Mugo had a great idea.....offer opportunity.
In light of the response from @oke, i wish to share this mail i got on my inbox.
It is long but is an eye opener.
--------------------
You Lazy (Intellectual) African Scum!
So I got this in my email this morning…
They call the Third World the lazy man’s purview; the sluggishly slothful
and languorous prefecture. In this realm people are sleepy, dreamy, torpid,
lethargic, and therefore indigent—totally penniless, needy, destitute,
poverty-stricken, disfavored, and impoverished. In this demesne, as they call
it, there are hardly any discoveries, inventions, and innovations. Africa is
the trailblazer. Some still call it “the dark continent” for the light that
flickers under the tunnel is not that of hope, but an approaching train. And
because countless keep waiting in the way of the train, millions die and many
more remain decapitated by the day.
“It’s amazing how you all sit there and watch yourselves die,” the man next
to me said. “Get up and do something about it.”
Brawny, fully bald-headed, with intense, steely eyes, he was as cold as they
come. When I first discovered I was going to spend my New Year’s Eve next to
him on a non-stop JetBlue flight from Los Angeles to Boston I was angst-ridden.
I associate marble-shaven Caucasians with iconoclastic skin-heads, most of who
are racist.
“My name is Walter,” he extended his hand as soon as I settled in my seat.
I told him mine with a precautious smile.
“Where are you from?” he asked.
“Zambia.”
“Zambia!” he exclaimed, “Kaunda’s country.”
“Yes,” I said, “Now Sata’s.”
“But of course,” he responded. “You just elected King Cobra as your
president.”
My face lit up at the mention of Sata’s moniker. Walter smiled, and in those
cold eyes I saw an amenable fellow, one of those American highbrows who shuttle
between Africa and the U.S.
“I spent three years in Zambia in the 1980s,” he continued. “I wined and
dined with Luke Mwananshiku, Willa Mungomba, Dr. Siteke Mwale, and many other
highly intelligent Zambians.” He lowered his voice. “I was part of the IMF
group that came to rip you guys off.” He smirked. “Your government put me in a
million dollar mansion overlooking a shanty called Kalingalinga. From my patio
I saw it all—the rich and the poor, the ailing, the dead, and the healthy.”
“Are you still with the IMF?” I asked.
“I have since moved to yet another group with similar intentions. In the
next few months my colleagues and I will be in Lusaka to hypnotize the cobra. I
work for the broker that has acquired a chunk of your debt. Your government
owes not the World Bank, but us millions of dollars. We’ll be in Lusaka to
offer your president a couple of millions and fly back with a check twenty
times greater.”
“No, you won’t,” I said. “King Cobra is incorruptible. He is …”
He was laughing. “Says who? Give me an African president, just one, who has
not fallen for the carrot and stick.”
Quett Masire’s name popped up.
“Oh, him, well, we never got to him because he turned down the IMF and the
World Bank. It was perhaps the smartest thing for him to do.”
At midnight we were airborne. The captain wished us a happy 2012 and urged
us to watch the fireworks across Los Angeles.
“Isn’t that beautiful,” Walter said looking down.
From my middle seat, I took a glance and nodded admirably.
“That’s white man’s country,” he said. “We came here on Mayflower and turned
Indian land into a paradise and now the most powerful nation on earth. We discovered
the bulb, and built this aircraft to fly us to pleasure resorts like Lake
Zambia.”
I grinned. “There is no Lake Zambia.”
He curled his lips into a smug smile. “That’s what we call your country. You
guys are as stagnant as the water in the lake. We come in with our large boats
and fish your minerals and your wildlife and leave morsels—crumbs. That’s your
staple food, crumbs. That corn-meal you eat, that’s crumbs, the small Tilapia
fish you call Kapenta is crumbs. We the Bwanas (whites) take the cat fish. I am
the Bwana and you are the Muntu. I get what I want and you get what you
deserve, crumbs. That’s what lazy people get—Zambians, Africans, the entire
Third World.”
The smile vanished from my face.
“I see you are getting pissed off,” Walter said and lowered his voice. “You
are thinking this Bwana is a racist. That’s how most Zambians respond when I
tell them the truth. They go ballistic. Okay. Let’s for a moment put our skin
pigmentations, this black and white crap, aside. Tell me, my friend, what is
the difference between you and me?”
