06/06/2023
Another Long Story. "A Second Option To The Turkana Story".
Read at your own peril.
The story of Turkana cannot remain untold, hidden and swept under the carpet anymore. It should be a shame and a disgrace to all Kenyans that 60yrs after independence, one part of the country and population can live in relative affluence and opulence while another part lags behind so dismally.
The reasons are historical, but are also reversible with very deliberate, collective, affirmative and focused interventions.
These interventions will not be achieved by talk or rhetoric but rather by action. We must put money where our mouths are.
A modelling agency associated with me has just returned to Nairobi after a very challenging weekend in Lodwar, Turkana county. That agency is called Second Option Agency, sponsored by me using my income in public service, private practice and The MESU Centre, together with a few good friends and even fewer but committed corporate entities who have a shared mission and vision.
Turkana county is the largest county in Kenya, followed by Marsabit. The two are neighbouring counties who share a National resource in Lake Turkana, the 4th largest African lake. They also share in being the most remote and inaccessible parts of the country called Kenya.
In a world where land and water are considered some of the most important natural resources, it is paradoxical that these counties remain the poorest in Kenya, 60yrs after independence.
This is the sad story of Turkana.
How did it start? How did it go? Where are we? Where are we going?
It started with the official pre and post independence acceptance that Turkana is not part of Kenya. This geographical and historical location, described as the cradle of mankind where the first evidence of our existence as we are was first discovered, is the same location where errant public servants would be sent on transfer as punishment and would only be returned to Kenya after they "reformed".
Our own Siberia.
It served the powers at the time that conditions in the area remain harsh, hostile and remote, perhaps to serve as a cruel reminder of the kind of harsh life we all came from and must continue living in if we don't obey the rulers.
Insecurity and violence was normalised as the way of survival. Just like in the Nat Geo World Animal Series.
With insecurity, there can be no peace. Without peace, there can be no basic infrastructure for development. All efforts are directly only for survival of the moment.
No planning is made for the future of the region.
Without peace, there can be no economic or social activities to spur any developments.
These are considered non priority activities and wasted energy when all the people need is to just survive.
The pre and post colonial governments had no time to indulge the area with the luxury of providing economic, social or organized cultural activities. Remember, most economic and social activities can be undertaken by private citizens and institutions but peace and security can only be secured by concerted government effort.
The government failed in providing this for the last 60 yrs.
During the previous Jubilee government, relative calm had been restored despite the sporadic banditry that was experienced and this intensified towards the end of that regime as elections approached.
It was during this time that the Second Option Agency decided to first visit the region in August 2022 for the Auditions of the Mr and Miss Second Option Africa MSOA, Turkana edition as part of the regional auditions in various parts of Kenya. Including Turkana was a deliberate effort by the agency to be part of the economic and social activities of Turkana.
I personally drove our team during all the auditions of that year and I had the privilege of doing the long trip from Nairobi to Lodwar in 7hrs of scenic driving, passing through Uasin Gishu, Trans Nzoia, Elgeyo Marakwet, West Pokot and Turkana counties. I will not bother with the experience of the routine Nairobi to Eldoret drive.
I got to see, experience and compare first hand the disparities that exist in our different counties during the auditions of 2022 and realized that unless we know what we have, we will always be complaining about what we don't have.
I always believed that Marakwet and West Pokot were uninhabitable counties full of bandits in caves waiting to attack until I saw the expansive land that is uninhabited because it is unpopulated, the government presence being ceremonial and symbolic but not practical.
I got to transit from the hilly West Pokot county to the flat, dry and hot Turkana county with police road blocks scattered along the newly constructed highway, without any police presence in the interior.
I know about this twisted security arrangement because we toured the urban town of Lodwar where the security presence is visible and intimidating, then traversed the empty desert on nonexistent roads, led by guides on a motorbike, to the Lake Turkana Lakeside Town of Eliye Springs. The lake is very busy with waves and we swam in it.
I swam in Lake Turkana!
The vast part of the county is very large, dusty and empty. A desert. A territory with no named structures apart from a few mud Catholic churches (the missionaries did more for our country than we give them credit for).
How the missionaries reached and were able to build and establish their midsions in these remote places without official government security is a miracle. It should always be a permanent reminder to any doubting Thomases that indeed all is possible with the power of faith and self drive beyond what the human can or will ever achieve.
This year, banditry attacks became more rampart in the regions to the extent of having a night curfew imposed in the areas of Marakwet, West Pokot and Turkana counties. This insecurity and curfew had profound social economic ramifications as earlier explained...no security means no peace and no social economic activities.
Night curfew means no guaranteed night security, no night time economic activities and no night time social activities.
It became risky to send our MSOA 2023 auditions team to the region and we were thus prepared to skip that region this year, but we were not prepared for the implications of this miss.
As an agency, we have never cancelled any of our scheduled agency or pageant activities because our target population are mostly young people in disadvantaged situations who have a dream for a better life. A people that believe in our mission and vision of providing a platform to talents and models willing to grab the chance to get rewarded for doing what they enjoy doing.
