BY CASSANDRA MERCY
Hillary Clinton is a remarkable human being. Her level of personal self-realisation is beyond impressive and I do not want to be mistaken for belittling her importance in history. However, as I sit in the office waiting for the traffic mess her security is creating to ease up, I find the antagonism slowly swell up in me. I am also informed that for the duration of her visit, I may be unable to use my cell phone should her security people think we’re about to kill her with a barrage of calls.
For the last couple of weeks all we have heard in the media is stories comprising varied and rather creative ways of being carjacked in Nairobi. No one seemed to really care about it. I find it ironic that security is an issue now. Where have all these policemen been hiding? Before Monday, I had never seen so many guns in CBD. Surely if they did this daily or every other random week it would do something about security.
The purpose for these great disruptions? AGOA, Post Election non-sense, the shenanigans in Somalia and KARI. Now as far as KARI is concerned, I am down for improvement of agriculture, it was once a big income earner for us. Considering the state of food security in this country, everything should be done to rejuvenate agriculture and by proxy, trade. KARI deserves as much support and high profile visitors as it can get.
AGOA on the other hand could surely have been handled by phone. I have seen pictorials of the meeting; everyone has files the size of our proposed constitution. Come on people, if it can be put on paper it can surely be emailed. I know you are working towards trade and all but imagine the profile our IT sector with its new fibre cable could have had if we’d say done a video conference. It would also have saved a lot of trees I think.
With regards to post election violence et al, I am not sure what she hopes to achieve. If there’s one thing we have proven in this matter it’s that we have no great respect for outsiders; even when we invite them in to solve our problems.
We love visitors; after all we’re in Kenya, “Land of Wide Open Free Spaces”. It is just much preferable to have visitors who don’t inconvenience you to the point of arriving home at midnight. Do you know how hard it is to find alternative parking in Nairobi? If you did you would ban all large public events that even hint at disrupting traffic and parking. And as you are all aware, we really need to be using less paper.
Somalia should really solve its problems and operate from its home soil. Again we love guests but guests have to leave at some point. That would be the point at which it becomes a security issue to be your friend. Then all bets should be off because, and correct me if I am wrong, the security of a nation’s citizens are it’s top priority over failing friendships with other nations.
In conclusion, welcome Mrs Clinton, you will find Kenya beautiful and friendly. Make sure you come back sometime, with just your family and no press.
(Ms CASSANDRA MERCY is a producer with Capital FM)