Okuta’s Burial Revives Hope in Nation

David Okuta Osiany was a great man. Indeed, from his physique, terming him as big was an understatement. His greatness went further. As a great leader, Okuta led the Kenya National Union of Teachers, KNUT, from strength to strength. Telling from his burial ceremony today, Okuta’s significance trailed him even to his death.

Whoever decided that President Uhuru Kenyatta, and his entourage, should attend the burial of the late Okuta in Nyando, did an honorable thing. Better yet, Kenyatta’s attendance exemplifies his commitment to taking the country forward. The behavior of the President and Mr. Raila Odinga, Kenyatta’s main challenger and petitioner in the just concluded general elections, holds great importance if the country to move forward. Okuta’s burial provided the right opportunity.

Mourners in attendance did not disappoint. Dramas were trivial. The coordination of the event by Jack Ranguma, the Governor, Kisumu County, was great. He owned that the President’s coming to the county was a great honor. Other leaders who spoke were plain in their heaping praises the fallen Okuta, and the President. Nevertheless, the demeanor of Odinga and the message of the President carried the day.

Odinga, who spoke largely in Dholuo, urged the obviously charged mourners to remain peaceful. He recognized President Kenyatta and urged the mourners not to labor appropriating titles for him.

“I am Raila Amollo Odinga,” he said, sending the crowd of mourners ululating.

To me, this admittance is crucial as it shows that the former Prime Minister is ready to move on. Thus, the message to the residents of Nyando, Nyanza, and the country at large was that it was time to leave elections behind, the outcomes notwithstanding.

When it was the President turn, he recognized the important role Okuta played in fighting for the welfare of teachers, before promising that his government would ensure the furtherance of Okuta’s ideals. Importantly, the President was categorical that his government would work with all and sundry. He termed Odinga as his brother.

Such sentiments are pivotal in thawing any bad blood the people of Nyando, and indeed the country at large, could have had towards the new government.  I am certain that scores of those in attendance changed the way they perceived Kenyatta. This is especially following cordial gestures where the President sat next to Odinga, with only a coffee table separating them.  Even more conspicuous was the spectacle in which the duo marched hand-in-hand through the red carpet to the graveyard.

David Okuta Osiany may be dead now, but his greatness reverberates nevertheless. His burial was a great forum for auctioning the reconciliation and development agendas. May his soul rest in  peace.  

News is useless: Dobelli confirms age-old misgivings

Heard of the Boston terror explosions already?

Severally, right?

Welcome to the world of news.

For eons, media houses have broadcasted news on occurrences they deemed relevant to millions of audiences over the globe.  

This is not good. News is not good.

I know that this stance in social media jargon would pass as “the first shot,” justifying counter attacks, some with the potency of poison-pen letters. It is worth it.

 News is the most boring media product. At least features, documentaries, commentaries, and shot stories do not come any closer. For quite some time, I have found that news on radio, TV, newsprint, and Twitter do not satisfy my needs for information. If anything, news has been boring. And, thanks to insights by Rolf Dobelli in his book, The Art of Thinking Clearly, I have been right. 

For starters, news entails reporting on occurrences that the media perceives to have news value to the mass media consumer. Metrics of news values include proximity, prominence, currency, timeliness, bizarreness, conflict, human interest and impact. The implication is that the media-journalists and editors-are obsessed with occurrences that meet a number of these criteria to broadcast to the media consumer.

What is bad in that? 

Everything.

In an article appearing in the Guardian, Dobelli writes that news has cancerous on the human mind. Not in the literal sense though. He goes further advancing the standpoint that “news is to the mind what sugar is to the body” using anecdotes and vivid illustrations. 

From the article, Dobelli asserts that news is laden with trivialities, “that don't really concern our lives and don't require thinking.” The fact that news are easy to digest confirms its toxicity to the mind. Dobelli goes ahead confirming that news is both useless and dangerous. 

