Lamu IDPs bear the brunt for a forgotten conflict tearing their lives apart

Tags

Africa, Society, Terrorism, Violence

 

As the month of August approached and the political noise from the rest of the country rose to a crescendo, an ongoing conflict in the Southern Coast of Kenya, East Africa’s largest economy continued unabated.

Here, party manifestos, campaign posters, placards, T-shirts have no place in the collective psyches of the residents. Their days are punctuated by more urgent thoughts. The men think about more concrete things.

“I worry about where my family will sleep tonight. Where I will get food and when I will go back home,” Johnson Mketta said. He is among the hundreds of Nyongoro residents that have run away from their homes to a camp at Katsakakairu primary school grounds.

“We don’t know what to do anymore. We feel lost,” he said.

For close to five years now, an insurgency in this Kenya’s coastal region has gone on almost silently. More than twice, strangers have walked into homes. Called out the names of the men inside. Pulled them out. Tied their hands behind their backs. Lay them down on the brown soil.

Soil that they have cultivated over years to feed their families and fatten their animals. Soil that they have turned to mud and put up the walls that make their houses. Soil that, eventually seeped up blood as it came from their slit throats as they bled to death.

“Sijui sisi tulimkosea nani, kila siku ni hatari tu,” Mketa says. “hatuwezi panga chochote. Maisha yetu yote yamepanguliwa.”

An on-off curfew since 2014 has not helped. The deployment of contingents of the military, the police and the General Service Unit has done little to deter terrorists who strike, then melt away into the surrounding areas. It seems, at least for now, that the security forces are losing the war against the insurgents.

And it is people like Mketa who are bearing the brunt of it all.

A month ago, Katsakakiaru primary school used to have a playing ground. The thinning grass at the centre of field perhaps an indicator of the amount of joy time off class and a kickabout of football brought to the students of that school.

Now white tarpaulin tents occupy that space, their roofs competing for space with the cross bar of the goal posts on either end of the football field. Under the tarpaulin stand frail stick frames bending to the maximum from the weight of the tarpaulin.

The shelters are closely packed together, arranged in neat rows with narrow corridors between them. Children have other children on their backs. Privacy is a distant memory. There are no bathrooms. There are no toilets. The pygmy bushes nearby offer the only cover for a call of nature.

“When it rains, all our dirty secrets are washed back to where the shelters are,” Mketta says.

The fathers are away to the nearby town of Nyongoro and Witu looking for menial jobs to do. The mothers are lighting fires out of the hope that the husbands will come back home with the day’s supper.

The children are lost in their own little world oblivious of the worries and fears their parents fight each night, eagerly waiting for the day to break but silently fearing that the sun might bring with it some more bad news of gruesome murders which always seems to be just around the corner.

 

 

A section of the IDP camp at katsaka Kairu. Dozens have fled their homes over recent attacks attributed to the Al Shabaab militia. Dark nights and hungry days fill the lives of those living under the white tarpaulin tents. PHOTO/ Daniel Wesangula

 

 

Days to the election, masked men raided Mketta’s village in the still of the night. When they left, six of his friends lay dead. Throats slit open.

“That is why we left our homes to this place,” he says. “We do not know whether we will ever go back home.”

On August 2nd, as both Jubillee and Nasa were preparing for their final election campaigns, three people were killed after the militants attacked a passenger bus and a car at Nyongoro area in Witu, Lamu County.

The incident happened on Lamu- Garsen highway, police said. Four other people were left with serious bullet wounds. The deceased were in a Toyota Rav4 vehicle which was attacked and burnt by the militants. The bus was on its way from Mombasa to Kipini at about 3.30pm when the incident happened.

Driving on the main Garsen- Mokowe road from either direction is a ride disrupted by not only the roughness of the road on some stretches, but the numerous police check-points.

The rumbling police lorries, speeding landcruisers and occasional military armoured vehicles provide a blanket feeling of security for a traveller. But for many residents, it is a representation of the state attempt to pacify an area that seems keen to become the country’s problem child.

“We keep asking ourselves why these attacks continued almost unabated while we have all these security men here? Why is it so difficult to keep our people safe,” Kitsao Ndokolani says.

On election eve, a main power transmission line was hit by the insurgents plunging almost the entire county into darkness and panic.

Kistao is a son of Nyongoro. He was there in 2014 when Al Shabab ran havoc in neighbouring areas and went on a blood thirsty spree on a dark night that left almost 60 people dead. Before that, they had visited their terror on Mpeketoni town. Successive attacks led to more deaths.

The more deaths led to the deployment of more security personnel to the county who have never left and to some, continue to chase after their own shadows.

“We have had curfews. We have had bans on road transportation. Our lives have ground to a halt. Our lives are becoming worse, not better.”

Schools have been closed, with the education of hundreds of children in an area whose education standards are lagging behind the national average put on hold.

“We are at a bad place,” Mketta says.

Katsakakairu means ‘black forest’ in the local Giriama dialect. And as the sun dips behind the white tarpaulin roofs at the IDP camp of the school, the women still tend to their fires. This time though, a few of them have places sufurias with water on the three stoned fire places. Sparks escape the embers before entirely being swallowed whole by the dark sky.

The men start walking into the camp one by one. Some with some meat, others with some bread, other with nothing. All of them however, carrying with them the hope for a return to a normalcy that seems distant. A past that Nyongoro residents continue to long for.

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The church is always late, always.

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Personalities, Religion, Society

Kenya’s political space is currently dominated by acrimonious exchanges between the Government and Opposition, on the disbandment or reconstitution of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC). In this push and pull, the Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (CORD) has invoked its constitutional right to picket, a mode of non-violence protest made popular by civil society as well as the church in the early 90s that led eventually to the collapse of the Kanu regime.

Just like during Kenya’s second administration, the protests have been met by sheer force from the authorities. Reverend Timothy Njoya knows such force. In 1997, Rev Njoya, a Presbyterian minister and political activist, was accosted and mercilessly battered by a plain clothes policeman in Nairobi during an anti-government protest. At least eight people, including a police officer, were killed during the emerging fracas. But now, the man whose public life cuts across both church and civil society, says CORD’s current protests are self-seeking and that the church, once the custodian of all that was good in society, a voice for the voiceless and defender of public interest has, yet again, come to the table a little too late.

“The church is always two years behind Kenyans. Whatever they are saying now, they ought to have said two years ago,” Rev Njoya says of the church. “They opposed the Constitution and now they are talking about upholding it. It is not that they are not sharp, they just need more sharpening.” Speaking to The Standard on Sunday from his office in Nairobi, Njoya criticised the motivation behind CORD’s spirited effort to ouster the IEBC. Fight for power “We were giving our lives for a cause. That cause was to get a Constitution that would end the one party system that was there. What cause are they advocating for now,” Njoya asks.

He says that the Opposition is trading people’s lives for power. “They are telling people that if they do not get what they want we will have violence. In essence, they are telling us that if they do not get what they want, what happened in 2007 will happen again.” He says, in principal that he is not against the Opposition demos. “I have no condemnation for them. The need to fight for power but they need to do so on a level playing field… not by including innocent Kenyans who are not involved in their power plays,” Njoya says. The 75-year–old has been thrice defrocked by the church over his stances on an array of issues.

He has however been readmitted back into his congregation. “It is not about who goes. It is about the system. I went through this in 1992 and 1997 with Raila’s father and the Opposition at the time, which thought its sole reason for existence, was to get Moi out. I told them the question was not about Moi going… it was about having a system in place that will ensure a level playing field for all those involved,” he says. “That is what CORD should be asking for. Not for the removal of office holders.”

A section of lawmakers have asked the President to disband IEBC with disregard to what the Constitution says, citing previous occasions where the president has been seen to act in disregard of the Constitution. Njoya says two wrongs cannot make a right. “The argument of whether he has broken the law previously does not hold any water. It is like telling someone to cut off your right leg because he previously cut off your left one,” Njoya says.

Despite his apparent disapproval of the manner in which CORD is conducting its protests, he agrees with the opposition on one thing. The brutality meted upon the protestors was uncalled for. “A parent should not be brutal to his child. They should let the Opposition hold peaceful rallies and go home. It is in no one’s place to beat another,” he says. “This shows the levels of intolerance within the State too.”

