They call the Third World the
lazy man’s purview; the sluggishly slothful and languorous prefecture. 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 under the tunnel is
not that of hope, but an approaching train. And because countless keep waiting
in the way of the train, millions die and many more remain decapitated by the
day.
“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 New Year’s Eve next to him on a non-stop JetBlue flight
from Los Angeles to Boston I was angst-ridden. I associate marble-shaven
Caucasians with iconoclastic skin-heads, most of who are racist.
“My name is Walter,” 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.”
“Kenya!” he exclaimed, “Kenyatta’s
country.”
“Yes,” I said, “Now the Son.”
“But of course,” he responded.
“You just elected prince Cobra as your president.”
My face lit up at the mention of UK
moniker. Walter 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 and many other highly intelligent Kenyan.”
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
overlooking a shanty called Kibera. From my patio I saw it all—the rich and the
poor, the ailing, the dead, and the healthy.”
“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 prince. 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
millions and fly back with a check twenty times greater.”
“No, you won’t,” I said. “Prince
Cobra 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 2014 and urged us to watch the fireworks across Los
Angeles.
“Isn’t that beautiful,” Walter
said looking down.
From my middle seat, I took a
glance and nodded admirably.
“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 the lake. We come in with our large boats and fish your minerals and your
wildlife and leave morsels—crumbs. That’s your staple food, crumbs. That
corn-meal you eat, that’s crumbs, the small Tilapia fish you call Omena is
crumbs. We the Bwanas (whites) take the cat fish. I am the Bwana and you are
the Muntu. I get what I want and you get what you deserve, crumbs. That’s what
lazy people get— Africans, the entire Third World.”
The smile vanished from my face.
“I see you are getting pissed
off,” Walter said and lowered his voice. “You are thinking this Bwana 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 all be crowding around him chanting muzungu, muzungu and yet he’s 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.”
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
street selling merchandise. I saw them in villages toiling away. I saw women on
Namanga Road crushing stones for sell 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 years of
independence your university 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,
Bacchus Lounge, XS Millionaires, Galileos Lounge and Nairobi Club.
I saw with my own eyes a bunch of alcoholic graduates. These 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 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 Kiambu, Kisii, 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, formula, recipes, and diagrams from American manufacturing factories
and sending them to your own factories. All those research findings and
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 Bwana 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 JKIA International Airport. Walter 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 only the title:
“Lords of Poverty.”
Thunderstruck, I had a sinking
feeling. I watched Walter 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 Playhouse and lounges.
Walter 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 40
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. KANU, FORD,DP NARC, PNU,
ODM, JP et al embraced orthodox ideas and therefore failed
to offer many opportunities for drawing outside the line.
Knowing well that the current
leadership will not embody innovation at Walter’s level let’s begin to look for
a technologically active-positive leader who can succeed him after a term or
two. 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 Walter 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 YOU. Don’t be highly strung and feel insulted by
Walter. Take a moment and think about our country. Our journey from 1963 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 our 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 few of your beloved
ones.