January 24, 2005

OPINION

A PASTORAL LETTER TO THE KENYA COMMUNITY LIVING ABROAD

Dear Kenya Community Abroad,

In late December last year, I wrote an article in the Standard Newspaper arguing that you had no business lecturing us what to do with our condition back home because you were not best placed to tell us what to do with our politics, our poverty and even our corruption.

I am most pleased that most of you read the article, circulated it, responded to it, sometimes emotionally and negatively, other times logically and positively. Whichever way you read and understood the article, I sincerely thank you all for having found time to contribute to the debate.

One other thing though, the article did exactly what it was intended to do: provoke discussion on this issue of Kenyans living abroad who have the ability to repatriate billions of US Dollars back home every year.

Of the 987 mails I received directly, I have selected to respond to those worth responding to. Some of these well-argued articles also found their way into the local dailies back home. They were responses from Mr. Al Kags, an official of Kenya Community Abroad, my long time friend John Mulla from Washington DC, Michael Mundia Kamau, Liz Nganga and Mr. Onyango Obbo of the Nation Media Group.

As your letters came pouring in, via almost every known discussion forum on the Internet, I was on holiday in North America even though a few of you thought I was in Nairobi.

Having read all your letters and articles, and having had one on one discussions with many of you in North America and Europe, I have realized, sadly but not surprisingly that the culture of intolerance that we forever accused the Kanu regime of, had been domesticated in our way of life as Kenyans, irrespective of where we live, our level of education not withstanding.

When I read some of the insults, others extremely personal, I remembered the 1980s when Moi introduced in the Kenyan politics what was called the Kanu Disciplinary Committee, headed by the late Okiki Amayo. What that committee did to voices of reason and dissent within Kanu left a permanent scar on the individuals targeted. Some political careers and businesses were ruined forever.

I also recalled in those heady days of political repression when free speech as a basic human right was alien to Kenya. Those were the days one Hon Kuria Kanyingi and Hon Mwenje led an onslaught on the late Josephat Karanja, then Vice President of Kenya on the basis of True-lies manufactured at the Kanu headquarters, simply because some one did not like Karanja as Vice President.

After fighting for so many years to regain our freedom of speech, why are we Kenyans so prone to remind ourselves of the dark days that we would like to forget? Why are we so intolerant of divergent views? Why do we yearn for praises and accolades that sometimes we don't deserve?

For starters, I make no apologies for every word I used in my article. If anything, the Standard Newspaper changed the headline and cut out a lot of detail. Never the less, the main thrust of the article and spirit remained intact.

Soon after the attacks came pouring in from self-styled experts on the Kenyan situation, I went to the Kenya Community website and was amused to find that the well publicized home coming AGM in Nairobi had been postponed due to logistical reasons. One of the glaring reasons you gave for the postponement was that arrangements at home had dragged on with confirmation from Kenyan authorities taking too long to materialize. Deep down in the cancellation note was buried a reference to some donor that had failed to honor the pledge to sponsor that homecoming!

I thought that was rather strange for two reasons: one, because the meeting, according to press reports, had taken place at Safari Park Hotel and, secondly, why would Kenyans living abroad, who send so much money home, look for a sponsor to foot the bill for their coming home?

In my categorization of Kenyans living abroad, I must confess I was not exhaustive. There are other groups that I did not talk about and I received so many calls from individuals asking me where they belonged.

For this inconclusiveness, I apologize to those Kenyans that have joined the ranks of the international Civil Service who live and work abroad, serving Kenya as diplomats or were recruited from home by United Nations Agencies, the World Bank, World Food Program, World Health Organization and a host of other private sector organizations.

Then there are a number of Kenyans who in the recent past have applied for US residency and have since transferred their skills and training to North America and are surely making their careers out there

For a start, let me state that there is nothing absolutely wrong with Kenyans working and living abroad. It is a choice that one who has an opportunity has to make.

For many years, Kenyans were accused of being too complacent and loved their home too much. Kenyans never wanted to go and live abroad. Therefore this development is welcome. It falls in the same pattern with what the West African States like Senegal, Ghana, Liberia and Nigeria have always done. Senegal for instance depends on human resource export for its economy back home.

Now that there are so many types of Kenyans living abroad, which category has a stronger membership in this body called Kenya Community Abroad? Are they the busy academics like Ali Mazrui, Ngugi Wathiongo or the international civil servants like Dr. Khama Rogo and Dr. Orinda?

For your information, Dr. Khama Rogo built a whole hospital and brought electricity to his village in Gem before he relocated to Washington DC to work for the World Bank. For the years that Hon Raphael Tuju lived in Washington DC, he quietly brought development to Rarieda and built his business in Nairobi without meddling in local politics

I will tell you that this type cannot find time to join a pressure group whose activities cannot be quantified as Michael Mundia Kamau puts it. A member of the Kenya Community Abroad based in Germany, Mickie Ojijo has confirmed as much.

Personally I have my relatives and friends living abroad in Europe, America, Canada, Asia, South East Asia and all. Every time this discussion about the Kenya Community Abroad crops up, they tell me they are not members. On asking them to tell me why they are not members, they are quick to remind me that they have no time for such.

Perhaps the idea of a Kenya Community Abroad is noble but the approach to recruitment and issues back home has not been well thought out. I know at one time, during the Bomas Constitutional Conference, a memorandum was received from this organization pitching for dual citizenship. Now you can only ask for dual citizenship from Kenya if you are not a Kenyan. Another time they suggested that they should have a special seat in parliament to represent their interests! And I say there is nothing wrong with that but please justify it.

If every time you wake up, you remind us that things have not changed, that our politics is bad, that the economy is not working, that we live with 6000 rats in our city and that we are still very corrupt, then why don't you pack up your bags and come home to fix things? Why criticize from a distance?

If you want to help Kenya, please by all means do so but spare us the moral high ground and stop lecturing us on how to run our systems back home. This is where we live and we hold no other passport of another foreign country.

Now I have it on authority that most of you who subscribe to Kenya Community Abroad are not Kenyans. A lot more of you are permanent residents who loathe relocating to Kenya because Kenya is very insecure and that street boys will steal your mobile phones! This, not withstanding the fact that every Tom, Dick and Kamau own a mobile phone, from Mama Mboga to Wanjiku and a Mathree Driver!

You relinquished your Kenya citizenships long time ago. Some of you cannot come home for reasons you very well know about. A lot of you have too much time on your hands, surfing the Internet and spending countless hours gossiping and rumor mongering.

I was amused to find that in attacking me, some of you went through all known search engines and attributed everything about any Okungu on the Internet to be linked to me. That was cheap. Those of you who did so were way off the mark and missed my point.

If you want to argue with me in the future on this subject or any other topic for that matter, please give facts on logic the way Al Kags, John Mulla, Michel Mundia, Liz Nganga and Onyango Obbo did.

If you are intellectually challenged, shut up.

Jerry Okungu
Director
ACEMEPA - The African Center for Media and Political Analysis
Nairobi, Kenya
Contact Jerry Okungu
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