By Mwarang'ethe Njoguu
On 13th August, 2011, Chris wrote, “KFC Re - Opens in Nairobi capital of hungry Kenya,” available here: http://is.gd/HCkSvG. Among other stuff, he wrote that, “I think it is possible to sell human waste very successfully in Kenya as long as you can convince people it is from America.” This statement reminded us that, we have had an article which has been sitting on the computer: The African’s Tastes and Desires: Their Economic, Social, Political and Military Implications, in short, the Political Economy of Africans tastes and desires.
Having been inspired by Chris’ essay, we now detail how our tastes and desires are the means by which the imperialists enslave us. Or, how, we enslave ourselves.
First, a true recent story. A few years ago, some Europeans visited a village in Mbeere district. While there, they were served with some chicken and chapati. When they tasted this chicken, they were like, we have never tasted such a nice tasting chicken all our lives and we would love to have it back at home. In fact, many years later, they still want to go back to Kenya, not, to see lions, but, to eat that nice tasting chicken in Mbeere. To many people, this would have been the end of the story. However, this reaction to the taste of a chicken in Mbeere, made us inquire, why is it that, the Europeans are not able to taste our chicken in Europe which would outsell the PLASTIC LOOKING
and TASTING European chicken? After some research and reflection, we have found that, the European rulers understand the POLITICAL ECONOMY of tastes and desires. As such, they control the tastes and desires of their own people.
Now, let us first inquire, what is imperialism? Simply, imperialism is a word used to denote a weird situation whereby, a few or the minority population dominate, rule, rob, subjugate, murder, rape and mis -educate the larger population. How do these minorities manage such a feat? They do so because, the imperialists are aware that, to control people, one must control the consciousness of the subjugated majority. As such, consciousness is a social product created by the interaction with other people. Consciousness should be understood to mean, tastes, desires, knowledge, beliefs, opinions, conditioned emotions, behaviour, world view and unconscious motives. It also involves
methods of information processing, directional aspects of information, i.e. what value do we seek to fulfil?. In this way, then, the objective of the European people since 1492 has been to manipulate the consciousness of the African people to their own use so as to increase their own PROSPERITY AND POWER, i.e. white supremacy. To demonstrate this truths, we will follow, a day in the life of Jinga, a fresh FOOLISH graduate of the IVY LEAGUE of FOOLS in pseudo economics.
It is 5.30 a.m. in the morning when the alarm clock which is made in Taiwan goes off which thereby wakes up Jinga. Having stressed himself, he springs from his bed made in South Africa. Thereafter, he proceeds to make his bed with bedsheets and a blanket, all made from the Egyptians cotton, but, manufactured in Hong Kong. Having made his bed, he puts on his bath robe made from the Egyptian cotton, but, manufactured in China and sleepers made from oil imported from Iran.
Having done this, he walks to the bathroom for a hot shower. As he walks to the bathroom, he is walking on marbles imported from China.
As he enters the bathroom, he stands to pee on a toilet basin designed and imported from South Africa. Thereafter, he enters the shower and closes the shower curtain made from oil imported from Saudi Arabia. He then goes ahead to open the shower using taps made from China. As he opens the shower, a stream of warm water, heated with diesel imported from UK by a UK independent power company streams out for a nice warm shower.
Having finished his shower, Jinga dries himself with a towel made in Vietnam and then proceeds to dress. For his dressings, he puts on a second hand suit imported from the UK, but, was manufactured in Taiwan with the Sudanese cotton. Having dressed himself to look nice, he embarks on his breakfast. However, before he sits for his breakfast, he decides to listen to the latest news and for this, he puts on his TV imported from Japan. For his breakfast, he prepares coffee using a pot imported from China. For the coffee itself, although grown in Kenya, it was processed in Holland by a UK company and then, imported back to Kenya because, it is high quality stuff. He proceeds to use a spoon made in Vietnam to scoop sugar from Brazil. For the bread which he proceeds to cut with a knife made in China, it is processed with wheat imported from the USA as aid, and which was carried by an American flagged ship. Having taken breakfast, Jinga proceeds to brush his teeth with a toothbrush made in Kenyan under a licence from a UK
company. For the toothpaste, it is manufactured in Kenya using imported chemicals from India, by an Anglo - American company.
Having brushed his teeth, he now puts on his shoes imported from Turkey and hits the road to seek a WELL PAYING KENYAN JOB. In his garage, he starts his BMW made in Germany. He then, hits the road which has been recently constructed by the Chinese using Chinese labour and most of the materials. As he cruises on the smooth Chinese made road, he looks around and see a lot of Nissan's, Toyota’s, Range Rovers etc, all imported just like his BMW. Having spent the first three hours without success, Jinga decides to take a cup of coffee in town. For this, he enters Java coffee house which is owned by an American, but, manned by young Kenyan girls dressed in uniforms made from imported cloth from China. With his belly full, he goes on with his search for a WELL PAID KENYAN JOB. Just around 1 p.m., Jinga receives a call from his friend on his Nokia phone owned by Finish company, but, manufactured in China. Lest we forget, his friends phone
is Ericsson owned by Swedish people, but, manufactured in Taiwan and Poland.
