy to fold and make a run for it. And their merchandise are similarly mobile, easy to carry goods, like take away food. But this gentleman was selling cigarettes, sweets, gum, water and all brands of condoms, Sure, Trust, Deluxe, Bull and all other assortment that I could not remember.

I bought a cigarette, I have developed a behavior of smoking whenever am drunk so I can always deny that am a smoker (blame it on the alcohol). I lit it and sucked hard, after estimating through three deep puffs, I squeezed the butt and popped the menthol on the Switch. Just as I sucked the sweet tobacco adrenaline, she came to me from an alley way and blurted to me.

“Buy me a cigarette,” She was fat and motherly, her huge hips glowing in the damp street lights. She also had huge breasts, unbridled, no bra. Her only asset was her brown skin, so brown she almost looked European or Albinish. I ignored her but she reached out and pulled at me. I staggered towards her, she was strong. She had a musk which I could not decide if it was her perfume, the cologne of the man that had just had been on top of her or her own body odor (I blame my sinuses).

“Not interested,” I told her bluntly. I saw her cringe and curse in her eyes. She must have decided not to call me Kihi she had decide I was Luo. She took my cigarette as if I could not protest and rushed to another man who was coming down the road.

My cigarette gone I trudged on, past the night watchman who was crouched sleeping. There were other girls who chatted away in the cold Nairobi air. There was also a police man. I was jolted back to reality like a child caught with the hand in the sugar jar. I knew prostitution was illegal in Kenya. And even though I had not been caught in the act I felt being found in the presence of Delilahs’ was enough to have me arrested. But he didn’t even look at me. He was standing right at the corner opposite the ‘Iko’ toilet where Latema road bends into Duruma road. Two Delilah’s came to him and chatted him up a bit. I was too afraid of him to know what they were doing, so I walked fast past him.

I walked past the Kampala Coach offices and entered Duruma Lane. It was crowded, most men were seated outside closed shops around someone making coffee. They were chewing Khat through the night. Below them lay endless clippings of the plant pinched at their thump and first finger before being chewed. There was also plenty of groundnut husks about them and once in a while one of them would rub the groundnuts between their palms and blow a cloud of chaff into the air.

A man was selling bittings. Not the kind that is passed around during cocktail parties’ coiffed by the well to do. He was basically frying the remnants of the animals that made their way to up-town. Like the necks of chicken or the gullets of cows. He also had boiled eggs. He would let a buyer pick a part and then he would fry it in black re-used oil. Squeeze it as it frothed, turn it and then place it on a meshed wire to lose the oil. Wrap it in newspapers (under the president’s instruction to use newspapers only as meat wrappers) and offer the client.

There were few retail shops too. The sold mostly mineral water, Big G bubble gum, groundnuts, sodas, mostly sprite and fifty and twenty shillings phone scratch cards.

And then there were a whole assembly of Delilahs like they had a called a meeting. Some were buying khat, some huddled around the chef some loitering, some visibly drunk. One came at me and I liked her curvy body, she was either wearing thong or had no panty on.

“How much?” I asked anxiously. And she must have assessed me. Rule number one when you go to down-town be down town. You will be charged by the way you have dressed. She must have said in her head, one he is a first timer, two he is dressed well, three he has a news paper, mmmh. “One thousand,” she retorted as if not really interested.

She had made too many misjudgments. I walked past her into the bar, she tried to hold onto my arm imploringly, ‘How much do you have,” I disengaged it and went in.

Whatever these buildings were made for is left for a research into Nairobi history. The flight of stairs steeps upwards towards the door like the stairs that Jacob saw that led to heaven or the beanstalk that Jack farmed. They open up to large spaces where the bars selling keg and cheap gin and vodka are renovated into the old buildings. They still maintain Indian grills on their windows though, the two scimitars and Indian temple emblems. Perhaps the legacy of some prayer rooms when they used to be second class citizens and had the Ngara Eastleigh set aside for them apartheid style, a level just above Africans.

I enter the bar are and scan through the crowd. Here they are so many using their physique as a criteria is just dumb. They are all naked save for short fabric around their bodies. They all have thighs peeping into the disco lights that tease you with momentary glimpses of their thighs. All their breasts are propped up by bras they look succulent and teenager like. They all walk around just so you see them like an overpopulated market.

