Our 36th prompt comes from Dude. He says:
delivery.jo.ke, and other short stories
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Dude (and other Kenyans),
Hello, we hope this message finds you well. Four years ago, we were sworn in as your new government. We asked you to elect us based on three pillars: Umoja (Unity), Uchumi (Economy), and Uwazi (Openness).
We said we would prioritize national cohesion and work towards eliminating ethnic division. However, our flagbearer’s most rabid supporters believe that “uthamaki ni wao” (leadership is ours) and “thamaki ni ciao” (the fish are theirs) and no efforts have been made by us to dispel this narrative. In fact, the president himself has said that “tunakula nyama wengine wanameza mate.” It’s good to be honest.
Despite having a majority in both the Senate and National Assembly, we have been unable and unwilling to pass a law to fulfil the constitutional requirement that not more than two-thirds of the members of elective or appointive bodies should be of the same gender. Women may make up 52% of our population and be inadequately represented, with no women having been elected governors or senators, and with only 86 of them being in parliament, but we really don’t care.
We promised to do something about safety and security, but somehow the crime rate has been on the rise in the past 4 years. People continue to be killed extrajudicially, robbed at gunpoint or mugged; women continue to be assaulted and raped, road safety continues to be a joke, homes continue to be broken into, cars continue to be stolen and broken into, gangs continue to proliferate, and the police continue to take bribes to do their jobs or look the other way, depending on who’s paying. We installed CCTV cameras all over Nairobi, but we just don’t feel like using them to reduce the crime rate. Under our watch, our troops have been accused of profiting from the same illegal trade deals that also financially support Al Shabaab, and were accused of looting Westgate Mall in the aftermath of a terrorist attack. Life ni hard msee.
We were going to focus on sports and culture, but that didn’t work out as we’d hoped. You see, we realized we just don’t like artists, or sports for that matter. That’s why we had a scandal at the Rio Olympics in 2016 and athletes were treated like shit while our friends and family took their spots and their kits. That’s why we didn’t build those five stadia we promised. That’s why our flag bearer’s running mate wants to defund arts education in schools and focus instead on STEM as if it’s either one or the other. Artists and sportspersons are a nuisance, you just have to be in government to understand.
We also promised better healthcare to you, but here’s the thing – we lied. We had to. Did you really think that we intended to pay your nurses and doctors better without a fight? That we actually were going to distribute those health clinics? That we were going to equip your hospitals and make sure medicine was available? When we can steal the money for ourselves in scandals like the Afya House one where we made off with at least 5 billion and instead and fly off to South Africa, India or the UK for our healthcare? LOL, are you new here?
We also said we’d fix the education, unemployment and youth empowerment situation. Yeah, that didn’t work out. The quality of our education is still down in the dumps. Laptops were to be provided to kids in our first 100 days, but we only got to this in 2016. We were going to build a technical training institute for teachers in each of the 1450 wards, but we’re at less than 100 right now. Only 1% of our kids who start Standard 1 go on to complete university, and our youth unemployment rate is 67% for our youth aged 15 – 34, who make up at least 35% of our population.
We promised economic growth and development, but we have been unable to deliver. Our national debt is at 53% of our GDP, up from 40% when we took over. Our public debt has doubled in the last three years, hitting KES 3.77 trillion. It was KES 1.89 trillion when we took over. If you re-elect us, we may even be able to get it to KES 5.32 trillion in 2020. Oh, and when we borrow, most of that money goes to servicing existing loans. You know that saying – you’ve got to get Eurobond money to pay Germany. Or Japan. Or China. We forget sometimes. Who’s going to pay all this back? You, of course.
We were going to deal with corruption, but when we got into power, we realized we actually like it. We like it so much, some people say we’re Kenya’s most corrupt government to date. Yay! We’re the best at something! As Trump would say, we have the best scandals. Tremendous. We had our Deputy President implicated in a scandal to grab a school playground, he also was involved in the Hustler’s Jet scandal that cost us about KES 100 million, we were late with the kids’ laptops because the initial tender worth KES 53 billion had been awarded unfairly, we had the NYS scandal when Anne Waiguru was in charge of devolution that cost you KES 1.9 billion, we had KES 5.2 billion stolen from the Ministry of Health, we awarded a Chinese company a KES 5 billion tender for the Tassia housing scheme despite the fact that it should have cost KES 3 billion, we imported 100 mobile clinics for KES 1 billion (paying KES 10 million for each clinic despite the fact that they cost KES 1.4 million), we paid KES 1.7 billion to move geothermal rigs and other equipment in 40 lots (it should have cost KES 15 million per lot, but we thought it would be great to pay KES 42 million instead), we awarded a KES 475 billion tender for the Lamu Coal Plant to a company that did not even submit a proposal, we paid out KES 3 billion for the Anglo Leasing Scnadal in which we got nothing in return, we may have lost 56 billion when we stopped the building of a terminal at JKIA due to irregular tendering, and we overpaid the Chinese KES 314.2 billion to build the SGR. Aah, yes, our lovely Madaraka Express. With its Kiswahili signage translated from English using Google Translate even though Kiswahili is our national language and we have scholars here.
We’ve not even mentioned half of the ways in which we’ve lied and stolen from you because we don’t have the time or the space, but we still want your vote in the upcoming election. Why, you ask?
Because fuck you. Here, have a delivery portal.
Sincerely,
Your government.
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This post is part of a daily writing experiment that I’m running for a year. I’d love it if you took part! ?