News is misleading. The media cover events with utmost biasness. News has never been able to bring the whole picture surrounding a given occurrence. Instead, the media would only rush to broadcast small bits of the otherwise huge story. This creates a misleading picture on the minds of the audiences. “News leads us to walk around with the completely wrong risk map in our heads. So terrorism is over-rated.”

Importantly, news stories do not contribute in any meaningful ways to the lives of the consumers. They do not make the consumers make any useful reasoning. “The point is: the consumption of news is irrelevant to you.” Media houses would stop at nothing in making audiences believe that what is new adds value to them. But this is nothing compared to what news does on the minds of the consumer.

News makes the consumer accumulate facts, passively. News stories have a shallow approach to phenomena and in turn fail to develop the desired understanding. This is the explanation for the fact that news do not have a transforming effect. Worse still, news is toxic to the body, literally. Panicky stories, Boston terror attack types, inhibit the release of growth hormones, sending the body to a state of chronic stress. Fear, desensitization, and aggression are some of the side effects of news consumption. 

Worse still, news demotes thinking. News is quite successful in making its consumers shallow thinkers. News pieces distract concentration, frustrating comprehension. This is worse in online media where studies have shown that presence of hyperlinks is further distracting. News developed a condition known scientifically as “learned helplessness.” Here, the news consumer is exposed to events he cannot influence. Eventually, this makes him passive. 

News siphons off creativity from the news writers. Popularity of the inverted pyramid format of delivering news should confirm this assertion. Consumers are addicted to news that make them passive besides exposing them to old solutions. 

I should have written this article 10 years ago, especially following the downing of Looking for a Rain God and Other Short Stories. Those days, I found novels by such literacy icons as Chinua Achebe informative. But when I started making money and with the advent of information technology, when I could access company newspapers daily, immediately I procured my Samsung Galaxy tablet, and TV, my psyche with information has been spiraling down.

 At some time, I was certain that news was boring. And with insights from Dobelli, I can say with confidence that news is bad.

Uncelebrated Wild Foods Beat Rivals on Flavor, Value

Nzaaya, a wild fruit. .Millennials are shying away from consuming wild foods. Photo: Pius Maundu

Last Saturday, I received a call from Stephen Mwanzia Mwalimu, an old time friend and neighbor. After exchanging pleasantries, he said he called to know if I was around so that we could meet. 

I was in Nairobi. Before he disconnected, I had to establish how the village was doing. The rains were back. 

“Kwanza ni kuseo muno, andu ni mekwova mukauwu,” he quipped in the local dialect, before bursting into mirth. Essentially, he said that the rains had brought with them mukauwu, a popular wild vegetable, and that the villagers were rejoicing in harvesting it. 

Mwanzia’s approach to the wild vegetable typifies its perception amongst the Millennials in the village and beyond. Other wild foods like Tamarind , Namba, Nzaaya, Makunu, and Ngaatu do not fare any better. Unlike the older generation, villagers born in the 1990s perceive these fruits, tubers and vegetables as symbols of backwardness. This is unfortunate. 

Wild foods are an important part of the food system anywhere in the world. For eons, these foods have supported generations, providing the necessary nutrients to keep humans going. Who isn’t aware of the economic activities of the early man?

Fast forward. Today, wild fruits are still popular. They are unparalleled supplements for conventional foods. Besides, wild foods are sources of very vital nutrients that are hard to find in conventional foods. Those experienced in taking porridge seasoned with Namba and Tamarind attest to the fact that the inherent flavor cannot compare with what lemons or chemical additives deliver. 

Today, Kenyans are turning to wild foods en masse. Akeyo, Usuga, Managu and Terere are some wild vegetables that are quickly replacing Kales and Cabbages in the mainstream foods list. Enthusiasts cite healthy reasons for this turn of events. Kenya is not alone. 

Wild food harvesting is gaining popularity in the United States. According to Rachael Kaufman in the article, “Urban Foragers Cropping Up in U.S.”, Americans are leaving the comfort of their markets and shopping malls to harvest wild fruits. No. Not for fun.