His friend asks him if he would want to sit down for lunch. Without hesitation, Jinga says yes. For their lunch, Jinga and his friend decide to eat at the newly opened and popular American KFC. There is no way they would have failed to know about it because, it was given FREE advertising by Larry Oduor of the Nation TV. When there, Jinga and his friend order some chicken and potatoes IMPORTED from Egypt as we can hear here: http://is.gd/ZLVXYp. To drown the fatty chicken, they sip an American Coca Cola. Having taken lunch at the American KFC, Jinga resumes his search for a WELL PAYING KENYAN JOB. To ensure he reaches a few more places, Jinga decides to fuel his BMW. To do so, he drives into a Libyan owned petrol station which sells Libyan oil. Fully loaded, he resumes his search for a WELL PAYING KENYAN JOB.
Having not succeeded in getting a WELL PAYING KENYAN JOB, Jinga, decides to relax at around 5 p.m. by sipping some beer with a few friends in an up market bar. Just like some of his friends, Jinga’s favorite beer is the Scottish owned cold beer stored in a Chinese made fridge, but, which is brewed by Kenya Breweries Limited. However, some of the Jinga’s friends are sophisticated and like such stuff such as the Aberlour Scottish whisky as well as French wine. As they sip their Scottish beer, whisky and French wine, Jinga, just like most Africans who are divided between Manchester and Arsenal fans, they are watching soccer on the TV imported from Japan at the bar. To FOOL the Africans into FINANCIALLY SUPPORTING the European soccer, the European clubs do hire a few black faces from Nigeria and such place. DELUDED that, we are supporting our own, we flock into supporting these teams. To screen the UK football, the Kenyan bar owner had to pay licence fees to the UK owners of the broadcasting rights. To recoup these charges, he sells his Scottish beer, whisky and French wines at a higher price.
Since it is getting late and Jinga does not want to waste time cooking, he and his friends decide to order some nyama choma. Since the current and previous droughts have decimated our cattle, they get beef imported from Tanzania. Just before they leave for their respective houses, which are all “bought” on mortgages which are denominated in the collapsing dollar, they decide to wait a bit longer to watch the latest news, i.e. propaganda by talking heads. As usual, the big news is about the next BIG OPIUM SESSION in 2012. Having watched the news on how different horses are transversing the country using European made helicopters and Hammers made in the USA, Jinga and his friends then start a very animated conversation as to which of the horses will CREATE HIGH PAYING KENYAN JOBS for the unemployed Kenyans like Jinga. After one hour of what Jinga and his friends would call serious debate, they decide that, the horse which has promised to
bring in more foreign investors as PARTNERS with the STATE to build TOLL BOOTHS on our roads is the best candidate. Lest we forget, these foreign investors will repatriate their profits tax free. Who pays for the stuff like the police to protect these foreign investors does not enter Jinga and his friends minds. It is too remote and more so, the local TV and its talking heads has never discussed such non - issues.
Since now it is 11 p.m. Jinga and his friends part ways. Jinga cruises to his house safely and goes straight to bed so that, he can wake up early at 5.30 a.m. to continue his search for a WELL PAID KENYAN JOB. However, at around 4 p.m., he receives a call on his Nokia phone from one of his friends. Fearing for the worst, Jinga is informed that, two of his friends were hijacked, robbed and murdered as they were entering their gate. He is told that, the policemen, using imported Toyota cars from Japan, and radios from the UK, are on hot pursuit of the thugs who have escaped with a Nissan car imported from Japan. He is also told that, the thugs were armed with 4K 47 guns made in Russia. To view his friends bodies, he heads to the Kenyatta National Hospital where some doctors tried to save their lives using x - ray machines and drugs made in Sweden and imported by some Asians.
As the news of the grisly murder is broad cast from our radio and TV stations, all equipped with imported gadgets from Japan and Germany, Jinga, like the rest of the nation demands more policemen in the streets to fight crime. To put more policemen on the streets does require more taxation of local industries and labour. This, to the masses if they are thinking, would make them realise that, more taxation will only bankrupt more local industry which increases imports. However, since the government is afraid of asking for too much tax, after all, how much can Jinga pay? So, in it’s cleverness, the government MONETIZES the debt. However, since there are UNIVERSAL NATURAL ECONOMIC LAWS which no government has ever managed to defy, this clever move leads to INFLATION. With inflation, the FALSE HIGH PRIESTS of the Central Bank increase the cost of money for the local industry. As expected, this only deepens the poverty which will lead
to more thugs. In other words, Jinga and his nation’s solution is to cede their streets to the two groups of armed thugs, i.e. ROBBERS and the POLICE. May the best armed and the most ruthless win!
