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NAIROBI, KENYA - The year winds down and suddenly everything in my life is working at deadline pace: super fast, all a blur.
Aamena
JiwajiDeadline: January 25 2005
I need to travel to South Africa for my Masters [degree] but South Africa has intensified their permit processes. A friend of mine in South Africa, when I whined to him over email, said that it was probably an attempt to limit the number of 2 bedroom flats in Hillbrow being filled with 25 to 30 illegal immigrants.
That made me feel better, for just a second, while I laughed, -- but no longer.
The South African High Commission in Nairobi had a long list of requirements, most of which would only take a week or so of dedicated preparation and organization. But then there was one item, the Certificate of Good Conduct, which is issued by one place in Nairobi, the CID headquarters, and promised to take at least 2 weeks.
Let me start by telling you about the line I encountered when I went to make enquiries at the CID Headquarters. It seems that Certificates of Good Conduct are now demanded by all employers, companies, High Commissions/Embassies ... in short everyone in Nairobi who needed a certificate was in the line, and I was at the end of the line!
I was optimistic. After 2 years of being a civil servant, I am used to standing in long liens and have come up with ways in which to stay busy so that I don't get agitated and frustrated and end up leaving half way down the line.
But I didn't even make [it] into the line. I was cut short right at the start with the doomed news that a Kenyan passport would not be sufficient to attain the certificate but that I would need a Kenyan identity card.
The problem is that I don't have one.
I have no excuse. I have spoken them all in my defence at the CID Headquarters and at the National Registration Bureau while chasing my ID card and I know how stupid each one of them sounds spoken out loud and I dare not utter one again.
Fortunately I had applied for an ID card in July this year and so it wasn't as last minute as it could have been. And the Registration Bureau promised delivery in two months.
And so I waited patiently. Two months passed and I still hadn't received it, but I was still patient -- it could only be a few weeks more, right? Absolutely wrong.
My application papers reached the National Registration Headquarters from the substation in Westlands (a 15 minute drive away) 4 months later, on the 7th of December, to begin the preparation process.
By this stage I was frantic. No ID card meant no Certificate of Good Conduct, and that meant no visa.
And so the chase began. I have smiled at people, made ridiculous patronizing comments and high-fluted promises ... all with the hope of pushing the preparation of my ID card along at a faster pace than it seems to be going at present.
But even with this there was a problem. It seems that not pushing the process of your card at all isn't good, and neither is pushing it too much. The friend at the Registration Bureau who I recruited to help me make enquiries on a daily basis told me, at one stage, that he would have to lay low for a few days as the department had started asking him questions as to why he was so interested in pursuing this particular ID card and whether it was a question of bribery and fake identification.
Apparently I was disadvantaged on two counts:
I keep looking at the calendar and panicking. I needed my ID card two weeks ago so that I could have had the Certificate of Good Conduct by today which would give me the five days before Christmas to submit my application forms and therefore be ready in time to travel on the 25th of January taking into account the Christmas and New Year holidays and the sluggish pace of work that precedes and succeeds these holidays.
- I was both an Indian and a Muslim and
- it seems that too many members of the Asian race and of the Islamic fifth have been trying to fraudulently obtain Kenyan identification cards as a first step to establishing Kenyan citizenship.
It's the 17th today and I am still counting down. I hope you're holding thumbs for me.
Deadline: Unknown
The phrase "destination unknown" gained a lot of notoriety in the "Star Trek" days, imbued as it is with mystery and excitement. I have a new one which is imbued with the pending sense of doom which can't be pinpointed to a particular date but which date will come and go, and only after it has passed will you know that you are too late. Deadline Unknown.
I spoke to a retired civil servant today who has been involved in a number of private companies, international organizations and is currently the founder of an organization called Kendren, Kenya Debt Relief Network.
David (not his real name) was excited at seeing the freedom of information that the Kenya Law Reports (which is where I work) promotes by publishing judgments and rulings from the courts of Kenya. He saw it as one of the steps forward that the country has taken in establishing a free and fair democracy and consequently eradicating corruption. But he was more excited for himself and what our success and establishment meant for his project and its chances of success.
He believes that of the $11 billion public debt (around Kshs 800 billion) that Kenya faces today, 85% of it is odious. It cannot be rationalized and traced back. In other words, it is fake. It is actually the private debt of individuals who have used the government as a guarantor, and -- upon the individuals defaulting on the loans -- the government has converted it into a public debt and added it to the growing burden on Kenyan taxpayers' shoulders.
