Town meeting, the men side

This one goes out to Cristy.

July 25. At 2, there’s a “strategical” Save Lamu meeting, and we tag along to see what’s being discussed. Since we are the first to arrive at the office (d’oh, we were there at 2.15-ish – everybody knows that a meeting called for 2 will start the very earliest at 3), we decide to have a quick shopping session at the market. As we’re heading out, there’s a guy in front of the door. He turns out to be the environmental lawyer we’re working with, who arrived from Cape Town the other day. We introduce ourselves (and, since he’s Italian, he has the honor of being the first person here who knows where I come from), and tell him that the meeting is taking place upstairs, then proceed to go do our shopping.

During the meeting, a number of issues are discussed. For instance, we learn that there was a closed meeting with the prime minister and representatives from Lamu, but that the local people did not have a chance to ask questions. Instead, the politicians simply held their own speeches, in a clear-cut uni-directional type of communication. The same went for the public rally, where people were holding up placards protesting the authorities’ lack of transparency. People were asked to put down these signs, apparently by a member of the local community. As we were later discussing with Boss, “back in the day,” one could burn flags at public rallies. Nowadays, you get your right to free speech, in an enclosed space, 1 mile away from the speakers. In order to trust the system, there must first be a functional system, which is lacking here. Civil society’s involvement and actions are a lot more intense, and for good reasons: on the one hand, there are a lot more issues to address here than in the West, and on the other one, Kenya is a young democracy, so it makes sense that almost everyone here is part of an NGO (some even more than one).

The head of the elders’ council had taken notes regarding the PM’s speech. He apparently said that the Lamu port is a blessing, and that the town will become a metropolis. But the local people disagree with that, and really don’t want the port to end up like the Mombasa one, with more Kikuyu people moving here. Lamu people are not trained to work in harbors, to operate cranes, and so on, so the argument of more employment opportunities does not make sense here. It’s no wonder then that no one clapped about the port at the public rally. On the funny note, Read more »