It makes sense though to use price as the criteria, so I ask a few just to know the range that is being charged. Sh500, sh200, sh300. I then think it probably depends on whether they have been successful in getting laid, and thus getting paid. Am tempted to find those that are desperately watching morning approach and they haven’t made a kill. But as you would expect the reason they have not gotten themselves laid in the first place is because they are not appealing. They are either too fat, overdressed or plain drunk. Those that look professional, who do not drink and sit up like they are attending a lecturer or are from a lecture anyway, charge sh500. Those who want you to buy them a beer first and are not shy about ordering Tusker in the blink of an eye, consider the expenses and charge sh300.

Now how to choose. Then I decide to talk to one of them. Maybe if a find a little humanity in them I wont feel so guilty about my actions. Maybe then I might afford an erection. I am sure if I take any of the blatant sales women I might not even rise to the occasion.

So I ask her to sit with me. She looked out of place over dressed and selling alcohol more than her flesh. I asked her to get me alcohol, Pilsner Ice, chilled. She brought me change. Now Like Matatu touts remember when you are in down town the waiter will pretend he has forgotten your change. If you do not insist he bags it. If you insist he asks for more time and hopes you forget which you will, especially coins. So if you can carry extra change good for you, if you can’t don’t expect to get change.

So she had caught my fancy. So I bought her a beer. She laughed a lot, shrieked even or giggled above the din of throbbing music. She lived along Ngong road. I wondered why she was giving so much detail. She was tired with this job. There goes the rhetoric I said to myself. She wanted to start her own business. To sell Pastries, I liked the way she said Pastries. It whispered past her lips I almost missed it. Whenever she laughed, it went to her eyes and she looked like a human in a doll shop or people in a mannequin making shop. I assume that there must be a lot of mannequins in such a shop that they dwarf human population like the Krest, Obey your thirst advert that ran on TV long ago. I told her she was beautiful, very beautiful. She smiled looking away. It felt almost childish. She told me I should see her inner beauty.

That was deep. It’s like when I went to a swimming pool for the first time. I did not want to look stupid so I did not ask for which side was deep end or shallow end. And I just dived. And after I was rescued by a girl, being laughed at I was glad I had bit more than I could chew. Next time, I knew where to swim.

And I was unable to haggle for her wares. I felt that asking how much it would cost me to lay her would be insulting. Of course I wanted to but it no longer felt right. So we talked a bit and when I left I said I would come back.

I had chosen a whore wrongly.

Watch the space

I do not like to give too much credence where its not due.

So I wouldn’t assume the current administration capable of grandiose conspiracy that it has assumed credit for these past few weeks.

So I would approach their actions with the simpleton minds that they could have used to conjure up such blatant autocracy through legislations. Or the pseudo spiritedness that money has bought it pseudo intellectuals.

One this is a government composed largely of those who voted or campaigned against the constitution. That for fact negates all the rhetoric’s they have spewed about its protection or abiding by it.

From the onset they have craftily wedged in bit by bit of legislative amendments to all crucial laws that gave the constitution the pomp it celebrated. Alterations to legislations on the media, the AG vs Public Prosecutor, the NGOs, the police are all but examples of this attack.

And while these facets that had Kenyans excited are being ripped apart, the countrymen are being inured to hate the constitution and thus allow its manipulation without question.

The lack of immediacy in benefits as police continue on their rampage with little of the promised reading of Miranda rights before arrests as well as enduring corruption has not helped either. Hard realities have also hit out at enthusiasm to the document as chapters like integrity seemingly a foot in the mouth, Kenyans have been drawn from the crucial piece of national agreement.

Then when probably the Chinese gave secret conditions for a state to state loan to do us a railway they could find no fitter section to apportion blame. It is no secret that after Greece austerity measures will always be part of loan agreements to ensure little chances of default.

When SRC was drafting national pay was it ignorant of the wage bill. In fact the problem came to fore when perks of the bloated legislature were being discussed. The same legislature that this government went ahead and awarded hefty perks.

What instead they are doing is that they are driving this rhetoric to discount the constitution as the organ that has bloated the wage bill.

They do not say that it is the government which has retained the administrative structure that was supposed to be replaced by constitutional office holders which has created double offices. They do not say that they awarded legislatures hefty pay that prompted county representatives to equally demand rational distribution all the way to the counties. They neither indicate that it is probably a requirement of the Chinese loan to retrench and since it is government to government thou must not question anything.

The onslaught on the constitution and alienation of the people I is supposed to protect will suit their power agenda. They have outdid themselves at that.

