Huyo Ametupa Mbao versus Conservative Kenyan Ideas

I am a crazy one when an idea gets hold of me. One thing that happens is that I really get excited about it and discouraging me becomes impossible.

The truth is that time and again in my life I have pressed on with a number of “crazy ideas that will never work” that have ended up not doing too badly. A good example is this very blog. “One of his crazy ideas that never work, huyo ametupa mbao” somebody who thinks they know me too well quipped about it.

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The good thing about the fat donkey Kenya MPs

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But that one is a storo for another day. Today I will focus on the drama around my house construction project high in the hills somewhere in Ukambani where my ancestors come from.

From my few travels here and there, I had been inspired to think out of the box when it came to construction. By some stroke of very good luck I got a fundi who was receptive to my “crazy ideas”.

Now usually where I come from, to construct a house you either need to make bricks (there is plenty of good material all over the place to make some really nice bricks) or you get stones from elsewhere. And yet there is plenty of stone everywhere you look. It is a great menace and if people had the means they would probably pay you to get it off their shambas. But nobody had ever thought of it as building material.

I was advised not to dare use “those funny stones” for the foundation of my small shack otherwise it would collapse for sure. But when I met up with my fundi and dug the foundation, that is exactly what we used. Somebody even asked me if I had ever constructed a house before. When I said “no”, they gave me some friendly advice. They suggested that I start with a small toilet on the outside first and then later I could come to my shack. That one stung me and made me even more determined.

Let me spare you the details and cut a long story short.

The house still stands today, 16 years later. It doesn’t even have a single crack anywhere on any wall. It is a small house that I hope to expand into a nice country cabin one day. I have this most spectacular view of the valley below and into the distance towards what must be Thika. Just breath-taking. Imagine sipping morning tea while taking in a view like that.

But the construction did not go without mishaps. My ideas worked great until we got to the roof. I wanted to use stone and cement on the roof in a way that I had seen done elsewhere. In fact my construction site became a local tourist attraction as people came to see me fail. Finally the roof did not work out and I was forced to use conventional roofing material. But I have not given up. These days we have the Internet and when I get back there some day, I will Google how to construct a roof with stones and cement.

So why am I telling you guys all this?

It is because our beloved country is in a deep hole country and sinking deeper by the day. And the only thing that can save us are some radical brand new ideas.

The only problem is that Kenyans are too conservative for them. Way too conservative. Most Kenyans can’t even think out of the box when writing a mere job application. Too risky, they will tell you. But wise people tell us, no risk no gain.

Personally I believe that only some very radical ideas can save us now. Pussy-footing will just have us going round and round in circles when the people are really suffering and I can assure you the boiling point for them is way too close.

Here are some of the radical ideas I believe can go a long way in helping us save our beloved country.

1. Pass legislation to bar folks from standing for any political office in a constituency within their home province.
2. Pass a law to rotate the presidency around different tribes in Kenya for the next 50 years. That means that once your tribe has seen the presidency, no candidate from that tribe can stand again for the next 50 years. The years can be reduced to a minimum of 30 years.
3. Reduce the presidential and parliamentary term to 4 years from 5
4. Making it law that the president and vice president are never the same gender. So if the president is a man the vice president MUST be a woman.
5. Parliament should be at least 50% women.
6. Punish the crime of rape with castration and enforce the law kabisa. Also enforce the law on wife-beaters and increase the jail term considerably for all men who are involved in any kind of violence against women.
7. Move army headquarters from Nairobi to El-Wak and have strong military presence where it will help most—close to our porous borders where guns and all sorts of harmful things cross into the country at will.
8. Build massive solar and wind powered electricity generation plants in the North Eastern province to help counter the major world energy crisis that is coming.
9. Create massive programs to directly address the idle youth and unemployment. For example food-for-work and higher-education-for-work. This where people work on massive farms and the produce they grow is sold to finance their stay there as they learn how they can be able to sustain themselves as farmers or in small-scale business when they leave the camp and others come in for the same program. Same system can also be used to help the poor access higher education or those who did not make it through the conventional system to have another shot at a professional career.
10. Shift government head offices for everything from Nairobi to Nakuru, Parliament to Kisumu, main State House where cabinet meetings will be held should be Mombasa. Prime Ministers official residence and office should be Nyeri (if we don’t have a PM that is where the VP should operate from.)
11. Make it a criminal offense to discriminate against anybody along tribal or gender lines.
12. Give major tax concessions to businesses that are most active in creating gainful employment.

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