Optimism.

Kenya is optimistic, isn't it, and Kenyans are the eternal optimists. If you have had the ill fortune of witnessing Uncle Kidero's government at work, you will have noticed that some roads are getting the City Hall Heimlich while Mumias South Road continues to fall apart. Uncle Kidero's optimism is to be seen with his pavements policy; in his fevered mind is the fervent hope that grass will grow in four days. In the middle of a winter. So that Obama can be impressed. By grass.

Kenyans live in eternal hope that their politicians will stop treating them like idiots while Kenya's politicians live in eternal hope that Kenyans will continue to be docile, pliable and gullible, letting long cons and swindles to pass. If Uncle Kidero is a keen Twitterati, he will have noticed that there are very few Kenyans, very few Nairobians, very few anyone really, who isn't taking the piss out of his attempts to spruce up the Green City in the Sun.

We are neither fools nor blind. It is time that Uncle Kidero and his people, and all the rest of them realised this. Not all of us might have PhDs or "global" entrepreneurship experience, but we know when we are getting conned. We may not be frothing at the mouths, pitchforks and flaming torches to hand, baying for the City Fathers' blood, but be under no illusion that we have accepted the sorry state of municipal affairs we have been compelled to suffer under this government. We have chosen to bide our time; at least I have, I don't know about you.

The internet is not the infallible fount of knowledge, but it has enough information that helps us to see whether or not we are the victims of perfidy. The City Fathers' may have kept a very tight lid on how much they are spending to plant weeds along Uhuru Highway and how much they are spending to temporarily cover potholes in the CBD, but in the fullness of time, when they think that they have swaggered off into the sunset in victory, the truth will come out. It is the Information Age and slowly but surely we are developing a knack for empowering ourselves with the freely available information.

Kenya's Big People are deaf and blind; they will not hear what is being said about their perfidy and they will not see the suffering their perfidy wroughts on innocent Kenyans. They are interested in "development" and "networking"; they are not interested in whether the potholes their contractors have left behind will consume ever more billions to fill in afterwards, setting back their much-vaunted "development." Let Obama come. But let us not pretend that what is happening in the City is something to be proud of or something to praise the City fathers for.