My Two Cents’ Worth on Migrating to Explore the World

By Alexander Makau Mukiti

I bet you two cents that the first white man to discover Africa was armed with nothing but faith, in a poorly made canoe. He must have literally bumped into Africa, and if the monsoon winds had stirred him just a little bit to the right he would have ended up in Australia or Antarctica. I will go out on a limb here and assume that he was a man – yes, I dare you to accuse me of misogyny.

Sometimes I bury my head in my sheets and imagine him seated miserably in his backyard filled with regret, anger and disappointment that his life had not panned out how he had pictured it. C’est la vie – such is life; sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. I know that’s how I would have brushed it off, but, no, his head is spinning and his heart is thirsty for an adventure, something to jump-start his adrenaline. So curiosity, boredom, and a mid-life crisis lead him to set a journey. With no direction in particular but great desire to stimulate himself, he sails south. Somehow he survives the terrors of the sea, and, by grace and mercy, his voyage lands him on this beautiful continent. And this arrival turns the wheel of time for some historic events to happen in and to Africa.

The white man is met with open arms, and with astonished, yet smiley faces and warm hearts. He’s mesmerized by these amazingly textured human beings with thick hair and dressed in animal skins. He is dazzled by the languages, and he is amazed to see the kind of religion we had going on here, but he still considers our way of life “primitive”. He gets deeper into the continent – well, actually, the “big country,” according to him, and he stumbles upon these breathtaking landscapes, all green and unpolluted,  and he suddenly gets ideas.  He looks around him and sees a backward, retrogressive country, a country sitting on a lot of potential. He is filled with greed to turn this sanctuary into his own, and his feelings of being a failure suddenly disappear. He is overcome by a sense of superiority, as well as by so much ambition that he can literally taste it on the tongue. All the things he has so far not felt in a long time come rushing back to him like a moth to a flame.

The white man travels back to his country and exalts himself before his family, friends and his government. He beats his chest, reassuring himself that he all by himself has discovered something more valuable than any man who has so far walked upon the planet. The geniuses of his time, he tells himself, have had nothing to offer to beat what he has achieved, and he dangles this carrot that is Africa before their eyes and says:  “It is huge, greener than most places, fertile, full of resources:  gold, lead, diamonds – you name it – and the icing on the cake, the cherry on top, is that it is all free and comes with free labour.” They are all hooked. So, in the years that follow that coincidental trip, Africa will be visited by explorers seeking a sight for sore eyes. In will come missionaries, who will kick off the ground running, and like a pressed child who has found a hidden bush to ease himself they will make it pour. Traders also will find their way to this ocean of resources. Everyone with a little bit of curiosity will be headed this way – including even people with inferiority complex disorder – because this will be the place whereby they feel like royalty despite their backgrounds.

News of this rare gem called Africa will travel fast, even at a time when there will be no social media and when different parts of the world will be invested with unknown diseases, for there will be no impediment to Europe’s interest in them. And, as fate would have it, Europe’s greed will be too much for it to contain, that it will rush to Africa. Different superpowers will camp in various places on the Africa, and I assure you they will not consult us first. The era of colonization will be upon our people, and it will be an altogether difficult time for us. I don’t know what sins our ancestors have committed then, or what they will have committed in their preceding lives, but the wages will be due.

If you read your history well you will most definitely come across the invasion of Africa and how different communities reacted to that hostile takeover. The white man literally migrated to Africa, took over our lands, and wanted to be treated like a god? But as sure as hell it wasn’t going to be that easy, for some communities resisted his rule.

The Nandi of Kenya, the Hehe of Tanganyika and the Ashanti of Ghana, among many other tribes, were not ready to play ball, and the price was too much to pay. Tribes like the Maasai of Kenya, the Baganda of Uganda, the Lemba of Zimbabwe, and many others collaborated with the colonizer, but their maximum cooperation with him did not go without bloodshed either. The Europeans relegated us to a sub-class of human existence to such an extent that it still stirs up bitter emotions among the older generations of our people whenever they go down memory lane and recall the cruel acts done unto them, their parents, and their siblings.

That single trip out of curiosity and adventure somehow left us, the black people, killed, homeless and governed by the white man.  In our corner of the woods, we had the British, while across the river we had the French, and beyond the hills we had the Germans, and so on. Greed is an insatiable desire, and more often than not it blinded the white man so much so that that he tripped and fell on his brothers’ backyards. Yet on those days when they didn’t see eye to eye, when brother wanted brother’s piece of the pie, somehow it was our blood, we the Africans, that soaked the earth, because they enlisted our young men to fight their battles. This was settled by the treaty to partition Africa when the indigenous territories were enclosed in boundaries with restrictions of movement from one country to another, so that, even today, it is still a hustle to get a visa from one African country to another. When trouble stirred at home the white man also shipped us off to fight those battles for him as well. We fought alongside him in World War I and World War II, when diplomacy was off the table and each country wanted to show off their toys. The bill was ironically invoiced to us in a war that was clearly not ours.