Due to our commitment to do the auditions despite the curfew and security risks, we considered flying a small team of 3 staff to Turkana. The cost implications of airlifting a skeleton team to Turkana for the auditions were astonishingly steep, thanks to the ridiculous ripple effects of cartels taking advantage of well intentioned humanity efforts targeting the disadvantaged communities in desperate situations.
We considered hiring a vehicle to take the team there and we received equally alarming quotations from the hire vans willing to make the trip.
This is the sad reality of our times. Human beings take advantage of and profit from the efforts by other human beings trying to relieve the suffering of other human beings instead of assisting or facilitating the processes.
Capitalism has accepted this and having any contrary opinion is considered socialist and backward thinking by the selfish woke generation.
I therefore decided that in order to actualize this year's auditions, I would drive the team again this year.
Nairobi to Lodwar. Return trip.
This involves yet again sacrificing at least 5 days of my income generating activities for this philanthropic activity that has become my regular Community Social Responsibility (CSR) away from my clinical duties. The fuel costs implications using my vehicle is humungous for the 1400km road trip, but this is me taking one for the team.
On the well intentioned advice from one of my managers, we eventually hired a 7 seater van instead, complete with a driver at a cost I thought was reasonable, so that I can concentrate on generating income as the team does its work. And also to rest as prescribed by God after a week of working.
The team was supposed to leave Nairobi on Friday 2nd June at 4am to avoid the morning traffic and pick the rest of the team in Eldoret by latest 10am for the onward 7hr trip to Lodwar to arrive before the 6pm curfew for a sleep over before the auditions. Auditions were to start at 9am on Saturday 3rd June. We had learnt from the previous year's edition that the Turkana are very religious and so other non religious activities are not entertained by the residents on Sunday mornings.
When we went last year, we hired 2 BnB houses (2 bedrooms each) for our team of 7 to share. This year, we had no such luck because the landlords now offer 1br houses at double the cost of what they charged us last year for a 2Br. Crazy.
Blame this on county government tenders that have taken up the cost of every product because governments use tax payers' monies to pay for goods and services at exaggerated profits so that well connected people can get rich quickly. Madness.
Advance hotel accommodation in the religious town was also very tricky. The management in the town hotels do not want any suggestion of people of the same gender sharing rooms. I suppose even the opposite gender are required to have proof of marriage to qualify sharing one room.
When I drove there last year, we enjoyed the changing scenery of the forgotten territories of Marakwet, West Pokot and Turkana with their different forms of humanity, livestock and homesteads. We even witnessed children and adults scampering away whenever we made a stop over to take pictures or ask for information, possibly due to a lifetime of being conditioned to regard any foreigner as an enemy.
We saw women walking along the roads topless, unbothered by exposing what to them is a container for their baby's milk.
We got educated on the meaning of the different multicolored clothing, beads, necklaces and other accessories worn by different populations.
This year, things didn't go as planned, partly due to changing circumstances and partly due to our own budgetary constraints and inadequacies. The team left Nairobi at around 6am and I said a silent prayer for them because this was trouble.
In the naivety of youth, this is a good time for them to start a long journey. They had no idea just how long. I think they must have thought I was joking when I said trip to start at 4am. They therefore drove straight into the Nairobi morning traffic jam.
In the naivety of youth, they had time (or thought they had) to stop at the rift valley view point to admire the morning scenery and take pictures.
In the naivety of youth, they had the luxury (or thought they had) of leaving Eldoret in the afternoon and I said another silent prayer for them.
Curfew found them before Kainuk and from then on they were at the mercy of the security team in Turkana county. How they eventually managed to reach Lodwar in the dead of the night is a security matter to be discussed at another forum. Sleep was a welcome rest for this team and I have no idea where they slept, but they slept and woke up ok.
As usual, the audition itself on Saturday was a huge success. Models in Turkana are ready, willing and able to bring their best on the table. The environment does not favour them because of the historical injustices I mentioned earlier. The young talents feel like they are at a dead end, neglected and wish, no, crave for a way out of what they believe is a condemned county, and maybe it is. I am informed that as bad as things appear now, they have improved tremendously since devolution. I shudder to imagine how they were pre devolution days.
I had previously visited Turkana (Kakuma), Marsabit and Moyale as a medical student working as a volunteer medical assistant with the United Nations High Commission For Refugees (UNHCR). We went there by chartered air planes, landing on airstrips that had to be cleared of grazing animals by the local herdsmen as the plane circled the airstrip before finally landing on open grounds with bumpy, potholed cattle tracks called airstrips and runways respectively.
During our stay those days at these far flung areas, we stayed in highly protected UN camps and would only go to explore the villages despite stern written warnings against going to the villages and interacting with the locals was at our own risk. We were supposed to be there with the sole mission of taking care of the expatriates, refugees, and maybe a few locals employed at the camps.
We were however young and restless.
We have come along way since then and especially after devolution, or so I've heard...and yet this is where we are now, after 60yrs of independence and self rule.