“There’s no difference.”
“Absolutely none,” he exclaimed. “Scientists in the Human Genome Project
have proved that. It took them thirteen years to determine the complete
sequence of the three billion DNA subunits. After they
were all done it was clear that 99.9% nucleotide bases were exactly the same
in you and me. We are the same people. All white, Asian, Latino, and black
people on this aircraft are the same.”
I gladly nodded.
“And yet I feel superior,” he smiled fatalistically. “Every white person on
this plane feels superior to a black person. The white guy who picks up
garbage, the homeless white trash on drugs, feels superior to you no matter his
status or education. I can pick up a nincompoop from the New York streets,
clean him up, and take him to Lusaka and you all be crowding around him
chanting muzungu, muzungu and yet he’s a riffraff. Tell me why my angry
friend.”
For a moment I was wordless.
“Please don’t blame it on slavery like the African Americans do, or
colonialism, or some psychological impact or some kind of stigmatization. And
don’t give me the brainwash poppycock. Give me a better answer.”
I was thinking.
He continued. “Excuse what I am about to say. Please do not take offense.”
I felt a slap of blood rush to my head and prepared for the worst.
“You my friend flying with me and all your kind are lazy,” he said. “When
you rest your head on the pillow you don’t dream big. You and other so-called
African intellectuals are damn lazy, each one of you. It is you, and not those
poor starving people, who is the reason Africa is in such a deplorable state.”
“That’s not a nice thing to say,” I protested.
He was implacable. “Oh yes it is and I will say it again, you are lazy. Poor
and uneducated Africans are the most hardworking people on earth. I saw them in
the Lusaka markets and on the street selling merchandise. I saw them in
villages toiling away. I saw women on Kafue Road crushing stones for sell and I
wept. I said to myself where are the Zambian intellectuals? Are the Zambian
engineers so imperceptive they cannot invent a simple stone crusher, or a
simple water filter to purify well water for those poor villagers? Are you
telling me that after thirty-seven years of independence your university school
of engineering has not produced a scientist or an engineer who can make simple
small machines for mass use? What is the school there for?”
I held my breath.
“Do you know where I found your intellectuals? They were in bars quaffing.
They were at the Lusaka Golf Club, Lusaka Central Club, Lusaka Playhouse, and
Lusaka Flying Club. I saw with my own eyes a bunch of alcoholic graduates.
Zambian intellectuals work from eight to five and spend the evening drinking.
We don’t. We reserve the evening for brainstorming.”
He looked me in the eye.
“And you flying to Boston and all of you Zambians in the Diaspora are just
as lazy and apathetic to your country. You don’t care about your country and
yet your very own parents, brothers and sisters are in Mtendere, Chawama, and
in villages, all of them living in squalor. Many have died or are dying of
neglect by you. They are dying of AIDS because you cannot come up with your own
cure. You are here calling yourselves graduates, researchers and scientists and
are fast at articulating your credentials once asked—oh, I have a PhD in this
and that—PhD my foot!”
I was deflated.
“Wake up you all!” he exclaimed, attracting the attention of nearby
passengers. “You should be busy lifting ideas, formulae, recipes, and diagrams
from American manufacturing factories and sending them to your own factories.
All those research findings and dissertation papers you compile should be your
country’s treasure. Why do you think the Asians are a force to reckon with?
They stole our ideas and turned them into their own. Look at Japan, China,
India, just look at them.”
He paused. “The Bwana has spoken,” he said and grinned. “As long as you are
dependent on my plane, I shall feel superior and you my friend shall remain
inferior, how about that? The Chinese, Japanese, Indians, even Latinos are a
notch better. You Africans are at the bottom of the totem pole.”
He tempered his voice. “Get over this white skin syndrome and begin to feel
confident. Become innovative and make your own stuff for god’s sake.”
At 8 a.m. the plane touched down at Boston’s Logan International Airport.
Walter reached for my hand.
“I know I was too strong, but I don’t give it a damn. I have been to Zambia
and have seen too much poverty.” He pulled out a piece of paper and scribbled
something. “Here, read this. It was written by a friend.”
He had written only the title: “Lords of Poverty.”