However, since Jinga like the rest of Africans are educated in FREE TRADE, and MBA’s, this is a non - issue in their minds. As a result, the government decides to increase the number of policemen and have them better equipped with more Toyota cars as opposed to the usual Land Rovers. To the columnists of the Daily Nation and the Standard and the Gema, enriching the Japanese as opposed to the Britons, makes Kibaki a hero who can look East. Also, to aid the police communication system, the government invites some American companies to bring in
better radios, street cameras and such. With the security problem “solved” Jinga like the rest of the nation goes back to business as usual hoping for better times ahead after the coming OPIUM SESSION.
Jinga, like the rest of the nation is unable to understand that, the 2012 OPIUM SESSION will only increase the PARASITES. After all, our IVY LEAGUE of FOOLS legal dons told Kenyans that, increasing the PARASITES is the solution to all their problems.
What is the moral of all this? Simply, the African consciousness has been hijacked. Our conditioned tastes, desires, wishes, values, aspirations etc, are the means by which we further the prosperity and power of all other races. As such, due to the hijacking of our consciousness, we do not value African freedom, liberty, self sufficiency, wealth, dignity etc. This is because, Africans in Africa
and in the Diaspora have catastrophically failed to understand that, our tastes and desires are the means by which we feed others, as we starve; clothe others as we go naked; treat others as we die of diseases; build good houses for others as we live in shacks; educate others as we grapple with illiteracy; provide clean water for others as we drink contaminated water; ensure stable FAMILIES for other communities even as ours crumble into what some IGNORANT FOOLS call black men’s lack of responsibility for families; we provide safe communities even as our are invested with crime and drugs; provide jobs for others as our youth roam streets in search of non - existent jobs; arm other nations to attack us as we see in Ivory Coast, Libya etc.
In simple words, let no one fool you about the so called free trade and free choices. It is just another of the European propaganda concocted since 1492. When the European and Asians talks of FREE TRADE they mean this. To lock out the Africans from THEIR OWN MARKETS (check KFC buying potatoes from Egypt) and EXTERNAL MARKETS (try to export Kenyan potatoes to the EU). If there were free trade and free choices as they make Africans believe, then, the Europeans would be eating the nice tasting Mbeere chicken and not their plastic like chicken. What we call free choices are carefully planted tastes and desires to serve a system of political economy so as to serve certain ends. As such, to ensure that, the Africans tastes and desires serve the imperialist’s
agenda, through our so called education system, they falsify the African consciousness by:
(a) feeding Africans with FALSE CONTENT,
(b) feeding Africans with FALSE HISTORY,
(c) feeding Africans with FALSE KNOWLEDGE, and
(d) feeding Africans with IRRELEVANT knowledge.
By this, we mean to state that, Africans are OUT OF THEIR MINDS to think that, the UNNECESSARILY EXPENSIVE Western education is relevant or appropriate to the Africans situation. Any education system that teaches Africans to work in the current system is irrelevant and
inappropriate. As such, if our institutionalised schooling and self education is to have any meaning, it must have one goal. To produce REVOLUTIONARIES to OVERTHROW the current political economic system that falsifies the Africans consciousness. By word REVOLUTION, we do not mean USELESS street protests, riots, violence, new constitutions, OPIUM SESSIONS and such nonsense.
True REVOLUTION means equipping ourselves and more so, our children with the ability to judge things by their CAUSE as not the EFFECT. This requires that, we engage in a very critical re - examination of the true political and economic function of the Euro centric education system we put our children through. We must examine the intentionality of the Euro centric education system which brainwashes Africans with concepts such free trade and free choice. With such a review, we should be able to come up with African centred theories of learning and pedagogy. By so doing, we shall come up with education based on who we are and our African experiences. In other words, our salvation does not lie in new laws, new leaders, but, self knowledge of exactly who we are, why we are what we are and how we create others by what we are.
If we know who we are, we shall then automatically know who our children are. We shall be aware that, the African child’s destiny is totally different from that of a European child. On the one hand, the
destiny of the European child is to maintain the imperial system. On the other hand, the destiny of the African child MUST BE the total overthrow the imperial system. How can it be otherwise? If this is true, how can they learn the same thing?
