Because of this blogger's cable company's dispute with several of Kenya's broadcasters, his access to Sunday Live is non-existent. We will not dwell on the soul-numbing pining for Julie Gichuru that this blogger is experiencing. Thankfully, Royal Media acts with alacrity to upload its interviews on its website. Watching the Cabinet Secretary for East African Affairs, Commerce and Tourism, one is struck by the remarkable naivete the Cabinet Secretary displays.
In her management of the tourism sector, she is either clueless or still living in fear of public speaking. She makes a number of startling statements that betray her dearth of understanding of the tourist-fuelled economy. Kenya has been hit badly over the past three months by terrorist attacks. Dozens of Kenyans have been murdered and maimed. Western governments have advised their nationals not to visit Kenya unless they have to. In recent days, the United Kingdom have began evacuating their nationals from Kenya's coastal hotels, the United Nations Office in Nairobi is implementing a security plan to keep its officers safe and the United States government is bringing in reinforcements of its famed Marines to patrol the territory around its embassy in the overly militarised Gigiri district. All that the Cabinet Secretary has to offer the tourism sector is "Tembea Kenya", a plan to get domestic tourists to spend money in Kenyan hotels and tourism-related destinations and activities.
Kenyans are not blind nor are they morons. It is important that the Cabinet Secretary realised this. Many are proud to be Kenyans and they are very sensitive to being treated with discourtesy or disrespect. many Kenyans will grin and bear it when they are treated like shit by officers of their own government; after all, he who fights the government tends to get the worse of it. But Kenyans will not pay good money to be treated with disrespect by hoteliers, park wardens, car hire companies, airlines or shop attendants. This, for the majority of domestic tourists, is the sum total of their tourism experience in Kenya.
If the Cabinet Secretary believes this to be hyperbole, she should travel incognito and on a budget. If a domestic airline has the temerity to push around people in wheel chairs and make their travel experience hell, she'll discover that it is much worse for the Kenyan who cannot afford an air ticket, but has to make do with the fleets of "coaches" that ply the Nairobi-Mombasa route. When that Kenyan eventually makes it to Mombasa, or if he spends a bit more, Malindi, and takes another bus or matatu to his lodgings of choice, he will be subjected to greater security scrutiny than the pensioner mzungu who made the same journey as he did. When he walks into the lobby of the lodgings, it will be five minutes before any member of staff judders into action in his direction. It is more likely that that member of staff will demand to know what the Kenyan wants, while his colleagues solicitously fetch the mzungu's bag and take him through the newly elaborate check-in procedures at Kenya's coastal lodgings.
When the Kenyan is finally checked in, has had a shower and a rest and decides to do a bit of shopping, shop staff and curio vendors will treat his shillings with disdain, serving him shingo upande, reluctantly. Many Kenyans are willing to take up the Ministry's invitation and Tembea Kenya, but they will not do it if their tourism experience is going to be punctuated by a series of little humiliations at their expense. Samuel Kivuitu, the late chairman of the Electoral Commission of Kenya, in a different context, said it best in 2002: We may be a small people, but we will not be pushed around by anybody.
Finally, unless the Cabinet Secretary has been living in a bubble, she will no doubt have noticed that all the victims of the bombers and shooters have been Kenyans. Neither Britons, Australians, Frenchmen, Germans nor Americans have faced an al Shabaab bomber or gunman since Kenya became the target of that perfidious bunch. What makes the Cabinet Secretary think that Kenyans are going to place themselves in harms way so that they can keep Kenya's rude hotels in business now that their boon friends are abandoning Kenya for other destinations? We are not designed to take bullets for people who don't even like us. We are not going to spend money so that we can get shot at or bombed. No thank you very much.
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