Wild foods are handy in mitigating food insecurity, a major challenge facing food systems. With an increasing demand for food in the world, wild foods will continue to be great ways of buttressing food sustainability. The goodness with wild foods is that they are economically friendly. The trees and shrubs from which these foods come grow in the bush. This hints on another benefit of wild foods: ecology

.

Harvesting wild fruits is a plus to the environment. To continue reaping, communities have to ensure that their preferred tree species are not the targets of charcoal burners and loggers. This leaves the environment belching with satisfaction. Urban dwellers explore the environment in their wild food harvesting sprees.

But what are critics of wild foods eating?

Those opposed to wild foods advocate for conventional foods. Foods that rely on organic and commercial agriculture. While relying on organic foods could be OK, it is impossible to wish away the issue of sustainability. Eventually, the need for supplementation will knock. More importantly, the long miles these foods fly from the farm to the consumer means that their production and consumption is a detriment to the environment. 

Commercially grown foods are distasteful. Besides being major sources of ill health, these foods are a threat to biodiversity. The extensive use of fertilizers and chemical pesticides directly threatens other organisms in the ecosystem. Pullulated water is lethal to aquatic organisms. 

Back to Mwanzia. We concluded the conversation after the report on the rains and the wellbeing of the villagers. But even before I said the terminating “Bye,” I was wishing that Mwanzia could appreciate the place of wild foods and join me in celebrating the fact that the villagers were harvesting mukauwu.

Uhuru Kenyatta: The triumph of public relations

TNA, Uhuru Kenyatta's party. The semblance of the bird icon to Twitter's logo could be a deliberate move to endear the party's candidate to middle class voters.

Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta is Kenya’s fourth president. This is after surviving a grueling General Election, which ended up in the Supreme Court of Kenya. The court upheld the election of Kenyatta and his Jubilee Alliance running mate, William Samoei Ruto, currently the Deputy President. 

How did this happen, many have wondered.

Concurring that this was far from a predictable win, pundits have paraded several theories to explain the election outcomes. Some contended that the election of the Kenyatta and Ruto was a Kenyan rebellion to the West, considering that they are indictees of the International Criminal Court, ICC at The Hague, Netherlands. Other theories, like Mutahi Ngunyi’s “Tyranny of Numbers,” would earn condemnation and admiration in equal measures. It is embarrassing to admit that Kenyans vote along ethnic lines. My take is different. 

Effective employment of public relations. 

Kenyatta and Ruto's win of the elections is largely attributable to their effective employment of public relations. Without insinuating that their competitors flopped in their communication strategies, it is worth noting that strategic communication in the Jubilee Alliance played a monumental role. All through the campaign period, Jubilee Alliance mounted magnanimous public relations campaigns. But what is public relations?

Public relations entails communication campaigns that promote favorable perceptions of the communicator by the target audience. In the words of Harold Burson, a public relations guru and co-founder of Burson-Marsteller, one of the largest public relations agencies in the world, public relations is a protracted effort that is supposed to “employ communication strategies and tactics to motivate audiences to a specific course of action.” With this hindsight, everybody would be excused to charge that all politicians and alliances in the elections relied on public relations. An understanding of the roles of public relations would stimulate a reexamination of this standpoint fueled by naivety.   

Key amongst the roles of public relations is to sense changes in the society and reflect on these changes in communication. To understand what is happening in the society, one has to be in touch with the people. Today, the clamor against imperialism and neo-colonialism  is louder than it has ever been in the Third World countries. Perhaps this informed the anti-West rhetoric characterizing Kenyatta’s campaigns. Besides, Jubilee's campaign was outrightly alined toward the youth. That a sizeable population of youths in Kenya, and indeed the rest of the world are successfully leading in the corporate arena is indicative of a trend where this population would not hesitate to assume political leadership. This is something that did not escape the attention of the Jubilee Alliance.

