One day my caesar salad will murder me

One day my caesar salad will murder me. It won't really matter where it is served, my caesar salad will enter into a criminal enterprise with unknown parties and murder me to death. At least that is what boffins in Nairobi are suggesting. One day soon, when I'm feeling all health-food-conscious and shit, I will order a caesar salad at Java or the Kempinski or the Eka or one of those fancy schmancy places that serve rib-eye and the caesar salad will be the tail end of a plot to murder me in cold blood because some "farmer" I don't know, an "agro-vet" I've never visited, a kanjo askari I will never meet will have conspired to let the salad part of the caesar be grown in circumstances that will see me snuffling shown dangerous levels of toxins like calcium carbide, hydrogen peroxide, polychlorinated biphenyl-laden transformer oil, formalin and lead.

This one sounds particularly murderous: polychlorinated biphenyl-laden transformer oil. All this because someone, Uncle Kidero really, is asleep at the wheel. Or he seems to be asleep at the wheel. Public health - the prevention of polychlorinated biphenyl-laden transformer oil from becoming the murder weapon of choice for my caesar salad - is his government's job. Not Uhuru Kenyatta's. By all accounts, his government simply doesn't get it, and so markets have become incubators of some really scary shit -  polychlorinated biphenyl-laden transformer oil!

No one in the food supply chain of this fair city is blameless. No, not even the sainted Mama Mbogas. It boils down to simple things like clean water supplies and safety inspections that actually enhance safety and not just boost safety inspectors' bank balances. Many saintly Mama Mbogas would prefer not to use Ruai's sewage supply to grow the sukuma wiki, nyanya or pilipili hoho that ends up on my plate, every now and then, but the wholly owned company of City Hall called the Nairobi Water and Sewerage Company operates like most bad monoploies do: shit service at exorbitant prices. So some of the Mama Mbogas' sukuma wiki we haggle over in the evening - actually a significant amount of it - is covered in calcium carbide, hydrogen peroxide, polychlorinated biphenyl-laden transformer oil, formalin or lead, or something much, much worse. At the end of the day, even Mama Mbogas understand the basic rules of economics and appreciate the immutable law of profitability.

What should scare the "emerging" middle classes is that even up-market "farmers'" markets, where "organic" food features prominently, contamination is almost certain because Uncle Kidero's serikali can't and won't be bothered to do its job halfway decently. There are few things that matter in this fair city: solid waste management; reliable water and sewage services; a good public health system; effective and efficient public transport; and a safe food supply chain. Uncle Kidero's serikali gets good marks for public healthcare; everything else, it gets a failing grade. This is not the rocket science that my brother George actually does. (Okay, not rocket science, but a tad more complex than what Uncle Kidero's serikali has to contend with.)

For three years now we have watched as prmises are broken by our city's government. Not even the Sonko Rescue Team galvanised our city's government to improve services. Instead, now we are informed that officers of that city government's inspectorate have been murdering traders! Those who voted for the Governor must now be prepared to admit to themselves that he has been an utter failure. The calcium carbide, hydrogen peroxide, polychlorinated biphenyl-laden transformer oil, formalin and lead in our food supply chain are an indictment of the Governor's leadership of this fair city. If he reacts to this tirade by blaming farmers, brokers, supermarkets, middlemen, or the Ministry of Health, he will have confirmed that he really doesn't understand what being Governor actually entails.