One thing that has really excited me about being in Kenya is seeing all the challenges to overcome here and the way that the past few years have seen so much rapid growth. As I’ve mentioned before, Kenya gained independence from Britian in 1963 so it’s a very new country. I think it’s because of this newness, many of the Kenyans I’ve encountered have a very optimistic outlook for their country. None of them deny that the country has huge problems with poverty, tribalism, crime, corruption, effects of colonialism, etc, but all of those problems actually seem manageable with time, especially seeing how much positive development has occurred just in the 40ish years since independence. With the fervor for the elections growing more and more every day, I can see how hopeful many Kenyans feel about the future. President Moi’s 24-year presidency (dictatorship) which ended in 2002 put a damper on a lot of the political, social and economic development the country achieved after independence. But since that time, with Kibaki’s presidency so much growth has happened and I feel really excited for where the country is headed in the future. In my political science class (which is beyond excellent, by the way) we’ve had quite a number of “save-the-world discussions” as I like to call them, talking about solutions to the world’s problems. We all gave presentations last week about the ways that Kenya can overcome the colonial legacy left behind by the British and I felt so enthused by some of the answers we came up with. The world’s problems all seem so easy with discussions like that geared toward positive solutions.
Anyway, I feel really excited for the political future of this country and I hope that they continue with the track record they’ve had for the past few years. This past Saturday Raila Odinga (the candidate I’m supporting) had his rally to open his campaign in Uhuru Park, the huge park just down from my house where all kinds of events, political and otherwise, take place. (It’s funny to me as a US citizen that presidential candidates officially open their campaign only 2 months before the election, whereas in the US everything’s been heating up for awhile now and we’ve still got a year!) I unfortunately was out of town for the day with my family, but from what I heard of the rally it was fantastic. Nothing crazy happened, which was good, no riots or anything which is always the fear at these types of things in Kenya. The students who went to it said the air was really festive, cultural, celebratory and unifying. They stayed more on the outskirts of it all, which sounds like it was the more fun place anyway, where people were singing, dancing, partying, chanting and handing out all kinds of pins and orange flowers (because Raila’s party is the Orange Democratic Movement), celebrating. Right now Raila’s ahead by a lot in the polls, but all that can change really quickly (and Kibaki-his opponent and the current president-has ultimate control over when the election day is, and can do a lot to rig the elections). This is one problem with the unchecked presidential power in Kenya and something that really needs to be changed.
On the other hand, there is a lot of underhanded dirty stuff that goes on in the political realm. The health minister in Kenya is this really cool woman who speaks her mind and doesn’t really care what people are saying about her and she was sacked by the president on Saturday. The reason? She voiced her support for ODM, the president’s opposition. So much for freedom of speech. Also during the rally, the electricity in various parts of the city was turned off so that people couldn’t see the rally at home on TV…hmmm, very suspicious indeed. So the current president has a big advantage over anyone running against him because he enjoys so much unchecked power. It’s way exciting though, as you can probably tell by my lengthy descriptions of the Kenyan political scene.
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