Will lightning strike?

Were you surprised that the Government of Nairobi City County did not make it to the list of best-performing counties? I was not. This morning, navigating the horrendous mud-filled "tarmac" roads of Eastleigh and Pumwani, I was resigned to the mud and the invisible potholes that reminded me that I need to pay a visit to Robs Magic once again. What I hadn't seen before was the spectacular mounds of rubbish outside what are labelled Pumwani Doctors' Flats.

Dr Kidero, the Governor of Nairobi City, has spent a lot of money promoting the county government's investment in Nairobi's largest maternity hospital. He has even posed for photographs with beaming new mothers and self-satisfied midwives when making one of his numerous whistle-stop tours of the hospital. Unless Dr Kidero is blind, unless his county government officials who arranged the photo-ops are blind, unless the doctors, midwives and nurses of the hospital are blind - in other words, unless an outbreak of blindness strikes every official involved when there is a gubernatorial photo-op - I don't see how that mound of garbage is still there, how that unused waste transfer station is still there, and how lorries with unknown cargoes from unknown places can still kick up the dust or churn the mud outside the walls of the hospital.

I have an idea, though, of why Dr Kidero and his government are stricken with blindness every time they make their way to the facility at which 30% of Nairobi is born. Dr Kidero and his government, including the departments or officers charged with political messaging, don't really care whether the county government is doing a good job; they only care whether they seem to be doing a good job. I can't say that I blame them - yes I can - but the instinct to put lipstick on a pig by any government, national or not, is strong and the more incompetent a government, the greater the instinct. Dr Kidero's government seems powerless to override this instinct. Pumwani Maternity Hospital and its garbage are proof that style and substance are yet to be consummated in the Government of Nairobi City County.

These rains have made it starkly clear that our governor and his government do not really know what they are supposed to do or when they are supposed to do it. The rains have demonstrated that the rates honest Nairobians pay disappear in the mysterious maw that are the county's accounts. How is it that even with the forewarning from last year's rains drains were not unblocked and sewers unclogged? How is it that for the mysterious sums paid under a mysterious tender to the equally mysterious Creative Consolidated, public sanitation is notable because it makes things worse, not better.

I have no doubt that neither Dr Kidero nor his government will learn the proper lessons from that poll. I have no doubt that all the talk about making Pumwani Maternity Hospital the premier maternity hospital in Kenya is happy talk best listened to by gullible children. I have absolutely no doubt that the style-over-substance instincts of this county government will be redoubled and not tamped down. Without a doubt, come the next rains, Pumwani Maternity Hospital will be besieged with garbage, mysterious lorries, blocked drains, clogged sewers and mysterious lorries carrying mysterious cargoes from mysterious towns. Or maybe lightning will strike and things will take on a different hue.