From:
Mugo Muchiri
Los Angeles, CA
December 1, 2012
Q: Habari Bwana Mugo? It’s good to see you. Alas, the month of Christmas is upon us. What wrought it for thee, my friend? Good tidings?
Mugo: I think so. It’s a beautiful start of a special month. The world over, December is celebrated for gifts both human and divine. May the tidings be of uplifting the collective consciousness of the world in order that we might all live in peace and harmony. Na wewe, how’s your peace and harmony?
Q: Good and growing. Like you, chai and ucuru have become favorites. I’ve also noticed a greater proclivity for exercise. I don’t know, maybe it’s the cold; somehow the body seems to cherish the greater exertion. Anyway thanks for doing this again.
Mugo: Always a pleasure.
Q: Of course what we want to do is to review November’s events in Kenya. They say that he who neglects his history damages his prospects for a better future.
Mugo: And the Enlightened says ‘Success is born of he who acts while established in his innermost Self, in his transcendental pure consciousness.’
Q: Sawa. I don’t know if President Mwai Kibaki was established in his innermost Self when he officially opened the Thika Superhighway on November 9. But it’s an 8-lane road network that connects Nairobi to Thika and is expected to spur greater economic activity between the two towns and their hinterlands. This is part of actuating Vision 2030. These guys aren’t messing around, are they?
Mugo: No they’re not. As Kenyans, I believe we need to extend heartfelt congratulations to Kibaki. This is a significant milestone, all 31miles of it. My understanding is that they’ve started installing solar-powered streetlights as well as fiberglass road signs. By the way, this fiberglass material is non-scrap which should curtail incidents of vandalism.
Q: Are you looking forward to an immediate economic impact?
Mugo: Yes, I am. See, a country’s road system is like arteries and veins in our physiology which carry oxygen and nutrients to the different parts of the body and back. Having more roads and bridges will open up the country to itself and allow Kenya to more readily exploit its resources and potential. Inevitably, prosperity of the material kind will spread. And I suspect the impact will be as immediate as that of an unclogged artery. But it should increase in time too.
Q: Do you think this has a social impact too? I suspect Kenyans in more remote areas might feel more connected to their fellow wananchi in more populous areas when travel between regions is ameliorated?
Mugo: Growing up in the early 70s, we often heard about how people from Northern Kenya would qualify their visit to Nairobi as “going to Kenya.” They didn’t consider themselves to be a part of the larger Kenyan body politic. And It wasn’t necessarily being rejectionist, a la MRC; they just didn’t relate to anything other than their little world.
No part of the country should have to continue feeling remote and disconnected. That’s why I admire and support Vision 2030. And folks like Engineer Michael Kamau, the Roads PS and his technical team – the real brains behind this gathering infrastructural success – need to be recognized for their patriotism. Their love of country is clearly discernable from the good job they continue to churn out and shepherd in that important ministry?
Q: As if that’s not enough, on November 13 Kenya Railways launched a modern commuter service with the first passenger being none other than Mtukufu himself.
Mugo: Yes, another of the season’s good tidings. Cities around the world are grappling with how to reduce cars on the road without sacrificing moving people around efficiently. Nairobi’s no exception. In fact Nairobi’s transportation challenges are particularly daunting given that an estimated 500,000 wananchi move in and out of the city every day. That’s a massive influx of people relative to her total population. Effectively, towns like Ngong, Machakos, Thika and Naivasha have been rendered mere extensions of Nairobi which makes the case for rail as a transportation mode particularly compelling. Kenya Railways has appropriated Sh 24 billion (USD 29 million) for the Nairobi Commuter Rail Transport Project, of which this augurated commuter service is just the first phase. By the way, Syokimau has a brand new railway station that’s really fancy and in league with stations in the developed world.
Q: Since we seem to be on a ‘building’ roll here, let’s talk about the new Vice President home in Karen which Kibaki also recently inaugurated. The pics look terrific.
Mugo: As does the price tag! It cost taxpayers a whooping 383 million ($4.5million)!
Q: Was it worth every cent of it?
Mugo: I think so. It’s a fine piece of artwork that exudes a stunning ornateness very befitting of the dignity of the Deputy Presdent of the Republic of Kenya. Yaani you see it and you say ‘mazee, I won’t mind being a gardener here.’ The thing that comes close is Raphael Tuju’s residence, also on a 10-acre spread in Karen (check out ‘KTN’s Darubini on YouTube for a tour of Tuju’s digs and if you’ve had jawlock disease since your childhood, get ready for your cure, I kid you not!)
Anyway, the Veep project was initially awarded to Dimken, a Kenyan contractor owned by Dick Githaiga. But soon afterwards, the award ran into trouble with complaints of lack of performance and cost overruns. So the government went back to the drawing board and re-tendered. Italbuild Imports Ltd, a company owned by a Kenyan of Italian extraction, a guy by the name of Vittorio Veneziani, won the contract. Bwana the guy ran with the mantra ‘build, baby build’ and boy did he deliver a jaw-dropping home run!
Q: But didn’t we already have a Vice President’s residence in the Kabarnet Gardens area, close to Ngong Hills Hotel and Moi Nairobi Girls High School?