For him, the only solution to the current impasse is conversation. “The true mark of leadership is tolerance and ability to have a conversation with your political enemy. This cannot be solved by any other way and the conversation should not only include the political leadership but those that they accuse as well,” he says. “The IEBC must come to the same platform and say what they want. A level playing field does not belong to one side only.” But this conversation can only be held once both CORD and Jubilee set aside their baggage.

“They must first forgive each other of misdoings – real or perceived. President Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila should learn from Jesus because they are both leaders. They should both forgive their enemies for they know not what they are doing,” he says. Njoya also takes issue with the role women have assigned themselves in what is shaping up to be possibly be Kenya’s Waterloo moment before the next polls.

“Why are our women not talking? I do not want to call them stupid but they have been stupefied by politics. Yet they still march the streets, threatening violence if their end of the deal is not met. Forgetting they were the worst hit in 2007 violence,” he says. According to the reverend, any woman who does not rule, or fears leadership is a sinner. In the absence of tolerance, forgiveness or the participation of women, he says we are fast approaching a dark hole as a nation.

“We might just obliterate ourselves,” he says. The violence that was witnessed in 2007 might just come sooner than election time, because of underlying feelings of permanent exclusion from power, authority and development in some parts of the country. “I always vote with the Luo because of my socialist background. If I were Luo I would feel permanently excluded from power, authority and development. I identify with the plight of the oppressed, perceived or otherwise. Not that other tribes have not been excluded, but the Luos are conscious of their exclusion,” he says.

“If unfortunately 20 boys are killed during tomorrow’s demonstration, it will be seen as 20 Luos killed. We will have commissions and Raila will compromise for a position in government to make peace,” Njoya says. Njoya however says the current situation is not irredeemable and that as a nation we have our fate in our hands. “We need to be thinkers. Why should I act like an illiterate and defend every government move no matter how irrational just because it is Kikuyu? Should the fact that I voted for Raila mean I have to be a sycophant and defend his every move? We should all begin here. Then perhaps we shall save not only ourselves, but our country too,” he says.

A government, an old man and oil.

Tags

Kenya, natural resource, Oil, Society

Story originally ran in the Standard on Sunday.

 

Nairobi Monday March 26 2012. After a lengthy mid-morning function, President Mwai Kibaki, all excited, officially confirmed news that had been sweeping across newsrooms as mere speculation.

At the tail end of a rather colourless state function Kenya’s third president announced the country had struck gold. A rich vein of black gold that would play a big role in transforming the country’s fortunes.

The timing couldn’t have been better. For years, the East African powerhouse looked enviously as her neighbours announced the presence of oil in their territories. But on that day, it was Kenya’s time to shine.

“I have been informed by the minister that our country has made a major breakthrough in oil discovery…this is the beginning of a long journey to make the country an oil producer,” President Kibaki said.

As the announcement was made, an old man’s heart skipped a beat. It was happening again. It seemed he just couldn’t catch a break. He switched off his television.

“I thought that I ought to have been part of the announcement. Perhaps the president didn’t know at the time that I was the one who discovered oil,” Dr Kengar Monena tells the Standard.

But, Monena says, big money, politics, a corrupt judiciary as well as insincere lawyers have all colluded or been co-opted into what he says is a grand scheme to keep him off the fruits of his hard labour.

Rewind to 1987, when a younger and spritely Monena, on a water drilling assignment for a European aid agency chanced upon something that he thought would change his life forever.

“We were drilling a borehole in one of the villages up north. As the drilling went on, we noticed that what was gushing out of the hole was different. It even smelt different. Like kerosene and after a short while the extracts changed from a clear liquid to a blackish liquid that smelt like kerosene gushed out.

“At that time I knew it was oil,” Monena says.

After that, they moved the drilling to several other places and the results were the same. He was certain he had struck oil.

“I talked to my friends about the find and they convinced me not to tell any more people about it,” he says.

Monena and his friends were afraid of what might happen to them if they walked to the then Energy minister Nicholas Biwott and declare his find.

“I wasn’t sure what would happen. Those were dangerous times. Once you walked into a minister’s office you wouldn’t know if you’d walk out,” he says.

So he decided to get a sample of that black substance and sit on the news. Until nearly twenty years later.

After a regime change and the house on the hill had a friendlier occupant, Monena decided to finally inform his government of his find. He had all the coordinates and, he says, knew Pokot and Turkana like the back of his hands.

“It was time. I knew, or thought, those in government then were noble and of good intention,” Monena says.

On December 13^th 2005, Dr Monena, through his company Interstate Mining Company sent samples of that black substance to the Kenya Petroleum Refineries Limited (KPRL) Ministry of Energy. A letter accompanying the samples read in part as follows:

“This is to inform you that we have been carrying out drilling programmes in Turkana and West Pokot areas of Rift Valley Province to prospect for water for local communities.”

“In the course of our work we encountered a black substance smelling like kerosene which we suspect to be crude oil. This is a request to your office to carry out chemical analysis of the substance provided in the three samples…,” the letter read.

Two weeks later on 30^th December 2005, Dr Monena got a reply from KPLR. His sample had been tested.

“Our opinion is that this material is more likely to be fuel oil. This is however not a full analysis, however due to the small sample size delivered to KPRL, a larger sample is required to enable a conclusive analysis and we can provide the correct sized sample bottles if requires,” read the communication from the state oil agency.

Excited, Monena ended that year on a high and couldn’t wait for 2006. He had grand plans, grand plans drawn up over two decades.

And on January 3^rd 2006, through hi contacts, Dr Monena reached out and got in touch with the Norwegian Secretary of State for Energy, who then referred Dr Monena to the Norwegian embassy in Nairobi. Also he also reached out to the Permanent Secretary, Energy, Mr Patrick Nyoike.

“We set out to ensure everything was in order, even meeting the then Permanent secretary of energy Patrick Nyoike,” Dr Monena says. “The meeting was brief but detailed. I was asked to give details of the location of my find including the amounts of the samples retrieved as well as another batch of for a new round of analysis. The PS then promised to get back to us,” he says.

Meanwhile, Dr Monena, through his company Interstate with help from the Norwegian government had engaged top gear in preparation for the inevitable exploration and exploitation that lay ahead. Interstate applied for consent for exploration consents from the county councils of Pokot and Turkana. By mid-2006, permission was granted by both counties in writing and copies of the consent letters copied to the ministry of energy.

Unknown to him, plans were being hatched elsewhere regarding his find. And his role in the discovery would remain only known to him. From then on, his excitement to telling the world about his discover would be replaced by a certain despair as fate and what he calls a flawed judicial system conspired to kill the best of his dreams and relegate him to a black hole of court proceedings.

It all begun with a second communication from the ministry of energy regarding the sample Dr Monena had provided for further analysis.

A letter from the Ministry of Energy to Dr Monena dated July 14^th 2006 said the following:

“The material you presented for testing was tested at the Keya Petroleum Refineries Limited and was found to be black and very heavy. The sample was found to be heavier than the crudes processed at KPRL. It had significant amounts of water entrained which could not be separated in the KPRL laboratory and as a result, no distillation could be done on the sample…given this position, I am exploring other avenues for testing your sample. I will keep you posted on the progress.”

The letter was signed by Patrick Nyoike, the then permanent secretary. Unlike the initial results from KPRL, this latest letter did not come with a chemical analysis report.

This was the last communication Monena and Co. got from the energy ministry. But he still pushed for the granting of an exploration permit into Blocks 10B and 11.

Meanwhile, one of the two mining blocks on which Dr Monena had struck oil had somehow elicited interest from another company. Turkana Drilling Company (TDC). Investigations by the Sunday Standard show that the company that was granted an exploration permit in late 2007 was at that time co- owned by two Kenyan businessmen Yunis Mohamed and Amyn Lakhani plus two other foreigners. One Jurg Hemann, a taxi owner and operator in Switzerland and Albert Raponi a Canadian legal expert with some interest in the oil business.

Yunis Mohamed was a longtime Ford Kenya insider. Subsequent court legal processes by TDC were executed by Wetangula, Adan and Makokha Advocates a firm in which the then Assistant Minister Foreign Affairs and current CORD co-principal Moses Wetangula was a partner.

“I have never dealt in anything to do with oil. I own neither an oil block nor shares in an oil mining and prospecting company,” Wetangula told the Standard on Sunday. “This was a plot by my political detractors to tarnish my name. IN the fullness of time the truth shall be known.”

