Sheer stupidity

I thought I was done. Evidently I wasn't.

There something wimp-ish about this county government. They have a word for it in California. It's not a particularly nice one, but it sums up this county's government rather tetchily. When it comes to its particular forms of failure, this county fails particularly spectacularly at being a government. Even in the middle of an Aladwa, Majiwa, Wathika or Magic Mike mayorship, this city recognised that it lived or died by how well the CBD treated people.

This county government simply doesn't get it. I don't know if Aladwa et al had a cavalcade that drove them, sirens blaring, bodyguards gun-toting, from place to place in the busy service of the government, but I do know that I do not remember them being this stupidly tone deaf about things that make a CBD a CBD.

I don't know what bargain this county government has struck with the 2 watts in the Ministry of Interior, but the fact that pedestrians are becoming quite adept at dodging nduthis, recklessly driven taxicabs and even more recklessly hauled crates of Coca-cola because pavements have become "security zones" leads me to conclude that the bargain must be that the county government will lower its pants and bend over, and the Interior Ministry will decide whether or not to use KY jelly. It stinks, this arrangement, because it privileges the protection gates and fences over the safety of people who contribute to the vibrancy of this city.

The big brains over at City Hall have lost my respect and my vote. Pretty soon they will lose my desire to help by paying my rates. Machakos may not be Valhalla, but it is a damn sight better for trying to sort out the little people first. Nairobi just bullies and bullies and bullies, and it does so in concert with the jackbooted 2 watts in Harambee House.  No wonder even its head spends more time overseas or in Luo Nyanza; who would want to look over a catastrophic failure of leadership like his? Who?

Have you been to Nakuru lately? It isn't Seattle, but that place is coming up and coming up fast. But the places that intellectuals in charge (Machakos is not an anomaly; anyone who thinks he is an intellectual needs a very big dictionary) have turned out to be shit. Some intellectual fought for a fifty million shilling "city" gate. Fifty million! I know we have a tendency towards the grandiose, but that is utterly stupid. It pales in significance, though, to another tower of intellect who spent a hundred thousand apiece on mudwalled houses that he didn't even have the courtesy to have whitewashed when he went to "officially" inaugurate them.

But my guy can count among his signature accomplishments the gate he "unveiled" at the KICC a few days before the Barack arrived. How can anyone so smart makes such stupid unforced errors? And have you seen that thing? It is one of the ugliest things you will ever encounter. It feels as if the devil and Omar El Bashir decided to commission Robert Mugabe to build something for the late Mobutu Sese-Seko. That thing is hideous. And there are official photos of my guy inaugurating this. I hope those photos follow him to his grave.

I have given up on him ever sorting out the garbage that never quite seems to get collected. I have given up on him ever sorting out the scofflaws of the matatu "industry." I have given up that he will ever mark our roads properly. I don't think he has a clue about what to do with the traffic lights. But, Lord forguive me, this man has been a frequent visitor to world capitals. Even the two-bit third world ones have one thing in common: you don't, ever, force pedestrians onto busy roads. Ever. Not even to keep a government fence or gate safe. That is just sheer stupidity. But he has. What did we do to our gods to deserve him?