The Sunday Nation - Oil Wealth

Since the announcement of significant oil deposits discovered in North Western Kenya, the press has waxed lyrical and sleepy journalists have rediscovered their skills as they analyse the repercussions of this announcement from a plethora of angles. This discovery has distracted the nation from the usual shenanigans and drama of the political class although of course I did not miss the allegation that a Minister, Permanent Secretary and others were unfairly involved - directly or indirectly - in the sale of Block 10BB - The block that holds some of the oil deposits for some USD 10M.  They had the wisdom and foresight...or was it being at the right place and the right time, to profit from the find? This reported misdemeanour has not deterred Kenyans of all persuasions, at this juncture, from debating the merits and demerits of the oil find and what it would mean for the nation state. As for me, I am amazed at the going prize of the land  and  (if wishes were horses) would have wished that by some stroke of luck, it had been mine. One can only muse about how much of the USD 10M has been reinvested into the economy in Turkana county and its environs before thinking about future profits can be made.


The inherent blessings discussed since the announcement was made are a myriad and are not limited to Middle Income Status, Global political powerhouse, New Job opportunities, Budget  Surpluses, Economic Growth and all manner of business opportunities including churches being built in Turkana county. The pessimists have cautioned and reminded us of some of the many vices plaguing other resource rich African nations which may be visited upon our beloved land namely further governance issues, runaway high level corruption, environmental degradation, self inflicted wars, violent  demands for secession and self determination, indolence of an otherwise hard working people, propping up of undemocratic regimes and a myriad of curses...God Forbid.  I would wager that sales of the most widely read papers in East Africa have shown a positive trend as Kenyans' interest in scholarly pursuits such as the future of their Nation state has been ignited by this discovery. I indeed have felt obliged to read most of the articles and rant about the find on the luxury of this blog.   I was particularly amused by a seemingly unrelated article in which the French ambassador complained about the inaccessibility of the Head of State. I initially thought that my Head of State might be resting from some untold of ailment (this type of musing on the Head of State's health was treasonable to imagine during regimes past and may have landed me in Kamiti Prison) but then remembered that there must be some jostling by world powers as a result of this innocuous find. Methinks that  Turkana county more specifically  (and by extension Kenya) would be better served by building schools, houses, hospitals, highways, airports, universities, cities, industries and allied markers of development  as a penance for years of neglect before jostling for investment opportunities. We might even explore how to water the desert so that the hard working people of Turkana county may continue in their cattle keeping hobby should they desire and their women explore other economic pursuits.

Might I be accused of being disingenuous in saying that I have a soft spot for Turkana County?  As a young girl my father gave me one of those tourist booklets on the El Molo. The El Molo being a tribe whose habitation lies somewhere on the shores of Lake Turkana....For their sake, I hope not too far from the oil deposits. A tribe that, I am certain, is not proportionally represented in the recently published diversity statistics of the Kenya civil service and I am sad to state that I personally do not count an acquaintance from Turkana County from all the people that I have had occasion to cross paths with in my otherwise varied life.  For some strange reason, my kid brother has spent some two years as a physician in Northern Kenya at the pleasure of the Ministry of Health and much to the chagrin of my mother.  Now that some prospects seem to have appeared in this backwater, we may have reason to celebrate. Perchance there might be some investments to consider in that county as I am sure that the people coming to exploit the newly found resources need some amenities for the long haul.

The native peoples who live around Turkana county are the most marginalised of Kenyan communities....by the design  of the economists who penned the infamous sessional paper no. 10 of 1965.  Apparently, the sessional Paper no. 10 of 1965 stated that to make the economy as a whole grow as fast as possible, development money should be invested where it would yield the largest increase in net output.  The bulk of the resources were to favour the development of areas having abundant natural resources, good land and rainfall, transport, power facilities and people receptive to and active in development  I have never had occasion to read the sessional paper but my interest has been roused by the oil find but for quite different reasons.

