Budget day

‘Its smoke’ I say to myself, ‘ black smoke or gray smoke like clouds from a shisha pie though stinging like a charred picture.’ But the woman next to me thinks its fog, from her expression. She pulls her cardigan over her soft brown breasts to cover her cleavage. She does not smell its choking feeling. She is used to Nairobi, she is used to the bellowing burnt out diesel from the 19/60 matatu. She’s used to the skyline glazed by cold of people and cold of fog. What to me is smog to her is everyday. The sounds the hoots, the radio blaring till my throat thumps like am getting a nervous breakdown, to her is normal?

To her the fact that a budget has been passed yesterday, a trillion, two trillion, three trillion… is normal? She sits there in her seat and waits for the conductor to ask for fare. And she asks, how much? And he says, fifty. And she pays. Its normal. I wonder, yesterday it was forty, tomorrow it will be sixty, last year it was a hundred. Why?

She does not ask herself questions. Life gives her and she takes it, and buys cardigans and stares at the smoke hanging like clouds over the concrete jungle above her and she sees Nairobi. It has changed you know, I have seen that from @kresearchers tweets. Nairobi during colonial days, in black and white photos. She probably has not so how can she see Nairobi tomorrow?

Am burdened with the need to see, the questions, but am not the only one asking questions. At least I find out. I can tell, you know, kind of telepathy. I see him and I take note of the creases on his forward he is asking questions.

His shoes are frayed at the hems where a repairer tried to sew back Chinese synthetic leather. He is a walker. There are a whole lot of them here. They do not look into the skyline when walking. They look at the ground in front of them and watch it unfold. They walk fast, as if hoping for their journeys end in this life. Maybe they ask questions, but what questions I wonder. Do they ask about the division of revenue bills, transfer of functions to counties, anticipation of taxing capital markets?

I do not know but I know this one is thinking about the price of keg. Yes he is thinking, yes, and asking questions about why they have to raised the price of the keg. All he wants is that they let him frequent that keg joint at backstreet. Where after toiling the whole day for a wage, he can sit back and sip keg from his tumbler. Lean back and savor the taste of insipid beer mixed with powder detergent used to clean the cups by wafting them through soapy water. All he wants is to suck at the butt end of a half cigarette borrowed from a friend. And he walks on hoping they have not made it so hard to get himself a keg jar. And he walks into the town at the same pace as our vehicle as we jerk along the traffic. Into the city of smoke. Waiting to eat us all up and belch us like smoke, cold like a drenched pavement.

So I sit back and think to my self I should probably blog about the budget. Maybe give an analysis of this and that, make projections here and that suggest recommendations or something. But hell, those who can read my blog probably have already seen an analysis of the trillion budget-read a whole day at parliament, in a five minute segment of their favorite news channel. Where an economist, preferably a CEO was called and asked what he thought about the budget, asked to talk about financing it and taxes and then a mostly on issues that had been of recent controversy. And as they flip through the TV channel… KTN ‘What do you..” NTV ‘…think about…’ Kiss TV ‘… the MP…’ Citizen ‘….Clamor for higher..’ K24 ‘…wages…’ the CEO/political scientist/banker/economist, answering as I would answer. And the MP laughing as they flip the channel, and they raise the wage bill, and the news repeats itself, and the woman in the matatu accepts and the walker wishes he was an mp when he gets at the end of his journey at a keg joint and the middle class I want to write a blog to #occupyparliament.

So I look outside the window at the middle class, trudging alongside the matatu with their Toyotas. Hooting angrily at matatus for dangerous driving. They try to avoid the reckless drunkards terrorizing the traffic threatening to scarp the paint off their Toyotas. And they are scared the beasts who do not care about the matatus they do not own will bump the Toyotas they do not own. The Toyotas they have acquired from loans they are yet to pay.

They are ached anxious in their Toyotas hooting angrily listening to radio blaring middleclass music, or classic fm, or easy fm, or kiss fm. And they hear as the comedians cum journalists who have left the comic stage to push journalists out of airwaves make fun of the budget allocations. And they laugh off for the comic relief. They are the ones who can ask questions I want to ask.

