I was recently flying from Nairobi to Nanyuki, when I came across this photo (left) on WhatsApp, and it triggered memories of a somewhat unpleasant encounter I had had with a severely realistic American back in 2013. That was in the United States of America, on another flight.
“It’s amazing how you all sit there and watch yourselves die,” the man next to me said. “Get up and do something about it.”
Brawny, fully bald-headed, with intense, steely eyes, he was as cold as they come. When I first discovered I was going to spend my Good Friday’s Eve next to him on a non-stop JetBlue flight from Los Angeles to Boston I was anger-stricken. I associate marble-shaven Caucasians with iconoclastic skin-heads, most of whom are racist.
“My name is Smith,” he extended his hand as soon as I settled in my seat.
I told him mine with a precautious smile.
“Where are you from?” he asked.
“Kenya” I answered.
“Kenya!” He exclaimed, “Jomo Kenyatta’s country.”
“Yes,” I said, “Now Uhuru’s.”
“But of course,” he responded. “You just elected UK as your president.”
My face lit up at the mention of president Kenyatta's fond name. Smith smiled, and in those cold eyes I saw an amenable fellow, one of those American highbrows who shuttle between Africa and the U.S.
“I spent three years in Kenya in the 1980s,” he continued. “I wined and dined with Oginga Odinga, Sir Charles Njonjo, Dr. Robert Ouko, and many other highly intelligent Kenyans.” He lowered his voice.
“I was part of the IMF group that came to rip you guys off.” He smirked. “Your government put me in a million dollar mansion in Muthaiga, overlooking a shanty town called Mathare. From my patio I saw it all—the rich and the poor, the ailing, the dead, and the healthy.”
 |
| Mathare shanty town in Nairobi |
“Are you still with the IMF?” I asked.
“I have since moved to yet another group with similar intentions. In the next few months my colleagues and I will be in Nairobi to hypnotize the 'Digital team'. I work for the broker that has acquired a chunk of your debt. Your government owes not the World Bank, but us millions of dollars. We’ll be in Nairobi to offer your president a couple of trillions and fly back with a check twenty times greater, for later.”
“No, you won’t,” I said. “UK is incorruptible. He is …”
He was laughing. “Says who? Give me an African president, just one, who has not fallen for the carrot and stick.”
Quett Masire’s name popped up.
“Oh, him, well, we never got to him because he turned down the IMF and the World Bank. It was perhaps the smartest thing for him to do.”
At midnight we were airborne. The captain wished us a happy Easter and urged us to watch the fireworks across Los Angeles.
“Isn’t that beautiful,” Smith said looking down.
From my middle seat, I took a glance and nodded admirably.
 |
| Fireworks light up Los Angeles night sky |
“That’s white man’s country,” he said. “We came here on Mayflower and turned Indian land into a paradise and now the most powerful nation on earth. We discovered the bulb, and built this aircraft to fly us to pleasure resorts like Lake Kenya.”
I grinned. “There is no Lake Kenya.”
He curled his lips into a smug smile. “That’s what we call your country. You guys are as stagnant as the water in a lake. We come in with our large boats and fish your minerals and your wildlife (poaching) and leave morsels—crumbs. That’s your staple food, crumbs. That maize-meal you eat, that’s crumbs, the small Tilapia fish you eat is crumbs. We the 'Zunyes' (whites) take the cat fish. I am the Sponsor and you are the 'Fisi'. I get what I want and you get what you deserve, crumbs. That’s what lazy people get—Kenyans, Africans, the entire Third World.”
The smile vanished from my face.
“I see you are getting pissed off,” Smith said and lowered his voice again. “You are thinking, this Zunye is a racist. That’s how most Kenyans respond when I tell them the truth. They go ballistic. Okay. Let’s for a moment put our skin pigmentations, this black and white crap, aside. Tell me, my friend, what is the difference between you and me?”
“There’s no difference.”
“Absolutely none,” he exclaimed. “Scientists in the Human Genome Project have proved that. It took them thirteen years to determine the complete sequence of the three billion DNA subunits. After they were all done it was clear that 99.9% nucleotide bases were exactly the same in you and me. We are the same people. All white, Asian, Latino, and black people on this aircraft are the same.”
I gladly nodded.
“And yet I feel superior,” he smiled fatalistically. “Every white person on this plane feels superior to a black person. The white guy who picks up garbage, the homeless white trash on drugs, feels superior to you no matter his status or education. I can pick up a nincompoop from the New York streets, clean him up, and take him to Nairobi and you will all be crowding around him chanting 'mzungu', 'mzungu' and yet he’s just a riffraff. Tell me why my angry friend.”
For a moment I was wordless.
“Please don’t blame it on slavery like the African Americans do or colonialism, or some psychological impact or some kind of stigmatization. And don’t give me the brainwash poppycock. Give me a better answer.”
 |
| Aerial photo of Embu town taken from the plane (The local flight) |
'They call the Third World the lazy man’s purview; In this realm people are sleepy, dreamy, torpid, lethargic, and therefore indigent—totally penniless, needy, destitute, poverty-stricken, disfavored, and impoverished. In this demesne, as they call it, there are hardly any discoveries, inventions, and innovations. Africa is the trailblazer. Some still call it “the dark continent” for the light that flickers at the end of the tunnel is not that of hope, but that of an approaching train. And because countless people keep waiting in the way of the train, millions die and many more remain decapitated by the day'
I was thinking.
He continued. “Excuse what I am about to say. Please do not take offense.”
I felt a slap of blood rush to my head and prepared for the worst.