When people talk about being well travelled and knowing the cultures of different people around the world but haven't been to the vast lands in their own country to see and know how their countrymen and women live, I know that we have a society of people who just talk to sound educated and knowledgeable but don't know what they are talking about.
When I drove there last year, the most troubling car issue that I encountered then was seeing all the vehicle warning signs light up on the dashboard after the long trip, but this settled after a day of acclimatization.
This year, the van the team was carried in had to make several fuel stops since I had been made to believe that the fuel cost savings to me would be huge. It was a lie. Small engine capacity vehicles are uneconomical on long trips, especially when they use petrol. I spent many hours on my phone standby for those petrol top up calls. There were many.
This year, the team had a huge scare on the way back from Lodwar because the van lost a rear tyre after Kainuk (that name again). Now, this occurrence is a spectacle right out of a movie script. It is surreal for those who have experienced it. For those who haven't, let me describe it.
When a rear tyre breaks off its mounting from a fast moving vehicle, both the tyre and the vehicle become detached but still moving, one faster than the other. Many people don't realize what has happened because the vehicle just suddenly lurches on one side but keeps moving on three wheels. Alert passengers and driver may notice a flying wheel that will overtake the affected vehicle and speed off into the distance. It usually takes some time before a confused driver gets alarmed by the sudden loss of the vehicle balance as he applies his brakes and realizes that the wheel speeding off into the distance belongs to his vehicle. The vehicle finally lands with a loud dragging sound on the crippled wheel drum, screeching on the road surface with the vehicle swerving dangerously out of control before stopping, or rolling.
That is not a good experience to go through.
The speeding wheel is also a very dangerous flying object which can main and kill pedestrians and animals.
Needless to say, the team had a nasty scare, followed by a long wait at a remote hot place in the middle of nowhere as the driver boda bodad (these people are life savers) to a centre 40km away to get the only mechanic in the area. I understand he had to be pulled out of his local drinking den, not very sober, to reattach the wheel studs for the journey to resume, 4 hrs later.
Of importance is that he got the work done.
Many blessings to that man, and the boda boda one. Life savers at a fee.
The problem with hired vehicles is that drivers who have experienced mechanical problems on the trip take out their financial frustrations on their helpless passengers and begin demanding more than was agreed upon before resuming or completing their trip. Much the same way that a mechanic strips down your vehicle for a previously diagnosed problem then throws the spanner in by pronouncing other more serious problems that have to be fixed before he can even think of returning your vehicle parts, which cannot be returned anyway because they are broken.
The world needs to be grateful that surgeons do not have the same mindset while doing surgeries and discovering different things. The worst that happens during surgery is the patients get inflated bills which they promptly share on social media about how they were overcharged for a simple procedure. This life, no balance.
AI and Robotic surgery is however now here, and so humanity can start preparing for hearing"*beep*..new diagnosis encountered, please top up to continue with the surgery. To continue, press 1. To stop press 2" or other such nonsense. A lot of technology is being introduced by the industry and business enterprises as a money generating project that takes away the human aspect of problem solving in the guise of scientific breakthrough.
Back to Turkana MSOA auditions 2023 by Second Option Agency. The return trip was even longer than the going trip and my night was sleepless. The anxiety of this young team out there on the road in the hands of a frustrated and exploitative driver can make any parent to be very unsettled. I regard this team as my children but I am not sure they see me as their father. I am called a sponsor, with or without money. I have gotten used to them calling me GPapa Sam and so I will not accept this other title.
Still, I keep working with them doing what we can when we can to add value to society.
Still, we go to different places to conduct auditions of identifying young talents with a purpose despite many challenges.
Still, we are inspired by the many people whose lives we change and can potentially change by going to where they are instead of waiting for them to come to us in our big entitled cities.
Still, I find the energy to go out there and look for resources to keep this empire growing.
Still, I hope that one day when all is written after many years, the footnotes will be kind to the structures we set up 5 years ago, improving with inputs from different people and from our different experiences.
Still, I wait for the day when citizens will put more emphasis on home grown solutions to our unique challenges instead of copy pasting expensive and fancy foreign solutions for financial gain. Solutions which are out of touch with the problems on the ground because we assume that our middle class and political class problems are the benchmark of what needs fixing.
Still, I want to see more of our population doing what they can with what they have to add value to society without waiting for government intervention at every step.
The only thing that matters is security. We will find a way to take care of the rest. No, we also need goodwill, humanity, prayers, prayers and more prayers even more.
This was our experience at Second Option Agency in Turkana 2023. Despite the massive psychological and financial drain experienced, I am optimistic and certain that we will do it again next year, and the next, and the next.
I was hoping to have a restful weekend and save money this year but I achieved neither.
IrIsWhariIs and it is well.
This is not a fictitious narrative.
All the events described here are true.
The characters are real, including yours truly.
Second Option Agency is real.
Mr and Miss Second Option Africa MSOA pageant is real.
The MESU Centre is real.
Dedicated to the great team at Second Option Agency.