But what do they know save what the comedian joked about laptops and the billions it would cost, or what the CEO/economist/political scientist/banker said over news last night about the wage bill? And they too in their saloon cars, scrapping an eight to five week trudge along the morning chill hoping to get to town and park their vehicles at cost that will be read in a different budget that wont be comically relayed on radio or wont have the CEO/political scientist/banker/economist on news to discuss it.

I sigh. We enter Nairobi city. I alight. I join the millions trudging into the streams flowing like a jerky eddy through of the behemoth concrete jungle. And I put on a serious look, an important look as if am doing something important in life, over and over again each day.

A nation of Frauds

The good news of former colonial masters granting ex gratia to its victims during the Kenyan war for independence has been greeted with mixed reactions.

Concerns are gathering over the vultures swooping over the 1.8 billion compensation money. From fake claimants, to alleged home guards (who helped Britain perpetrate the atrocities being compensated) to advocates (who have been put on notice not to charge claimants), it is being proven that Kenyans are characteristically fraudulent.

Compensation in Kenya has always been faced with this same old culture of strategic positioning of non beneficiaries to reap the compensation at the expense of the deserved victims. During the forced Mau evictions, this same clout joined the evictees hoping to get resettled with the victims claiming to be squatters too.

The same scenario presented itself during the IDP after the 2007 chaotic elections where resettlement, to date has been marred by fake claimants and recompense is being seen to go to opportunists while victims continue to languish in camps.

 This national aberration towards fraud leaves a lot to be desired about our country and deserves national condemnation akin to that being meted to #Mpigs greed and underscores what Hon. Duale said about Kenyans being just as greedy as their leaders.

During the distribution of subsidized unga (maize meal) by the Kenyan government during a crisis i witnessed first hand this culture of fraud. The unga meant for the poor who could not afford the high priced off-the-shelf commodity was being acquired in large scale by rich Kenyans, and unscrupulous business men who repackaged and made a killing from it. Most of the poor who could not afford the ten kiliogram package did not benefit.

To demonstrate the vitriol of our  society, the people responsible for distributing the compensations were at the fore of the malaise, encouraging their relatives and friends to come benefit from the ‘freebie’ and serving these nepotic polity with priority over the real victims being targeted.

This malaise ought to be confronted and condemned if we are to purge our society of greed from the leaders to the led.

Notwithstanding this malaise as adverse as it is in Kenya knows no borders. After the Boston bombings in America, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley warned that within four hours of the bombing, more than 125 websites had been registered purportedly to collect money for victims most of them fraudulent.

Resettlement

She had always found these groups retrogressive, in their thinking especially. They were the most exposed, some of whom had never lived in Somalia like her. For folks who had been exposed to western civilization and foreign existence they had turned out too conservative for her taste. Her community has always been close knit, in bred and frowned on veering into the fringes, daring a leap of faith into the world out there. They had kept close to feeling of home and alienated as they were still clung together as if their life depended on it. She approved this of course, since what was a man without family?

But what if the family was distasteful to her invocations or her reaction towards the world? What if they met every of her action with spite as they had with Amina, the foreign minister of Kenya launching a cyber attack on her person because she did not wear a headscarf on appointment to the office. She smiled thinking about how crass they had sunk with their insults, guess they had learned something from their host country, Kenya had acquired a reputation for insulting people in cyberspace.

In the chatter in the big hall in Eastleigh where they had met she could recognize almost all present. Some family, some friends, community members she had lived with for years. The women were clustered away from the men invoking the loudest chatter cuckolding like penguins in the dark mystery of bui-bui’s. “Women cannot lead men, it is immoral and European,” a woman was saying.

In these meetings she preferred to hold her silence, the arguments usually heated exhausted her. And she always found her convictions at antagonism, always. “I heard that a woman wanted to be an MP in Garissa and after consulting with the village elders, they asked her to lead in prayer after the meeting, of course she could not,” another was saying.

She had always preferred to separate politics from religion. Religion had its place, culture had its place and politics had its place. “Exactly, another retorted, just like a woman cannot lead men in prayer so they cannot lead men in politics.”

She felt stretched to her uttermost tempted to go right into the argument. She restrained herself. Somalia was rising from its ashes like phoenix to a grandiose that the whole world never thought possible. Its people, unrelenting had been spread to the four corners of the earth but remained true to her. And now its people were on the verge of seeing Somalia resurge.

