Orals East Africa>Boycott maize, it is a revolutionary act Part II. At the hut of the story

The peasant farmer

My trip sent me to Sori to meet Mr Ezra Ngoje, the chair of County Pensioners Association. He had been ‘detained’ as he put it by the Gen Z who had shut down the country and made it impossible to go to the city for the annual general meeting of the CPF Financial Services.

It was a beautiful drive through the spaces of the country, that made me re-arrange a little of my childhood geography. Geothermal flowed right down beneath Sondu which made me curious about why most of rural western lies in the dark yet the very power comes from some of these very areas.

The trafficking grid crisscrossed these vast areas losing idle power over homes that relied on the ancient art of igniting fires and market women huddled over cyclops eyes of pay-go-solar solutions.

We dove through incomplete roads and large sections of washed-out tarmac into the interior where the true nature of our climate shows itself. The drive brought me through towns that formed from connecting transport nodes, creating magnets of human invention, commerce and waste cluttered inside the thickets.

The vegetation is hardy, the plants that dare show their palms are covered in dust or shriveled from the glare of the equatorial sun.

The ground is good sediment and sprouts at the slightest tease of water but dries up even faster to allow the bog to recede. And what looks green from the road is bone dry, and spindly leafed like camouflaged Ojuok.

In everything eat first

We finally got to Sori a town that touches the lake and draws claim for its remoteness as for its small fisher community. We agreed with my colleague that on such assignments, it is important to eat food first.

We looked to the local hotel and prayed we would not have the stomachs. It was typically provincial, most of the food on the menu stuck on a wall, was not ready. But they had achwaka, and we went for the local specialty. They had not yet cooked their greens but if we would not mind, some cold almost frozen green mixture of ‘traditional’ vegetables.

The Ugali was hot, arega, maize meal that is ground with all embryo and husk that gives its coarseness and yellowish colour. So I put the frozen vegetables inside and ate through what was a decent meal for the sleepy town.

We then veered into the interior and were happy with our wisdom of anticipating the lack of more eateries.

But when we got to the old Mzee’s homestead it was apparent we had made the mistake.

When you go to a Western Kenyan’s home, they will serve you tea, whatever the time, do not fall for this trick. Because truly and truly I say unto you, the whiff of sumptuous chicken and fish will only float by.

But we ate like there was no tomorrow literally, claiming courtesy to our host, rather than sheer greed.

Project unemployment

Mr Ngoje was a retiree and after we cleared the work we had been contracted to do I asked him to sit down with me for a podcast on a project I have just began.

Through Project Unemployment; I am sitting with anyone who has lost work, or retired, and made the transition from despair through to normalcy to help anyone currently experiencing the job market crisis to see beyond their predicament.

His home was typical of the ones I had seen on the road. A three bedroomed house that sat on sizable property like true ambition of Kenya’s middle class.

The house stood capped with the mansard roof, with a small veranda where makuti chairs made from local papyrus rotted grey from rain and sunburn. He had been wise when he built the house, placing a rump out front beside the stairs. When we meet him it proves almost ingenious as his wife has sprained her leg and moves about with the help of the rail over the rump

Inside his triumphs in the city are framed on the wall that hangs from a low wooden paneled roof that gives the interior of the spacious living area a coolness from the sun outside.

Milking opportunities

We moved to eat at the dining room like true guests, policed over by those ancient wood and glass cabinets that had sacrificed its finest china. We were served both cassava and white ugali and I instinctly go for the traditional brown.

Mr Ngoje tells us that when he retired he quickly realized there was very little in agriculture that he could do since the area received only one cycle of rainfall which most often was not sufficient for a crop. In the area, there was little farming done on the shores of the lake where the vegetable comes from but most farmers here rear cattle.

“I have a goats shed here and a cattle boma which helps me to generate some cash flow now that I am retired,” he said. Adding that five years before he retired he started buying local cow breeds and giving his friends and neighbours to keep for him, a cheat sheet that he wishes young people could learn.

His foresight for old age cash flows proved almost prophetic when he retired in 1995 and it took him a whole two years before the Kisumu County Government could remit his pension to the Laptrust,- now CPF Financial Services.

His battle against the Kenyan government’s short-sightedness would come to define his life as a local leader post-retirement.

