On Race in Africa- nah

I just completed reading Chimammanda Adichies novel and I beg to react while the knots of exciting story are still fresh as smoking feaces in ashen dewy grass.

This amazing book about race to me lied when she stated that in Africa she had never been black. That here race doesn’t implode on your face until you meet those niggers and their former slavers in America.

Personally being home grown I have no first hand opinion on America and frankly its books like these that inform my opinions.

On race and Africa I would say that it does exist. who wasn’t a loose toddler running after a white man who has happened to your dark corner of the continent shouting 'Mzungu how are you' The way we did it in our days, was incredulous in our ability to get the grinning old white people with spindly hair and reddening necks to give us sweets.

The lessons do not stop because soon after cutting a cypress tree to make Christmas tree and sprinkling its spiked incensed edges with soft white wool, after putting up Christmas cards with white Jesus Mary and Joseph or Santa and snow, we go to school and read our history as it was written for us.

We see photos of black naked men carrying white missionaries as they discovered us. We are taught more of when the Portuguese made their conquests than the Mau Mau (mentioned in passing as we rush to finish the syllabus just before exams. I can’t believe had to cram all those bloody years)

It is not lost to us that we are a race of people apart and subservient to another. A race who defines what we consider progress, development, future.

It was not lost to me one day when I arrived at Busia catholic church late and was standing in the warm tropical sun all the pews occupied when a white couple, we call them odiero here in Kenya or mzungu. What I witnessed made me stop going to church.

The usher an old illiterate was suddenly struck with panic, the odieros couldn’t possibly stand through the whole mass. That must have seemed so scandalous to her, to imagine the exporters of this religion would be made to endure standing at the expense of the recipient was un-African. So she not only shooed away some Africans but also stripped her greying hair of its wrapper and polished the pew for the white folks who actually thanked her for being so kind.

That was not so bad until the priest who was conducting a Kiswahili service chipped in a few Anglo cues for the benefit of the white folks.

So race is not lost to us it is acknowledged here but not in a militant way; in a submissive way but with a belief that a good white man is only a dead one.

No, white folks do not fret. Meaning a good white folk is one you could fleece. Here you walk down the street with a white woman and brothers slyly smile at you and congratulate you in mother tongue for making it in life. Brothers go to the gym because they see niggers in magazines with chiseled bodies and they reckon it increases their chances on duping a white woman. Other tribes don Maasai regalia and learn how to jump to nail a white woman which is automatic cash cow!

Here relations are more of beach-boy-old-white lady or young girls vulturing for old white men with money. And they help they white guys friends land their sisters in a gold rush kind of way Here interracial is economical just like there where its for immigration papers
Here white folks who have read the travel advisory that garishly paints it as an Al shabab terrorist outpost with criminal gangs running rife. Who have been told not to talk to starngers by their governments and smile wryly at the rushing deluge of blackness and browness only talk to friends they have made at the NGOs they work in.
Race is real not just against us.

A chapter in my life I would give up for a dollar

Last night they cut my power

Just one fast forward dusk like all the power outages Kenyans are accustomed to but this time it was only my one roomed flat. The rest of the single rooms in the opposite tenement flickered like fireflies now that I was plunged in darkness. My thoughts fraught enough to compliment between the words in the novel I was reading and the reality that had just struck.

I only had train fare left, you know. So the first reaction was acclimatising to the fact that this blackout would really last for long. Two, that this writing under a yellow candle flame with a blue arse like monkeys would become household. Three, that maybe I will finally break. It is the third thought that scared me most.

I had tried not to notice things, you know. The fact that I lived in a crappy one room who sewage pipes were burst and collected in foul pool that bred vicious mosquitoes. The fact that I lived next to neighbours who thought I was a teacher because I read so thick novels. Neighbours who drunk cheap alcohol illicit alcohol or smoked bhang in constant intervals just to avoid noticing the squalor. Neighbours who managed to fit in these one rooms with four to six children, one bed (How did they even make love in that crowd?) I had feigned indifference maybe because I hope soon enough I would leave these derelicts behind. But every waking day was serving a reminder that my desire to leave would not be quenched soon.

At least the caretaker was holding me in higher esteem smiling or brandishing her yellow teeth a little more whenever I paid rent in full. She had placed a notice on the landing just beneath the stairs warning of eviction if the tenants could not pay by 10^th of each month. After some obscenities were slewed on the piece of handwritten notice someone tore it through the spine obviously irritated by either the notice or obscenities.

But just that silent instant in a square swimming pool of black suffocating air I desired home. Home where we had never had our lights disconnected. Where my father would somehow always manage to pay earlier than expected.

But I quickly fought that lethargic thought. I would not fail in my quest to cut out a life for myself. I would not fail in this town of unequal opportunity. Yes unequal opportunity because while I was going to a children’s home in Karen yesterday staring at humongous real estates and knowing my idea of making it in this city would never win me one of those. This naivety to work hard would only land me in mid-life crisis. Here I needed either pure luck ingenious deceit a corrupt patron or mooting voodoo.

