Is it still 1969?

Way back when - 1969, actually - when Mzee essentially made the party the government and the government the party, Kenya was yet to discover oil, gas or areas of seismic activity that could be used to generate geothermal power. Its problems then as today were the bickering between politicians that sometimes escalated to violent confrontations in our villages. Oh, yeah, and the fact that Kenyan voters didn't really elect men who would look out for the people's interests.

This isn't really surprising. Few Kenyans had the sophistication of Kenyans who had been part and parcel of the trade union movement or the Legislative Council or the Mau Mau movement. Few Kenyans were lettered enough to read about political ideas of liberal democracy, one man/one vote, or the proper place or a representative government in the management of the affairs of men. Six years into post-Independence rule, "disease, ignorance and poverty" remained harsh facts of life. In northern Kenya, that bit the British christened the Northern Frontier District, that stretches from Mandera in the north east to Turkana in the north Rift, is stuck in 1969 - poverty, ignorance and disease stalk the land like colossi.

Mt Elgon, West Pokot, Turkana, Baringo, Kapedo, Garissa, Majir, Mandera, Moyale, Marsabit: these are places that the government once classified as "hardship" and if a civil servant was posted there, it was almost certainly done as punishment. That has not changed. The National Police Service still posts officers to these frontier as a punishment - usually for not kow-towing to some superior officer. These, too, are places where Kenyans die, as the acting head of the National Disaster Managment Unit alluded, like cockroaches: unmourned and, usually, unnoticed.

But this is not 1969. Kenya has become a hot destination for oil and gas prospectors. "Hardship" areas suddenly have value. The places have value; the people, stuck in the 1969 dystopia of ignorance, disease and poverty, not so much. Unlike the men they elect to "speak for them in Nairobi" these people are still waiting for the Government of Kenya to "come". It is why they celebrate every son or daughter who survives childhood, excels at school, gains a degree and gets a job -  a job with the government. It is why when a mobile clinic is delivered by Kenya's First Lady there is great excitement and a massive spread in Kenya's tabloids. It is why when fifty people are butchered the nation swiftly moves on after a few hours. And it is why the Cabinet Secretary for Education and his counterpart for the Interior are not overly panicked that tens of thousands of children will not resume school because bandits have made that all but impossible.

Kenya's government is an organic being. It is an artificial animal. We have no emotional attachment to it. We have no emotional attachment to its symbols or power or institutions of authority. We do not care if it succeeds or fails; it isn't ours, after all. It belongs to that professional class that owns it, runs it, makes decisions for it. We are spectators in this game. Like the deranged ones who commit murder or suicide over an English Premier League game, some of us will murder for this animal; but even then, deep down, we know that it isn't something that we want for ourselves. We just don't want anyone else to get it. That is how fifty people get murdered by "cattle rustlers". That is how one hundred and forty seven people get murdered by terrorists. That is how it is.