By branding himself “Hustler,” a common attribute referring mainly to a youth struggling to make ends meet, Ruto could have endeared himself amongst the youthful voting constituency. Narratives of Ruto’s humble beginnings as a roadside hawker, perhaps made many youths identify with him. Who would believe that Ruto, in his social stature then, would partake in a meal of ugali and fish in a dingy kibanda in Nairobi’s terror-prone Eastleigh with ordinary folk? 

The rationale behind the gesture is that many youths in Kenya go through this lifestyle on a day-to-day basis. Consistent passing of these gestures in the campaigns certainly succeeded in enticing the populace. This hints on another important role of public relations: communication.

Public relations is about communication, effective communication for that matter. This is passing messages across in a truthful manner, to facilitate the articulation of critical issues.The outcome of effective communication is not only to persuade the audience but also to nurture trust.The Jubilee Alliance reiterated its commitment to the plight of the business community, farmers, the youth and women throughout the campaign period. Anybody could tell that Kenyatta and Ruto knew which audiences to target with what messages, so that they promised affordable fertilizer while in Eldoret and erecting fish processing plants while in Kisumu. 

That Kenyatta and Ruto have been effective users of social media is not debatable. The combination of their Twitter followers has consistently outnumbered that for any other politicians. By the time I am writing this, Kenyatta’s official Twitter handle, @ UKenyatta has 156, 146 followers and the number of tweets has hit the 1634th mark.That of Ruto, @WilliamsRuto has clocked 42,982 followers. They recognized that the new media was a great way of reaching to millions of middle class voters and opinion leaders, at home and in the diaspora. Then came the Presidential Debates.

Kenyatta must have realized that the Presidential Debates were great forums for stating his cause. This explains his demeanor during the events. Besides tackling questions head on, he managed to wrestle one of the “elephants in the house”, in the words of NTV’s Linus Kaikai, one of the moderators. In a display of compos mentis, Kenyatta reiterated that the ICC case before him was just a personal challenge, more or less like the challenges facing each of the seven presidential candidates with him at the Brooke House School event. Analysts could not have gone wrong when they unanimously rated him as the greatest beneficiary of the presidential debates. 

Non-verbal cues in public relations are critical in passing critical messages. This is one of the many areas where Kenyatta and Ruto outshone their competitors. Conspicuously, the two traveled travel together, oftentimes in the same car, to all their campaign rallies. Nobody could miss noticing the hugging, and hearty smiles exhibited by the duo in public rallies. These gestures radiated warmth, sincerity, and, importantly, dispelled any fears that the Kenyatta-Ruto alliance was a union of convenience. They used the acceptability developing from the effective communication to their advantage.
 

Throughout the campaign period, Kenyatta and Ruto ensured that they were responsive to contemporary public issues. Their manifesto is vocal on issues touching on public health and education. Here, there was need to articulate on the issues that reflect on the expectations of the electorates while at the same time beaming in feasibility. Sustainability is an important tenet of public relations. All this flourished in any environment in which the duo behaved in utmost decorum. This entailed exercising restraint from resulting to vulgar language even when the provocation from opponents warranted for nothing less. This deliberate cultivation of conscience, still, is amongst the important roles of public relations.
 

When, therefore, Cynthia Nyamai owned that she was amongst various public relations heavy weights, including Big Ted, a popular urban MC, and a swarm of British public relations firms, working behind the triumph of Kenyatta and Ruto, to me, it was not surprising. Mounting serious public relations campaigns culminated in turning around the perception of the electorate on the duo. Consistency in these campaigns worked miracles for the electorates who had some misgivings about the suitability of the duo. Eventually, they took the day in the hotly contested elections.
 

So what?
 

Public relations is not an end in itself. Following their declaration as the winners of the March 4^th elections, Kenyatta and Ruto are reaffirming that effective communication should translate to better service delivery. Those who were keenly following the speeches by the duo during the inauguration ceremony must have recognized as I did that Kenya is in safe hands. The reiteration of their commitment to upholding the devolution agenda and fulfilling the promises in the manifesto is reassuring enough. Clearly, there is every reason for Kenyans to trust in President Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta. 