Mugo: As a matter of fact we did, but there’s an ugly wrinkle to that story, a case of acquisitive fingers getting too restless. The itch had to be scratched and boom! Voila, Moi Africa Institute! “Muketi hivyo hivyo!”
Q: But this was government property and therefore a public asset. The fact that it was strong-armed into private ownership doesn’t erase a grievous injustice on the Kenyan people. Why can’t the government do a repo?
Mugo: It’s an excellent question. When it comes to how a nation addresses its seemigly intractable problems, I’ve come to believe that the character of a president is an especially important pointer. Particularly in the absence of a culture of constitutionalism. Kibaki is no (Zambian President) Sata or even(Malawian President) Joyce Banda for that matter. Deeply non-confrontational, he abhors ruffling feathers. This effect is a ballerina-esque tip-toeing rather than the brazen, hard-tackling approach that Zambians and Malawians have gotten accustomed to.
Now this modus operandi doesn’t necessarily make him any less effective; challenges just take a lot longer to be resolved. So efficiency goes out the window. Another downside, in Kibaki’s case, is that you deprive Kenyans the ‘joy’ of seeing spilt blood. Issues like the repo of the 900-acre excision from the Kaptagat forest, now a bustling tea farm and factory in private hands, get punted to a National Land Commission if at all. Compare that to Raphael Tuju’s more brash style of resolving the issue of KICC ownership; KANU didn’t even know what hit them! They just knew twas between the eyes!
Q: Perhaps that explains at least in part Kibaki’s being so invested in the passage of our new Constitution. From his perspective, any loss of power from its diffusion from the center is far outweighed by the gain of punting to Commissions. No one will be wagging their finger at you in the latter and more vulnerable years of your life. No?
Mugo: I would generally concur with that observation but with a cavaet. I think Western pressure and the specter of an ICC overhang may have been key factors as well.
Q: Coming back to the building theme for a second, with all these infrastructure projects going on, do you worry about the country’s indebtedness? Are you concerned about our ability to serve Sovereign Debt? I mean let’s face facts: the nation’s debt has quantum-leaped and shows no sign of abetting. Do you see the adverse omen of ballooning interest payments that suck up all the oxygen from spending on Education, Healthcare and the Environment?
Mugo: Your question speaks to what economists call debt-to-GDP ratios. How much debt a nation carrys relative to the total value of goods and services it produces every year. This is a primary indicator of national economic health. This is one very critical area of analysis where a spotlight needs to be shone on. Check on some 2011 figures for various nations: Category 1 – Leading African economies: South Africa (35.6%), Egypt (85.7%), Nigeria (17.6%), Kenya (48.5%). Category 2 – Kenya’s leading donors: United States (105.1%), United Kingdom (86.8%), Canada (83.5%), Norway (48.9%), Japan (208.2%), China (43.5%).
The main thing is to invest where returns are measurably tangible and directly result in improved living standards for the common mwananchi.
Q: Finally as we head towards Christmas, what’s your sense of our cohesion? What more can be done to dim the divisiveness that always seems to rear its ugly head around elections?
Mugo: The answer is the growth of love. A man meets a woman and falls in love with her. If you look at that man before, and then look him after, it’s the same man. Only the condition of his heart has changed. And with it, there is more delicacy in his manner; there is more thankfulness in his attitude; there is more exuberance in his feelings as well as more bullishness about his prospects. What changed? Just the quality of his heart. This is the power of love; it leaves life in greater beauty and more abundance. That’s why, ‘And the greatest of them all is……….’
Q: So do you tell theTurkana to love the Samburu and the Pokot and vice versa? Do you tell the rest of Kenyans to love MRC and so forth?
Mugo: No, this is too tedious as Kibunjia and his team will attest. Truth is you don’t have to tell the sap anything. Just water the root, and the rest is automatic.
Q: But how do you invoke love in a community, we can’t be falling in love at every corner?
Mugo: By going to the core of love, the real residence of love. Ask any mother where the love for her child comes from. She may not be able to locate where, but she’ll tell you it’s in her heart. The reason she can’t point a finger: the field of pure love within us is at the transcendental, unmanifest level of our lives. Love is the essential character of our inner soul. And, importantly, humans have the ability to experience and stir this pure field of love. The method for doing so is Transcendental Meditation or TM which provides a direct path to experience increasingly finer levels of life until the finest level is transcended, leaving the experience of this transcental level of pure, unbounded awareness.
What happens when the mind transcends? The same thing that happens when the sap is enlivened by watering the root. All expressed values of the tree – the roots, the bark, the trunk, the leaves, the green, the fragrances – every fiber of the tree is nourished and strengthened when the sap is enlivened. Like that, when the mind transcends, every aspect of our individual, family and collective life will be strengthened when a group of about 500 practice the TM and TM-Sidhi program together in a group. This is the way to eliminate stress in the collective consciousness. People spontaneously treat each other in a positive and loving way.
It’s a beautiful country, let’s unleash its great potential.
Q: Asante sana. Finally word from the son of Ndunge?
Mugo: Let’s all learn TM and play our part to develop a world that angels can’t wait to descend to. HEAVEN ON EARTH.