Slumber not, dear mother land.

Above photo: Once majestic Nairobi Railways, its frontage has been turned into a terminus for public transport vehicles. I took this on the 17th of September.

As ardent readers of my blog know, I was based abroad from the start of this very informative transformational blog. I am back home ready to assist and do my part in building this yet-to-be great nation. A sage once told me: “Even that America that people are fleeing to, was once barren and bare. Pioneers made it the way it is now. So build your America here in Kenya.” These words of advice, coupled with the fact that all my ideas for development can only be implemented while I am on the ground, made me transplant.
Initial Impressions
Kenya has changed these years I have been away. There are very few clunkers on the roads.There are some nice cars here and there but the vast majority of people still walk or take public transport. Nairobi has become overcrowded. While not rundown, its beauty has paled due to lack of maintenance. It is not a pleasant experience walking around this once great city, former pride of East Africa. On the positive, it is cleaner than it was during the former regime. People don’t litter for fear County Askaris may pounce on you from out of the blue. And gone are the days when women used to cook chapatis outside Times Tower building. There is no smoking on the streets; they have designated smoking areas where people huddle together like chickens during a storm to puff away, inflating their lungs with noxious fumes.
There are many more people especially the youth; sadly they have taken to aping western culture in song dance, dress and mannerisms. Generally, people are well dressed especially the ladies. Clothes, new and used are in abundance and it is thus easy to dress decently.
As for the roads, I have not been to see the famous Thika road and don’t intend to. A major modern highway leading to nowhere serves no purpose and we will be paying for it several generations down the line. What we need are feeder and access roads leading to densely populated areas or areas where commerce takes place. Other roads are still the same. There are no new roads in my area, Rongai which is outside Nairobi. The town has become very densely populated, trash everywhere, traffic a night mare with speeding drivers and non obedient matatus.
As regards communication, everyone has a phone. I mean from the tech savvy generation, up to the old grandma out in the country. Safaricom is very dominant as a supplier of mobile telephone service. Their Mpesa mobile banking system probably has more users then all formal banks combined together. Internet connectivity has improved tremendously according to those I asked. There are many internet capable phones being offered at affordable price points and the youth have taken to them in droves. Internet cafes are still popular as the price of a laptop or desktop is still prohibitive.
As is obvious, our greedy politicians have not bettered their ways, they are busy feeding themselves oblivious of their starving electorate. Recently without fanfare, they unanimously agreed to dip into the emergency reserve fund to pay their back taxes. And a day after a fire tragedy in one of the Nairobi slums, the Cabinet passed a resolution to shift the date of the next General Elections from August next year to December of the same year. The excuse given was flimsy at best. These are not the leaders that will transform this nation. Local Government is even more ineffectual. I will deal with them in the next article.
All in all, I am very optimistic about my motherland but we need a concerted effort with every ones involvement to propel this nation forward. Development will not take place with a centralized form of Government and the new Constitution is already stumbling out the gate as regards its implementation. Hopefully a new Government under a devolved type of administration will fare well as regards delivery services but it will only be driven by a completely new set of servant leaders. So my fellow Kenyans, choose wisely at the next Elections. To this end, we suggest an intense campaign geared towards civic education. I plan to start a civic education program and will be contacting civil society bodies for teaching materials.
Going forward I plan to post more development related articles and interviews with regular Kenyans. The tale of Kenya needs to told and I am optimistic this story will have a happy ending.
I sign off with this well intended Moi era Slogan that somehow went awry: “Peace, Love and Unity.”