Anatomy of a Kenyan Politician

It is that time in the political calendar when ‘seasoned’ politicians, upcoming politicians, and all sorts of political ‘wannabes’ come out of hiding. They all have well lined pockets and mouths oozing sweet promises. The unsure ones are timid and careful with their words. Those who think they have the electorate in their ‘pockets’ are careless with their mouths. They go about insulting all and sundry with abandon. They feel invincible and sadly, many of them will make it back to whichever office they want to occupy. I guess there is something about confident politicians that endears them to voters irrespective of how they treat them.

I have observed several traits of politicians in Kenya. Each of them seems to possess at least two or more of them. Please remember that this is not based on a scientific study. It is based on the usual observations and ramblings of a Layman.

(Un)Healthy Appetite

Politicians have two-fold appetites. They can eat unusual amounts of food. They can also amass unreasonably high wealth from unscrupulous sources and deals. These appetites keep politicians awake when the rest of us are lost in slumber land.

Mpango wa Kando (Clandestine Liaisons)

It is not news when we hear of this or that politician being exposed for having more than one wife or several girlfriends. Apparently, this trait is not restricted to male politicians. A funny story is told of a popular female politician whose husband would plead with the wife’s lover (who was also a politician) to let her come home even if it was just for a weekend.

Private Developer

It is said that one of the reasons the Member of County Assembly (MCA)’s position is so attractive is because of the ‘opportunities’ it provides. These are the people who will degazzette all sorts of public land and allocate it to themselves. The newly acquired land will then be developed with premier apartments and gated communities. They will also provide space for malls and all-star hotels. These developments will further require surrounding land (whoever it belongs to) so as to provide space for parking lots required for such developments.

Hope in Miracles

When an ‘ordinary’ person decides to venture into politics, he is the only one who thinks he has any chance of making it. Relatives and friends will either have to support his unreasonable foray into leadership or run the risk of getting disowned. Threats of getting ignored by him once he gets into power helps to keep his detractors in check.

Lecherous Side-Kicks

One of the most obvious indicators of a politician is the presence of myriad hangers-on wherever he goes. You can tell which house or compound he is in just by observing the idlers buzzing around the area like flies. These side-kicks are multi-talented. They serve as ego-boosters, security agents, public relations officers, and political advisers. They in turn benefit from the occasional free meal and lessons in how to become future politicians.

Tribal Kingpin

A politician is the automatic defacto leader and defender of his community. All he does is on behalf and for the benefit of his roots. Any attack on him is never personal. It will be construed to be an attack on his tribe all the way from their ancestors to the present and future generations.

Eye on Others’ Failure

Any Kenyan politician worth his salt must be able to observe, study, and articulate his fellow politicians’ failures. He is interested in showing what he has done in the same way he wants to prove how inadequate and unqualified his competitors are. When he has nothing to show for all his opportunities, he can dedicate 100% of his time bashing others.

Attention Seeker

It is said that in politics, there is nothing like bad publicity. Any form of attention accorded a politician is welcome. It is for this reason that any politician who has had a loose tongue is rather popular.  Appearing in the news is so important that some have been known to pay journalists to ensure it happens. In this era of social media, politicians have spent good money to hire the best web designers to ensure that their digital footprint is felt loud and clear. After all, a politician craves your attention and lives for it.

Short Cut Culture

I lived in Nyalenda for two and a half years. For those who have no idea where Nyalenda is, it is a ‘suburb’ in Kisumu city. I intentionally use ‘suburb’ to avoid calling it a slum as it is referred to by those who classify living standards (or lack thereof) in an area. My sweet little house was made of baked clay bricks finished nicely with smooth plaster on the inside, and keyed joints on the outside beautifully sealed in with varnish. My house was different from some of the common but not so classy mud houses which most people would associate with Nyalenda.

In spite of the disparity in living standards in our vast ‘estate’, the people of Nyalenda had one thing in common. They were warm hearted and friendly to a fault. Within the first few weeks of my residence there, I had several friends. I would therefore often find someone to walk with as I went to work in the morning and back home in the evening. Each of these friends would show me a different shortcut, short here being relative because they always seemed longer than just using the main road. The shortcuts were also complicated in much like finding my way through a maze. You see, in most of Nyalenda, homesteads had no fences and you were literally walking through people’s compounds who, instead of accusing you of trespassing, always greeted you cheerfully.