I would however not also give them the benefit of forecast as that too they lack

In a year with increased unemployment trough retrenchment, increased unemployment through closing down of struggling NGOs, increased unemployment through elimination of labour costs by the large infrastructural ‘legacy’ and spiraling violence; then the country is damned.

Institution of military police, ordering shoot to kill to ‘protect property’ would not stop anarchy as crime in numbers will always overwhelm even the most systemic law enforcement. This government is courting revolution.

Criers

When I sat on that seat, it was not a matter of irregular and unprecedented. It was an urgency, I wanted any seat empty next to a window. I wished I could pay for two and just be alone, I didn’t want to sit with anybody. As quickly as I sat on it I tried to flee, urged the driver to go. Urged the criers to stop.

Men do not cry

Men take everything in a stride

Fifty, Hamsini,: Fifty, Hamisini: Fifty, Hamsini

Two criers were calling out the wares of a hawker. They were bras and panties, polyester from China. My brother once told me that he had met one crier in his Keg joint in Umoja. After he bought him a keg of beer, in his usual social science forensic, the crier told him about his business.

His voice was his asset, he had said, siphoning the keg through a straw and hoping his tale was interesting enough. I live by the benevolence of Sir Jah and his gift to me of a voice. I wake up each morning and go by the riiiiveeerside for a session of the herb. He drags the riverside like Joseph Hill’s reggae classic. And then I walk to Muthurwa. He says looking down at his tattered shoes to make his point. And there traders pay us to shout all day, Fifty for those who have gone to school and Hamsini for the sufferers. People are so anxious in life they forget Sir Jah feeds the birds of the air and the beasts of the land and fish of the see. And then he gesture with his finger for my brothers half-life cigarette. He thinks my brother probably is the professor types, the ones who buy people alcohol to get them tell their stories or a journalist or something.

I smile to myself a part of my misery cried away. My chest heaves and I still feel a puffball in my throat. Hot dry choking puff ball. I wish the driver could make off. Ram his foot onto the foot onto the accelerator and fly home.

Doni Thirty, Doni Thirty, Doni Thirty, Doni Thirty, Doni Thirty, Doni Thirty, Thirty Doni Thirty

Touts join in the cacophony. They hit against the matatu like shadow boxers gesturing three with their middle fourth and little finger, each finger worth ten shillings.

An old minibus that had probably plied more routes than necessary pulled over. Its sides bashed in by constant bashing from criers, cracked and aged.

Doni Mbao, Twenty Doni, Doni Mbao, Twenty Doni, Doni Mbao, Twenty Doni, Doni Mbao,

Everyone on my matatu alighted and boarded the new old matatu and in seconds it was off leaving me alone and my criers with a job rolled back. I cursed them, cursed their criers and angrily looked out. All I wanted was to leave, to go away, to float away like their cry.

A man must not cry

He must bear everything in his heart.

I decided on anger, needed an emotion to kill my self-loathing. I needed to be angry to go and drink some cheap vodka, to swivel the mixture of industrial spirit in water and gulp down into my mouth in one swig. Maybe that way the pain would go away. They say alcohol does not solve problems. But they are some dumb people, alcohol allows you to be honest with yourself, to see things in a different perspective. Of course I needed alcohol. Or maybe I should go to a brothel. Angrily let my spite burn out of my groin. Spit a fiery lava into a random vulva. Maybe I should hit someone or something, start an argument and bash somebody’s face in. punch away into warm black flesh until my knuckles meet dull bone resisting impact.

The bus started off jerking into the long queue of vehicles in traffic. My anger spent me, tired me, my chest was heaving with emotion. I no longer wanted to be part of life. Just to watch it with the amusement afforded by God.

Allllaaaaahu, Akbar, Alaaaaaahu Akbar…

The muezzin was raising his cry to the heavens. Flying with recited melody through speakers hanging out of a tower at the Mosque. Floating like consolation to God above where he chose to listen to the muezzin with the sweetest voice all over the world. I closed my eyes and sucked in the salty taste in my mouth.

I could still see it in her eyes, she could see into me. The immense pain that raked my mind. The confusion as I tried to understand. There was no anger then, just an overwhelming feeling of heartbreak. Wrung heart, taut chest that labored breathing, and the feeling of everything falling apart at my feet. The disappointment.