Mombasa Road delivers loads of agony to residents of Kinyambu village

Thirteen months ago today, YESU passed on after being hit by a speeding truck. YESU was what people widely knew Daniel Kiio, a one-time manamba whose work-day entailed shuttling between Kibwezi, Kinyambu, Machinery markets, and back.

  

Nobody knows where he got this nickname or the motivation behind it. 

Before he met his premature death on February 25, 2012, he had dropped touting and involved himself with crop farming and other mainstream economic activities. In fact, the last time we bumped into each other, he was ferrying a load of sisal poles from DWA Estate on his newly acquired bicycle, ostensibly headed for Kinyambu market, 195 kilometers south of Nairobi. When I learned of his demise, I could not resist updating on Facebook that Mombasa Road was more of a curse than a blessing for Kinyambu villagers.

Going forward, Mombasa Road is still a curse to the residents of Kinyambu. Scores of villagers have fallen victims to accidents involving trucks, buses or even motorbikes. I have lost count on the number of people killed in road accidents in the section of the road between Kibwezi and Machinery markets. Many more have undergone amputations. In my estimation, this number is higher than in any other section of the road of equal measure. 

Muthama, 10, an amputee, poses for the picture while resting on his undersized homemade underarm crutch. In his infancy, he was run over by a bus while crawling across Mombasa Road in pursuit of his mother who had just crossed the road near Manyanga, Kibwezi. Photo: Pius Maundu

This, then, begs the question on whether the victims are to blame.

Not in any meaningful way.

Instead, many of the accidents in this section of the road are attributable to a set of interesting factors. Terrain is the most notable. Valleys and corners characterize this section of Mombasa Road. In most cases, when drivers are approaching such valleys, thickets obscure their visibility of the oncoming vehicles uphill. 

High frequency of road accidents in this section of the road has something to do with its historical background. Traditionally, this region has been known to harbor the most notorious carjackers and thugs way laying trucks to annex their cargo. A story is told that a local legislator was once a beneficiary of this business. To compound this fright, the markets in this section have conspicuously gone without electricity. 

But the region is now safe. Kaleidoscopes greet travelers as they transverse the markets dotting this 10-kilometer section of the road. There are Administration Police posts in all the markets along the section of the road. This notwithstanding, the difficulty in convincing motorists, especially those who are cognizant of this background, to warm to the developments is imaginable. This way, drivers, especially truck drivers traveling at night do not take any risks by giving way to apparently obstructing cyclists or pedestrians. 

Recklessness of drivers in this section of the road is cause for increased road accidents. Oftentimes, this section enjoys low levels of traffic. This explains the tendency of drivers to drive at very high speeds. The result is a situation where such drivers face difficulties controlling their vehicles in the event of an obstruction by, for instance, a cyclist. Reckless driving is notorious with motorcyclists, considering the proximity of the area with Makindu market, home to Makindu Motors, the stockists of affordable Chinese brands of motorcycles.

Riders, convinced that they have learned the ropes from their friends, soon get to the road, only to find the thrill of speed irresistible. A sizeable number are oblivious of the dangers of riding without protective clothing and helmet. It is confirmed that Makindu District Hospital has a special ward for victims of motorbike accidents. And their numbers have skyrocketed since the installation of Makindu Motors in the vicinity.

Any solution?

To tame the increased road carnage, it is imperative that scores of stakeholders come together. Kenya National Highways Authority, KENHA, for instance, should sponsor campaigns on the media urging drivers to exercise caution while on Mombasa Road. Through collaboration with the National Police Service, KENHA should reaffirm the fact that drivers do not need to be frightened when driving along this section to the point of endangering other people’s lives. Without this intervention, the curse that is Mombasa Road will continue haunting Kinyambu village taking at its will hard working Kenyans such as YESU.