This week, the state's most significant
personality arrived in Western Kenya. He had come to the land of Mulembe to
deliver development goodies. In a typically Kenyan way. For some reason, this
most respected state personality chose to package the development in a most
peculiar fashion. The promise of roads and stadia and factories and things, needed to be embroidered in an entertaining package of insults hurled, epithets
exchanged, and body-shaming traded.
Some say that he went so low; that going on
rampage against people he has worked with and knows more than we do, he had
descended to the very doldrums of dark arts that characterize our political
duels. I do not agree with those who think like that. In any case, he was not
going anywhere, even low. In some cases, it is impossible for an artist to go
so low in entertaining his audience.
While in some places development narrative is
delivered in terms of billions and hundreds of millions, in Western Kenya, it
was delivered in descriptions of body parts. We now know who has a big head,
swollen stomach, misshapen body parts and oblong head. We even know who slept
with who; who murdered who, and who dumped dead bodies in River Yala – apparently
all under watch of very senior people – and we also know who they were.
There goes the anatomy of development in the
region. First, it comes ferried in hordes of tax-funded motorcades and
helicopters. All the way from Nairobi. It comes in a form accompanied by
descriptions of physical deformities of other people. In the big, oblong and
misshapen heads of other leaders. While in some places development goes
narrated in kilometres of bitumen roads, dams, factories and things, here, the
size and shape of heads of political opponents precedes the project.
Again, development travelled to Western
Kenya with rumours, gossip and innuendo. The chief state personality proved
that we can all get so low in handing out low-level tabloid rumours, gossip and
uppercuts of insults and other epithets.
The senior most state personality was perhaps
not told why the schools in Western Kenya are so severely understaffed, nor
have fewer classrooms compared to schools in other places. Or maybe he was more
concerned with the realisation that one of his political opponents did not have
a house. Oh, sorry, that he was living in a borrowed house. And that that was
not all: this political opponent, a joker he said, was also staying with a
borrowed wife. That was a lot of content from Nairobi, enough to entertain and
shock us for a lifetime.
Our executive almost bragged that he is
not fat like his opponents. This suggested that he has grown thin trying to
develop the Western region of the country. It show that the hard work of
uplifting the level of the region had made him to un-fat, the cut down size.
Seeing that his opponents were not enjoying the luxury of such hard work in
taking Busia, Bungoma, Trans Nzoia and Kakamega right into Singapore, he
advised them to go to the gym and cut down the size of their bellies, heads,
and streamline the shape of heads.
He is sure that if they go to the gym,
choose the treadmill, and ran on it with the speed with rumour mill was running
and delivering juicy news to Western Kenya. He is sure the gym will improve
their bodies. With the improvement, the state of Butula-Nambale-Adungosi road -
the only dusty or muddy road in a pre-Singapore Kenya that connects three major
sub counties.
In dishing out development to my county,
the president was also generous with information. He said that he knows many
things: that while he occupied the second highest office, one of his opponents,
a minister for interior, killed and dumped innocent people in River Yala! That
while he sat in the second highest seat, he was aware that another of his
opponents made a young girl pregnant and later killed her. The president did
not initiate any proceedings to make these people pay for these heinous
misdeeds. He packaged them and delivered to an audience waiting to understand
just why Mumias Sugar and Webuye Panpaper Mills have never fully returned from
admittance in hospital.
Some people think that having a great
leader who arrives in your backyard loaded with rumours of his opponents'
sleeping talents, or escapades with women, or dossiers of his so-called enemies
murder credentials, is a bad thing. It is not. Some reckon that for a president
to arrive and dish out insults and descriptions of people's bodies, is as low
as the lowest-rated gutter newspaper, or online tabloid. It is not. You see,
having alighted from the Vision 2030 train and boarded a ship to Singapore, we
shall need entrainment along the way as we sail to our new Utopia. What better
person to lead the entertainment squadron than the president himself? Bill must
surely fit the bill, seeing how easily he blends a crude sense of humour, dark
comedy, bitterness, good English and some ordinary Kiswahili punchlines to
produce art of a most tragicomic aspect.
In all of these, the silver lining
exists. Once the Busia Stadium is complete, we shall invite the fighting
bigwigs to a fistfight with each other in it. For there will be more dignity in
that, than there is in the foulmouthed tirade, and body shaming that we saw
being traded.
Robert Wesonga is a freethinker
who writes his own things
Amazing
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