Trenched city all in the name of cables

It's not only under the international waters that there has been a tussle amongst governments on whose cable should be used to link the wretched countries on the eastern coast of Africa to the rest of the world. Eassy and Teams have become the most recent catch phrases to the tech-frenzy chaps from Cape Town (or is it Durban??) to Fujaira, not forgetting Mogadishu. That said at the national level, particularly in Nairobi, the euphoria that has been created by the talk of these under sea cables has led to businessmen scrabbling for trenches to lay the fibre optic cables.

To my guess along the major highways on the street of Nairobi there are at least 3 or more cables buried in there waiting for 'internet' to be switched on in Fujaira. I'm told when this will happen, 'internet' will flow like water. Good days to look forward to!!

But were the French in town, or was this Paris, things would have been done differently, no, more sensibly as they have done. The french are ingenious sometimes. Like when they discovered that their sewer lines are not just a one-way traffic out of their stinking loos and sinks on to the sanitation centres but can also be used to lay fibre optic cables. But wait a minute! This is not a discovery. This is common sense. It is common sense that in any city proud of bearing that title (that excludes, Nairobi obviously) to each building, housing block, or dwelling, there's a sewer line and it's function does not necessarily has be to taking bog out of the house.

The long and short of it is that the Nairobi City Council, rather than spend time and money licensing Tom, Dick, Kauff and Gamay to dig trenches and in the process endangering our walking nation in the pretex of laying cables should wake up and smell the coffee, no, make more money out of the sewer system. Alternatively, licence it to some one and see what will happen. I'm willing to bid the bog line!

NCC-Roundaboutleasing

Like the rest of us, we were all very excited to hear that the Chinese have agreed to carry out major expansions on the Uhuru Highway. In fact to my recollection, the Old man wenfor a ground breaking ceremony at the Nyayo Stadium round about. This notwithstanding, and with the City Council of Nairobi knowing very well that the round abouts will very soon be bulldozed, they continue to 'rehabilitate', landscape or do whatever else they like to do on these round abouts under the beautification programme. I really wonder whether GoK and the NCC and the Chinese are in sync vecause i do not see the logic of beautifying a roundabout that will soon be knocked down unless the NCC is indirectly saying that they have more than enough money to waste. Or is it yet another................'Roundaboutberg' or 'Roundaboutleasing'??

Nairobi City Council 'owned' kioks

To stem the ever-running battles between the NCC on one hand and the kiosk owners and hawkers on the other, wouldn't it make sense if NCC could construct the kiosks itself (on the road reserves) and rent them out so that on the day when they want to carry out evictions, all they would need to do is to issues notice as landlords and then have the rest follow. In fact, this way, NCC would be collecting more revenue from the kiosks while at the same time stemming illegal encroachment of road reserves. Aestheticity of the city in the sun would also be restored. I'm not sure whether this was one of the many proposals that was contained in the 'Nairobi we want' way back in 1992-93 but it would be useful, if the NCC could start looking at the kiosk issue in this light.

Colonised by politics

If I survey on political interest was to be carried out throughout the world, Kenyans would come first! We sleep, eat, drink, talk, and dream politics, ALL the time. And our media doesn't help....they report on the same, create news on the same, ALL the time.

I think that it may be extremely sueful if, our media could report on other more useful things, more positive things, like economy, education. If for example, the media was to give politics and politicians a black-out for a month, would we KENYANS who eat and sleep politics, STARVE? Or would we stop watching news (which we are very addicted to), or stop buying the dailies? I don't think so. May be they, the media should give this a try. Otherwise, even such lofty ideas as vision 2030 will not be achieved unless we consume less politics and more of the other important stuff.

the 'architecture' of a duka

Part of the legacy that was left behind post independence is the architecture of dukas that is, those kioks that line up streets in shags and a majority of our urban centres in Kenya. Yes, I'm talking about those flat faced shops. In there you'll find, a 'hotel', 'butchery', 'general shop' or 'general kiosk' and a 'posho mill' plus 'bar'. To be a owner of a 'general shop' in shags one must be doing very well or at least, seen to be doing well. They do firm a source of aspiration and inspiration to the youngfolk...

Of course, the dukas play a very impaortant role in ensuring that goods and services, and other provisions (like posho) reach the mwananchi up there in the rural areas. One cannot also forget that these buildings also do get branded with all manner of goods and services, cowboy; rexona; ugali; celtel; safaricom; all for free thus saving the shop owner a few more shillings. This also beautifies the 'town' if you may call it making it look like a rainbow of sorts. With the branding, only churcjes and cattle dips get spared.

