In Ngong town, Kajiado county, election candidates smile at passers-by from posters pasted on shop walls and electricity poles. Some of the politicians go by striking Maasai names. They have turned fully native, dropping their mzungu labels.
One of Governor Joseph Ole Lenku’s competitors is veteran politician Katoo Ole Metito. No one probably knows his foreign name, Judah. It is not on his campaign posters.
The Kajiado county Jubilee woman rep flag bearer is Simayiai Rakita, a beautiful poetic name. Then you have Sankok Teeka, an independent candidate for Kajiado North MP. Teeka hopes to give another independent aspirant, Senteu Lekina, aka US Dollar, well, what else? A run for his money.
In Uasin Gishu, Governor Jackson Mandago is retiring. He will be missed. Jolly good fellow. Famous for trademark wide-rimmed bowler hats and beaded clubs, his singing, dancing and humorous banter on the podium often sends people rolling on the ground with laughter. If it pleases Cheptalel, Mandago might come back as Uasin Gishu senator.
The race to succeed him includes the UDA candidate everyone now knows as Koti Moja. His real name is Jonathan Bii. How did he acquire the nickname?
Koti Moja’s haters demeaned him as always wearing the same jacket. In keeping with the hustler gospel of using stones hurled by haters to build oneself, Bii embraced the insult. And it has stuck, given him massive campaign mileage he couldn’t have bought with money or prayers.
The 2022 election campaign season – now described by Nairobi political reporters as being on “homestretch” – has two contrasting faces. On TV news you have these important, unsmiling men clad in designer suits and ties, head tilted sagely at an angle, long faces, unblinking eyes, occasionally wagging a finger to drive home a serious point about the elections. You gerrit: this is a matter of life and death. Chief Ref Wafula Wanyonyi Chebukati typifies this group.
You also have the solemn men and women of the cloth preaching peace every time they get a chance; government officials giving assurances everything is in order; NGO types struggling for relevance by making new demands daily on the government and Chebukati; and foreign development partners looking more worried about Kenya than Kenyans themselves. That is one face of the election season.
The other is things Kwa Grao. Excitement galore. Frenetic. Energy. Colour. Boisterous supporters carrying their man shoulder high (beware of pickpockets). Kids perched on trees and rooftops to get a better view of things. Daredevil fanatics hanging on branded speeding cars. Adrenalin rush!
Soaring speeches laced with sexual innuendo. Song and dance. Wiggling hips this way, that way. Shaking a leg. Maboko likolo/mikono juu. If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be in your revolution, said Emma Goldman, feminist writer, jailbird, and troublemaker.
New praise songs have been concocted for favourite politicians. Some local crooners are making a killing at the rallies to attract and entertain crowds.
A rainbow of campaign merchandise – caps, lesos, t-shirts, posters, banners. No ngothas yet, we checked. Suppliers are smiling all the way to the bank, as a reporter in Lokichogio might inform his bosses in Nairobi, who are bored to death at their desks over “issue-based” coverage.
Bloggers are cashing in, too. Some on the payroll of bigwigs complain they have been shafted by dodgy campaign managers. But that’s the way it is in these matters, boss. Kuwa mjanja nanii, hii ni town.
The Grao also features endless skirmishes on social media by impassioned backers of rival candidates. Watu hawalali.
It’s all big, engrossing fun out there. People panting, drowning in their own sweat.
In Gusiiland, it’s the season of ogoseerwa. Word borrowed from the common practice of (women and children) queuing with a gunia or debe of dry maize at the flour mill waiting for their turn to have the maize ground for ugali. It’s how people queue for free campaign money from agents of candidates – sometimes inside bushes and banana groves well into the night.
This second face of the election season – the burst of creativity, ingenious underhand tactics, the grinning all the way to the bank, song and dance, bawdy speeches, ogoseerwa – hasn’t really received its fair share of news coverage. Perhaps newsrooms bosses have been frozen by the deluge of calls for “issue-based” campaigns. So, “serious” journalism only.
Have scribes noticed the campaign has transformed Musalia Mudavadi aka Madvd’s dress code? Or that bangi is now “acceptable”, discussed on the same table as education reforms and universal healthcare?