As this went on, Dr Monena continued to write to the ministry of energy seeking for an exploration and production license.

“By this time, our partners in Norway had already pulled out. But we hadn’t given up hope. Despite numerous visits to the ministry of energy and several letters requesting the granting of a permit, we got no feedback,” he says.

Almost two years later, on 26^th August 2009, he wrote to the president determined to inform Mwai Kibaki of his find. Part of the letter, which was received by the Principal Administrative Secretary in the Office of the President on January 18^th 2010 reads as follows:

“Good news to you your Excellency. Interstate Petroleum Company Limited has struck oil in Kenya long before Uganda. Unfortunately the minister of energy has robbed us of this God given find. He has given a Petroleum Exploration Licence to foreigners and denied us the same using our oil sample…our petition is for you to intercede forthwith and grant us an exploration license on blocks 10B, 10BB, 13T and 12A…”

To date, Interstate awaits a reply from OP.

By the time he was writing to the president the license had already been granted to Turkana Drilling Company.

A secret memo from 2007 titled “Remittance of US$1million by Turkana Drilling Company Before The Scheduled Negotiations” from the Office of the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of energy to Moses Wetangula alludes to a phone conversation between Wetangula and Nyoike, during which a sum of 1 million dollars was transferred to a bank account thought to be associated with the ministry.

“I would like to refer to our (Hon. Wetangula/Nyoike) telephone discussion this morning, Thursday July 5^th, regarding the above captioned subject. It would be appreciated if Turkana Drilling Company remit US$1 million into the account of the Ministry of Energy…negotiations for Production Sharing Contracts (PSC) for blocks 10BA and 10 BB will be held within three days of receipt of the US$1 million as signature bonuses.”

The mining act is silent on signature bonuses. However, the Kenya government gives the National Oil Corporation of Kenya (NOCK) Sh100million annually to undertake preliminary exploration surveys. Data from these surveys is then sold to various companies that might be interested in exploration.

 

Dr Monena is confident that it is the data from his initial survey and test results from samples provided by Interstate that were sold to TDC. It is also noteworthy to mention that the PS energy sits in the NOCK board.

“By 2010 we realised things were not working as we expected,” Monena says. “We wrote to the Attorney General over the manner that we had been treated by the ministry of energy.”

The letter to the AG had several accusations. Interstate accused Patrick Nyoike, the PS of abusing secrets of Interstate Petroleum and of collusion with TDC to deny his company an exploration permit.

By the time we went to press, the former PS had not responded to phone calls or questions posed by the Standard on Sunday.

As this was being done, ownership of the mining blocks was changing. Fast.

TDC sold its mining and exploration rights to Canadian firm Africa Oil Corporation for US$30 million.

That same year, Africa Oil Corporation and another of its sister companies Centric Oil sold half of their operations to Tullow Oil gaining mining rights to blocks 10BA, 10BB, 10A, 12A and 13T. Two years later in 2012, Tullow increased its share in several of the initial five blocks significantly.

And in early March 2012 the big oil companies got the president’s ear resulting into that big announcement to the nation:

“I have been informed by the minister that our country has made a major breakthrough in oil discovery…this is the beginning of a long journey to make the country an oil producer,” President Kibaki said.

With that, Dr Monena’s heart skipped, and since then its beating has never been quite right.

The frenzy that accompanied that announcement was enough to sweep away anyone who would challenge the legitimacy of the discovery.

In a press conference, soon after the president’s announcement, Tullow termed the oil samples as “high-quality oil that will yield more gasoline and diesel per barrel than some other crude discoveries in Africa.”

In 2006 a sample from the same block provided by Interstate was dismissed by the PS energy as containing too much water.

Dr Monena just couldn’t sit back. Letters to the ministry or even the highest offices of the land had done him little good thus far. He turned to the judiciary.

“After all, I knew I had the truth by my side. What could go wrong,” he says. He was unaware at that time, but many things could and did go wrong. And just four months after the announcement on the oil discovery was made, his years-long affair with the judicial system began.

Love and Repatriation

Tags

Africa, Conflict, Features, Society

Mohammed in his compound in Block C in Hagadera settlment followed by his wife Sara and daughter Sumaiya. They have lived in hagadera all their lives. PHOTO| Daniel Wesangula

Story originally published in the Standard on Sunday on June 14th 2015

Mohammed Abdi Abdulahi is slightly built with an even slighter tone to his voice. Words slip out of his lips so nervously, his syllables seem accidental. Like they wouldn’t want to impose themselves on the goings-on. Like they are used to not being heard. He is 27, old enough to have a wife and child. But not old enough to have a dream he can believe in. “What can we do? This is life for us,” he says. Next to him a billboard towers.

“Somalia is my home, to return is my choice,” it declares. Mohammed is part of its target audience, but somehow, the message does not make sense. It is the same for hundreds of thousands of other refugees from Somalia. “Return where? Even if you were to get me onto a bus, or a plane and drop me in Somalia, where would I. I am Kenyan in every way,” he says. Finding shade The Dadaab refugee camp population is 353,590. Of these, 336,695 are from Somalia. At the height of the humanitarian crisis in 2011, the population had increased to 486,913.

Mohammed is a statistic, clawing through life to become more than a number. Dadaab is a massive complex made up of five satellite camps – Dagahaley, Ifo Main, Ifo 2, Kambioos and Hagadera. Hagadera has been Mohammed’s home all his life. His family found a livelihood here more than two decades ago. Later, he found love. “Even when you are in the harshest of deserts, somehow you will find shade,” he philosophises. Sara Hassan Mohammed has been his shade in the sun.

“Without him, I would suffer a lot. I have been a refugee for as long as I have been alive… My mum gave birth to me here. I have done the same. I have a daughter,” Sara says. The two have been married for close to five years. “At least our daughter has a birth certificate. We hope in future she can use it to get other papers that will enable her to follow her heart’s desires,” Mohammed says. At birth, they didn’t haggle over the name best suited for their daughter. “We called her Sumaiya.

“We were tired of living a bad life. She is one of the few good things that have happened to us while here,” says Sara. Sumaiya loosely translates to ‘good quality.’ The two want the best for their child. But they remain practical to the realities around them.

“You ask me what I want Sumaiya to have in future,” Sara says.

“Do you have children?”

“One.”

“What do you want for her?”

“I want her to go to the best schools. I want her to find her purpose early in life. I want her to have access to the best healthcare if need be…” I begin.

“Adheer, you have complicated dreams,” says Sara.

“I just want Sumaiya to travel and see the world… I want her to leave Hagadera and decide whether she can go north, south, east or west. I want her to be free,” she says.

A tear falls on her orange hijab and expands into an intrusive, shapeless blot, but in a few minutes, the moisture is gobbled up by Hagadera’s unforgiving heat. Sumaiya, has fallen asleep under her mother’s hijab. Mohammed knows about love. At least enough to know that his family cannot live off the four-letter word.

“To be a refugee is hard. But to be a husband, a father and the sole breadwinner for family, both extended and immediate, is something else,” he says. “I know she loves me… but what if she meets someone who can offer her much more than I can?” he says. “Would I stand in the way of her happiness? I don’t know.” His eyes wander to a column of suitcases next to him. The cases hold their world. Their savings. Their education certificates – he and his wife went through secondary school in Hagadera. Nowadays, the suitcases stay packed.

“They say one day the government will tell us to leave,” Sara’s mother, Zeytun, joins the conversation. “We must be ready.” The relatives live in the same compound. Here it is called a ‘block section’. A section is made up of several blocks, normally of relatives or families that walked into the camp on the same day. Their houses are structures with twig walls and tarpaulin or polythene roofs. Some houses have iron sheet walls, but all the floors are earthen. Reed or manila mats are rolled over the floors to create the seating room.

Zeytun, Sara’s mother going about her business. PHOTO| Daniel Wesangula

A visitor is offered a plastic chair. If there are many visitors, then it becomes awkward. A decision has to be made on who takes the chair. At one end of the compound, a sheep and a goat share a tiny pen. “We used to have more animals, but Mohammed lost his job and we sold a few. We have to keep on living,” Zeytun says. “We know he will get another one soon, Inshallah.” For three years, Mohammed worked as an incentive worker for one of the aid agencies. Although he was qualified for the job he was given, he was paid a pittance to keep him interested in living. But what if he does not get another position? What next? “I trust Allah that the pen writing the story of my life has not run out of ink. And that as He turns the next page, my load will be lighter,” Mohammed says.