However, I have alsways considered that the architecture of the 'general shop' is very colonial; backwards and un inspiring. Whereas I'm not a sociologist, I tend to think that the facade is even depressing and perhaps if we want to 'jivunia kuwa wakenya' then perhaps like we did with a national dress, have a copmpetition to design the national kiosk. That architecture that came from I-don't'know should be done away with, even fir the sake of a new century.

Of names, maiden names and hyphens.....

If my name is X Y Z, with X standing for my first name, Y for my middle name and Z for my surname, assuming that I come from the Mt. Kenya region, then it's easy to decipher where all my three names came from: X was by choice because my mother, father or neighbour liked it and hence it was given to me at birth or later during baptism. As for Y, that is the name of a relative that I have been given to carry. Z of course is the name of my father. That being the case, then it's obvious that all the three names are mine; that is my brand. The reason why in shags people tend to refer to each other by their middle names is partly out of respect(because you do not want to call a young boy by his surname name, particularly if the caller is the young boy's agemate). However, in other settings or environments-such as places of work, it then doesn't matter whether you call me X, Y, Z or a combination of these as long as you know you are referring to me, and I know that you are referring to me.

Then enters the hyphenations and maiden names. The first question to pose is: is it really necessary for a woman on getting married to adopt a husband's name? The Kenyan law does not provide as such and what we experience is a practice and adopted from I would think, England. To change or adopt a name in a forma way in Kenya is a long and not exactly cheap affair as one has to swear statutoty declarations and ultimately have the same officially gazetted.....The second question to raise is: What does hyphenation of names by married women signify? Her family tree? Reluctance to adopt her husband's name? The most used reason/excuse that I often hear is that by marriage a woman does not want to lose her professional identity because changing names midstream her professional carrer can be very confusing (and costly too) both to her, her colleagues and clients. Again brand issues -management and change arises here.

Another problem that arises post-hyphenation of names on marriage is the following: assuming that on marriage the lady name becomes ABC-D. Does the lady now have four or five names, or are they still three? that is, A, B, C,D; or A, B, C, -, and D; or A, B, C-D? Now if she was required to fill some form as required in our day to day life for insurance, pass port, immigration; job application, etc etc how does she do it? I'm keen to know!!

This being the case then it seems to me that the most sensible thing for a woman to do on getting married is NOT to adopt her husband's name at all. Change of name does not to my mind make a marriage or whatever relationship longer; and your kids are there to carry the names on.

In any event, lately, confusion does arise on what name to adopt, if any: the husband's middle or surname? Both??

Perhaps a way out is to propose a law to regulate naming, like in Switzerland and Sweden.

The Queuing Act

Recently, I had to go to a KPLC customer centre to pay my electricity bill. It happens that this was my first time, after a very long while. So, it being a working day, I got up early and set off to Adams Acarde. On getting there shortly before 8.00am, I was welcomed by a long snaking queue only to learn that it was an hour to go before the KPLC staff reported to work. A thought then occured to me that at Sarit Centre, the KPLC office is usually opened early. After meandering through the Nairobi morning traffic, I go there only to find a situation similar to that I had left at Adams-another long queue. Almost giving up, I thought it wise then to rush to work, and then take an early afternoon off to tender to my bills.

I started the afternoon at Sarit and the sight was to static: it seemed as if no one had moved not even an inch since I left there in the morning. Stupidly (and on the theory that the other queue moves faster), I rushed back to Adams only to find exactly the same state of things as I had left in the morning. Since, it was now approaching closing time for the KPLC office, and I stretched to the absurd limits of my imagination on how best to go about paying the bill, i stuck myself to the tail of the queue and with nothing else to do (other than queue and feed my eyes to the environment) patiently waited for my turn to be served.

Observing the crowd (for lack of a better word), I noticed that some people would join the queue for a short while then tell the fellows behind that they should watch or keep their spaces and then take off only to return when their 'space' was very close to the service counter. Of course for those that would protest against this person claiming his 'space' would be welcomed by stone-faced "I was here first".

As I harbour some 'almost political' ambitions, I thought then that if one day should I find myself in the August House (never mind my party-will probably call it 'space' or 'mlolongo'), I'll move for a motion, on the first day to enact THE QUEUING ACT, a Act of Parliament that will make it mandatory for everyone to queue without abandoning thier 'space' until served. I'm confident that my motion will receive overwhelming support form my colleagues, the Honourable members. In any event we, in the August House will just have come from elections and the electorate will have queued patiently behind the ballot boxes to vote fo us.

It's been over seven months since I last blogged. A lot has gone down since, including a full christmas and an easter. My endeavour from now on is to post, post and post, on everything and anything that I feel worth ranting about, with a view to calm my nerves as I take a deep breath. So, watch this space. I'll be dropping my first rant shortly.