However, whilst I am tempted to demonise the economists who penned the sessional paper, I must recall that Jesus Christ in the parable of the talents indicated that those who have, would be given more and those didn't have, even the little that they had would be taken away from them. Our Lord might have been a carpenter but He prophesied on the economic theory that has marginalised Turkana county - and other unlucky people groups - since Kenya's independence. This theory is somewhat akin to the osmotic  theory where solvent molecules in the form of development resources move through the semi permeable membrane of the Nation State from low concentrated and less endowed regions to regions of high concentration and more endowment.   

Apparently one could only criticise the sessional paper No. 10 of 1965 to their peril and one so bold, albeit from the  safety of the Harvard corridors, was Barack Hussein Obama Sr. Being as he was from the low concentrated regions, of the Nyanza, he understood that this sessional paper would mean doom for some people groups and bliss for others. But no one cared to listen and as people judge his later life they should perhaps appreciate his disillusionment and the high prize he paid for not falling in line. This Sessional Paper No. 10 of 1965 is as incomprehensible as McNaughton's theories but has consistently been the basis upon which the nation was built and resources shared by subsequent regimes. It's no wonder that what grips the nation is the lack of diversity in the cake eating palaver. So before Michella Wrong muses on Kenyans oft quoted phrase "it is our turn to eat" she must at least analyse the travesties of the sessional paper no. 10 of 1965. I digress.

It is ironical that the oil has  "always" lay untapped (undrilled) in Turkana county and that somehow the economists who penned the much maligned sessional paper were not aware of it at the time. Had they had some foresight, perhaps, the capital would be located somewhere on the banks of the former Lake Rudolph  - initially named for crown prince Rudolph of Austria - as George W Bush would refer to it long after it had been changed to Lake Turkana. (I cannot recall why he felt compelled to refer to it but perhaps, being a Texan, it was the oil beckoning!). Now, I must pause to complain about the renaming of this lake in honour of Crown Prince Rudolph since I am sure it already had a good enough name(s) before the first Europeans recorded chancing upon it on one of their long wanderings through the East African wilderness. This lake is the world's largest permanent desert lake; the world's largest alkaline lake and the world's third-largest salt lake by volume.  Turkana county is home to violent winds and the government is belatedly investing in what is billed to become Africa's largest wind farm. 

Last but not least, it is also the cradle of mankind - perhaps even the Garden of Eden if evolution and creation were to converge.  The Leakeys who have a penchant for discovering skulls from eons past have discovered skulls in the area, unrivalled by those discovered next door in Olduvai Gorge....Makes me miss my history class!!  It boggles the mind that Turkana county and its environs was always an endowed area (only the economists were too blind to realise it).  Had the county received its  fair share of development resources it would be at par with the bastions of Central Kenya and the rest of the Rift Valley...But its not too late.

Since God in His wisdom has ordained that oil wealth suddenly be discovered  in the land of the Turkana and their immediate neighbours, all I can say is that there is karma and it is time for the native peoples of Turkana to eat.  Hopefully the rest of the tribes will allow them to eat in peace and when they have eaten their fill and are satiated, I pray that some crumbs shall fall off the tables, for the benefit of the rest of Kenya.

Condoleezza Rice - A memoir of my extraordinary, ordinary family and me

Condi's memoir is quite an interesting and easy read. I asked my daughter, who is an "A"level  student and wanted to go places to purchase it together with her other book "No higher honour".  Her schoolmates didn't have an idea who Condoleezza Rice was. I thought "what a shame, in this day and age...what do young ones read?". 

The book has given me a good basis to understand the period around the Jim Crow laws and the infamous  segregation and desegregation periods. My daughter, who wants to be a lawyer, has been wondering whether people must follow unjust laws. This is a million dollar question because there are no easy answers. Reading Condi's book made me realise that the answer to this question is not always black or white...sometimes it is grey.