If that is what love does to you then I do not want to ever feel it. I thought to myself, philosophizing. Marrying a bad woman makes a man a philosopher, Nietzsche. I laughed at the thought. If love means cutting myself down at the sheens, I never want it. But was there an otherwise. Lovelessness. A hollow pit of drudgery and loneliness. A painful black hole that I had lived all my life.

When I was little I cried. But a man is not supposed to cry. I felt compelled to cry because I realized I had lost the recognition of my mother. She was weaning me then from her over protection. I was angry, heightening my perception of sibling rivalry and I wanted my affection. So I thought that if I cried, maybe I would evoke emotions back. But mama told me, Men do not cry. It was then that I realized why men do not cry, because the vilest human emotion so grave that it harangues the very nature of man is pity. So I decided never to be pitiable and never to pity.

She knew, I knew it was over. I did not want it to but I knew that was the only way it would go. Unsaid but it was over. I felt crumpled. Overwhelmed. Even death felt more predictable the uncertainties of living without her was too much to bear. How would I even manage to live? How could I wake up each morning and not think fondly of her and hope that she would call me and I would hear her husky sleepy voice over the phone, her chuckle at the other end of the call. The way her words fell out of her mouth with heavy syllables cropped at the edges. How could I imagine never seeing her?

How was I to handle the thought that she was now with another man. Tickling him and laughing playfully, looking at him naughtily and teasing him. That she was kissing him and telling him she loved him.

I clenched my fist and stared into the night Nairobi air that was rushing in through the half opened window, I closed it and felt a blinding urge to jump out. I stared out at open night clubs and was undecided if I should alight and rush into one. When I reached Eastlands. I rushed out bumping into the tout and hoping he would protest so that I could initiate a scuffle. He did not. I ploughed into the first bar I saw and ordered a drink. I no longer cared if I spent all my money. I drunk and drunk and wrote this story hoping it would cry for me.

Nyumba Kumi

Was ‘Nyumba Kumi’ system a reactionary response of our security forces or was it a deliberate and viable yet unpopular policy that the government intended to use. On October 16 2012, coast province PC Samuel Kilele ordered security agents to cluster homes into groups of 10 or 12 and monitor them closely in a system he called ‘Nyumba Kumi’

Events around this period inform this stand of the government as Mombasa Republican Council posed the highest security threat to the country, mobilizing to make real their threat of secession. The MRC were mobilizing and for the government to get a hand on them and closely track their activities it needed to spy on them. So it was apparently logical to divide them into small clusters that could easily be assigned to officers for monitoring.

One year down the line the status quo has drastically changed. While it was mainly the MRC who were giving the Kibaki government a big headache, the new administration has come under overwhelming pressure left right and center. Skirmishes in Moyale, Samburu, Mombasa, Busia Tana River all exploded within weeks of each other. Mandera is in the constant grip of terror from Al Shabab infiltration and military apparatus response.

As a policy Nyumba Kumi was easily applicable in small containable areas due to logistics. Currently the Police force boasts of fewer than 50,000 police officers, a factor that makes the application of the policy as earlier envisioned impossible. With about 8.7 million households each officer will be assigned 180 household which coupled with geographical demography will not be tenable.

Last year the government envisioned an ambitious alternative, the mounting of Close Circuit Television (CCTV) cameras in 41 locations in Nairobi at a cost of KSh437 million (US$5 million), part of a KSh8.5 billion (US$98 million) loan from the government of China. A tender was issued to China’s ZTE Company but has since been caught in the web of red tape and counter accusations (legal or otherwise) between the government and the company. While this was a viable option to Nyumba Kumi in terms of incorporating technology in fighting crime and mass surveillance with minimal labour it has not come to fruition.

While the government was still undecided in security policies, the general state of insecurity went to the dogs. Armed gangs sprung into the fore and general security malaise spread in the countryside as reports after reports of civil strife flew into newsrooms. The government on most of these instances seemed to lack intelligence on the skirmishes preferring to heap a blanket claim of political instigation even to cases of outright conflict over natural resources.

Then came Westgate, a terrorist attack that apparently brought forth the complete breakdown of our security institutions from its highest echelons to the enforcing police and immigration officers. This opened up the security apparatus to scrutiny and exposed its rot in corruption incompetence and nepotism.

