THE British entered Kenya in the late 19th Century wresting control from Omani Arab slave traders who themselves had wrested control from the Portuguese invaders.

The British were interested in controlling the rich resources of neighbouring Uganda and, to this end, Kenya was of particular strategic importance.

WALTER RODNEY

They built a railway between Mombassa (on Kenya’s east coast) and Kampala using labourers from India, many of whom remained and have become today’s dominant merchant class.

With the imperial might of the British Empire behind them, British settlers seized huge tracts of land from the indigenous people and set up plantations geared toward export crops such as coffee.

Africans were displaced from their land, forced into reservations or unto inferior lands.

Resistance, such as that by the Nnandi people, was stifled by British soldiers wielding superior weaponry.

The British favoured some tribes and this divide and rule strategy set the foundation for future jealousy and ethnic conflict.

Timothy Gachangain, in an article titled Kenya: The Land is Ours, writes: In an interview with a local TV station this year during the Madaraka (Independence) celebrations, ex-Mau Mau veterans were still expressing disappointment over Kenyatta’s declaration that no land was free.

Kenyans had to work for it.

“This was a humiliating betrayal for Mau Mau.

“After spending years in the forest and risking our lives, we thought Kenyatta would recognise our sacrifice by rewarding us with land grants,” complained an ex-Mau Mau veteran.

The month long stay in Kenya offered a first hand look at the land situation.

Apart from the fact that prime land is concentrated in the control of British settler families, huge tracts of land are also under the control of multi national corporations, Christian missionary organisations and a few local Kenyans who benefited from their government connections or positions after Independence.

The ownership of land is directly connected to the economic hardships experienced by many Kenyans and the lack of opportunities for development.

Industries such as the profitable Tea and Horticultural industries are not owned or controlled by local Kenyans and thus the revenue accrued do not benefit the lives of ordinary Kenyans.

A local Kenyan even described the working situation of the many Kenyans, who provide the labour for these industries, as enslavement.

The digital divide is a stark reality here.

Not many people have land telephones, but cellphones are very popular and the green and red advertising billboards of the two cellphone companies Safari.com and Celltel are everywhere.

Computers and internet access are available from Internet cafes situated in town areas.

None of the primary or secondary schools we visited had computers or Internet access; there were other more pressing infrastructural issues to be dealt with. The infrastructure in most of the schools that we visited were inadequate.

Rickety furniture and dilapidated buildings are some of the educational challenges faced by Kenyans, added to the fact that education is not free.

Especially in the rural area where we mostly stayed, most children go to school bare feet.

Inspite of the material poverty, the children we interacted with were enthusiastic and full of life.

Visiting various schools and interacting with students and teachers was one of the highpoints of the Kenya experience.

In the villages, the traditional value system is most alive.

For instance, Harambee, which signifies the spirit of working together, manifests in the operations of many self help groups, a couple of which we visited.

These groups have been very helpful to ordinary Kenyans overcoming everyday challenges, especially the general lack of material resources.

The Harambee groups provide materials and labour to help build schools, health care centres, churches, drill bore holes for water and lobby for various other developmental needs of the community.

For me, the Kenya trip was a mixture of joy and pain.

Joy at the beauty, warmth and enthusiasm of the people, yet pain for the suffering and lack of opportunities available.

Kenya has suffered immensely from colonial rule, a legacy that continues today in a socio-economic system is which, although the political leadership is in the hands of indigenous Kenyans, control of resources have remained in the foreigners to the detriment of the indigenous population.

To make matters worse, the Black Kenyan elite, who emerged in the Post-Independence period, have followed in the footsteps of the colonial elite, making use of their government positions or connections to gain control of large tracts of land, with little benefit for ordinary Kenyans besides the receipt of meagre wages in exchange for their labour.

The Kenya experience has a lot of lessons to draw upon: both Trinidad and Tobago and Kenya are caught in a vicious cycle of underdevelopment and misdevelopment, but in TnT material comforts may blind many to the mechanisms of underdevelopment and thus from the solutions to the many social problems.

Both countries have yet to address the historical underpinnings of their social, economic, educational and political systems and as such “progress” and “development” have been moulded according to the values, biases and socio-economic priorities of both the local and foreign elite.

The solutions to problems and the pathway forward cannot come from the same framework and attitudes that created the problems.

Walter Rodney in his book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa explains that solutions to problems are implicit in a correct historical evaluation.

Overall, the Kenya trip was an overwhelming success: it was a moving experience to interact with ordinary Kenyans, sharing aspects of our Caribbean reality while learning about Kenya and the Kenyan people.

The Kenyan people were eager to learn about us and we shared aspects of our culture with them, including calypso and pan.

The single tenor pan that we took and played in various places was a big hit, especially in the schools.

The experience raised many questions and discussions around issues that people generally take for granted, giving us an opportunity to work on the conditioning that locks us mentally and physically in debilitating relationships with Europe and America.

Furthermore, the experience highlighted the importance of history in understanding Africa and by extension ourselves, for the same pattern of foreign domination that has negatively affected the Caribbean is also a reality in Africa.

Preference for foreign ideals and products is as much of an issue in Kenya as it is in Trinidad and Tobago.

Colourism, the preference for lighter skinned persons, is also a serious issue in Kenya, as the many advertisements for skin lightning cream showed.

A local article in one of the daily Kenyan papers attempted to address this issue.

The historical processes of colonialism and capitalism that allowed

Europe and the United States to amass great physical and technological resources has also been accompanied by great suffering in so-called Third World regions from which labour and natural resources are extracted.

Addressing the stigma and distortions around the African continent and her peoples through re-examining African history and by building genuine connections with the African continent can go a long way in Caribbean people evolving towards healthier self concepts and developing proper solutions to the rampant ills brought about by underdevelopment and misdevelopment.