On the lighter side, I could relate to the family's reaction on the mistake made on Condi's high school diploma by missing out one 'z' from her name.  The family was sufficiently irritated by the mistake on a name that had been painstakingly given by her mother, to promptly return the wrongly named diploma to the school for correction. (What was surprising is that they never got a response back until she was at the White House!!!) This reminds me of a question on Lucy Kellaway's blog in The Financial Times last week. A lady was mulling about taking on her husband's name because it was complicated whereas she had been endowed with what was, in her culture and place, an easier name - Smith.  In my neck of the woods, the very well meaning educationalists found it a pain pronouncing our names and to solve their problem, decided that we should be given names foreign to our tongues but which of course were easier for them to relate to.  To achieve their objective, they told well meaning congregations that some of our original names were "evil". At school, without the advantage of a baptism, the teacher took it upon herself (or himself) to provide a new name.  My considered view is that the apparent difficulty in a name depends on the culture, place, country, dominant language...such that one man's meat is another man's poison.  My friends and relatives could barely get round to pronouncing the Irish name that my father so well meaningly bestowed upon me and I have heard so many versions of it that grate against my ear.  I am sure that my father probably didn't pronounce it in exactly the same way as the Irish did but he got the spelling right ...Although common in Ireland and appears in the Oxford Advanced Learners' dictionary as a "common English" forename, I was recently amazed to learn that it is in fact a Greek given name meaning "fate".

Oftentimes, it is so difficult to get bureaucracies to amend mistakes they make on documents and one has to adjust to the unfortunate baptism even as Oprah did.  I noticed  a date of birth mistake on my son's GCE's certificate.  It irritated me to the core and I promptly informed the school. When they did not want to admit their mistake, I hit the roof and they thankfully asked me to return the wrong certificates for correction...I hope they amend them since I have no chance of serving at high echelons of any government.

In many ways, I like Condi.  I can relate her experiences to another recent post in The Financial Times on whether, in public organisations, one needed to be 'mousy' to succeed. People posted all manner of advice supporting this theorem.  I wonder what Condi would have said given her response at Stanford, to the surprise of her audience, that she would consult widely but at the end of day, she and the chancellor would make the ultimate decisions. She didn't do committees as committees don't make decisions!!!.  Working as I have done in large organizations, I am wont to agree that the best way to stall on something is to ask a committee to opine on it. 

In certain situations one has to be "bullish". Condi was a tough woman for her stature. In her whole book, I loved two expressions and I shall attempt to quote them verbatim. "You don't have the standing to question my commitment to minorities. I have been black all my life and that is longer than you are old"..."When you are the provost, you can have the last word"!!!! Woah!!! That hurts!!
 

On the one hand, she was really misunderstood and the book, I wager, was her medium of explaining herself  to her critics.  (At Stanford, although a respectable position for her age, gender and colour, the headlines about her were brutal and criticisms unrelenting.)  Whereas on the other hand, she appears to have had very loving parents, an enviable childhood and a tight family...almost unreal. (Yet, despite all that, she didn't see the need to perpetuate the lineage. It would be interesting to have a psychologist's opinion since the considered view is that people born into steady homes are more likely to want to perpetuate the institution.)

 

I enjoy the scholarly pursuit of reading people's biographies and autobiographies...no matter the person...as one often realises that one cannot always have it all.

Andrea Levy - The Long Song

I picked this rather entertaining book at Heathrow. I have read it twice and both times I couldn't help chuckling or  laughing at the humour  throughout the book. I marvel at how one writes such a humorous book about such a grotesque venture as slavery and its aftermath? Funnier still is the vibrant Jamaican English in which the tale is told. It makes me want to visit the West Indies for myself. When I think of July (an inappropriate name for someone born in a different month altogether!) recounting the tale...I can't help thinking of my mother. I can imagine her spinning a yarn like this, telling us of some time in her past. The book is told from the perspective of July, a grandmother, retelling events of a certain time and place in her past with such humour that leaves one laughing and guffawing.