“But if His will is done, then that will be it. I will pray that at least I leave Sumaiya with memories passed down from my parents about their home in Somalia. My own memories of a place I would like to call home but can’t. And I will ask Allah to at least grant my daughter happier memories to give my grandchildren.” Normal life In April, during the aftermath of the tragic Garissa University massacre that left 148 dead and many more injured and traumatised, Deputy President William Ruto gave the United Nations three months to close the Dadaab refugee camps, failing which Kenya would forcefully return them to Somalia.

For the father of microfinance, life is not all about money and fame

Tags

Banking, Microfinance, Society

Originally Published: April 11, 2010

Prof Muhammad Yunus is clearly the poor man’s banker. Simplicity is the hallmark for the father of microfinance as we know it today.

At first sight, little about the five-foot eight-inch, grey-haired professor will strike you. He is not imposing and has the uncanny ability to blend into whatever crowd he is part of.

He dresses in a cream, sleeveless cotton jacket, a panjabi (Bangladeshi traditional attire that looks like a long shirt or a short kanzu) that is loose enough to allow free movement but tight enough to reveal a slight bulge around his mid section, and khaki pants, the sole accessory being a brown leather-strap watch on his left wrist.

Prof Yunus, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, rubs shoulders with world renowned leaders, yet he never loses focus of his cause of uplifting the poor.

When he visited Kenya recently to attend the microcredit summit in Nairobi, he also toured the Mathare slum in the city’s Eastlands to meet the needy people and find out if microfinance has had any impact on their lot.

Fight poverty

The Bangladeshi professor is credited with the founding of Grameen Bank, which he used to fight poverty by advancing credit to the poor who were under the mercy of ruthless shylocks. This worthy cause earned him and the bank the Nobel Peace Prize three decades later.

Fame and recognition is not one of the things Prof Yunus pursues in life. His wish it to see a world where the poor are breaking the shackles of poverty and getting empowered.

An elite professor of economics, the don began his cause in 1974 after a nine-month famine rattled him from the comforts of his near perfect world in a Bangladesh university.

Before it ran its course, the famine claimed more than a million lives and destroyed what had been left of a majority of the Bangladeshi economic base.

Farms and property were destroyed and the little hope that the country had been hanging onto after a two-year liberation war with Pakistan was quickly disappearing from the many faces around him.

“I quickly realised that all the elegant economic models I had learnt, and was passing on to my students, had little meaning in practical life. Most of them began and ended in the textbooks,” he told Lifestyle in Nairobi last week.

Then, he discovered his life should have much more purpose. Before the famine, Bangladesh was grappling with devastated infrastructure in the aftermath of the war.

Devastating floods

From April to July of 1971, the country had been hit by heavy rains and devastating floods. The estimated death toll put forth by various scholars stands at 1.5 million people.

“There was immense suffering among the people. It was evident something had to change,” says the Nobel laureate.

From his day-to-day interactions with residents of a village neighbouring the campus he was teaching, he stumbled upon an idea that would not only help in lifting the lives of millions from poverty. It is the same idea that would earn him the coveted Nobel Peace Prize.

“The only people who seemed to be coping with life well after the famine were loan sharks. I was attracted to them because of their ruthlessness.

“I could not understand how so few people would set out with the aim of making as much money as possible from the poorest people of society,” says the professor.

He decided to look for the people who had gone to the sharks for money in order to understand their reasons for doing so.

“More than 40 people had collectively borrowed slightly more than Sh2,000 from the shylocks. I was surprised at this seemingly small amount, but shocked at the repercussions that would plague one should he default on a payment,” he says.

He paid off the shylocks and absorbed the families’ debts.

“The difference that little gesture made in their lives was unbelievable. For once in their lives, they had been provided with an opportunity. That made me feel good,” he says.

But feeling good was not enough. Thousands more could not access the credit facilities they needed. So he approached some of the commercial banks to plead the case of the poor. None listened.

“They only agreed to lend them money after I offered myself as a guarantor,” he says.

While traditional banks were not interested in giving out small loans at reasonable interest rates to the poor due to high repayment risks, he believed that, given the chance, the poor would repay the borrowed money.

This, he thought, was a viable business model. It would not only be a source of income for them but also a way out of poverty.

“The intervention of microfinance bears fruit with time. The original beneficiaries of the loan may not live the life they may wish for, but their relative success creates a sound base for their children,” he says.

Lack of options

He adds that poverty is neither permanent nor a creation of the poor. Instead, he says, it is a lack of options in a select group of society.

And its remedy? “Provide an opportunity for them and they will move to the next level.”

In 1976, he secured a loan from the government and formed Janata Bank to provide loans to the poor in his home district.

By 1982, the bank had 28,000 members. On October 1, 1983 the pilot project began operations as a full-fledged bank and was renamed the Grameen (village) Bank.

But his quest for social change was not without hitches. At some point, conservative Bangladeshi clergy told women they would be denied a Muslim burial if they borrowed money from Grameen Bank. But, together with colleagues, he soldiered on with the cause that has earned him a special place in world history.

Prof Yunus recalls vividly the events in the lead-up to the Nobel Peace Prize.

“Someone from a Norwegian television channel called me. He told me that the Peace Prize would be announced within 10 minutes and requested me to hold the line. They then told me the name was about to be read, and that I’d better hear it on live TV,” he says.

But for a man who believes in simplicity and humility the company he keeps speaks volumes of the respect he commands the world over and, for his peers, the Nobel was long in coming.

“Because of his efforts, millions of people, most of them women, have had the chance to improve their lives and we are all better off as a result. I have thought for years that he deserved the Nobel Peace Prize. The committee could not have selected anyone better,” said former US President Bill Clinton upon hearing of Prof Yunus’ recognition.

Born in 1940, the third born of nine children in a Muslim family, he spent his early childhood in the village before his family moved to the city when he turned four.

After years of study in universities both abroad and in the then Pakistan, he became a lecturer of economics at Chittagong College. He then proceeded to the US for his postgraduate studies on a scholarship.

Sojourn in US

During his sojourn in the US, revolutionary ideas concretised in his mind. During Bangladesh’s liberation war, he founded an organisation aimed at raising support for the liberation and autonomy of the Bangladeshi state.

His efforts earned him a position in the new Bangladesh government’s Planning Commission, a position he did not hold for long.

“The job was boring, so I returned to my first love – teaching,” he recalls.

The fame and fortune brought about by the glamour of the Nobel prize has had a toll on him.

In 2007, Prof Yunus gave in to pressure from friends and countrymen to play a bigger role in his country’s leadership. He heeded the calls and formed a political party originally meant to fill the then existing political vacuum. Two months later, he disbanded it.

“The same corrupt officials the party was supposed to counter started aligning themselves to us. Plus, those who nudged me towards politics were not ready to play an active part in it. It is then that I knew it was time to abandon that ambition,” he explains.

Numerous awards

During his secondary and college years, Prof Yunus was quite an actor, bagging numerous awards at various competitions. Though he wouldn’t mind getting on stage, he has no time for it.

“My schedule doesn’t allow me to do it. All my time is gobbled up by microfinance. That is my life,” he says.

In his 70 years of life, love has not been very kind to him, as it has dished out both pleasure and pain. His first marriage ended within months of the birth of his first daughter.

At that time, the young family had relocated to Bangladesh, but the move proved too harsh for his wife, who opted out saying Bangladesh was not a good place to raise a baby. He later remarried and raised a family in his motherland.

He wishes many more people in the world would understand that the belief that life is all about money is “the flaw in society’s architecture”

Kenya’s Kibaki: a chequered legacy in power

Tags

Kenya, Kibaki, Politics, Society

Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki will step down after more than a decade in power that spanned some of the country’s most violent periods, but also saw a new constitution that has brought hope for change.

A veteran politician from the birth of independent Kenya, Kibaki, 81, will retire after March 4 polls, leaving a legacy of impressive economic growth partly overshadowed by rampant government corruption.

For a leader who was popularly swept into power in 2002 on an anti-corruption platform, Kibaki’s tenure saw grotesque graft scandals where hundreds of millions of dollars were siphoned from public coffers.

Kibaki’s National Rainbow Coalition — which took power from the authoritarian rule of Daniel Arap Moi — was welcomed for its promises of change and economic growth, but soon showed it was better suited to treading established paths.