And this restlessness made me start seeing and coming to terms with my reality instead of fleeting to the desired future I had painted in my mind like canvas murals. I now noticed the ragged men who used the trains that made me feel out of place when I took the train home yesterday evening. Heir ripped up collars and browning clothes who would squeeze up into you in the crammed up spaces. Where men’s limp members were pressed against your thighs and women’s warm breasts on your shoulder blades. Where fat women selling groundnuts would wedge through the crowded boogie and one would feel his wallet moving out of the pocket. Where peoples breath with mint or menthol from chewing PK would merge with haughty pronouncement of hunger stale alcohol and fading perfume would merge and float like low clouds on mountain tops. I had effectively ignored the hoarse rheumatic breathing and minions of dashing spittle making rainbow kaleidoscopes whenever they sneezed. All I did was keep my head high to avoid drowning in my hypersensitivity that no one else could afford to notice.

But that afternoon at the children’s home I jumped at the offer of a free meal. In my calculations I had saved a lot of money, sixty shillings to be precise. I was pleased with myself shrewd. A pale white lady who was seating at my table decided it was her business to keep the conversation going. She decide everyone should say what they did. How was I supposed to tell her I they had sent an intern to cover the event. I told her I was a correspondent, a get paid a retainer and a commission for every story. And that self-deceiving instant I realized I was no longer comfortable in my skin. That freckled woman whose pork white skin was speckled with browns spots and her freckled white hair was tidy behind her head in perfect streaks made my castle in the wind crumble. All the time that I introduced myself to my friends answering that I worked in a big media company without giving the details of the nature of my position no longer stood. I was an intern; I had been so for some time. I was paid a stipend and that was all that there was. So when the white old lady who had been in Kenya long enough to make deductions of local dailies who could tell my tribe by my name (Otiato, you are Lou? She said in a knowing Kenyan way) made me face my reality I stated seeing things for what they were and felt pitiable.

I realized from then on it would be difficult to pretend not to see the thick coalesced fat of unhealthy muturas (stuffed goat or cow intestines) that I sometimes ate for supper. Or the sickening rush of acidic cheap liquor, Meakins vodka to be precise, that I drink in Nairobi backstreets. In those dingy unlit bars with urinals that could scald eyes with urea as if pissing was peeling onions. I realized I could no longer use those who were below me as reference point and see myself as just a little haughtier than them and the thin veil of self-absorption that comparison availed me. I had opened up eyes my alter ego thought was long overdue. A restless soul like mine needed heavier blankets of self-deceit to live the life I was living. But the fear of failing was the greatest conviction that would not allow me to throw in the towel. I had to cultivate a belief that some good will come of it. It was like an atheists belief in God.

So today evening with barely anything left for the rest of this disdainful period I will go to Québec wines and spirits. I will buy a half a bottle of Meakins vodka. While standing with a bunch of casual labourers and small time business men I will hope it will deliver a quick blackout to  face the harrowing darkness that awaits me like the uncertainties in my life. And in the carefree nature that only my college buddies could relate to, I will whisper after cringing my face to allow saliva to calcine the woeful taste of cheap vodka, ‘Money Commeth’

Free Eskinder Nega

Everyone has A Right to expression unless they shout fire fire in a theatre full of people.

Eskinder warned that Ethiopia was staring into the abyss of the Arab Spring and for a nation that is systematic in its subjugation of human expression, they made a law to suit agitators for social change.

What in effect is their interpretation of this exception of the tenet of freedom of speech is that we should jail the manufacturers of fire extinguishers at theater door because they have written (expressed) fire fire.

We should also imprison the administration maintaining the theatre for setting up fire assembly points because they have the same effect as someone who shouts fire fire,  in a theater!

Now if the Ethiopian government deludes itself that it could stop the unraveling human history that is towards democracy and its tenets then it should look around for examples in History.

When the biggest state mechanism that is still operating on throttling civil voice, aka china took in Ai wei  wei, they made him in fact a voice of democracy. Tianamen square embodies this spirit to date and the effect of open revolutionary contempt for the Chinese government simmers to date.

What the Ethiopian government has successfully done is turn Eskinder Neta into the beacon of an African voice for the call of democracy and free speech.

It is a call that every blogger and journalist who has staked up his voice in the open space of the internet should fight for.

It’s a battle that if we lose to despots who are relishing on the precedent by Ethiopia to instigate similar bridle across the continent. Like in Kenya where CCK or whatever it is called wants to license and register bloggers and give them passes in order to converse in the internet.

This is a battle of epic proportions a battle that should allow Satta to be called a sweet potato if he is really one symbolically and behaves like one literally by locking Bwalya for 5 years.

As the Nation Of Africa we solemnly call on Ethiopia to Free Eskinder Nega

Joshua Kisemei: Let Eskinda Go: Let Democaracy Prevail 
Zakes Mda: Africans Must Speak Up for Journalist Jailed in Ethiopia
Call For Justice: Sign Petition Now!

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.