As always when I read a book, I decide whom I like best. In this book I quite liked July (both in her youth and in her old age), her son Thomas and Robert Goodwin. Thomas doesn't talk for himself but we hear about him (as we do most of the other character's) through July. Almost as a proud mother gossiping proudly about her son but not wanting to seem to be doing so.

The experiment that was slavery was quite an interesting one and it begs further objective analysis. With hindsight, one wonders whether it succeeded or failed. One thing I hadn't quite given much thought was whether the abolitionists considered how the ex-slaves were going to survive without land and without money after emancipation.  Or did they just want to "tick a box...DONE". Compensation was given the slave owners but not to the slaves.  It was assumed that one day they would be slaves and the next day they would be wage earners.  What about those that did not want to continue working the fields? Inadvertently, the ex-slaves were set up for failure from the very start. In explaining her book, Andrea writes "those Island societies would not have existed today were it not for Britain and Britain would certainly not exist as it is today were in not for those Islands".  Were the Islands simply explored so that sugar could be provided for the sweet British tooth? (I descend from a sugarcane growing people and a tea growing country). Who thought about the idea? Where did the original inhabitants of Jamaica (Xaymaca - Land of Springs) disappear to? I have often wondered, without an answer, as to whether the exploration, the cane fields and the expoitation that slavery were really worth it.

Slavery created an interesting society with new rules. First there were the field and the house slaves. Then there was also the colours between black and white. Negro, Mulatto, Sambo, Quadroon, 'tente-en-el-aire' (suspended child) and white. With of course many other shades in between. Even in the white society there were different classes...the plantation owners, the abolitionists, the preachers, the overseers and others in between.

I learnt something quite interesting about labour vs capital from the 'strikes' that happened at the Unity Plantation. Reminded me of the recent hospital workers' strike in Kenya. The solution was to get the coolies from India (another experiment) to work on the Islands instead of the freed slaves who had had enough of the cane fields.  I presuppose that the people who benefited the most were those in the transport business. There was always something or someone to transport from some place or other.

I pitied Robert Goodwin who was as good as they came. Young and Idealistic but eventually disillusioned and depressed. I guess the fundamental mistake was that, his 'goodness' was not based on the equality of races but a need to be more humane to the lower breeds. Robert Goodwin and Thomas Kinsman both suffered a crisis of faith in completely different continents....both away from home. Master Goodwin, the white man, suffered his crisis in the West Indies and Mr Kinsman, a black man, in Britain. I can quite relate to them. 

In between reading the book,  I had interesting discussions with my children this weekend. So many years after slavery and with more understanding and globalisation, my teenage daughter said to me and I quote verbatim: "Another problem that I have come to notice here (Britain) is how people have such a silly outlook of Africa. All the TV's show are slums, sickness, people dying, drought, basically all the bad. You have to be the one to tell them 'Look I do not live in a slum, we live in houses, we own cars just like you do'. It gets so frustrating sometimes having to tell the story over and over again, but if only the TV's here started showing what Africa looks like, the good and the bad, we won't have to explain ourselves so much".  My son, like many men, doesn't have too many words in his mouth. His simple response to me was "Oh that...We face it all the time but as a guy, I simply brush it off".

Their remarks summed up why I enjoyed reading Andrea Levy's - Long Song.  That no matter how "inhumane" life was on the sugar plantations - pre and post slavery - (and no matter how "difficult" life is)....there is woven in between a story of joy, laughter and survival. For that, one can really be proud.

J California Cooper - Some People, Some Other Place

The author's name drew me to this book and I started referring to my own first name as J. when I bought it back in 2006.

The story is being told from the perspective of a child yet to be born. The yet to be born child was able to narrate about the life of his future ancestors and neighbours. It ended on 'Dream Street' at a location called 'Place'.  The book sounded simplistic I struggled to nail down a core theme. It transcends different generations and different continents. Sometimes the book sounded like too much of a sermon with reference to Jehovas' Witnesses which sort of grated against the story. But thinking about it, in times of desperation, we need something or someone to hold onto.