“You, my friend flying with me and all your kind are lazy,” he said. “When you rest your head on the pillow you don’t dream big. You and other so-called African intellectuals are damn lazy, each one of you. It is you, and not those poor starving people, who is the reason Africa is in such a deplorable state.”
“That’s not a nice thing to say,” I protested.
He was implacable. “Oh yes it is and I will say it again, you are lazy.
Poor and uneducated Africans are the most hardworking people on earth. I saw them in the Nairobi markets and on the streets selling merchandise. I saw them in villages toiling away.
I saw women on Nairobi - Meru highway crushing stones for sale and I wept. I said to myself where are the Kenyan intellectuals?
Are the Kenyan engineers so imperceptive they cannot invent a simple stone crusher, or a simple water filter to purify well water for those poor villagers?
Are you telling me that after fifty two years of independence your University of Nairobi's school of Engineering has not produced a scientist or an engineer who can make simple small machines for mass use?
What is the school there for?”
I held my breath.
“Do you know where I found your intellectuals? They were in bars quaffing. They were at the Muthaiga Golf Club, Nairobi Sports Club, The Intercontinental hotel, and the Flying Club.
I saw with my own eyes a bunch of alcoholic graduates.
Kenyan intellectuals work from eight to five and spend the evening drinking. We don’t. We reserve the evening for brainstorming.”
He looked me in the eye.
“And you flying to Boston and all of you Kenyans in the Diaspora are just as lazy and apathetic to your country. You don’t care about your country and yet your very own parents, brothers and sisters are in Mathare, Kibera and in villages; all of them living in squalor. Many have died or are dying of neglect by you.
They are dying of AIDS because you cannot come up with your own cure.
You are here calling yourselves graduates, researchers and scientists and are fast at articulating your credentials once asked—oh, I have a PhD in this and that—PhD my foot!”
I was deflated.
“Wake up you all!” he exclaimed, attracting the attention of nearby passengers. “You should be busy lifting ideas, formulae, recipes, and diagrams from American manufacturing factories and sending them to your own factories.
All those dissertation papers you compile should be your country’s treasure. Why do you think the Asians are a force to reckon with? They stole our ideas and turned them into their own. Look at Japan, China, India, just look at them.”
He paused. “The 'Zunye' has spoken,” he said and grinned.
“As long as you are dependent on my plane, I shall feel superior and you my friend shall remain inferior, how about that? The Chinese, Japanese, Indians, even Latinos are a notch better. You Africans are at the bottom of the totem pole.”
He tempered his voice. “Get over this white skin syndrome and begin to feel confident. Become innovative and make your own stuff for God’s sake.”
At 8 a.m. the plane touched down at Boston’s Logan International Airport. Smith reached for my hand.
“I know I was too strong, but I don’t give it a damn. I have been to Kenya and have seen too much poverty.”
He pulled out a piece of paper and scribbled something. “Here, read this. It was written by a friend.”
He had written the title of a book: 'The Ultimate Trophy' by Ed-Rutere Mutuanga.
Thunderstruck, I had a sinking feeling.
I watched Smith walk through the airport doors to a waiting car. He had left a huge dust devil twirling in my mind, stirring up sad memories of home.
I could see Kenya’s literati—the cognoscente, intelligentsia, academics, highbrows, and scholars in the places he had mentioned guzzling and talking irrelevancies.
I remembered some who have since passed—how they got the highest grades in mathematics and the sciences and attained the highest education on the planet.
They had been to Harvard, Oxford, Yale, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), only to leave us with not a single invention or discovery.
I knew some by name and drunk with them at the Panesic in Embu and The Tavern.
Smith is right. It is true that since independence we have failed to nurture creativity and collective orientations.
We as a nation lack a workhorse mentality and behave like 20 million civil servants dependent on a government pay cheque.
We believe that development is generated 8-to-5 behind a desk wearing a tie with our degrees hanging on the wall.
Such a working environment does not offer the opportunity for fellowship, the excitement of competition, and the spectacle of innovative rituals.
But the intelligentsia is not solely, or even mainly, to blame.
The larger failure is due to political circumstances over which they have had little control.
The past governments failed to create an environment of possibility that fosters camaraderie, rewards innovative ideas and encourages resilience. Jomo Kenyatta, Daniel Moi and Mwai Kibaki embraced orthodox ideas and therefore failed to offer many opportunities for drawing outside the line.
I believe Uhuru Kenyatta’s reset has not been cast in the same faculties as those of his predecessors. If today I told him that we can build our own car, he would not throw me out.
And now to the County level, Embu County especially. We Know well from his track record that Governor Wambora will certainly embody innovation at Smith's level. Let the people of Embu begin to support him so that he becomes a technologically active-positive leader who can propel us to greater heights.
That way we can make our own stone crushers, water filters, water pumps, razor blades, and harvesters.
Let’s dream big and make tractors, cars, and planes, or, like Smith said, forever remain inferior.
A fundamental transformation of our country from what is essentially non-innovative to a strategic superior African country requires a bold risk-taking educated leader with a triumphalist attitude and we have one in Uhuru.
Don’t be highly strung and feel insulted by Smith. Take a moment and think about our country.
Our journey from 1964 has been marked by tears. It has been an emotionally overwhelming experience.
Each one of us has lost a loved one to poverty, hunger, and disease.
The number of graves is catching up with the population.
It’s time to change our political culture. It’s time for Kenyan intellectuals to cultivate an active-positive progressive movement that will change our lives forever.
Don’t be afraid or dispirited, rise to the challenge and salvage the remaining... Ponder this.
The writer is a graduate, a Financial Advisor by profession, a musician and a blogger.
