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Let us all grow bananas, make more pads, distil more Waragi by Jenerali Uliwengu

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We are now getting used to Kenyans chalking up achievements in areas where all of us should have been eager to prove our worth in. And it looks like there is neither atomic science nor black magic in what they beat us in. All they have needed is a little thinking space in which to exercise their minds, and, surely, that should be available.

This time round, I learn that a couple of Kenyan students, Paul Ntikoisa and Ivy Etemesi in the Rift Valley, have been putting their heads together around a problem that has been dogging young female learners in all our countries; some female students sometimes drop out of the school system because of the biological imperative of having to go through the menstrual cycles in an unfriendly environment.

Though we all know that this is a natural imposition of womanhood that no girl — unless seriously disabled — can avoid, we seem to think of it as a girl’s problem that she and her mother – not father — should deal with.

Modern education

It has been with us for a long time, and we have knowledge of the impediment it places on the path to women’s emancipation which should come through attaining modern education, and yet we do little to alleviate the inconvenience experienced by school girls. It has often been stated that many girls cannot stand the discomfort and humiliation they have to go through when the inevitable happens, every month because they are shunned and mocked by their uncomprehending male colleagues who treat them as if they were unclean, though it is obviously through no fault of theirs.

It is estimated by Unesco that to more than 2.6 million girls are faced with this problem in Kenya alone, and it is easy to imagine how many more will be affected across the continent.

Now, some Kenyan youth have come up with a brilliant idea that will radically change the way we look at the banana plant. Taking a cue from the traditional use of the banana stem by Ugandan women, these young Kenyan students went one better, by obtaining banana trunk fibre and processing it into wearable fibre that can be deployed as a sanitary pad.

Immediately, I heard of this big news I rushed to google it, and spent some time buried in the literature. Till I understood the processes. I am not a techy buff myself but I could kind of understand what they had done with the banana stem: take out the soft inner flesh of the stem, and wash it thoroughly to remove impurities…

Well, I must stop there lest I give misleading information to DIY enthusiasts, but my point is made.

What these young people have done is a practical demonstration of the can-do spirit with which many youngsters are imbued, and they are to be found not only in Kenya but in all our countries.

It is only that the Kenyans tend to get there before the others and get all the bragging rights. If I sound envious, it is because I am.

But better late than never, and all our youngsters in the other countries can take up the challenge.

Other tissue

First, we have the advantage of knowing what the Kenyan lads have done with the banana plant. That is not the only way to go, because someone could try to utilise some other tissue. I wonder how baobab bark would fare in this context, since ‘orubugu’ is hallowed textile in the Lake Victoria area and could do the trick if it is properly pounded and softened. What about papaya stem?

On a general note, we need to encourage our youth to be more adventurous, to experiment with what has never been used but is plentiful.

A long time ago I got some wisdom from a visiting young French man who told me, unforgettably: to make progress, you either identify something useful and acquire plenty of it, or you identify something that you have plenty of and find a use for it because you already have it. It is the case of banana plants all around us.

This might create a banana revolution in which people will uproot other plants to replace them with bananas, and find that the bananas have numerous advantages:

They can be eaten as fruit when they ripen; they can be cooked before they ripen to provide matooke and katoogo; the banana juice is sweeter than Coca Cola; fermented, it gives the alcoholic beverages, rubisi and mbege, from which a moonshine is extracted for serious Waragi and Konyagi gins consumers.

In addition, banana plants in large numbers help to decorate the land, cool the earth, and freshen the air.

Rainfall pattern

I see no reason why people all over East Africa do not plant as many bananas as they can in all the areas with a moderate rainfall pattern. DR Congo, which enjoys such plentiful rains, should take the lead in creating this luxuriant and extremely valuable agricultural belt.

We could all soon celebrate the banana plant as a liberator on so many fronts, and since some people have been trying very hard to make banana republics of our countries, we might as well complete the picture meaningfully.

Jenerali Ulimwengu is now on YouTube via jeneralionline tv. E-mail: jenerali@gmail.com

Strictly Personal

Road deaths are symbolic of our national failure, By Tee Ngugi

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“Killer roads claim 25 lives,” screamed the headline of the Daily Nation on March 18. Among this number were 11 Kenyatta University students, who died in a grisly road accident on the Nairobi- Mombasa highway.

The report gave chilling statistics on the ever-worsening road carnage. The 25 died in a span of three days. Between January and February 20, a staggering 649 people lost their lives on our roads.

