Dictates of the international community.

Together, Buda and Queen brought forth seven glowing lives, two boys and five girls, full of talents inherited from both parents. A new family was born from their union. The children would grow to make their own ways in the fields of music, art, fashion and design, as well as campaigners around human rights and other causes. The results of such tried and troubled unions can be unforeseen. Turbulence in such marriages can have the effect of pushing individuals to discover strengths in themselves that comfort may not nurture. The marriage of Buda and Queen was one such.

Buda was a proud man who kept very much to himself, he showed the best of himself freely to the world but there was a lot in him that was his private domain. He was certainly a man who would not have his dirty laundry hung up for public consumption. This was a man who wanted his wife and children to have the best and believed education was one of keys to success. To be educated in these times was a mark of status.

He even paid for and supported the schooling of Queen at the Kenya Utalii College, a prestigious hotel school in East Africa. Utalii drew students from across the region and its location bordered on the Kenya Power Training School and Muthaiga, one of the capital’s wealthiest suburbs, as well as Mathare one of the biggest slum areas. The suburb was a place of well-kept cricket clubs, presidential and ministerial addresses. There was also a personal motive here in that Buda wanted to be accepted by Queen’s family, to show them that he was able to provide and care for their daughter.

Queen was a tall woman, taller than her husband and slender. She was someone who was always able to fit in, a blend of urban and rural, able to move comfortably in both worlds. As a teacher, mother, and woman, she took her duties seriously and when she wanted her way she would get it. Queen might take a long time to decide on the object of her desire, weigh her options carefully, but once she was certain, it was hers! Even in marriage, she would allow her husband’s ego space to roam while standing to one side in support but when she decided it was enough, it was enough. Queen was a woman that, if she wanted to see the president, she would!

I remember a story that illustrates this. Every night Buda came home he would sit and play music with friends. Queen did not like this much and one day she stopped their session, a container of boiling water in her hand, threatening to throw it in the faces of the men as they played. Perhaps Queen struggled to share her husband with music, needing time with him for herself, and this moment was one that saw Buda begin to withdraw from music and direct his focus on family and work.

During the time that Buda and Queen were working as teachers. Back then, educators were still respected members of the community, viewed as beacons of hope and strength. They had responsibilities and undertook them with diligence and a sense of belonging. Teachers were supported by and belonged to the people. There were no cases of strikes or child abuse by these honoured guardians. Like many places in the world it was one of the few careers open to natives under foreign rule as future agents and sustainers of the colonial project. As such teachers found status in their communities.

Buda eventually left teaching as things were changing rapidly in the independent nation in the early 1990s. Positions were being filled by people connected within the ruling elite, those who had conformed at every level were now being rewarded with positions and privilege as a way of continuing this legacy. Urbanization was rapidly increasing, electricity and other infrastructure was coming to the people as well as western economics and all the material goods that go with it. This had major effects on people’s lifestyles, which were rapidly changing, and with these changes came new and different pressures. This too was true of Buda’s young and growing family.

He had gotten himself and Queen fairly comfortable jobs, something he had always been good at. Buda was working in relatively high position as a warden to the Kenya Power Training School in Nairobi, the nurturing ground for those who would run the country’s growing electricity infrastructure. Queen was also doing well in her own endeavours, she was working as the head of housekeeping at the Meridian Hotel, an upmarket establishment in the Nairobi CBD before getting a position in the Libyan Embassy. As a result, they could afford a bigger residence and also mix in social circles that matched their newfound status. Life was good and they aspired to give the best of education and values to their children.

Buda had spent some time in the city in his youth, it was an ancestral home, while Queen had grown up mostly in the rural areas. Now they were among the many flocking to the cities, in their case the country’s cosmopolitan capital. They were representative of a generation of people who were making the transition from being rooted in the ways of their ancestral past to becoming part of the so-called developed world. They were taking the first steps toward becoming “modern” citizens. Both were well positioned to establish themselves in this new space and, while they enjoyed much of what it brought, their generation would be the first to learn about the pressures that come with adopting and maintaining this foreign way of life. These were people who would be the first to experience this system from the inside.

Oduo was the first-born and depending on how you look at it, unfortunately or fortunately for him, he was the guinea-pig child, the one who determined how the other children would be treated. He was opening the path for his siblings, the yardstick used to determine the way for the rest.

His birth was an important one not only for Buda and Queen but also for their extended families. Not only was Oduo the first grandchild but his arrival was engineered by the ancestors in a way that he became an important point of unity. Both sides wanted to lay their claim to him even though there was a knowing that he belonged to both. This meant that, despite the differences, Oduo always had a special place and was allowed to do things that the other children may not have been. Buda and Queen were also brought closer together by this son. He had the effect of holding their bond.