I struggled to understand and so he gave me a true-life example to relate to. In the 1970s, a group of people in Kenya decided to defraud the government and so they formed a company called Halal Kenya Ltd, registered it, and then bought a piece of land for the company in the Ngong area (outskirts of Nairobi near the Ngong Hills). Then they came to the government as individual Kenyans and put forward their story: that the meat slaughtered by the Kenya Meat Commission did not meet the international standards of halaal meat and that they proposed to set up a company which would slaughter meat and then export it to the Middle East. This would bring a lot of valuable foreign exchange revenue into the country.
The government accepted the proposal and agreed to guarantee the loan which was taken from the National Bank of Kenya.
Once the money was in their account however, the fraudsters wound up Halal Kenya Ltd, built some houses on a residential property with that money, rented them out ... and defaulted on the loan.
It was all a sham.
The Bank approached the government to repay the loan and the Government added it to the list of National Public Debt and thus [made the defaulted loan] a responsibility of the average taxpayer to repay. Hence the $11 billion public debt that Kenya owes.
This was just one of the examples that David narrated to me.
As an active member of both the public and the private business arena in Kenya, David had himself been involved in one of these scams where the debt of a public company was transferred to the Public Debt in order to free it of all financial obligations and allow it to become privatised.
On the pretext of writing down his contact details for me, David pulled my notebook out of my hand while I was frantically jotting down notes and figures and names. He held it on his lap, told me the most intimate details about these transactions and gave me the names of the people involved and those responsible. My mind was buzzing with details that I was desperate to remember and my hand itching with wanting to scribble them down, but he refused to let me write any of the names down in the best way he knew how, by taking the pen out of my hand.
David believes that this is the source of all corruption in the country, these are the Dons ... not the policeman on city streets who coerce paltry sums of money from motorists. To end corruption in Kenya, this is the place that has to be aired.
And apparently this is where people like me come in. As a young, educated Kenyan, he believes the responsibility is on my colleagues and me to open up these books of Public Debt and make a distinction between the legitimate amounts owed and the odious ones.
If, as he claims, 85% is odious, then the process of opening the record books and getting the liable individuals to take responsibility for their defaulted loans rather than the Kenyan taxpayer, would free the Kenyan economy and its people and probably lead to the economic recovery that Kenyans have been awaiting for 10 years.
Deadline: 1st January 2005
There are three scenarios that can happen when you meet someone for the first time. Either you connect with them instantly, hate them at sight or somewhere in between where they are comfortable to be with but no more than that.
We are all gifted with an instinct which helps us to make these divisions instantly. At times, it may mislead us but most of the time it gives us a direction to move in while the acquaintance is young, when the initial moments are still awkward. Strangely enough, at these times we are drawn more towards those who make us feel comfortable rather than those with whom the friendship could have an intensity. Those latter friendships, if destined to be, develop later.
I met my kindred spirit one evening, didn't recognize him, and was my usual withdrawn and overly analytical self. I went home relieved, having survived an evening which had the potential to be incredibly awkward. But I was drawn, for some reason, to the person I had exchanged the fewest words with.
Destiny played its card and we met again a few months later in a totally different scenario and this time got to know each other a bit better in spite of strains and pressures. But this is where I cracked. I have walls around me that I created in the last three years, for reasons I don't know and that I can't logically deconstruct. My kindred spirit calls me a cactus, no explanation needed there. He describes himself as a rosebud (with thorns), which blossoms one petal at a time into a beautiful flower. Any less complicated? I don't think so.
Clearly, we both have our issues and barriers that need to be overcome. And, this week, the issues exploded in our faces. We argued for close to two and a half hours, each sarcastic barb from him prompting a further withdrawal and comment from myself.
When we first met we used to play games with each other: games of identity, character, personality ... and, most of the time, the games were fun, as games are. But after our evening of argument, something hasn't quite bounced back into place. A lot of truths were told and a lot of raw emotion revealed, most of which was not done in a playful mood. Things were said that will take time to heal.
We are both a bit stunned by the intensity of the argument. He questions whether it could be a clash of character or whether we are expecting different things from each other. I think it is neither. We communicate so well, when we do talk,that it is evident our characters are in synch. I think we have different ideas of what a friendship is. What made me crabby that evening was that my expectations were not being met, which made me frustrated and ready to lash out ... which I did.
But I am not so sure whether he was deliberately not meeting my expectations, as I knew he was able to, or whether my life was not meeting mine.
His New Year Resolution is to try and understand this situation a bit better and maintain peaceful relations. I am not sure whether this means he wants to throw in the towel.
One of my New Year's resolutions is to realize that the best-intentioned advice from a loved one may sometimes not be the best advice for me. The second is to forget, for half an hour every day, the most difficult parts of my life by escaping to a dream-castle which can restore my equilibrium. And the third is to salvage the shreds of this friendship which I know has a potential worth realizing.
© 2004, GENERATOR 21.
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