Kenyans are a nation of the creative unemployed. Unemployment has become our art.
Generalizations notwithstanding perhaps its time we embraced this reality and took pride in time spent sitting at Jevanjee Gardens, wondering who Jevanjee was and trying to calculate the most attractive way to strut with the heel of one brand new mitumba stiletto worn down to the nail from someone else's walking. Occupation comes from having the opposite of a manicure, picking black lichen from a weary stone bench, and competing to strike the best "do-I-know-u?" pose, while simultaneously, and with relative difficulty, doing a mental litmus test to determine the degree of unemployment of the person you are not in fact looking at but who you notice all the same has equal fascination with malnourished lichen. Having spent countless afternoons performing expert variations of this scene I finally, and firmly, resolved to be employed at all costs. Three hours later I was resolutely enrolled into the Nairobi Conservatoire Orchestra as First Oboe. First Oboe is certainly an improvement on memorizing penal statutes for a living, but I had never before that fateful Saturday afternoon seen an Oboe. Nor could I accurately remember what it should sound like. They say there is hardly anything more troubling to the intellect than floating in the emaciated atmosphere of unproved possibilities. This is the plight of the average Kenyan youth. Young people who waste precious life sitting on rusty Cowboy containers from dawn to dusk, waiting. I have the good fortune to be possessed of a short fuse on patience and a great deal of scorn for empty promises but many young people in this land of plenty are drawing in the sand and playing the Green Card lottery in the hope of something better. A hope that they might have the pleasure of working their whole lives, in whatever dead end job, and perhaps have something to show for it that isn't so different from what they were trying to become. We all have dreams of obtaining the mythical "dollar a day" to which it seems we are entitled. It's terrifying to imagine that fifty years from now my arthritic fingers might still be picking at smoke fed lichen. I had a horrible time trying to get into the city today. The "Kazi Iendelee" campaign was on the road and work had to stop until they got past. The metabolism of Kenya seems to be changing. Is it getting faster or slower?
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