Ayomide
I spent last week in Nairobi, the Kenya capital. We had travelled, members of our Board of Editors, to hold a session with member so for the Advisory Committee of our African of the Year project. It was my first visit in Kenya, which remains a surprise for me, given just how much of Kenya history I have lapped up from childhood. My father was fascinated with the nationalist movements of the different African nations, and I was tutored so early to revere Patrice Lumumba, Kwame Nkrumah and Jomo Kenyatta, amongst several heroes of African liberation. Kenyatta’s book, FACING MOUNT KENYA, was one of the texts of my home and one fine morning in 1979, I took it to the broadcasting house in Ilorin and forgot it in a taxicab!
If that was my earlier experience of Kenyan life, Ngugi’s writings and the development of left-wing politics in the4 Kenya of the nineteen eighties, and the subsequent severe repression of socialist and Marxists in the country would be the more intimate developments for me. The years of the late seventies and early eighties were years of very robust left-wing debate all around Africa; these came in the wake of the liberation struggles in Guinea Bissau, Angola and Mozambique, and the emergence of outstanding individuals like Amilcar Cabral, Agustino Neto and Samorah Machel, The debaters in Kenya were related to those we were having in Nigeria and all around Africa, and we had a community of feelings which united all of us in socialist politics around our continent. I was equally fascinated by the history of Kenya resistance to colonial rule, especially the war of liberation symbolized by Dedan Kimathi; the Mau Mau war, was one of the bloodiest wars of African resistance to colonialism.
So from a fascination with history, a lot of reading of its literature and familiarity with several other aspects of Kenya life: the wildlife, its sports, even the railways, i went to Nairobi, feeling as if I have been in the country before. A city built by colonialists to serve mainly the interests of the settlers; Nairobi is a modern city which seems to function. Its infrastructure is supporting a growing population and it is a truly international city, as one of the UN headquarters cities. Away from our African of the Year event, I attended a civil society event which Muthoni Wanyeki’s Human Rights Commission organized with other NGOs to look at the problem of sexual violence against women in Kenya. An underlining current of Kenya life was the history of violence which came from the colonial effort to subjugate its people. The British instituted killings to remove African people from the very fertile land to aid settlement by their own people. It is the same imperialists who have so much bllod on their hands that will teach us lessons about human rights today!
I spent’ a whole day visiting different bookshops in Nairobi, because I wanted to get another copy of Kenyatta’s book that I lost all those years ago, but without success; I also did not get a coopy of J.M.Kariuki’s MAUMAU DETAINEE which I have always wanted to read, but in the end, I got about twenty-five new books, including the children’s versions of the biographies of Nelson Mandela, Nkrumah, Dedan Kimathi, Pio Gama Pinto and the Kenya heroine, Me Kitilili. Those I purchased for my daughter, Innawuro. A visit to Kenya will not be complete without a night out in one of the most famous restau4rants in the world, CANIVORE; together with Tajudeen Abdulraheem and Okello Oculli, I went to have a bite of the exotic: crocodile and ostrich as well as the ususal suspects of beef, chicken and lamb, washed down with a uniquely CANIVORE punch that was as hot as it was sweet!
The result of our work in Nairobi will be released in the next few weeks, but what was most incredible was the opportunity to meet the outstanding team of friends, comrades and intellectuals that we had put together for the Advisory Committee, from Salim Ahmed Salim to the others from all directions: Gahan, Kenya, South Africa and Senegal. I was at the heart of the work to put that team together, and over the past few months, I made telephone calls, sent emails and texts to destinations around the world to confirm acceptance of membership, to work out the accommodation, the travels and related logistics. The fact that we pulled through the meeting in Nairobi, speaks so well of how much the modern communication technologies have made the world a much smaller unit. Nairobi is a destination that is also very convenient for pan-African meetings because it is so well served by international airlines and its very functional infrastructure.
The Nigerian ruling elite has often spoken about making Nigeria the destination of choice for conferences and tourism; I think there is the need for Nigeria to work with a greater determination to get the infrastructures right. Basic things like electricity help to underscore the intention of a country to be modern and be taken seriously. We cannot build out country and be a part of the modern world, it those basic things like education are neglected; when we do not invest in infrastructure or are more interested in stealing resources that should have been applied for national development. I enjoyed the few days out in Nairobi last week and will be back there sometime soon, during my leave. But what is constant for me, is that no matter where I go around the world, the irresistible pull of Nigeria is so overwhelming for me. Our country has all the problems that we all lament and are very angry about, yet it has an incredible vibrancy which makes me want to continue to work for its liberation. That is the duty of the patriot.