Always an Alternative

My life in Nyalenda taught me an important lesson about Kenyans. They believe there is always an alternative way of doing something. This alternative is considered quicker and more effective in reaching a destination or attaining an objective. A lot of Kenyans take an inordinate amount of time trying to discover innovative ways of doing things. This has become the new normal and those who stick to orthodox ways of working are considered to be not so bright (or just plain stupid).

Get-Rich-Quick

Our ancestors were stupid. This is the belief of many with regards to ways of making money. They ask, “Why wait for years to get rich when you can do so today?” I know people who are on the verge of developing business plans in the area of gambling and betting. It is now considered a legitimate way of making a living and placed alongside trading in stocks and other high profile investment options. Pyramid schemes are now openly promoted and people always fall for them.

Instant Dating

I can vividly recall the day I went to my wife’s father and asked for his daughter’s hand in marriage. It took a lot of courage to do that but earned my marriage respect and legitimacy. Things are now different. People are cohabiting without as much as informing even their immediate neighbours. Even close friends are learning of some ‘marriages’ when they break up. Welcome to the world of instant dating. People are meeting on Facebook and moving in together within a few weeks.

Quick Sale

Whenever I look at classified vehicle ads, I can’t help but wonder what people mean by ‘quick sale’. It is possible to see a car with superb specs being put up for sale and the effect getting spoilt by those two terrible words. What do people mean by quick sale? I always get the impression that the car has some serious flaws and the owner wants to get rid of it quickly before it falls apart on him. It is a kind of passing the button of trouble to some unsuspecting buyer.

Instant Food and Drinks

I used to be sent to buy premium coffee in Java for use in the office when we had many Europeans working there. I would buy freshly roasted Kenya AA coffee beans and have them ground to medium consistency. I would then carry the sweet smelling packages in the car but during the short drive there, I would have enough caffeine in my body to last a week, just from the fumes! That is how portent the quality is in premium coffee. However, most Kenyans prefer instant coffee. They like instant everything. Those things you get from colourful packages and just ‘add hot water’.

Forget the Information Age; we are living in the Shortcut Age!

P.S. A long time ago before people in my village could afford instant coffee, there used to be coffee that had to be boiled for hours known as ‘Kahawa No. 1’. I wonder if it still exists.

Men – The Endangered Species

For some strange reason, I can’t pronounce the word endangered on first try. Even when I eventually do, I say it in a weird way. Some people might interpret this to mean that I have a strong point. I agree with this particular reasoning. I think that the difficulty of pronouncing this word exposes the sheer danger that we as men have to live under. If you ask me, I think it is a miracle that men have not become extinct yet. I guess we have more resilience than we are given credit for.

Seriously Stereotyped

“All men are dogs!” says many a women at the back end of a broken relationship. Whereas you can hear of different types of women ranging from composed to outgoing, it is not so for men. Men are all lumped into one group irrespective of all our obvious and distinct individual differences. A man making a mistake does so on behalf of all men but a woman errs as an individual.

Unreasonable Expectations

A man is expected to have a good job or a business by his mid-twenties. He is then expected to marry and have children by the time he hits thirty, failure to which he will be branded a selfish brat who wants to ‘eat’ all that money alone. All these achievements are expected of men and yet they have to go through childhood and youth with almost no guidance from their parents and society. They literally have to bring themselves up.

Different Measure of Success from Women

From academic grades to sports cut-off points, men have to attain more to get the same opportunities as women. They have to make more money so as to cater for their often extended responsibilities to their families and society in general. This is often in total disregard to their own personal needs and desires.

Pent-Up Feelings

Society expects men to be strong on behalf of everybody else. It is for this reason that men who display any negative emotions are frowned upon. This has led to many men learning to keep a brave face in all situations including those where they are seriously worried on how to come out of. Statistics have shown that men are more suicidal than women due to inability to release pent-up feelings of anger and depression.

Population Myths

Contrary to popular belief, the population of men is roughly equal to that of women. It has always been assumed that there are more women than men leading to the impression that men are more empowered. Some opportunities may have been availed to women based on this myth further disadvantaging men.