However the incident also provided a landing ground to the policy of Nyumba Kumi which the government must have been toying with for some time. The opportunity off selling the policy at this point would enable the government avoid cost implications and overwhelming number off households to monitor with limited police labour. It would also be less costly like the technological option that had stuck in the pipeline. It would also effectively bring back the state to the fold of intelligence it seemingly had lost.

Will it work?

Will it bridge the lack of ideological buy in as the terrorists-induced fear wanes? The model in China, Cuba, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Rwanda were informed by communist ideologies (save for Rwanda whose system is based on traditional colonial systems) to control populations. Our own largely unregulated policy might border on repression and loss of privacy. While in the communist countries it was given an ideological perception of fighting those who harboured dissenting views to the system lack of the same for our case might make the policy unpopular especially as the Westgate memory wanes.

Will it further swell our wage bill as incentive to the leaders becomes inevitable? The clusters of 10 houses are set to choose a person of ‘integrity’ and elect them as a leader who is supposed to inform the chief each morning on the state of affairs within his commune. Now based on this ‘cheap’ policy proposal, what incentive will they offer the leader? Plus in a capital economy will it be rational in towns given that everybody has different work schedules, and be damned if you show up late at work and your excuse is that you were filling a daily report with the chief. Note: in Eastlands where there are so many people it would take a whole day for the chief to actually file reports.

Will it run into a constitutional crisis; the gender, youth and people with disabilities rule or the very fact that the constitution protects individuals from being compelled to join or form an association in Article 36 (2).

If the government is shifting rails on how to administer the Nyumba Kumi policy based on the current status quo, then it should consider re-assessing the policy to make it less of a directive and more as activism. The enlightenment of Kenyans in the environment of liberal democratic thought might pose the greatest threat to an authoritarian policy that seeks to compel its citizens even for security reasons. While it is every government’s ‘unofficial’ role to spy on its citizens Kenya might aspire American like technological surveillance rather than ‘Face East’ on this one.

Where is African SCI-FI

African science fiction and the curse of cultural displacement

Eurocentric foreshadowing was based on the understanding of man in his form of physical evolution. The essential projections were a sure end. Their philosophical attitudes toward the future were more like Nieztsche’s Zarathrusta, toward and end physically or philosophically. Their sci-fi were more of secular versions of the religious Revelations.

America who were experiencing renewed vigour and unparalleled growth at this end times in Europe adapted a different course. They invented the UFO, a kind of life after death or the religious transfer of populations to heaven. Theirs was the possibility of life beyond our physical and historical end or evolution of humanity into an indestructible being beyond the elements so they could survive the end of man. So beyond an imminent end there could only be another world (aliens) or other humans (demigods, supermen, Spiderman etc).

The African case suffers from the curse of cultural transfer. Barbara Kimenye’s Moases and the man from Mars reads more like Roswell or Katama Mkangi’s Walenisi could sell as Utopia. I have not read many African Sci fi which could be a blunder on my part but allows me to qualify that African Sci fi is dead.

Could this lack of arrational literature that is supposed to inspire and provoke ideas, reflecting society back onto itself indicate lack of an identifiable personal growth of the African person? Is it that we are only capable of imagining evolution according to modernization theory and cannot strive to create new realities for ourselves?

And could this realization open up the explorations of the African oracle to re-discover premonitions and the infinite possibilities that sci-fi opens

Why Science Fiction is Important

Sci-fi are tales that span time, reality, the human condition, and much more. They are a kind of creative and arrational or free futuristic thinking. From this powerful genre we are able to draw a limitless understanding of how we see ourselves in the future. And this conscience can unlock human potential and effort as we head towards the last man or beyond.

Holywood sci-fi has in recent years produced classical forward thinking of future economic social and political state. Its ability to predict shift in the social order based on the precedent might of global economic systems that might see very powerful corporations conquering state power. For example Repo Men, In Time and recently Elysium show just how significant forward thinking is and its relevance in foreseeing possible challenges.

Can Africa open to unbridled forecast of its future? Can literature open the doors beyond predicable data sets or fact sheets and world bank projections of Africa Rising and present to us an image of Africa Risen.

ALL HONESTY IS NOT LOST

The state of dishonesty in Kenya is perhaps disheartening and maybe deservedly so.This cause of concern mainly driven by the actions of our security forces at Westgate Mall, where they ‘sanitized’ the mall of its valuable is indeed called for. It raised questions of the culture of security operations especially in light of our incursion in Somalia where more ‘sanitization’ might have occurred in the spirit of war bounty which is usually justified by the theory of ‘I put my life on the line, and this must be recompensed’.