Bailing on our fathers

For years, Mr Ngoje like most civil servants would receive his paycheck which indicated that part of his income had been deducted and remitted to the pension fund.

CPF Financial estimates that Kenyan local authorities which later transitioned to counties owed pensioners over Kes40 billion which has constrained its payouts to the aged workforce.

When Mr Ngoje quickly realized that once you are out of the bureaucracy, it treats you as harshly as it does the rest of the citizenry he mobilized his fellow pensioners, pursued legal means and applied pressure until the county paid their dues.

He says that he was then approached by the Laptrust leadership who asked him whether he could replicate the lobby at a national level, and that is how their association was formed. It grew into a sacco underwritten by CPF and has proven vital for supporting pensioners as they transition out of employment.

Mr Ngoje said through his association they have pushed the Retirement Benefits Authority (RBA) to invoke its mandate over pensions, to pressure the counties to deposit old peoples' savings or risk a penalty of Kes100 for every shilling not remitted

Every time this has been invoked the counties schemes have come to agree with the pensioners to remit the lumpsum and put the old savers on their meagre pensions.

They have also been pushing the government to deduct a minimum sum from county disbursements to go into clearing some of the old balances which he says will be a big game changer for the oldies.

“There is money that is sent from the ministry to councils, and we wanted to agree on an amount that could be paid in every scheme to finish up on the debt of each county, This one is still in discussions it is a new thing,” he said.

Falling domino

While he hopes the current officeholders will have the perspective to realize that they will also exit public service and do right by pensioners, he is mistaken in assuming the ability of Kenyans to see beyond their immediacy.

As the government gets ratings downgrades by Fitch and Moody’s very few are putting into perspective what a state default will mean, and one of its biggest casualties will be the pensioners.

But for now, Mr Ngoje is happy with his pension, it is regular and supplemented by his small agriculture offers him modest income and above all dignity in old age.

He said since he left work he has forgotten everything about the days of the week save for Saturday when he goes to pray at his local Seventh-day Adventist church. He invites us for a camp meeting and I am unable to decline and we return to Sori a few weeks later.

Coincidentally the West which is using the IMF to gain a foothold in Kenya through designation as a Major non-Nato ally, is the same that accused China of debt diplomacy in pursuit of the 'String of Pearls'.

On this second drive, the maize crop failure is too apparent. Stalks lie dead and rotting in their tracks while others have been opened up for livestock to consume. I saw on one plot someone had angrily slashed the stalks from their mid-riff and they stood spiking out like porcupines.

When we got to Luanda the local area town, we got lost and showed up at the local SDA, it was a modest church typical of rural villages. When we called, Mr Ngoje directed us to Lwala SDA which is a short distance in the interior to the direction of his house.

Spiritual food

When we got there we realized how high his spires of ambitions peaked. This smaller village church perched a top of a hill wanted to be the tallest edifice in the village.

For now, it was only a skeleton, quality roofing lying on strong pillars that slanted down with the promise to provide captured water along with spiritual nourishment when complete.

He looked proud of what he called their ‘humble’ church and you could see his patronage from the reverence shown to him by the faithful. Mr Ngoje was the most smartly dressed in the congregation where he wore a metallic grey three-piece suit and had combed his short cropped silver head into neat discipline.

I have never been to an SDA church service and this gig allowed me into their commune and I quite appreciated their traditions. They had put the children at the very front, and then the old men and the rest of the congregation formed rank and file.

The SDA also fed their congregants and I was impressed further by the quality of their chapati despite the need to feed so many people. We had learned from our previous escapade not to eat before visiting Mr Ngoje. Unfortunately like most human knowledge, the assumptions are relative, fluid and often at times wrong.

When they opened the bowls of food, all they could offer was green grams and cabbage to go with the chapati.

“Here do not even think about soup,” Mr Ngoje remarked, “You know our religion does not allow us to eat meat, we should be vegetarian, but we hide ourselves inside our houses and gobble the soup.” I caught the joke in his expression and broke out laughing.

Clearly what we eat is at the center of cultural and spiritual identity, which I find lacking in gobbling down the sludge the Europeans fed to their African workers in exchange for free labour that underpins the history of maize meal ugali.