In favour of logic and reason, it was beyond reasonable that the man had to go. A few educated men and women came together, strategized, incited, and took a swing at the Europeans. This revolution was historical, although not without its ups and downs and a lot of bloodshed – because the white man did not leave without a fight. We finally got our lands back, our culture and our people in different prisons. Ghana got her independence in 1957, Tanzania in 1961, Uganda 1962, Nigeria 1960, and Kenya in 1963 – and so did many other African countries.

To say my imagination of how these events transpired is wild would be an understatement. Each country, each community has their own story to tell of the harm done to it those many years ago, and these stories need to be heard because the pain inherited from those events these many generations has not yet dissipated. Most certainly one thing remains true: the relationship between Africa and the outside world is complicated. Those hundreds of years ago, when the white man wanted to break his monotony and stumbled onto the continent, he was welcomed with open arms until he proved himself otherwise, as I have just narrated.

What is ironical, or, rather, paradoxical, is that, for us, the experience is the opposite whenever we decide to explore and see the world beyond our borders. First, it’s a hustle to get a visa, even though some of those whose countries we may want to visit may not require one in order for them to visit us. And secondly, more often than not when we finally fly into those counties we are met with hostility at the airports, death stares on the streets, closed arms at the malls, and cold hearts at the restaurants. Today black people in the United States of America are still considered lesser human beings than European Americans, and whenever they walk on the streets it is as if they have targets pinned on their backs. Even with our artefacts still on display in their museums – and I dare I say an apology long overdue – many in those countries still do not accept us as fellow humans and certainly do not consider us worthy of their hospitality. I would not go so far as to condemn all Europeans and Americans on those grounds.  As everyone knows only too well, every society has its good and bad apples.  However, one cannot help but wonder why this problem persists in certain parts of the world despite the passage of so much time.

The first person that wanted to explore, see the world and all that, sent Africa down the colonization and slavery route, and with the kind of debt we have accumulated we might just as well end up in cages again, but that is beside the point. The question is: why doesn’t everybody settle in their own places and put a hold to this travelling and seeing the world that is, for the most part, misguided curiosity? Yes, it might cost us money, but our pride, dignity, and safety will not be compromised if we made that conclusion and remained stuck with it. We have everything we need here, and, as the saying goes, a flower must bloom wherever it was planted and trust it was not planted there by mistake.

The Lure of the Middle East: Must We Go?

By Martha Irene Mwende Wanjuki

Recently, there has been a rise in the number of semi-skilled and unskilled Kenyans migrating to the Middle East, particularly Qatar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). In a report by the Labour and Social Welfare Committee, 80,000 Kenyans are working and living in Saudi Arabia alone. Most of them are serving there as domestic labourers.

I do not think there is a problem with these statistics. I am also a hardworking Kenyan and believe in moving in the search for new opportunities and for new ways of making a living. However, I have a big problem with the documented  mistreatment of Kenyan migrant workers in those countries. A few weeks ago, I watched a video of a young Kenyan woman who had  left behind a two-month-old baby to go to the Middle East to work as a domestic servant and who had been denigrated by her employer to such an extent that she was breastfeeding his puppies, and my heart sank.

Many families have been crying out to the government for help inbringing their daughters, sisters, or mothers back home from the Middle East due to forms of mistreatment that were not dissimilar to the experiences that that young mother was going through. Unfortunately, some have only received corpses, while others have been treated to news to the effect that their loved ones had died under mysterious circumstanes. Yet, even so, we have continued to hear of flights to Saudi Arabia with women filled with hope and ambitions. And this brings us to the critical question that we must all confront: Must we go? The simple answer is, No: we do not have to go because the government can create opportunities here in Kenya that are comparable to those that are available in the Middle East. Equally importantly, the mistreatment of our women in the Middle East threatens our dignity as a nation.

Between 2019 and 2021, the Labour and Social Welfare Committee reported that 90 domestic workers had died in Middle Eastern countries in the course of that period. Most of them, according to the report, hadpassed away due to violations of their rights and other forms of mistreatment. Furthermore, within the same period, there had been 1,908 calls of distress whereby some of  the workers hadrequestedurgent assistance against such mistreatment. These are statistics from a publication of a government committee. Yet, unfortunately, the parliamentary publication only highlights the sad situations and leaves it at that. Nowhere in the report does it provide solutions or action-based mitigation in respect of the atrocities. For me, this is enough reason to believe that the government is partially responsible for the mistreatment of its migrant workers.

