Who knew running a country could be this difficult? Pray, please. Right NOW. I was stunned when the Ruto prayer rituals went into overdrive this week asking Kenyans to pray very hard and also to fast so that God will bring rain and food to the citizens.
Someone should have told Ruto that when people are starving and dying from drought and lack of food they do not need to fast. They are dying from lack of food already.
God knows that already. And poor God has no food to throw down on Kenyans. What do they do now to get food to eat? That is why they have something called a government.
The one thing that is beginning to become clear to Kenyans is that William Ruto is asking himself how the heck he ended up being the president of Kenya. He has no clue what to do to deal with the real-life issues that Kenyans face today. Ruto must be asking himself. Why is Raila not running this mess of a government Ruto has? Pole sana Ndugu.
You have inherited ten years of your mess running a country to the ground where power and only power mattered to yourself and your boss. Now eat the mess you created. It doesn’t taste good, does it?
The real solution to the food crisis in Kenya where we are now facing mass starvation is to help Kenyans to produce the food they need from their own farms and have that food available across the country. Stop imagining that stupid ideas like bringing GMO food production will solve anything.
Kenyans have land and farms and if they produce food for the country, we would not be having this nightmare every year and not be as bad as it is right now.
The first thing in food safety in Kenya is to let the farmers know that yes you have your land and you own it. Here is your Title Deed. The second thing Kenyan farmers need to know is that the Kenyan government will provide farming assistance programs.
The first one in that line should be farming tractors available to local farmers to plough their land. That is between now and February 2023. I am a farmer on 8-acre land in Bondo. I have a farm tractor for me and my sisters. Without that, you are dead as a farmer. The oxen ploughs are gone.
If the small-scale farmers in Kenya just get to plough their land they are a pig step ahead. The Ruto chaps keep talking about subsidized fertilizers and all that but if you do not plough your land that is completely useless.
After the land is ploughed and the crops planted the farmers know what to do. And we need to diversify our crops all across the country. Look at Arrow roots mainly in Mount Kenya areas. That is a magnificent food crop I would love to eat. Take it all over the country and let the folks grow it and get to like it as food for them.
I used to eat Nduma when I was in Kamiti prison. This prison boss of ours takes us to go plant his ndumas and all that at his farm. Then we harvest them and he gives us some of it to eat. His kids were shocked that prisoners could talk and eat.
“Wafungwa wana ongea” the kids used to yell when we first got to their father’s farm.
They couldn’t believe we could talk because they had been told that prisoners are the most evil people in the world. They are going to kill you in one minute. That is what the kids were told. Then we come to their farm and we are harvesting crops for them. It took them a while to get that in. But Nduma is something else. It is very good food.
Take rabuon, kitungu, osuga, sikuma wiki, rice, cassava, beans and all the great foods that Kenyans grow and spread that all over the country. I want to eat all of it and so do many Kenyans. We need to nationalize all our foods and grow them. Nobody is going to starve in that country after that.
And then we have dairy, fish, beef farming and all of it at once. How can we possibly be starving in a country like that?
We are starving from ideas on how to develop our country, not from food. That can be solved if we work at it and it shall be.
This is fish cage farming in Luanda Kotieno beach in Lake Victoria and which is very near to my sister’s home and she always tells me to invest there. She tells me the lake will be gone and colonized if we do not invest there and build fish cages. That is what Kenyans have to do. Invest in what we have.
Adongo Ogony is a Human Rights Activist and a Writer who lives in Toronto, Canada