“The initial response to corruption was very solid … but it became clear after a while that these scams reached all the way to the president himself,” said Kenya’s former anti-corruption chief John Githongo in Michela Wrong’s book “It’s Our Turn to Eat”.

Most notorious of a raft of graft scandals was the multi-million dollar Anglo Leasing case, which emerged in 2004 and involved public cash being paid to a complicated web of foreign companies for a range of services — including naval ships and passports — that never materialised.

Yet Kibaki also boosted education and health sectors that were reeling from mismanagement under previous regimes, as well as launching ambitious infrastructure projects including large- scale road building.

His government introduced free basic education for children aged between six and 13, and revamped hospitals and clinics closed under Moi.

Closer ties to China have also boosted Kenya’s role as the economic powerhouse of east Africa, even if critics say Kibaki’s drive for growth has come at a potential longer term cost for the nation.

“He will be remembered as the president who pursued expansionist economics… and one who borrowed the most leading us deeper into debt,” said Peter Kenneth, a minister under Kibaki and now a presidential candidate.

Kibaki’s recent large-scale and flagship projects — started but far from completed — include the development of the super-port of Lamu as a second harbour to rival overstretched Mombasa, a transport hub for multiple nations.

Last month Kibaki also broke ground on the Konza project, a proposed giant Internet technology and business hub dubbed “Africa’s Silicon Savannah” which, it is hoped, will create more than 200,000 jobs by 2030.

But golf-loving Kibaki, who is expected to retire with a golden sendoff of $180,000 plus $75,000 a year for life, also led the country during the most violent election in its history, when over 1,100 died in bloody ethnic battles after disputed 2007 polls.

— Complicated legacy for his successor —

Kibaki, after a contentious win that the opposition decried as rigged, was hurriedly sworn-in for a second term, prompting further violence that was resolved only after former UN chief Kofi Annan helped broker a deal.

The crisis rocked what had until then been Kibaki’s most popular achievement — a stable economy — with hundreds of thousands forced from their homes, and Kenya’s lucrative tourist industry left in tatters.

Kibaki, who grew up in a simple farming family in Kenya’s highland Nyeri district, excelled at school. He later studied economics and political science at Uganda’s prestigious Makerere University and then the London School of Economics.

Kenya’s longest serving parliamentarian — elected in 1963, and swiftly rising to be trade minister three years later — he was also part of the team that drafted Kenya’s 1963 independence constitution.

In the chaotic aftermath of the 2007-8 post-poll violence, Kibaki would find himself in the unusual position of presiding over a referendum that overwhelmingly endorsed a new constitution aimed at averting a repeat of the violence.

The 2010 constitution maintained a presidential system, but introduced substantial checks with a devolved system of government, and consolidated democracy and basic rights.

“His greatest moment was the promulgation of the new constitution… It was a very deep and emotional moment for him,” Kibaki’s son Jimmy said in a recent documentary.

In the future, the elderly statesman — who was left with serious long-term injuries following a bad car crash in 2002 — is expected to enjoy his retirement on the golf courses of Nairobi and his sprawling estates in his birthplace of Nyeri.

But Kenya’s third president leaves a complicated legacy for his successor.

Leading contender Uhuru Kenyatta — who in 2007 put his presidential ambitions on hold in favour of Kibaki — faces a crimes against humanity trial for the 2007-8 violence that erupted under Kibaki’s rule.

The legacy of that same violence may also dog the future for the other top candidate Raila Odinga, whose 2007 presidential bid ended with him reluctantly settling for the prime minister’s post after Kibaki’s contentious win.

We rarely do six feet at Langata cemetery, grave digger admits

Tags

Death, Society

Originally Published: November 24, 2013

“Are you afraid of death,” Mr Kennedy Mwangi asks.

The combination of an unlit cigarette and a restless tongue transform his slightly parted lips into a subdued playground, as the stick of tobacco moves from left to right, the macabre nature of his question lost in these subtle motions.

Every day, for the past seven years, he has been reporting to work like many other hardworking Kenyans.

In a world glorified with computer applications, smartphones and a plethora of gizmos, his tools of trade remain rudimentary, but highly efficient in his line of work.

A rusty pickaxe covered with soil and blunted from the occasional collision between rock and metal remains his preferred choice. Its wooden handle is smooth from overuse. The metallic head wobbles a bit. It is rough, almost like unprocessed ore.

“Without these I am nothing,” he says, as he folds the hems of his navy blue trouser. His white shirt rests on a low branch of a nearby tree. He takes off his Safari Boots. The stitching along the sole of the left shoe reveals it has made several visits to the cobbler.

He places the shoes to one side, wears a pair of tattered beige running shoes that look like they were once white.

Disappearing

Next to him is a jembe delicately balanced on a wooden cross just a foot off the ground. Under it is an unmarked grave identifiable by a coarse cement slab, the current occupier known only to his close relatives. The only thing discernible from the cross is the number ‘9’, nothing else.

Another slab lies roughly three feet from the first one. This one has no cross, but is slowly disappearing under a thick carpet of grass, weeds and soil.

Mwangi stands between the two slabs legs apart, leans to his right and takes the pickaxe. He then lifts it above his head with both hands but pauses before striking the ground.

A ledger at the cemetery shows the facility was first opened in 1958. Robert Lockead was the first to be buried there. His cause of death remains unknown, but he died at the age of 74.

Tens of thousands have followed him there, but not all of them are recorded. However, an incoherent record book is not the only problem at Langata Cemetery. As if on autopilot, Mwangi gently places the axe on his left shoulder, takes the cigarette from his lips and puts it behind his right ear, holds the pickaxe once again with both hands and brings it down tenderly but forcefully.

Less than three inches of the pickaxe penetrate the sun-drenched ground.

“Kuna mtu anapumzika hapa, (someone is resting here),” he says. “Tusonge (let’s move).”

Mwangi, with years of experience as a grave digger, is at home with death. Sadly though, it is becoming increasingly difficult for the dead to find a home in Nairobi’s largest cemetery.

In 2012, a representative to a civic post in a Nairobi area died. At the time of burial, a ‘favourable’ spot could not be found for him. “We had to burry him next to the fence. There was no space, it has been full since 1996,” says Alex Ouda, the Langata MCA, who moved a Motion to have the cemetery officially shut down.

The current occupiers of the 150-acre cemetery lie rib by rib. Walkways remain invisible. Footpaths often lead to headstones. No space to even mourn a departed loved one without desecrating another.

Reburials

When you enter the main entrance of the cemetery, the management office lies to your left. The structure, built 65 years ago, sits on arguably the only ‘big’ empty space in the whole cemetery.

It sits on roughly one eighth of an acre. It is here that on most days, those who can afford it, hold their requiem masses under a white tent.

However, the space is limited, and most of the mourners are forced to sit on chairs and pavement on the other side of the dusty road.  Those walking in cut through the sadness and somberness of the mourners with each step they take.

On a hot Tuesday afternoon, Milcah Atieno sits on one of the few remaining concrete benches that dot the cemetery. It is smack between old graves. She lost her sister two days prior to the interview with The Standard on Sunday. The family has decided this will be her sister’s final resting place.

“I wish we could bury them together,” she says, her voice steady, almost too steady for someone who has lost a sister and a niece.

“She was still-born. We chose to let the hospital dispose the baby’s body. We could only afford one plot. We chose her,” she says and just like death, their decision, though final, was guided by unavoidable circumstances.

Her brother-in-law died two years ago. He too rests at Langata.

“He is somewhere here. I will have to get directions from the office to know the exact location. The place has changed since we were here last,” she says.

Where once were paths, now stand graves, some fresh, others not. Some are noticeable from their impeccable grooming, others from the simple bump in the ground like a pimple on uneven skin. By the time we went to press, man and wife occupied different 6 feet by two feet plots on different ends of the same graveyard.

That is what Sh6,000 buys the family. A temporary plot, which is a dignified way of saying one day you might come back to find the grave of your loved one replaced by that of another.

In fact, it is prohibited to revisit a temporary grave. A more permanent abode will set you back Sh60,000.

Ouda says since its opening decades ago, the cemetery is now going through a third round of reburials.

“First, the graves were 10 feet deep. After all the land was used, people were buried in 6 feet deep graves. We are now digging graves that are 3 feet deep and we have exhausted all the available space,” he says.