Just an example. When the Western/Asian law schools teach their lawyers the mysteries of the stock exchange, it is an education to prepare them to continue the CAPITALISATION of the African soil in London, New York, Hong Kong exchanges etc. Now, if this is the true intention of stock exchange law from the Western/Asia law schools standpoint, what is the intention of the University of Nairobi when it teaches Kenyan lawyers stock exchange laws? If University of Nairobi understood its sacred mandate, it would prepare the Kenyan lawyers not to cooperate foolishly in the capitalisation of their own soil, i.e. create their own and their children's imperial masters, but, to resist and overthrow the Western/Asian capitalisation of the African soil. As such, instead of University of Nairobi becoming a means of self knowledge, it is a means of perpetuating the African's servitude to all other races. This is where the problem lies and must be understood if Africans are to be free people.
To summarise, dear reader, the relevant question then, is this. What values do our own education, wishes, tastes and desires promote? Do they promote the goal of African’s freedom from want, or, deepen it?
By this we mean that, even if the American KFC chicken is very nice and sweet, we must reject it to the extent that, it does not promote the Mbeere, Kitui, Kakamega chicken farmer.
Monday, August 15, 2011
Saturday, August 13, 2011
KFC Re-opens in Nairobi capital of hungry Kenya
Kentucky Fried Chicken opened on Friday in Nairobi at the Junction shopping mall to such huge crowds that I fear many westerners will think that the crowds are the hungry starving Kenyans from the Eastern and northern part of the country queuing up for free food.
Kenyans are an interesting lot rushing to fill their bellies with all that fat. Unaware of the fact that the popular brand has fled the increasingly health-conscious west to pitch camp on the continent that loves everything that is American. I think it is possible to sell human waste very successfully in Kenya as long as you can convince people it is from America.
Interestingly the local press has completely missed the fact that KFC have been here before but packed and left in the early 70s. Now they are back to fatten naïve Kenyans.
Don’t get me wrong. It is not that I am allergic to chicken. It is just that I eat it sparingly and next time I am in Nairobi the first item on my list will NOT be to rush to KFC just so that I may have something to post on my Facebook status.
But friends, I am still very excited about KFC coming to Kenya. And the reason is the inspiring business story behind the world’s largest quick-service chicken restaurant chain.
The founder is one Colonel Sanders, a man who was not even a real colonel.
Born Harland Sanders, his dad died when he was only six years old, and, since his mother worked, he was required to cook for his family and that is how his long career as a cook started. He dropped out of school in seventh grade to help provide for his siblings. But when his mother remarried, he ran away from home because his stepfather beat him. Sanders falsified his date of birth and enlisted in the United States Army at the age of sixteen, completing his entire service commitment in Cuba. In his early years, Sanders held many jobs, including: steamboat pilot, insurance salesman, railroad fireman and farmer amongst many others.
At the age of 40, Sanders cooked chicken dishes and other meals for people who stopped at his service station in Corbin, Kentucky. Since he did not have a restaurant, he served customers in his adjacent living quarters. His local popularity grew, and Sanders moved to a motel and 142 seat restaurant, later Harland Sanders Café and Museum. Over the next nine years he developed his "secret recipe" for frying chicken in a pressure fryer that cooked the chicken much faster than pan frying.
Sanders was given the honorary title "Kentucky Colonel" in 1935 by Governor Ruby Laffoon. He was "re-commissioned" in 1950 by Governor Lawrence Wetherby.
It wasn't until 1950 that Sanders began developing his distinctive appearance, growing his trademark mustache and goatee and donning a white suit and string tie. He never wore anything else in public during the last 20 years of his life, using a heavy wool suit in the winter and a light cotton suit in the summer.
At the age of 65, Sanders' was broke. His small store had failed due to the new Interstate 75 reducing his restaurant's customer traffic. He took $105 from his first Social Security check and began going door to door selling his recipe. It was very hard work for such an old man and rejection was constant so much so that he was forced to live off Social Security. But amazingly he never gave up. He just kept on knocking on doors with his cooker and spices trying to convince restaurants to pay him to use his recipe. Smaller restaurants were willing to pay him a small fee for every chicken sold and, by 1960, Sanders had over 400 "franchises".
Sanders sold the Kentucky Fried Chicken Corporation in 1964 for $2 million to a partnership of Kentucky businessmen headed by John Y. Brown, Jr. The deal did not include the Canadian operations.
There are fewer tales that are more inspirational than the Sander story. Enjoy your fried chicken this weekend but head to the gym immediately after.
Amazing quotes from Colonel Sanders
I made a resolve then that I was going to amount to something if I could. And no hours, nor amount of labor, nor amount of money would deter me from giving the best that there was in me. And I have done that ever since, and I win by it. I know.
There's no reason to be the richest man in the cemetery. You can't do any business from there.
You got to like your work. You have got to like what you are doing, you have got to be doing something worthwhile so you can like it.. because it is worthwhile, that it makes a difference, don't you see?
Ambitious KFC plans for Kenya and Africa
Another inspirational business tale: How I turned around my ailing Nairobi business in 7 days flat
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)