What these statistics show is that we are well on our way to breaking the annual record of deaths on our roads.

Roads are deadlier

In a column in 2022, Kenyan roads are deadlier than some of the battlefields, I gave some comparative statistics to illustrate just how deadly our roads are.

I stated: “In 2021, more than 4,000 people lost their lives (in Kenya). By contrast, the UK, with a population of 65 million people and 32 million cars, recorded 1,400 deaths on the roads in 2021.

“In Germany, within a comparable period, about 2,500 people died on the roads in a population of 85 million people and 48 million cars.
“Thus, Kenya, with a population of 50 million people and only two million cars, registered more deaths on the roads.”

I went on to show that the deaths on our roads in 2021 were twice the number of American soldiers killed in Afghanistan in a 20-year period.

If these statistics are not enough to wake up our somnolent officials, then nothing ever will.

Not the avoidable deaths during droughts. Not the deaths caused by collapsing buildings. Not the sky-high cases of femicide.

Not the cry of millions who sleep hungry every day as officials fly around in helicopters. Not the alarming numbers of street families.
Not the despair of millions of unemployed youth. Not the squalor in our unplanned towns and cities.

Nothing will wake these officials. In any case, as the Daily Nation of March 19 on globe-trotting officials showed, when awake, our officials are travelling to the next European destination or, as the countless cases of theft being reported almost daily in all media show, they are busy lining their already saturated pockets.

Now, Kenya wants to send its police to Haiti to rein in marauding gangs that control most of the capital. Do our officials, or citizens, ever ask themselves how Haiti became what it is?

Cursed by God

Haiti is not cursed by God. It got that way because of systematic plunder by officials over the years.

It became what it is because of officials not performing their duties to required standards, and not being sanctioned for it.

It became that way because its officials love nothing more than to cavort in Paris or Miami, rather than think about how to transform the lives of their people.

Every day in our papers, we read about the conduct of our officials that mirrors the behaviour that led to Haiti becoming the broken country it is today.

Tee Ngugi is a Nairobi-based political commentator

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Strictly Personal

How patriarchy underpins gender violence today, By Tee Ngugi

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On January 27, Kenyan women flooded city streets to protest rising cases of femicide. These were the largest protests ever held against gender-based violence in the country.

The killings that triggered the outrage were especially horrific. In one instance, a woman was raped, beaten and forced to swallow acid. Another young woman was beheaded in airbnb establishment. In January alone, 14 women were killed in the country. Between 2016 –2024, 500 women were killed. The figures, horrendous as they are, are thought to be higher.

Statistics on gender-based violence paint a very sick society. Almost half of women in the country experience gender-based violence in their lifetime. Then countless others face daily sexual harassment in schools, public transportation, universities and workplaces.

Boda boda riders are notorious for harassing women drivers. In an incident that caused national shame, boda bodas descended on a hapless woman driver they accused of ramming one of them and physically and sexually assaulted her.

A few years ago, some self-appointed moral police would beat and undress women they deemed indecently dressed, as if in a country in which billions are stolen every year, and in which so many sleep hungry, the most egregious crime is a woman’s short skirt.

To be sure, femicide and physical and sexual violence against women is not a uniquely Kenyan problem. In South Africa, rape has reached crisis proportions. In eastern Congo and other war-ravaged regions in Africa, rape is a weapon of war.

The problem of rape also transcends race, culture and religion. In the United States and, surprisingly, liberal Sweden, rape is endemic. And in the so-called traditional societies of Lesotho and Swaziland, rape is a serious problem. In pious India, rape had become so rampant that it even happened in buses. The government, unlike other regions, moved with ferocity to stem the problem.

The Kenyan protesters called for tough legislation against gender-based violence as well as quick police action in response to cases of sexual harassment. These measures will go a long way in curbing the impunity that exists in the country about violence against women.

But, at the same time, we must seek to change deeply ingrained cultural attitudes. Even though we no longer live in the traditional society, residual traditional attitudes still stain our views of women. Therefore, we must explore ways of overcoming these cultural attitudes and making them a liability in society.

At the same time, we must rid our society of erroneous views such as there is a head of a family who lords it over the household and, instead, advocates a respectful partnership. Other erroneous beliefs consider domestic violence as not quite violence and rape within marriage as not quite rape.

Police stations also need to be sensitive to rape victims. Eradicating gender-based violence will, therefore, require uncompromising action at the levels of legislation, policing and culture.

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