Congestion

The depth of the grave is no longer standard. “Sometimes we go three feet deep, other times two feet. Very rarely do we do six feet,” Mwangi says after finding another “empty” plot. He has been commissioned by a family to find a spot for them.

He says business isn’t bad.

“We can burry as many as 25 people in a day. Sometimes more,” he says. “We cannot complain.” The cemetery management officially recognises about 15 grave diggers.

But with each opportunity that presents itself to Mwangi and company, the ground sinks further with the burden of the weight of the dead.

Personally, Achieng’ wouldn’t want to be buried in Langata. She says she doesn’t want a stranger’s body to be placed on top of her remains.

“I may be dead but that would be very awkward,” she says. She and her husband have been fortunate enough to buy a one-and-a half acre piece of land in Nyanza. That is where they will be buried. Her sister’s grave has been dug. The walk towards it is a delicate journey. A hop here, a step there and a jump to get to her destination.

The solitude that Robert Lokead first found at Langata no longer exists. Instead, it has become a place with no peace.

A certain kind of congestion hangs over it, a congestion that transforms the burying of a loved one into an intrusive affair, an affair akin to disturbing the peace of the dead.

As one goes out of the cemetery a party making its way in almost always meets him. Death does not wait for availability of space.

“Death happens,” says Achieng’. “The only good thing is that when you go, you really don’t care whether your grave is six feet deep, or half a foot deep.”

At the end of the day, Mwangi takes his tools to a metal box near the office and locks them in. “Huku hata maua wanaiba (here even flowers are stolen,” he says. “Ukiwacha kitu hapa hupati. Na sio mashetani, ni watu tu.” (If you leave anything you cannot find it. And its not spirits but human beings).

Circumcision hasn’t reversed HIV trends in Nyanza, but…

Tags

Health, Nyanza, Society

Originally Published: September 15, 2013

One day as he returned home from visiting an uncle who lived far away from his village, John Eric Ouko discovered that a number of boys belonging to his age group were secretly planning to get initiated.

They thought he was too young and that knocking off his six lower teeth could expose his cowardice.

But on the day they visited the Janak for the nago ceremony, he was there to be initiated; completely unaware of the significance his undertaking would have on his life.

“I did not know why it was done but I did it…it is culturally correct…that is what our people did. I am the embodiment of our people, so that is what I did,” he says, and in deep reflection he continued; “But this other new thing…this cutting of the skin…I do not know where it has come from and where it is taking our people,”

Up until the issue of circumcision comes up, Ouko narrates the different things that make the Luo culture beautiful. From the wooing of a girl, birth, naming ceremonies and the different stages of mourning from the time of death of her husband, a woman is required to walk into her homestead naked in reverence of the departed and gets her head shaven clean after 30 days of mourning.

Through all this, he remains unfazed but the mention of circumcision unnerves him. He mentions it passively the way a man would talk about his wife’s ex-boyfriend. On the surface, there’s an air of nonchalance but inside, some kind of a bubbling bother.

Research programme

In 2006, the UNIM Project, a collaborative research programme between the Universities of Nairobi, Illinois and Manitoba, embarked on a study on the effects that Voluntary Male Medical Circumcision (VMMC) would have on the spread of HIV and Aids in Nyanza.

“Nyanza was right for the programme because it had a high HIV prevalence rate and low rates of circumcision. At the time of the study, the circumcision rate in Nyanza stood at 46 per cent while the national average was 84 per cent,” Dr Odoyo June of the Nyanza Reproductive Health Society told The Standard on Sunday.

“It was only logical we start here for maximum impact.”

In 2006 the World Health Organisation (WHO) reviewed evidence and VMMC and countries with high HIV prevalence and low circumcision rate introduced circumcision as an additional tool to fight HIV.

“There was initial resistance. They were saying they were being targeted for elimination. Politicians tried to mend fences. The Luo elders were against this… but they finally towed the line. The wave was against them,” Dr Odoyo says.

Five years later, the numbers of those who have undergone the cut have gone up, but with varying degrees of success.

For instance, although the number of males circumcised so far falls short of the targeted 850,000 by some 200,000 experts believe it remains a step in the right direction in combating HIV. But the data that initially informed this decision is lingering too long on the wrong side of the curve.

Earlier in the week, the 2012 update on the Kenya Aids Indicator Survey (KAIS) showed that Nyanza registered the highest number of people living with HIV despite voluntary male circumcision campaigns aimed at reducing HIV spread. Uncircumcised men are five times more at risk of contracting the disease compared to their circumcised counterparts. For children aged between 18 months and 14 years, 104,000 were found to be HIV positive, with 42,640 being diagnosed prior to the survey.

The KAIS survey also shows that widows and widowers were more prone to infection than the married and those living with partners. The lowest prevalence was among the single while the highest infections were among married couples.

Of most concern was the shift in the number of infections across different age groups. In 2007 the highest cases of infection were recorded among those aged between 25 and 34 years, the 2012 study shows that prevalence is highest among those aged between 45 and 54 years.

“Those recording the high HIV infection rates seldom come forward. Maybe because of apathy or just a general reluctance,” Dr Odoyo says. This particular group could also be the one holding on to age-old traditions.

Seated under a line of seven framed accounting certificates of different sizes, Ouko maintains that circumcision should not even be tolerated when talking about the Luo.

“We have our own thing. We have our own pride and standards to maintain. This thing is Western and will be of no use to us,” he says.

His English is impeccable.

He takes time when enunciating words. He is London educated but remains schooled in the ways of his people. Only a road, a bunch of statistics and a stubborn clinginess to tradition separates his office at the Ofafa Jericho Social Hall and Lumumba clinic where tens of young men troupe to get the cut at Dr Odoyo’s.

A less than a ten-minute matatu ride from Lumumba is the Kisumu Town main bus terminus. Opposite it is the Yellow Line shop where a group of young men chat animatedly about whether getting circumcised can be termed an insult to the founders of the Luo Nation.

Milton Orengo, 33, publicly acknowledges that he is circumcised and believes this state is partly responsible for his health status.

“Maybe if I had remained as before, I may have become sick, but I am okay,” he says. He has never tested to know his status.

“But my wife tests regularly so I know I am safe,” he says.

An attempt to talk about discordance among sexually active couples is brushed aside as an allusion to his wife’s infidelity. No further talk on the subject is tolerated.

Seven of the nine men at Yellow Line say they plan to be circumcised but don’t know when. The other two, including Milton, have had the cut. The second one is Kalenjin.

“As far as things stand now, I am healthy and have never had any problems in that ‘department’ so why fix something that is not broken?” asks one of them. With his remarks, the conversation seamlessly flows into the politics of the day.

An attempt to reintroduce the topic is met with rebuke. I am told that is enough for the day.

“You know Kisumu has become more tolerable nowadays. Two years ago, if you had started that conversation somewhere other than at a health center, people would probably have roughed you up,” Milton warns.

As he rushes across the road to get onto a matatu and demands a “squad” (free ride) one is left wondering rather nostalgically, if when called upon, he will have it in him to tell his son why he, unlike his grandfather, does not miss the six lower teeth and then provide an alternative rite of passage.

Ouko’s leathery face seems immune to the humid Kisumu heat. No bead of sweat can be spotted on his brow. He has fought many battles and like an experienced general, is wise enough to know and acknowledge when victory is out of reach. And just like the old layers of paint covering the walls of his office, he understands the values he has lived with for all his years are falling off one after the other.

“I wish times were different. But I know I am fighting a war that was lost by a different generation of warriors. It was lost when our fathers allowed the church onto our land,” he says as he smacks his lips.

His initiation gap is no more. Where there once was a gap of missing teeth now rests a new set of dentures, methodically put in place by a skilled dentist.

He says the only way he can accept circumcision was if science proves that it protects against HIV.

“One hundred per cent protection!” he says with finality, “If not, forgets it.”

Many in his age are at a cross road. There is the sense of identity, and belonging derived from hanging on to cultural practices.

But there is also the cold, hard compelling evidence that researchers like Dr Odoyo churn out on daily basis. There can only be one winner in this confrontation. But the question remains, what more collateral damage has to be tolerated before the victor emerges and the loser accepts and moves on.

“Numbers don’t lie. We will win this perception war through science,” Dr Odoyo says.