When the video of the Kenyan woman who was shown breastfeeding dogs in the home of her employer in the Middle East went viral, the Secretary General of the Central Organization of Trade Unions (COTU), Mr Francis Atwoli, did not say much except that the employment agencies responsible for hiring and transporting Kenyan women to the Middle East to work as domestic servants should be banned. However, he did make a statement that means everything if only everyone would listen to it. He said that the mistreatment to which the women concerned are routinely subjected is an indirect form of slavery and that it is better for us to stay here in our country than to sacrifice our dignity by taking up indecent jobs in the gulf countries. I reflected on this statement for quite some time, and it made a lot of sense to me. There is no doubt that it is far much better to suffer in your own country than to do so in a foreign land doing unthinkable tasks. And so, I believe we do not have to go!

There is a saying to the effect that necessity is the mother of invention, and the recent unemployment risein Kenya has caused youths to begin to  apply their creativity in innovating opportunities to make a living. Every time I walk the streets of Nakuru and Nairobi I cannot stop applauding the levels of innovation that ordinary Kenyans in those and other parts of the country have achieved based on the businesses I see. I have met young women selling snacks and men carrying luggage for a living. These may not sound like decent jobs, but they feed their families and make a living out of them. Everyone can find something to do with a little change of mindset and willingness to take the “road not taken by many”, as mentioned in Robert Frost’s poem of the same name.

The reason why our youths oftentimes leave the country to venture out into other parts of the world is taht they want to take the smoother path instead of the grassy one. And, in the end, the smooth path oftentimes leads them into mistreatment and exploitation, so that they are left making distress calls and promising to make better choices if given another chance. It so happens that migrating to the Middle East is an easier route most people take to make ends meet. I do not blame them; I uplaud their bravery and determination in life. However, I think that there is a need to consider the bigger picture that lies in the consequences of such decisions. That path should be the last resolution after a person has exhausted all other alternatives. But this is not the case for most migrant workers because some go so far as dropping out of school to chase the “easy” money. I am of the view that we do not necessarily have to become international migrant workers in order for us to make a living. We do not have to go!

Philippinos by are by far the largest population of migrant workers in the Middle East, and they have also had their fair share of mistreatment scandals. However, unlike Kenya, the government the government of the Phillipines has in the past had to ban the deployment of migrant domestic workers to the Middle East, particularly Saudi Arabia, as a way of enforcing remedial measures to the situation. For example,in the recent past, the government temporarily suspended the deployment of its workers to Saudi Arabia following a series of cases of violations of their rights. This paints a picture of a government that values its citizens’ welfare and life. It shows that the govenment upholds the dignity of its citizens and will not let them be reduced to slaves in a foreign land. Our country needs to take the same direction so as to protect our young women fromthe  mistreatment and frequent deaths we have been witnessing in recent times. The Philippine government intends to lift the ban this November only becasue its officials and those of Saudi Arabia have agreed to reforms allowing for close monitoring of the migrant workers. Subsequent to the negotiations, the Workers’ Secretary in the country, Susan Ople, announced that Saudi Arabia had committed itself to collaborating with the Phillipnes on the matter and would henceforth support the rights of Philippino migrant workers as required by international law.

In Kenya, ont the other hand, the government has not made much effort as a collective unit. Rather, it has been left to a few philanthropists and organizations to take onthe  role of philanthropists with respect to the workers who make distress calls. It is high time we took the initiative as a country and upheld the slogan, “We do not have to go until the necessary reforms are out in place!”

The newly formed government has started well. The Foreign Affairs Cabinet Secretary, Alfred Mutua, has made an official trip to Saudi Arabia following a talk with Mr Khalid Abdullah, the Saudi Arabian Ambassador to Kenya. Earlier, Mutua had met with the employment agencies responsible for the recruiting and transportation of migrant workers to the Middle East and had discussed the matter with them. The agenda of the meeting was to find out what might be done to ensure the  welfare of Kenyan workers in foreign countries. Could this a sign of a new dawn for Kenya, especially for the people living in foreign countries as migrant workers? I am not sure, but it does not hurt to hope. I pray and hope that the government will take action required to improvethe wellbeing of Kenyans who venture abroad in search of greener pastures. After all, as John Locke observes in his Two Treatises of Government, the existence of government is throughthe people’s consent to protect their rights and act for the common good of the society. The government is, above all eslse, obligated to protect its citizens, including migrant workers, within and outside the borders, against all possible dangers.

As I have said herein, it does no harm to hope, but I continue to maintain that,  until action is taken, we do not have to go!  It behooves us to remain in our country and engage in other productive activities until we are assured that the problem has been corrected. We would rather have one bird in our hands while in our country than chase twobirds  inthe Middle East as long as that part of the world continues to be so unpredictable.

Please do not take me wrong. I have nothing personal against the Middle East countries and the migrant workers who go there in search of opportunities to earn a living. What I am against is the blatant mistreatment and violation of Kenyan workers’ rights. This is why I will continue to recommend action – so that our workers can be safe in those countries. My problem with us is that, as things stand now, all we have is people talking and expressing concerns without intervening in the situation as much as we should.