Scary Look into the Future

I recently read somewhere that the continuing evolution of humans will endow women with the ability to reproduce asexually. For the Laymen, reproducing asexually means that an organism contains all the ‘equipment’ it needs to reproduce, internally. This takes away the need to need to mate and consequently, the gender that traditionally mates is rendered redundant. If (or when) this happens, it will only be a matter of time before the ‘useless’ gender vanishes from the face of the earth because nature has no apologies to make for exterminating ‘joyriders’.

Fighting for the Boy Child

I know I have lost a lot of you (particularly ladies and Christians) along the words above. However, let this not be construed to mean that I am fighting women. I am only saying that some effort has to be put in fighting for the boy child. It is true that women have always been disadvantaged and continue to be so. Affirmative action and advocating the rights of the girl child have achieved a lot in improving the lives of women and affording them opportunities that would hitherto have been considered impossible dreams. It is also true that a lot remains to be done in bringing women to be at par with men. My worry is that if the boy child is not considered alongside the girl, he will slide far back and it will be a case of reversed roles when he has to be brought back up. Let us not allow it to reach that point. Let’s all fight against the endangerment of the male species.

Going Gaga Over Raw Data

Big Data

I have seen a lot of IT companies advertising services to do with big data. Being a Layman, I often have no idea what they are talking about, but it sounds really cool. My little research efforts have yielded an inkling about what is happening. It turns out that many professionals, both individuals and organisations, have been collecting data that is meant to help them gather useful information about what they are doing. Unfortunately for these people, data does not necessarily readily provide information. It has to be carefully analysed and interpreted before it can be of any use in decision making.

A New Form of Laziness

It has become fashionable for Kenyans to spew all sorts of statistics when they are telling stories of what they have witnessed. It is seen as some kind of authentication when an otherwise far-fetched story is accompanied by numbers. Everybody agrees with the saying that ‘numbers don’t lie’. While it is true that figures give a story more substance, they don’t replace the need for creative storytelling and the interjection of beautiful prose. It is this flashing around of ‘facts and figures’ that has given rise to a new form of laziness. People no longer want to package the information in an easy-to-understand form. They can just throw in a caption-less picture and bar graphs on their social media pages. Nobody will read these pages but the authors will go home convinced that theirs will be the next ‘viral’ post.

Actuarial Uprising

A few years ago, I heard that there were less than 20 actuarial experts in the country. For the Laymen and Women, rest assured, I have not gone berserk. Actuarial science is not a Greek term. It refers to a field of mathematics (or science, I’m not sure) dealing with measuring and managing risk. The growth in this field has corresponded with a similar growth in the areas of betting and other forms of gambling. Insurance has also become a major industry. The people involved in both insurance and betting rely heavily on information provided by actuarial experts. This is not so for the thousands who consume these services. These just do it blindly and the only ‘evidence’ they claim to have is the handful of winners who have walked away with millions. There is a new breed of ‘expert’ who claims to be able to help players place winning bets. They say they have analysed mountains of data just to help you win. Whether or not that is true remains to be seen.

Vehicle Fuel Consumption

Like I have said before, I am not a complete Layman when it comes to the field of Automotive Engineering. I therefore found it funny when some years back I listened to the then Finance Minister (who is the President today) give a directive on the maximum engine capacity vehicles bought by the government must have. He declared that government vehicles must not have an engine capacity higher than 1800cc. For the Laypeople among you, cc denotes internal engine volume in Cubic Centimetres. All the big-engined ‘guzzlers’ were auctioned off in a fashion that I don’t want to get into right now.

The reasoning by the government then was based on an assumption that the higher the engine capacity, the higher the fuel consumption; and vice versa. While this may have been true two decades ago, it is no longer entirely accurate. Ground-breaking technology has made engine capacity almost irrelevant in the determination of rate of fuel consumption in a vehicle. So much extra data has to be analysed before an accurate figure of consumption can be derived. Other conclusions do not help much besides creating unnecessary sensation.

Conclusion of the Matter

What is the Layman rambling on about? You might ask. The only demand I am making, ‘uncategorically’, is that we all purpose to base our conclusions over different matters on accurate information that has been analysed and interpreted by knowledgeable persons. Let us avoid going all ‘Gaga’ over raw data!