Poverty as entertainment?

This post is a direct response to Rasna Warah's post in Kenya's Daily Nation newspaper of 20 March 2011. I came across it here where it was reposted.

I watched Famous, Rich and in the Slums (here on YouTube) when it was aired in Britain by the BBC recently and my consternation at the issues featured was directed neither at the makers of the documentary, nor at those who participated in it. My anger, instead, was directed at the authorities in Kenya, who seem to be clueless as to their responsibility towards the country's citizens and in particular, the inhabitants of Kibera, a slum area in the country's capital city. Lest I incur the angst of my readers, I make haste at this point to clarify that this is not intended as an onslaught on the aptitude of the Kenyan government singly, since such failure is characteristic of the majority of the governments of Africa.

The author in the Daily Nation opined:

"There are dozens, if not hundreds, of charities operating in Kibera and other slums like it, with few significant results to show for their efforts. 

There may be slightly more sanitation facilities in the slums now, but the living conditions have become only slightly less appalling - they have not improved dramatically. And the slum continues to grow."

And I ask, in all of this where are the Kenyan authorities? What function does the municipal authority in Nairobi perform when a sizeable segment of the city's population are forced to live in such squalid conditions? The author in the Daily Nation was critical of the NGOs that operate in the slum and seemed unhappy about what was referred to as "slum tourism", but I beg to differ.

It's puzzling that we do nothing about a problem and then think that we are justified in criticising the foreigners who make an effort to tackle our problem, one which we have previously ignored. Why do we become angered when westerners point at our festering sores that we have pretended did not exist? Most annoying for me is the fact that Raila Odinga, Kenya's Prime Minister, holds the parliamentary seat for Langata Constituency, which covers much of the Kibera slum.

My take on this is that it was never the intention of the makers of and participants in this documentary, (participants who in any event, include a considerable number of Kibera residents themselves), merely to provide entertainment for the film's viewers. What the film did for me was to vividly highlight the failure by another of Africa's governments to take an interest in, and responsibility for the welfare of those whom they govern. The situation is the same in much of Africa and I have written about the same thing in relation to Nigeria previously on this blog.

Parking woes

Some months ago I wrote this post commenting on how I thought it is nightmarish finding parking space in this city where I live. This morning, I didn't find a place to park the car in the council estate behind our office building, where I would normally park for free while at work. I had noticed that in recent weeks finding parking space in that estate had become even harder than before. Today someone explained to me that the construction work on the the East London Line extension, a new railway line that runs directly behind our building, means that several more people, namely, railway construction workers, are coming into the area each morning; and that most of these people are driving their cars to work. Ah, so that explains it..

Anyway I got to work and there was nowhere to park. So I was forced to park on the street in front of our office building. I parked the car in what I thought was a parking bay, at the cost of £2 for each hour you remain parked there. I was careful to buy the ticket and display it on the dashboard, since the very first thing I was to do on arrival at my desk this morning was to grudgingly write a cheque for £60, payable to Parking Services, London Borough of Hackney, in respect of a parking penalty charge I'd received last week for parking in front of the building without displaying a ticket, much to my chagrin. £60 is a lot of money to just throw away.

At 10am I went down to the parking meter and renewed my ticket. The new ticket was valid until about 11am, and I displayed this ticket prominently on the dashboard as required. At noon, I repeated the exercise. By this time I had already spent £8 just for parking, and the day wasn't even halfway through yet! Then at 1pm I went down again, but this time, there was a penalty charge notice stuck under my windscreen wiper. Yes, another one!! I was livid! As careful as I had been and after spending all that money, here I was again being slapped with another penalty charge for another £60! It was lucky the parking attendant was nowhere in sight when I arrived at the scene, because I couldn't trust myself to not have smacked him in the mouth with my fist before he even had the chance to explain.

I carefully examined the penalty charge notice and it appears that although I had been buying parking tickets as I should have, the spot where I was parked was not a parking bay at all. I should not have parked there in the first place. I had spent all that cash this morning just for parking, and all I got in the end was a fine!! I was so miffed that although it was just past 1pm, I went back into the office, shut down my workstation and fled from the office in a fit of fury.

Tomorrow, I shall abandon this car at home and travel to work peacefully (and cheaply), by bus. I take back everything I said when I had just got the car. I stated then that I willl be driving everywhere, but now I'm not so sure any more.