Sometime in January, year of Our Lord 2011, two helicopters took off from Wilson Airport.
Destination? Three National Cereals and Produce Board stores at Mosoriot in Nandi County, Moi’s Bridge in Uasin Gishu and Lodwar, Turkana County.
One chopper took off first. Inside was then Agriculture minister Dr Sally Kosgey, ministry officials and a few handpicked journalists. The second helicopter took off moments later. Inside was then minister for Special programmes, Ether Murugi. And, again, a few handpicked journalists.
So why were two helicopters hired by the government making the long trip across several counties to the furthest end of the country in Turkana?
They were looking for ‘hunger’ or rather, evidence of hunger, or lack of it.
Sounds familiar?
Before the trip, reports had emerged that some people were dying of hunger in the parts of the Rift and Turkana, including claims that some starving family had slaughtered a dog for dinner.
The then national coalition government denied the claims, with the Agriculture minister insisting that there was enough maize in the government silos to feed the country, and that claims of hungry Kenyans were being pushed by cartels bent on importing tonnes of duty-free maize.
Still familiar?
To proof that the government had enough food, the trip to the three NCPB cereals was arranged. So, were the national silos full? Yes they were. Indeed they were overflowing, although a debate on whether the maize was fit for human consumption later emerged.
But now that is a story for another day.
During every stop over, the Agriculture CS would let the journalists take shots of the overflowing silos. At each point, she appeared to throw the gauntlet at the feet of Murugi: Here is the food, what hunger were you talking about?
To a large extent, the trip was a demonstration of simmering divisions between the two sides of the coalition government. Then, rumours flew left and right about ‘cartels’ perpetuating the hunger ‘myth’ in search of funds for the next political campaigns by opening the maize imports window; that these cartels wanted to paint ‘the other side of the coalition’ in bad light.
The emerging stories would only fit under one headline: The politics of hunger.
And yes, pictures of ‘starving Kenyans’ flooded both the mainstream and online media platforms. Yes, suddenly the State ‘released’ some Sh9.7 billion to fund drought-mitigation measures-from distributing food to sinking boreholes and, yes, constructing water pans and dams.
This, barely three years, after another Sh12 billion was sank into a similar “national emergency.”
Whether the Sh21 billion released within three years was well used, or whether they went into the pockets of briefcase ‘lords of hunger’ is not too difficult to tell.
All one has to do is listen carefully to the ongoing hunger narrative, one which, unfortunately, we are telling with the same words, same pictures, and from the same political script, and in some cases, rather dramatically trying to squeezing a story of the dry bones of starving Kenyans.
Ultimately, all our stories failed on one front: They did not tell Kenyans anything they have not heard or show them anything they had not seen in the past!
