What a waste

Allow me, good people, to bring up once again the utter uselessness of the Government of Nairobi City County. I don't know what the eggheads in that government have against me and members of the walking public, but the hostility is getting out of hand. Now the city fathers are afraid that the walking masses will do something bad to pavements - those ones, it seems, have been outlawed for the duration of the World Trade Organisation's conference. If you have been on Taifa Road this morning, the only place that is left for you to walk on is the road. The police don't want you anywhere near their steel fence; Uncle Kidero doesn't want you anywhere near the pavement.

But that is neither here nor there. I am prepared to live with serikali idiocy, but only if that idiocy isn't idiocy for idiocy's sake. Do you remember that building that collapsed in Nyama Kima (the junction of River Road and Ronald Ngala Street)? That building now stands tall and proud. But that stretch of road between Tom Mboya Street and that Nyama Kima building is, more or less, a permanent car park for Thika Road-bound buses. The other side of Ronald Ngala Street between Uyoma Street and Tom Mboya Street is a parking for Umoinner Sacco, the most ill-mannered, reckless and ill-tempered Sacco in Nairobi.

Mr Kidero's city will playhost to thousands of delegates to the WTO conference; another feather in his cap after the visits by the President of the United States and the Pope. He seems to have no idea about what to do with all these fancy-shmancy visitors. Public transport is still organised like a mafia racket. Traffic is run as if by toddlers with bumper cars. Drainage? Don't be stupid. The Central Business District, Westlands, bits of Kiambu Road, bits of Argwings Kodhek Road and that vast hinterland known as Karen are okay, as far as you can tell, but the rest of the city is one giant rubbish tip. He kept Obama and the Pontiff from seeing the true state of his city; he will not succeed with the WTO conference-circuit adventurous set to camp out in Nairobi till the 22nd looking for he "authentic" Nairobi. They will all go back home thinking that Nairobi is one giant slum that has a few houses and offices for the rich.

Why has this county government failed so spectacularly to sort out its solid waste problem, when less high-powered teams dealt with it? It is like all that intellectual firepower is a camouflage, gods know for what. What a complete waste. At some point we have to ask whether we want technocrats anywhere near our matatus or our garbage, because the ones we have seem to have turned up their noses at the sight of the great unwashed and decided to lest us stew in our own fecal matter. They are more comfortable supping with presidents, popes and foreigners than in governing like we had elected them to do. What a waste.