Oduo and his brother, Weya, were born in the Rift Valley, on the Kenyatta farm, while their sisters came into the family while they were living in Nairobi. This meant the brothers were better rooted in the rural world whereas the girls would grow up as fully urban citizens, or watu wamtaani, as such “city kids” are known. As the generation following their parent’s transition they were separated from the ancestral ways of their people while being exposed to many different cultures and ways of thinking and doing.

Oduo’s schooling was a struggle for both his parents and himself. Despite their teaching backgrounds, Queen and Buda were now also learning as this child’s experience was their own, they were emotionally involved. Oduo was different. The norm, normal, normality did not fit with Oduo but then what is normal? These were things that made schooling harder for him.

Being the eldest, Oduo also had the responsibility of taking care of his brothers and sisters while his parents were working. He would often reflect on why, as the eldest, responsibility for the children was his, as if he was a substitute parent. The answers came only later in his life, when it became clear why it all happened the way it did. Added to this frustration, Oduo’s siblings had been schooled in the best private institutions and yet he had always attended, at least in his opinion, the second rate government ones. Even when he finished his schooling he continued having to contribute to funding of their education. It was part of the doubt that is introduced by the mind, the questions asked about why one life is the way it is rather than being like another. These were the questions of youth but for Oduo there was a grander design that he battled with, one his eyes would be closed to until much later. He felt like his lot in life was a burden.

Buda and the family’s problems started in the early 1990s when the International Monetary Fund (IMF) arrived in Africa with bags of paper with imagined value, full of promises of loans and support to struggling governments. These were the effects of Cold War, the development decade, and the world was in flux. But the IMF’s gesture was not one of goodwill, it was business and with their offers of support came conditions.

In the case of the Kenya Power and Lighting Company (KPLC) it was no different. Across many government driven institutions these conditions forced retrenchment. These redundancy programs encouraged tribalism by seeing to it that those who were from non-Kikuyu tribes in the company were perceived not to be politically correct. It was a clear case of “it is our time to eat” as cliques fought to entrench and maintain their privilege. In other companies it was the same, maybe, but the dominant tribe might be different, say that of president Daniel arap Moi’s Turgen clan which is part of a bigger ethnic group of Nilotic origin, the Kalenjin.

The former foreign powers had put in place strategies for continued influence after Independence. In most cases there was never genuine empowerment of the people to fully take over the inherited system and this opened the door for abuse. The IMF later used this same logic as leverage to make demands that were externally imposed and which did not always fit with the reality of people’s experience or ability. This was a different kind of colonialism. After the Kenyatta reign in 1979 there was a purging the Kikuyu, the tribe of the first president, as it was time for others to take their seat at the table of state resources as well as those flowing into the country from outside.

The IMF, maybe unknowingly, set up a system where abiding with the foreign government policies and governance models caused capable employees to be axed because of their tribe and political affiliations. This was a situation ripe for nepotism and resentment. Truly, blood is thicker than water and how do people now dependant on a system choose strangers over family? The impact of the forced retrenchments also went far beyond the affected individuals, being felt by their families and communities. For Buda, a proud man, it was a blow from which he would never fully recover.

It was difficult to get rid of Buda, he was well qualified, dedicated and had established himself as a man of the people. The students in the college, the one and only learning institution producing graduates for the growing electrical power sector, loved him as he talked their language. Buda had the ability to understand his students and meet them on their level. To them, he was not a staff member but an equal. The fact that he was good at sports, creative and down to earth were also things that endeared him to those in his charge.

This mattered little however. Orders were conveyed from above seeing to it that his employers came up with a more cunning plan to eliminate him. They transferred Buda to the Central Province, which was tribally and climatically different to where he came from and what he was used to. The real difficulty came in how he was now apart from his family who remained in Nairobi. Queen continued to work in the city where the children were still in school. This meant that Buda could only travel home on those weekends he was able.

He did not complain openly for here there were fewer problems than at the college. Buda had also come a long way since the challenges of his youth, there was pride and happiness whenever he looked back on where he had come from, his achievements. In this situation Buda was not alone, like many other men he became part of the migrant labour force who moved around the country, leaving behind families and homes in pursuit of jobs and comfort for their kin. As men, the separation was not only from family but, more significantly, the important roles they played in their households. This situation has had far ranging effects on the family unit, on the continent, and even the world. Added to this was the way Buda had been set up.