For me, it is principally a story of women. A story of eventual triumph. For Ha and her daughters, For Eula Too, For the symbiotic Rita and Iris friendship, For Earle, her painting and her man...Even the 'bad' Lona could go back to school. It is just as well that I finished re-reading the Book on March 8th 2012 - The UN international women's day.

I liked Eula Too (people marvelled at her strange name)...Her earlier life was hard but even she had had her dreams...delinked from her mothers and also from Elizabeth Fontzl. In some way, I felt that my life and hers were similar....Thinking that life was only about helping people with handouts. That is a  poor substitute for 'love' as her sister told her.  Reminds me of when my sister told me '....J, you are not God...to solve everybody's problems'.  My sister's view was that only God was able to lift his people from the Sisyphus like struggles that made living in this world a misery. My best character is Earle...Eula Too's younger sister. She didn't have a very prominent role in the book and she was what one would call 'a supportive character' - the voice of my conscience. My worst character was Jewel...the very ungrateful child. The character I pitied the most was Elizabeth Fonzl...Many of us end like her...with nothing to hold on to despite what we think are apparent successes...Afraid to be alone.

The book is so full of misery, aloneness, loneliness, heartbreak, sadness, unmet targets and broken dreams among its very  many characters, whether it be Eula, Eula Lee, Iowna,  Beth Fontzl, Eula Too, Burnett, Maureen, Rita, Ha, Henry Lee, Lona, Mrs Green, Mr and Mrs Heavy, Jewel.....But there are also those who eventually survive. Dream Street sort of reminds me of Miguel Street....Set at another time and place. About the lives of different people on a street all alone in their own way.  Is that really the way of life?

Family is strange and the same despite being separated by continents and generations. Mr Burnett mused that his family loved him in equal measure to the money he had; Rita's sister loved Rita's money that bought the house she lived in but wouldn't allow her in the house when she eventually needed it because she sold her body to earn the money that bought that house; Elizabeth Fontzl's mum didn't seem to love her yet Elizabeth wanted that love so badly. Eulalee's dreams were held down by her many children who spawned off her. Ha's father (back in China) hadn't thought much of her as she could not work the fields - a boy child would have been better - and eventually sold her for a bag of beans. Henry Lee didn't care for her daughters. Henry Lee's cousins didn't think much of him. Lona didn't like her son Homer and almost ran over him with her car.

Bon Fete de Femme!!! Festa della Donna!!!

The New York Times - Donald M. Payne

The obituary in the NYT on the late Donald Payne got me a-thinking about the difference between Adjectives and Nouns. I have an interest in obituaries because through them I get to know people I wouldn't have otherwise known. I am impressed by the variety of people featured by the New York Times columnists. However what intrigues me most are the comments that people post online against some of the columns.  This week Mr Donald Payne who passed on at 77 caught my interest. Now you may ask, why this interested me. The title initially read something along the lines: "Donald Payne, the First Black Elected to Congress From New Jersey, Dies at 77".
 

It is not his achievements which drew me to muse about him but the ire by readers on the utilisation of the word "black" as a noun as opposed to an adjective in the initial posting. This drew fiery comments from some indignant readers and some interesting discussions. Before reading the comments, I had noted with amusement that the New York Times juxtaposed Black with Italian-Americans.  I wondered silently, whether Italian-Americans has a "short cut" or why the writer chose not to use the longer form for "BLACKS" for equity's sake. Apparently the title was updated in the subsequent online versions to use the word "BLACK" as an adjective and not a noun! What would the NYT refer to Henry Thierry as? Is he 'French', 'Black French', or 'Black' or mixed? How would they refer to Phillip Leakey? Is he 'White Kenyan', 'Kenyan' or 'White'?
 

