Land of the Guiltless Natives

Everyone knows it is always the colonialists fault
Our mania for land is no different.
For the past forty years, we have blamed our bad habits on the colonialists.
We lived in a land of guiltless natives before they arrived!
Our fascination with land has joined the rank of one of our vices.
Kenyan vices.
Women, wine and land.
Not necessarily in that order.
We obsess about it, we want it, large tracts of it, small pieces, plots 4m by 4m.
Our fixation has become an irrational passion that we kill for.
Land is a soothing mistress.
A sense of calm soaks those who possess it.
Owning land gives me comfort. I know I won’t fall if I lean back.
My mother the land is there to catch me.
I don’t know how to be any other way.
When people from other states express astonishment at such an attachment, I am equally perplexed that it does not exist in their lives.
How can a person live without this ardor?
Without the satisfaction that comes with possessing your very own piece of land?
At such times I sense myself at an impasse trying to cross an unbridgeable chasm.
Me on this side with my land, and they standing there, puffs of smoke, with no substance at all.

II
I longed for land of my own even when I was a child.
When I was unhappy, I would dream of running away to my very own secret island.
To live off berries, rabbits and delicious little edible birds, the fruit of the land.
No prizes for guessing where I got those images.
The British are guilty - again.
This time as imperialists.
Enid Blyton, Robinson Crusoe, Paradise Lost, Lassie, Dr Bwana.
A mish mash of sources filling my head with the make believe adventures of white people in the bush.
Continuing the grip on my imagination.

III
But let’s not blame all the British.
The set that came to Kenya is guilty of this particular mania.
Lords and Ladies of the realm, from a tiny island only 244,820 sq. km. with 60million souls.
And those few still managed to own large chunks of it.
Can you imagine what they saw when they came to this country back then?
Miles and miles of empty land, owned by no one?
Would you endure the land lust that gripped them?
They had to have it. And they took it any way they could.
Purchasing it from owners who did not possess it.
Procuring with currency to captivate guiltless natives
Gunning down unyielding resistance
Conjuring up flocks of compliant faithful.
They carved out chunks of that long ago empty land, 100,000 hectares for this Lord, 200,000 hectares for that Lord.
Four of them ended up owning land the size of the original island.
They came and stayed for 120 years.
Enough time to infect us all with the contagion.
Like a genetic fever they passed on their obsession.

IV
After we got most of our land back, at independence, we discovered sadly there wasn’t much of it that was any good.
At least that’s what we were told in school, what was written in our books, what our government officers repeated in board rooms across the country.
What we came to believe.
Some facts and figures about Kenya. It covers 582,650 sq. km.
82% cannot support modern farming. It is incapable of growing cucumbers, carrots, cabbages and lettuce. The terrain is too harsh.
Only 18% of the land is any good.
So we are back to the small island after all.
Soon the new country was gripped by the same land-scarcity-fever of that original small isle.
Too-little-good-land chased by 30 million people growing ever more greedy by the day.
That’s why we kill for it.

V
It was predictable that we would soon start stealing land with the calm soig froid that other people pick pockets.
We even invented a special term for it.
“Land grabbing.”
That’s what we call it.
As if you could snatch a piece of land and carry it, unseen, wrapped up in your pocket.
Vehement denial follows the apprehended land thief when the pilfered land is pulled from its hiding place.
Loud protests of, “It’s mine! Here’s the title deed to prove it!” follow.
And indeed he has a genuine title deed just like yours.
Title deeds have became accidental pieces of paper drawn up by government officials gone seemingly berserk
One as real as another.
There is just one small problem. I am the one who has to pay the loan I borrowed to buy the land in the first place.
I have only reached half way; I still owe another five million shillings!
I can’t very well go to my bank and say, “Sorry I’m not going to be paying that loan now because the land has been stolen.”
I am afraid of looking sloppy.
All those years my mother would have been right.
I am careless after all.
The signs were there early on when I kept loosing my school sweater.
Now I have gone and lost my land!