There are many ways to kill a rat, and migrating to the Middle East is only one. There is not a day that passes nowadays that I do not find myself praying for the migrant workers’ safety and hoping that a day will come when we will not have to worry about their welfare. I am always hoping against hope that the government will find it in its heart to act on their plight as we we here at home continue to look foralternative ways of making ends meet. Until that day comes, in my view, we do not have to go!

If you are a contact of a person who has COVID-19, or who has received a positive COVID-19 tst result, remember that contracting the virus is no one's fault.

Egerton University has once again topped in University Ranking by Academic Performance (URAP) rankings system.

Egerton University marked World Bee day on 20 May 2021 by launching an innovative technology for rearing queen bees to increase quality honey production and pollination services. At the launch, Mr Joshua N. Otieno, Member of Council, called on the collaboration of students, researchers and farmers to create opportunities for large scale modern and sustainable bee farming, with Egerton University taking the lead.

In its quest to promote access to justice among vulnerable members of the community, FOLLAP has trained a section of Chiefs and Assistant Chiefs in Nakuru Country on alternative dispute resolution (ADR) mechanisms.

During the training that took place on Friday 21 May at the Njoro Campus of Egerton University, the Chiefs and Assistant Chiefs were encouraged to use other means of conflict resolution among the residents they serve.

The training looked at the legal basis of ADR, its advantages as well as its challenges and benefitted than 40 participants.

The 42nd Congregation (Virtual) for the Conferment of Degrees and Award of Diplomas

 The 41st Congregation for the Conferment of Degrees and Award of Diplomas.

Today's Graduation Ceremony has a unique celebratory aspect to it – it marks 65 years of graduations at Egerton. It was on 22 November 1951 that the first graduands were released into the world of agricultural work. The ceremony was an important milestone in the institution's history of quality training which started in 1939 and continues to this day.

The Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Isaac O. Kibwage presents a CESAAM cake to the Director of University Education at the Ministry of Education, Mr Darius Mogaka Ogutu. On the right is the Vice-Chancellor of Jaramogi Oginga Odinga University of Science and Technology, Prof. Stephen G. Agong. This was during the ACE II National Steering Committee tour of CESAAM at Egerton University on Friday 28 May 2021. 

Egerton University  was privileged to host this year's national celebrations of the World Environment Day (WED). The day is marked each year on 5 June as a principal forum through which the United Nations (UN) raises global awareness on issues pertaining to the environment, including pollution,global warming, overpopulation, and relations between human beings and the wildlife. It brings togethers take holders from divers e backgrounds, such as governments,Non-Governmental Organisations(NGOs), corporations, communities,and celebrities drawn from more than 143 countries .

It is my pleasure to preside over th this 37^th Graduation Ceremony of Egerton University. On behalf of the Egerton University fraternity, I congratulate you all on attaining this great milestone in your education. We are proud of your accomplishments and join your family and friends in the celebration of your success.

Egerton University is part of a major collaborative effort that brings together the Government with leading universities in the country in an effort to jumpstart The Big 4 Agenda in a wide range of critical areas. On 30 April 2018, the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation led by the Cabinet Secretary, Hon. Mwangi Kiunjuri, signed a collaborative framework with the Vice-Chancellors (VCs) of four public universities.

Cabinet Secretary for Education Hon. Dr. Amina Mohammed has appointed Amb. Dr. Hukka Wario as the Chairman of Council of Egerton University. The appointment, published through Gazette Notice 9713 in a Special Issue of the Kenya Gazette (Vol. CXX—No. 117) released on 21 September, is for a period of three years, with effect from 6 September 2018.

The value of a university does not reside simply in the experience that its students undergo in the lecture halls or through their participation in extracurricular activities. Nor is it to be found exclusively in the buildings or walkways that make up the university as a campus, however glamorous or awesome those structures may be. 

In the course of the development of any cultural institution that is worth its name, there are invariably sign posts that it leaves behind. The sign posts attest to its most important achievements and the contributions it has made to society. th The 80 anniversary of Egerton University, which we are celebrating this year, is such a sign post. The anniversary caps all the efforts that Egerton has put into establishing itself as the exemplary institution of higher learning that it is recognised to be today.

Inspite of the considerable damage that the coronavirus pandemic has caused to society throughout the globe, there are indications to the effect that the world is rising up to the challenge of containing it. This is by no means happening only through the defensive methods of treatment, social distancing, contact tracing, quarantines, shut-downs, or fumigation. 

In collaboration with the Faculty of Health Services and the Nakuru County Government, the Division has constructed hand-washing facilities in all University entry/exit points and within all buildings, including lecture halls, hostels, offices, and other public areas.