It has always puzzled me why Americans are fixated with race. Black-Americans, African-Americans, Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans, Caucasian-Americans, Latin-Americans... Do we have English-Americans , German-Americans, French-Americans,  Indian-Americans, European-Americans etc. After all, it appears that apart from the 'Native' Americans, everybody migrated from someplace else and thus it would only be fair in such an egalitarian society to then describe all people (and not just some) by where their ancestors came from. And which ancestor would be chosen if two sets of ancestors came from two different places?
 

Which brings me to some confusion I have had over the years. Apparently African-American  is now the politically correct term referring to citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub Saharan Africa. It isn't clear to me whether this excludes the peoples from Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Libya and Mauritania who may be citizens or resident in the US but may or may not have a black hue since these nations are 'North of the Sahara'. What would one call a South African 'Boer' with American Citizenship? Would they be African-American? After all they are African....born under the African skies. 
 

During the American Election, I argued that Obama was as much Black American as he was Caucasian American. I didn't understand why he had to be dumped in either set actually. In the country I come from, we would solve this 'confusion' by referring in street speak to him as "point five" (0.5) meaning Half/Half.  However sometimes the real mix is not always so neat. They are often 0.75/0.25 or some other percentage. The Southern Africans have tried to resolve this problem by referring to children of mixed races as 'coloured'.  Apparently in the United Kingdom anybody 'coloured' is one who is not 'white. Now this also has its own issues. My understanding is that both Black and White are colours and referring to people of mix race as coloured is a misnomer.  I have also heard a group of Americans calling themselves 'People of Colour' which implies that others are 'People of no Colour'.

 

 

I recently asked a fellow the usual Kenyan question "where are you from?". He answered that he was  Half/Half.....To my puzzled looks he added, Half Kenyan/Half Ugandan. Of course we burst into laughter because he knew that for him to qualify to be Half/Half...the colour of his skin would really have to be of a totally different hue.
 

A friend attended a 'black' meeting in the USA and noticed that some of the participants were 'white'. Someone explained to her that these 'white' people had some 'black' in them. It didn't make sense to her because she was unable to differentiate them from from 'pure' white folks in the streets.
 

This brings me to the use of  the word "mzungu".  It appears that the origin of this term was to refer to the white people  (initially Portuguese explorers, I suppose) who had a penchant for exploration. Or was it the British trying to find the source of the Nile? Anyway, to the natives, these people appeared to be wandering from their lands to other lands without a purpose. For some strange reason the term wasn't used to refer to the Omani Arabs who came to the East African Coast in their dhows. Perhaps the Bantu Tribes didn't think the Omani Arabs were aimless in their wanderings.  That they were more focused and had a purpose! History says the Omani Arabs were looking for the spice route.  The 'aimless wandering' may be deemed a  misnomer as every migration has a purpose be it:- Spices, Gold, Ivory, Source of Nile, Slaves, Timber, Oil, Plantations, Space, fleeing war, Looking for space...
 

In hotels, the word 'mzungu' often refers to a white tourist, despite the fact that tourists come in all hues.   I once asked a waiter, since I was a-touring,  whether I would qualify for a 'mzungu' and we laughed at the banal suggestion.  Would an African American be referred to as a 'mzungu' if they came in as a tourist? Would we refer to Barack Obama as a 'Mzungu' or a 'point five' if he came a-visiting? Would a child of British Settlers in Kenya be a 'Mzungu' in the true meaning of the word since they are settled and not 'wandering aimlessly'?  In Swahili, the word 'Watalii' often refers to Tourists. Watalii appeared to derive from the Italians whether tourists or not and it would be questionable to dump all tourists under the 'Watalii' banner since most are not Italians. 'Wageni' - 'Visitors' may be the more appropriate term since anybody can fit the description...Italian or not, aimless wanderer or focused person....
 

Anyway.....I must say that trying to group people by the colour of their skin or ancestry or where they are apparently from (they may be from nowhere) is a slippery slope. Really! As Michael Jackson famously sang '....Neither black nor white'.