However decrying the whole fiber of the society over this or similar instances might not be justified after all. George Grebner developed the Cultivation Theory to explain why TV viewers held the notion that the world is much worse than it really is. According to him constant consumption of media products which usually present violent events creates the perception of a dim world of constant turmoil.

Following the Westgate attack there has been constant bombarding of viewers with news of the terrorists which might have informed the author of the article. We are victims of our own entrapment and by that nature we are predisposed to reminisce about the good old days. Quoth, ‘By the waters of Babylon, where we sat down, there we wept, when we remembered Zion…’

I can relate with the author, but in the view of my recent encounters I would like to point out that all has not been lost. Up till recently I used to think that there are very few people who still thought courtesy was important in Kenya (like the author). I always remember to say ‘thank you’ or observe other curtsies that most Kenyans would brush of as “Tanzania”.

However I boarded the Ruiru-Eagle train as I usually do in most mornings. As most people who use the same means of locomotion would know getting a seat in the boogies is usually a very are occurrence and when one passenger alights it’s usually survival for the fittest to occupy the vacated seat. So on this morning a passenger alighted and a young but tough woman and a man emerged victorious in scrambling for some two vacated seats. Then to my surprise the man stood back up and let an old man sit (who had not even participated in the scramble due to his disadvantage). Then the woman suddenly stung with guilt or kindness also offered her ‘trophy’ to another old man. I thought to myself, we are kind but it is somewhere beneath waiting to be discovered.

And this is not a case in isolation. Once when I was plying the dreaded Thika highway known for its number of brutal deaths at the hands of speeding cars and careless pedestrians, I saw a matatu tout abandon his station to help a school child cross the road. Now this is no small matter, matatu touts are known for their overzealousness for money that nothing not even impending death can pull them out of their station. But to see some rugged haggling tout leave his station to help a child cross the road was both moving and reassuring.

You might find this utterly odd, however, while walking down the streets of Nairobi with human traffic pushing and flouncing against each other I witnessed something amazing. A man was holding up the traffic as people pushed to cross the road and we all nearly bundled over him. A carter almost shoved him cursing. When the man moved, we discovered to our shock that he was actually lame. And all those rude gestures turned into self-admonition and we actually apologized below our breaths, some offering to help him cross the road.

I agree with him that the old days might have been full of sunshine and filial piety and love. That today there air is polluted with dishonesty and acute desire to get the better of others. However this view can be myopic if we look at the little things that show we still possess the homely humane, and that celebrating these instances is our only chance of reviving the good old days

Reactionary response to #westgate

Last Friday I was pondering over an article on March 2011 by Vogue on Asma Al Assad ‘A rose in the Dessert’ praising Assad’s regime as democratically elected by over 90% and an oasis of peace. In that very same month that the article appeared the Syrian Civil war began.

There seem to be a nascent explosion of volatility in the world at the present time with events happening in unpredictable ways. What Asma could not imagine days before the Syrian civil war was ‘how Palestinian children lived’ now she does not anymore and is presently in-housing her philanthropy which she used to take to Palestine in Assad’s PR instagram.

What lessons I draw from this experience especially after the #westgate attack on Kenya (May God rest the victims souls in Peace) is international wars do not know borders. We cannot live in an autarky of peace when there is war all around us. At some point in time we get to import it.

We cannot live in the same world with people who live in perpetual warfare. Whose everyday reality is our four day nightmare. Especially now that people who commit these atrocities are an international network that is faceless and cannot be profiled being exported all over the world (eg Al Nusra).

It is imperative that the government now sees to the end that peace is restored to Somalia, we cannot relent. War on terror can only be won if there are no more safe heavens for these beasts. If it is pursued with just reason (not to justify further radicalism) and if it is done in a concerted international level of cooperation of intelligence to track down the microcosm of the terrorism network.

But in the same breath as aforementioned while the perpetrators are Al Shabab most of the including their mastermind are international terrorists from the world over. So as we clean up our house in the backlash that is expected we must refrain from profiling Somalis.

I have heard outlandish sentiments which is only natural for our situations but must be checked. People cannot claim that we are one and that we will not allow tribe to divide us when in essence we are blaming the Somali tribe, we are now more willing to give up human rights to stay safe with even suggestions that the military should be everywhere, probably a legislation like ‘the patriot act’ in America will easily be passed.