Queues shorten as faith in Loliondo’s drug wanes

Tags

Health, Society, Tanzania

Originally Published: August 28, 2011

Almost overnight, the otherwise sleepy village of Loliondo was thrust into fame. The single path that led to Mzee Ambilikile Mwasapile’s home was turned into a two-way road as weary villagers sought answers to the questions they woke up to with each rising sun.

Questions, perhaps, about debilitating migraines, wounds that would not heal or delayed motherhood.

Word of this village’s 76-year-old healer and his miraculous cupful of brownish green brew had got around, traversing Mt Meru to the north to get to Kenya.

News of the Loliondo wonder drug echoed past the Ngorongoro Crater to the east and was heard as far out as Rwanda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo and even South Africa.

Thousands trooped to northern Tanzania to drink Babu’s magical concoction, with cars forming queues up to 15 kilometres long. These were the images seen on television when NTV first brought the story to Kenyan homes.

Happier times

But those were the happier times in Samunge village, Loliondo. In those days, it seemed that a higher power had come down from the nearby mountains to oversee and bless business at Babu’s.

Now, however, it seems it will be a year of mixed fortunes for Loliondo. The multitude that trooped to Mzee Mwasapile’s compound is slowly declining.

And while evidence of a bountiful past dots the landscape – abandoned makeshift camps, uncompleted buildings and heaps of plastic water bottles – the air hangs heavy with a sense of bleakness.

At the height of its popularity, two sisters relocated from Dar es Salaam to Samunge village. They had been small-scale traders operating an electronics stall in the city. Business was not as lucrative as they had hoped it would be, and so in early February, they sold all their stock and Saada Mwajefa, the elder sister, headed to Samunge village to explore business opportunities.

“We knew there would be money to be made there. All we had to do was identify a viable business opportunity,” she says. “I found that there were food courts, water vendors, accommodation providers but no bars.”

They ditched electronics for alcohol and, two days later, Ms Mwajefa’s sister arrived in a truck loaded with an assortment of drinks. The following morning, they were open for business.

The only visible law in Samunge is the area councillor. If you want to set up a business, you seek his audience and he gives you his guidance, blessing and then gives you a piece of land on which to set up your business. All this in return for an agreed percentage of the profits. There are no permits or certificates of compliance required. A handshake seals the deal.

But business is no longer lucrative. The number of visitors to Samunge has reduced drastically, with about 20 carloads a day making the trip to Babu’s compound and barely a hundred people drinking his brew.

Word that not everyone who has been to see Babu has recovered from their ailments has spread just as widely as the initial news about the drug did.
But Babu says the reason behind the dwindling numbers is that there are people out to get him. Big people.

“You would think that everyone would be happy to see the work of God among us. But not everyone likes to see God work miracles,” he told the Sunday Nation.

Drug companies

Top on the list of those who want to see him fail are major drug companies.

“No one goes to their chemists any more. Their drugs are gathering dust on the shelves as people have discovered true, healing power through the eyes of God. They are losing money. That is why they want us to fail,” he says with a wry smile.

Our conversation is interrupted by a chopper buzzing above us. It circles around for a few minutes before finally landing on an empty field nearby. A blue Toyota VX with heavily tinted windows zooms past towards the chopper, presumably to pick up the occupant. Babu’s wonder drug still attracts the high and mighty.

A short while later, he continues to speak in his slow manner, with each word carefully selected for maximum effect. He says God first spoke to him in 2001 and pointed him in the direction of the mugariga tree from which his drug is extracted.

But now there are people using powerful means to bring him down.

“They have the media in their camp. Each day they damage my reputation in their newspapers. They say I have lost my healing power. Some say I got lost in the forest while digging up my herbs. Others say I am on my deathbed and have reduced my lifespan to a matter of days. But I am still here,” said the former Lutheran reverend.

“If I were to die tomorrow, it will be by the will of God and not their words.”

And his handlers take his concerns for his safety seriously. He walks around with a government-appointed guard.

In the course of a sermon, just before he starts handing out his famous drink, an overawed pilgrim takes out her cellphone hoping to digitally immortalise the moment. But before she clicks away, the guard is upon her and confiscates the phone.

“Do not worry. You will get it after we have had our medicine,” Babu assures her.

He continues with his sermon, which is a mixture of Bible quotes and a brief history of how he was chosen to be the sole dispenser of the medicine.

“God came to me in a dream and told me I had been chosen to do work for him. He showed me the herb to use and how to mix it. The next morning I woke up, went to the forest and on the third day after the dream, I began dispensing, he says. That was 10 years ago.

Snippets from Babu’s sermon point one towards the general direction of the needs of his patients. Once he mentions the disease that has brought them to Loliondo, a loud “Amen” is shouted out as if the affirmation will somehow increase the potency of the drug.

“I tell you here and now that after you take my medicine, your HIV will disappear in seven days,” says Babu.

“Amen!” a pilgrim shouts.

“I tell you here and now, that after you take my medicine, the child you have been looking for will appear in your womb.”

“Amen!” another shouts.

Amid this, a group of around 30 people covered in dust arrives to listen to the sermon. It is a delegation from DRC. Among them is a middle-aged woman with a tumour on her lower lip that has caused it to swell to the size of a small banana.

There is a tent to the right of Babu where the very sick are seated. She is led to that part of the crowd. Once the woman settles down, the preaching resumes.

Mzee Mwasapile is convinced his drug works, and some experts agree with him and have offered scientific evidence to further his theory.

A report by medical researchers from Tanzania’s National Institute for Medical Research and Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences gave the herb the thumbs up in March, although they recommended further studies to determine the exact dosage to be administered.

Dr Hamisi Malebo of medical research institute and Dr Zakaria Mbwabo of the Institute of Traditional Medicine at Muhas concede that the herb could be used to treat six types of illnesses, including epilepsy and heart problems, and used as a general body cleanser and an antiviral agent.

“The plant is safe and the dosage prescribed by Mzee Mwasapile is below the toxic level. The available scientific data supports (his) ethno-medical claims,” they wrote.

But Babu says the experts do not know what they are talking about. A single cup of his medicine can heal any illness.

“HIV, cancer, diabetes, psychosis … name it. There is no disease bigger than the word of God. If He says He will heal you, you will be healed,” Babu says.

But he cautions that how fast or whether you get healed at all depends on two things: the level of your faith, and your initial intentions when walking into Babu’s tent.

“There are people who come here to steal property or put the faith of others into question. Those ones leave here worse than they came,” says Babu.

Nearby hospital

Despite his miracle drink, Babu lost his son Jackson, 43, to malaria in April. On the day of his death, his son had been rushed to a nearby hospital for treatment.

Does Babu think he could have done more for him? “Faith is a personal issue. It is God who decides whether yours is sufficient enough to get healed,” he says, a distant look in his eyes.

When Babu is not giving a sermon or dispensing his drug, he is in his new government-built house, perhaps watching the latest episode of his favourite show via satellite. The white dish on his roof and the two solar panels are also courtesy of the Tanzanian taxpayer. The rest of the village has no electricity. Businesses run on generators.

As a large convoy of Babu’s satisfied pilgrims leaves his compound, Ms Mwajefa, the bar owner, places another order for drinks from an Arusha-bound matatu. Just four crates this time, which she expects to last a week.

“Soon,” she says, “we may have to just count our blessings and ship out.”

She turns on the generator to charge her cellphone. The battery is depleted after the previous night’s events when her phone was the sole source of entertainment at her Top in Town Bar. It has a dozen songs in its memory card.

The songs played all night long in repeat mode for all of seven patrons gracing her establishment.

50 years on, the birth control pill has achieved a lot but the fears still linger

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Health, Society

Originally Published: May 30, 2010

Fifty years ago, at the peak of Kenya’s struggle for independence, Kenyan women and girls were perhaps clamouring silently for freedom of another kind.

With birth control a taboo subject in most homes and a high fertility rate, large families kept women out of formal employment, made them dependent on men for everything and put their health at risk.

And girls experimenting with sex at adolescence often found themselves helplessly exposed to unwanted pregnancies, dropped out of school, got forced into early marriages or became social outlaws.

But the accidental discovery of the birth control pill in far-off America in 1960 by a Catholic nurse would help to accelerate the pace of liberation for the Kenyan woman in a manner before then unimaginable.

The Pill, as the tiny tablet is popularly known, is credited with revolutionising sex, love, relationships and the way millions of women around the world conduct their affairs. So small. So powerful. So misunderstood.

