Some of this, a little of that.

Tomorrow I will travel to Uganda to do a community Virtues workshop, so will be away for three days. In the past week or so we have run a community workshop in Kakamega and one for teachers. At the latter the Provincial Education Officer came in person to tell the participants that he is entirely behind the project and expects all schools to be compliant. He told them of the reduction in serious violence we have seen and reiterated that it will spread through the province.
Our rutted and potholed dirt roads in town have been graded because the President came on Thursday to preside at the graduation ceremonies of the university.
Today we visited the three wells we have going. Tambua and Lirhanda are going well and should be finished next week. We will organize the official handover in January. Ingidi had more problems. They hit rock twice at the spot we had designated, so moved to the other side of the compound. At first I was concerned about the proximity of pit latrines to this site, but we checked it all out, taking into account the slope of the ground, and they just squeak by for distance between the latrines and the water hole. I’ll try to post a couple of pictures when I come back from Uganda.
Here’s what’s keeping us talking:
The government has adopted the tried and true way to stall decisions by proposing a tribunal (commission) to look into the issue of MP taxation. Even if the result is what people want, laws will have to be rewritten. Not likely that anything will happen until a new government in 2012.

After vehemently protesting the implementation of the Waki report to bring instigators of last January’s mayhem to justice, there has been an about face and the government is setting up a tribunal, rather than see the whole affair handed to the World Court in the Hague. Two of the judges must be foreign and one Kenyan. The prosecutor must be foreign. A Dutch lawyer who is a World Prosecutor has arrived in Kenya on her way to Uganda to work in the prosecution of the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army. She also served in the court that condemned Saddam Hussein. She says "something is wrong" with the way Kenya is handling the local tribunal issues. She warns against those who were opposed and are now advocating the tribunal. They may be attempting to frustrate the process.

Subsequent to the outcry about the cost of maize meal, the government came up with two brilliant ideas. The first is to decree a reduction in the price of flour, ordering farmers to sell at a new (lower) fixed price. The second was to make two prices for the 2 kg bags: one for the ‘rich’ areas and another (about half) for the ‘poor’ areas. Of course there is no indication of how this difference in sale price will be controlled or administered. If you were an MP and had lost some revenue on your stock of meal because of the enforced reduction in selling price, where would you buy your new supply?

A new regulation will force teachers and civil servants to take home 33% of their pay. Many have bank loans to service that eat the whole of their monthly cheque. Thus they are constantly stretched for money and looking for odd jobs to make ends meet, neglecting their classes. An example shows a typical pay slip of 18,000 or so shillings ($300) of which the teacher takes home about 2,000/- ($30) Question is, why do the banks and credit unions loan this kind of money to begin with?

The Electoral Commission of Kenya is on its way out. That’s the good news. The jaw dropping news after all their incompetence earlier this year and the confirmation that they were at least partly to blame for the turmoil, is that they have requested severance packages which would total about 500 million shillings (close to $1 million)

We hope a senior police officer (Chief Inspector) is facing jail. He arrested a suspected rapist of an eight year old girl last year, but let the man go after three days. He then asked the father to accept money from the man to drop the case. When the father refused, he was arrested and charged with giving false information with the alleged rapist a witness in the case.

A big case of land grabbing has come to the fore. This one has a certain irony. The Ministry of Lands had a plot of ground to build a new head office. The employees of the ministry faked title deeds and divided the plot into six, which they were preparing to sell. In Eldoret alone 54 fake documents have been issued.

An MP has been in the Cabinet for two years. During that time he has managed to acquire a small aircraft which he uses to visit his constituency. A rough calculation will show that even his bloated salary would not enable him to operate the plane and care for his ordinary living expenses. Being in Parliament is the door to unheard of wealth. It sees the Anti Corruption Commission has given no indication of interest in this example.

The government, supposedly annoyed that the newspapers are keeping certain issues (like MP taxation, Waki report, EKC) front and centre, is trying to introduce a bill that would give more presidential control over the media.

In all this we are humbled by the indomitable spirit of the people with whom we live and work. Hunger, unemployment, disease cannot dampen their faith and optimism. Why else would we have so many giving time and money to attend our workshops in the hope that this will help bring about societal change? They love their country and hate their government. They continue to hope that one day strong, honest leaders will appear.