Thunderstruck, I had a sinking feeling. I watched Walter walk through the
airport doors to a waiting car. He had left a huge dust devil twirling in my
mind, stirring up sad memories of home. I could see Zambia’s literati—the
cognoscente, intelligentsia, academics, highbrows, and scholars in the places
he had mentioned guzzling and talking irrelevancies. I remembered some who have
since passed—how they got the highest grades in mathematics and the sciences
and attained the highest education on the planet. They had been to Harvard,
Oxford, Yale, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), only to leave us
with not a single invention or discovery. I knew some by name and drunk with
them at the Lusaka Playhouse and Central Sports.
Walter is right. It is true that since independence we have failed to nurture
creativity and collective orientations. We as a nation lack a workhorse
mentality and behave like 13 million civil servants dependent on a government
pay cheque. We believe that development is generated 8-to-5 behind a desk
wearing a tie with our degrees hanging on the wall. Such a working environment
does not offer the opportunity for fellowship, the excitement of competition,
and the spectacle of innovative rituals.
But the intelligentsia is not solely, or even mainly, to blame. The larger
failure is due to political circumstances over which they have had little
control. The past governments failed to create an environment of possibility
that fosters camaraderie, rewards innovative ideas and encourages resilience.
KK, Chiluba, Mwanawasa, and Banda embraced orthodox ideas and therefore failed
to offer many opportunities for drawing outside the line.
I believe King Cobra’s reset has been cast in the same faculties as those of
his predecessors. If today I told him that we can build our own car, he would
throw me out.
“Naupena? Fuma apa.” (Are you mad? Get out of here)
Knowing well that King Cobra will not embody innovation at Walter’s level
let’s begin to look for a technologically active-positive leader who can
succeed him after a term or two. That way we can make our own stone crushers,
water filters, water pumps, razor blades, and harvesters. Let’s dream big and
make tractors, cars, and planes, or, like Walter said, forever remain inferior.
A fundamental transformation of our country from what is essentially
non-innovative to a strategic superior African country requires a bold
risk-taking educated leader with a triumphalist attitude and we have one in
YOU. Don’t be highly strung and feel insulted by Walter. Take a moment and
think about our country. Our journey from 1964 has been marked by tears. It has
been an emotionally overwhelming experience. Each one of us has lost a loved
one to poverty, hunger, and disease. The number of graves is catching up with
the population. It’s time to change our political culture. It’s time for
Zambian intellectuals to cultivate an active-positive progressive movement that
will change our lives forever. Don’t be afraid or dispirited, rise to the
challenge and salvage the remaining few of your beloved ones.
----
From: Okechukwu <okechukwu@gmail.com>
To: Skunkworks Mailing List <skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke>
Sent: Thursday, January 26, 2012 10:40 AM
Subject: Re: [Skunkworks] OT - Solar powered Garden lights
Boss, do you want a lamp, and do you want to stay in darkness until
some dude makes one for you? That is the reason we buy some made in
china stuff - coz its available and it serves the need. If that guy
you want to make this was sharp enough, the product would already be
on the shelf IMHO
./Ok3ch
On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 10:36 AM, Eric Mugo <
kabugum@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks guys for the proposal,
>
> The thing is...im thinking it would be better if i could get some
> smart university guys to create one working model for me...as oppossed
> to buying "Made in China stuff"...
>
> i think it shouldnt be too hard a project for a smart innovative
> electrical engineer student (didnt they all get A's to join the
> JKUAT/UON/MASENO etc)...." Made in Kenya" project...
>
>
Methinks that we should be the change we want to see..for example, if
> we came up with a working model and it works, then we petition the
> government to ban all imports of solar powered garden lights in favour
> of "Made in Kenya"...#Dreams#
>
>
> Regards,
> Eric
>
> On 1/26/12, Okechukwu <
okechukwu@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Found quite a number at Alibhai Sharrif, Mombasa road - check out!
>>
>> ./Ok3ch
>>
>> On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 9:15 AM, Dennis Kioko <
dmbuvi@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> There are such lights in our office garden, can check up on the source,
>>> though they seem quite old.
>>>
>>>
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>
>
> --
> Eric Mugo.
> http;//www.bu.co.ke
>
emugo@bu.co.ke,
kabugum@gmail.com> Cell 0722-894600
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