In Kenya, where it became central to family planning efforts in the 1970s and 1980s, the dramatic decline in fertility rates from eight children per woman in 1960 to the current 4.6 children per woman is partly attributed to the increasing use of the pill and other methods of contraception.

“It has touched on every aspect of not only the woman’s life, but the whole homestead as well,” says Dr Pauline Giorgio, a pharmacy owner in Nairobi.

Carries stigma

Although it has radically altered the lives of women, it is apparent that its usage still carries some stigma. Dr Giorgio, 53, says she cannot buy the pills from her own chemist due to lack of privacy.

“I would not want my staff to see me pick the pills from my own pharmacy. I prefer going to another chemist to buy them,” she says.

Ever since its discovery, it has courted controversy throughout its five-decade journey. It was the first medicine ever designed to be taken regularly by people who were not sick.

Its main inventor was a conservative Catholic who was looking for a treatment for infertility and accidentally stumbled upon a combination of chemicals that would prevent these “accidents” in 1960.

When the pill finally knocked on Kenyan doors, in the early 1970s and 1980s, it was met with unified opposition from across the religious spectrum.

Protestant, Catholic as well as indigenous African religious opinion shapers united against it.

At that time many regarded sex, even within marriage, as immoral unless it was for the sole purpose of procreation. Fear of pregnancy was a powerful check on promiscuity — and information about contraception was treated as pornography.

“They (church) have always been against contraception. From the outset, they say it is ungodly to plan your family. That only God can decide to give you children. In fact, were it not for the ravage caused by Aids, condoms may still be looked upon as a sin,” says Oliver Waindi, the executive director of Family Health Options Kenya.

In 1962, at the height of calls for a general liberalisation of church teaching, Pope John XXIII convened the Second Vatican Council. Many leaders and clergy anticipated a relaxation of restraints on family planning. But the teaching against contraception stayed in place.

Hundreds of American theologians issued a statement that this was not an infallible teaching and that Catholics could in good conscience dissent.

According to a recent edition of Time magazine, leaked reports of the commission’s findings suggested that nearly all its theologians and a majority of the cardinals favoured changing the church’s teaching on the immorality of contraception. But the following year, Pope Paul VI issued his encyclical Humanae Vitae, in which he sided with the minority.

Humanae Vitae is a letter that re-affirms the traditional teaching of the Catholic church regarding abortion, contraception, and other issues pertaining to human life. The letter prohibited all forms of artificial contraception.

If religion posed a challenge to the acceptance and eventual penetration of the pill as contraception, then tradition was the cryptic puzzle that family planning providers had to solve if they were to claim relevance in uncharted ground.

“How could you tell an African man not to sire children? In his mind, sex was primarily for procreation and also as a sign of fertility. This was their second most important function in the home after protecting their families,” says Ndiritu Njoka of Maendeleo ya Wanaume.

Naturally, the heads of the homesteads were opposed to having fewer children. Bigger families meant prestige.

Data from the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey of 1989 indicate that the average number of children a woman of child-bearing age had in 1984 was 7.7, the highest birthrate on the continent at the time.

“Back then, contraceptive usage was almost equated to murder. Tales were told of wives who were returned to their ancestral homes at the slightest suspicion of having popped a pill or having subscribed to any other form of family planning,” says Dr Louis Machogu of Family Health Options Kenya.
But women still had their way.

“They flocked to government clinics on market days and got their pills or any other form of contraception without the knowledge of their husbands,” says Dr Machogu.

Something had to give if contraception was to become acceptable and make the impact that government planners hoped it would. Reason alone could not appeal to the masses.

The campaigns needed a voice and a face.

“Former President Moi was one of the first prominent people to add voice to family planning. After he gave contraceptive use the green light, acceptance in society gained some ground,” says Walter Odhiambo of Marie Stopes.

The former president, who has eight children, became a vocal supporter of family planning.

The effect of contraceptive use was felt in the early 1990s. The Kenya Demographic Health Survey of 1989 indicated a drop in fertility rates from 7.7 in 1983 to 6.7 in 1989. And all trends at that time pointed to the rates going lower.

But sceptics were not fully convinced of the marvels of the pill and its fore-runners like the coil, the intra-uterine devices and injections. Lack of information among the public could only serve to fuel the rumour mill.

“Every woman had her own method of preventing pregnancy. The thought of a chemical substance in their systems made many women uncomfortable,” says Dr Giorgio. Dr Giorgio uses the safe days method and resorts to the pill only when she suspects failure in her system.

Other traditional methods included prolonged breastfeeding, withdrawal method and abstinence.

Ancient Egyptians are said to have made a paste out of crocodile dung and formed it into a vaginal insert.

The condom is often credited to one Dr Condom, who was said to have invented a sheath made out of sheep intestines for England’s King Charles II to help limit the number of bastards he sired in the mid 1700s.

From suspicions of causing cancer to milder side effects such as hot flushes, all one needed was pick a side effect and use it as an excuse to abandon “modern” methods of pregnancy prevention.

In these claims, experts say, lie truths, half-truths and untruths.

Contraceptives have a direct relationship with one of the biggest fears of its users – cancer. Some may accelerate it while others may slow down its progress.

“Growth of cancerous cells is accelerated by the presence of high amounts of oestrogen. At first, most contraceptives had high amounts of oestrogen. Thus, women already predisposed to the disease were at greater risk,” says gynaecologist Eric Sagwa.

But he says evolution in the medical world has resulted in the creation of “smarter” contraceptives with little amounts of oestrogen and more amounts of progestin.

“The cancerous cells cannot thrive as well in an environment with little oestrogen. So the cells grow at normal speeds. Such contraceptives are not considered as trigger factors to abnormal growth of body cells,” Dr Sagwa says.

Other side effects such as weight gain, or flushes depend on the individual using the contraception.

“These are chemical substances aimed at mimicking the body hormones. Since each woman has a different hormonal balance the methods react in various ways. That is why it is advisable to seek professional help when deciding your preferred contraceptive method,” says Mr Odhiambo.

But on the business side, it has become a hot sell.

“It is selling more than ever. We have marked a more than 100 per cent increase in sales since our last consignment,” says Dr Giorgio.

In the late 1980s, family planning initiatives received more than Sh80 billion in donor aid. By 2000, the amount of money coming in had reduced by more than 60 per cent to less than Sh32 billion.

“Aids happened and many donors diverted funding to HIV/Aids-related programmes. A cut meant stockouts at government facilities fuelling a black market for fakes and quacks,” says Mr Odhiambo.

It was then thought that a tangible solution to this would be to increase government funding in the Department of Reproductive Health and make some contraceptives, such as the emergency pill an over-the-counter drug.

Stockouts persisted as government funding fell short of the intended projections and the problem of fakes continued to fester. But yet another problem arose from these stop-gap measures.

“The ease of accessing the emergency pill led to a rise in its abuse. Some women used it not in emergency situations, but as their choice contraceptive resulting in health complications,” says Dr Machogu.

Bit by bit, the gains in family planning that had been made over the last 15 years dating from 1990 slowly began reversing.

In 1984, a survey found that just 18 per cent of married women used some form of contraception. The Kenya Demographic and Health Survey 2008 indicates contraceptive use among married women stands at 46 per cent.

Half a century after its discovery, the pill cannot be said to have been radically successful in its aim of curbing population growth.

Sharing a birthday with your child may be considered special by many parents. But for Rose Naliaka, the coinciding dates of her 28th birthday and her fifth born’s 3rd birthday is a reminder of a failed family planning programme.

Naliaka grew up in rural Bungoma.

“Not once did I ever hear of the pill. The only sure family planning method I knew of was abstaining from sex,” she says.

Older women from her village are now telling her to watch the size of her family.

“They say one day my husband may run away and leave me with all these children. I once told him of a visit to the dispensary. He left and came back after two days,” she says.

As a result, Naliaka has fallen back to her old method of abstinence on the days she feels “unsafe”.

There cannot be a definitive answer on whether the pill as a precursor to other contraceptives has failed or succeeded.

The only certainty is that women and men, for centuries to come, will still be talking about the exploits of Margaret Sanger, the devout Catholic nurse who stumbled upon a hormonal combination that helped women avoid unplanned and unwelcome pregnancies.

“We have a whole generation of women who grew up while the pill was making inroads in the country. Many of them still have five or more kids. It still has a long way to go,” says Monica Wanjiru of Population Council of Kenya.