Our situation is peculiar but not unique, we must very carefully examine how other nations have faced similar crises, learning from their success and avoiding their pitfalls.

How not to apply disbursement of Uwezo funds

Welfare policy must balance with rational application if real goals are to be achieved. While it is laudable for the government to channel saved expenditure (Election re-run monies) to build the capacity of youth and women in business, the manner in which it is done is not prudent.

With a history of 10% success rates, continued unemployment and recruiting young people to the culture of corruption and patronage, the funds have been doing more harm than good.

This is largely through the way the funds are disbursed. Guided by the rationale to get money to the grassroots, the government has bequeathed the fund to CDF committees, a lot that haven’t done well with the CDF money in the first place. Then there is the 15 member group thing with balanced gender, registered at the government office and a few pages of typed minutes. Then there is the revolving fund where the group has to show evidence of routine contribution.

The whole criterion looks well intentioned as a welfare policy should be, but irrational if the overall goal is to battle unemployment.

One, what really happens is that today I will call up a group of friends till we are 15. Then if we meet all the criteria, and get the maximum amount (quite unlikely) of Kshs 150,000, we will divide it amongst ourselves and go separate ways with a mere Kshs 33,333. After the grace period some of us will probably be unable to pay back crippling the prospect of others in the future because of debt unworthiness, some of us will have made something of our fortune which will be lauded as a the success story of the whole initiative while some will fall back into the dearth of unemployment waiting for another intervention.

Methinks financing startups is more prudent to growing economies. If such finances can be targeted to startups that not only show potential but have actually a chance of repaying while being able to employ the majority of youth.

I might have a small business either as a sole proprietor or with a manageable number of partners (certainly not 15 incompatibles) I do not qualify to benefit from such a fund which could allow me to expand and employ others.

The prudence of funding such businesses is that they will have a viable record of cash flow which can be assessed to assure repayment, the money will not be fragmented hence less effective as a capital and they actually tackle unemployment. Plus can’t the government just look at the evidence of commercial institutions practically at each other’s neck for a share of the SMEs in the market.

In fact with institutions of higher learning hosting incubation centers, fab labs, i-hub etc with large numbers of small but highly potential startups the work of identifying such business is already done, work which the government wants to be handled by a chief!

It is only a government as wise as the bible man who went on a journey and gave 5 talents to one, 2 talents to another and 1 to the last one that will come back and get 15 talents and not a government that will give 8 talents to all of them and probably not even get any of the talents back.

VAT Bill simplification a complexity

The over emphasis on tax simplification in the VAT Bill 2013 is in itself a complexity. This need for simplification that has been used as a rationale for a standard rate of 16% for all taxed goods and services has too many grey areas.

It beats logic to tax everything at the same rate as different goods and services operate in different market dynamics that may merit higher or lower taxes. For instance in case of an acute shortage in say maize, you might be excused to reduce its VAT which does not necessarily require you to reduce the VAT of say petroleum products.

Hence the rationale of raising the VAT of electricity currently taxed at 12% to 16% is unwarranted especially in the face of the fact that our economy is being stifled by high cost of inputs notable electricity.

This is further complicated with the fact that the Principal Secretary can reverse the tax by 25% upwards or downwards meaning it could either be raised to 20% or lowered to 12%.

It is not however indicated in the Bill whether this will be a blanket raise or lowering. But it is safe to assume that it will be so given the insistence on a standard rate of 16% just so tax collection can be simpler.

I wouldn’t deem it wise though. What would be the rationale of say lowering all taxes to 12%  if say there is a crisis of girls dropping out of school because they cannot afford sanitary towels (to be taxed at 16% in VAT Bill)?

I think there should be different categories say ‘Basic Commodities’ (overtly described and parameters for defining them set) that should be taxed either at 12% or exempted all together. The proposed tax on electricity unless justifiable by another reason should not be raised in order to stimulate SMEs who find the current rates inhibiting.

Then there is the case of vesting powers of raising and lowering tax on the Principal Secretary, ever heard of the Boston Tea Party. Well the Americans set precedence by rejecting the Tea Act in 1773 because it violated their rights to be taxed only by their elected representatives. It is immoral to put all the taxation powers on one man, in the executive. Albeit our legislative members seem more poised to represent their political parties rather than their electorate who would suffer if such tax is imposed, it is better to vest power on a democratically elected legislature than an appointed stooge of the executive.