When the meeting was called to attention and issues discussed the main agenda came up. The leaders announced that they were organizing for the group to go back home. They had made arrangements in Mogadishu to get accommodation and they would be availing means to go home in batches.

Never had she seen so much enthusiasm the meetings. The eyes of the men shone brightly wither inner light of expectation. The women teared ululating. She felt her heart rush in an excitement. The thought of home had never been far although she had never been there. But what she was clear about is she was not at home here, at least life kept reminding her. She wished she could be there with her people. In their comfort and acceptance. Somewhere she could lay claim to, where she could be free like a kite slashing through the skies.

But, there was always a but. Some people were skeptic about the plans and raised their issues. What if it was not safe there and what of the lives they had started here. A cold shudder rushed through her nape, what of the life she had started here.

A comabatitive man had risen up vehemently thrown back by the doubt. He spat wildly and asked “A life here!” she remembered him, he had been arrested in the raid last week when the Kenyan police claimed he had no papers.

“Here in this God forsaken country you call this life. You call life when they think you are a dog and say it in your face. Where you do not have to carry a gun but by virtue of your being Somali you are considered a terrorist and they tell you in your face. Where they ransack Eastleigh everyday to kick in doors at night where our women are sleeping and defile them in unwarranted body searches. You call this a life in a country where they have sent their army against their own people in Garissa to shoot and maim Kenyan Somalis, and you, a foreigner, think you can make a life here?” He was shacking with indignation as word spat themselves out with frothing saliva at the sides of his mouth. The room had held silent for a while and as he sat down still shacking indignantly the crowd bust up with similar experience.

He was not wrong about Kenya, her office had been moved to a new building the other day. When se went there a guard had taken it to herself to be offensively mo through with her. She had insisted she turn her bag inside out. She was not ready to expose all her personal things to the strangers who had lined up and so she refused. The Kenyan guard lady had then made derogatory stereotypic insults of her; she had then called her office because she di not believe she worked there. “Kuna warriah hapa anakataa kuserachiwa…” (There is a Warrriah here who refuses to be searched…) she had shouted over the phone. What amazed her most is that the people in the line who had witnessed her humiliation and were now witnessing the false accusations, instead of backing her up, joined the guard in insulting her. “These Somalis, if they cannot follow our rules they should go back to their homes,” one blurted out bluntly. “They come here to make our country insecure, peace has returned, they should go,” another pointed out.

As other people recounted their own ordeals she felt her resolve had weakened. How could she call this place home when its government had issued a decree to deport her anyway? Was it not better to go on her own volition than be bundled and dumped like a reject?

***

When she got home that evening Paul was watching TV. “How did the meeting go,” he asked. “Not bad, just the usual,” she avoided the topic. She had fallen in love with a Kenyan man who saw beyond mere nationality. Love transcended borders, it knew no bounds and came when one least expected it, where one least expected to find it. Paul was a progressive in has thinking, he neither held the chauvinism her people held to so dearly nor the prejudices and stereotypes his countrymen were lent to. He saw her for who she was and appreciated every aspect of her. She had never found someone in this world who complimented her person as he did, who stood by her and was sworn to love her. She had kept him a secret from the group as she knew how they would react how they would never understand. Her act of finding this universal felling of love would be treated as a betrayal to her people, and her religion. They would never accept her fight into the foreigner’s arms, especially a foreigner they held with spite.

She sat with him and cuddled close to his chest. He kissed her soft hair and breathed deeply in relief. She could never find a warm and loving place more than her with him in his arms. The TV set was blaring a programme on KTN a local Kenyan station, ‘perspective’. It was showing a feature about two United Kingdom Somali, were planning on the journey home and their experiences in Mogadishu. Hw they had parted with friends and threw caution to the wind and gone. How it was blissful to land in the city with a silver sea shoreline and smell of Somali air. How they had overcome their challenges and how they wished all Somali in the Diaspora would come back and do their duty by their country.

Paul coughed uneasily, he wanted to change the channel but figured it would be awkward, “But you are not going back honey,” he whispered and held his breath. Silence dropped between them although they still held closely. She fought in her mind, in her heart, in her spirit and convictions. He was looking down at her when she raised her face and looked tearfully into those warm eyes that loved her with a passion. “I don’t know, I wouldn’t say.” She whispered and avoided his eyes looking beyond the TV set, beyond now and the future, looking at nothing.