In 1968, I was the elected President of the Student Union at Strathmore College. I was also the elected Secretary of Foreign Affairs, National Union of Kenya Students (NUKS). Chibule wa Tsuma was the NUKS President. As Secretary of Foreign Affairs, I visited Holland and Finland. And I led an orderly student protest in Nairobi against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia – you should have heard how many pronounced it! Uniformed policemen closely followed us throughout, ostensibly to maintain law and order. There were more policemen than demonstrators, and they appeared to onlookers and on TV to be part of the protest!
In 1969, I was the elected NUKS President. My Vice President was Peter Anyang’-Nyongo. As NUKS President, I visited the UK and Uganda as a guest of the national students’ unions. I also started my undergraduate studies at Dar Es Salaam – though I had preferred UoN. While in Uganda, I engaged in a well-received TV debate; and attended a dinner hosted for student leaders at State House by Milton Obote and the First Lady. Other guests included Kenneth Kaunda and Idi Amin Dada. Amin sat at a table behind me, and I heard him say quite audibly at one point that he did not believe in military coups!
The NUKS Patron was T.J. Mboya, whom I met once, and whose funeral I attended on Rusinga Island in July 1969. The evening of the funeral, many sailed back to Kisumu on a vessel apparently provided by the government for the occasion. I vividly remember that one of the passengers was Jaramogi Oginga Odinga. Even as we sailed, he held court with people more prominent than I. While I caught a free train ride back to Nairobi, there to flag off a reciprocal charter flight of NUKS members for a one-month visit to the UK, Jaramogi and his entourage disembarked at Kisumu and clearly travelled to their preferred destinations.
From July 1970 to March 1972, I was a member of the Editorial Committee of TAAMULI, a Political Science Bulletin published at the University of Dar-Es-Salaam. While at Dar, I met Agostino Neto of Angola. Walter Rodney was one of our lecturers. Paulo Freire visited. So did J.M. Kariuki. And I attended several “Sunday schools” which he – and Yoweri Museveni – attended, and where we discussed deep ideological issues from a radical perspective. With my TAAMULI colleagues, were invited guests one weekday morning at Ikulu in Dar-Es-Salaam. Our host was Mwalimu Julius Nyerere himself! There were no other guests on that occasion!
I joined the University of Nairobi as Lecturer in June 1980. I was the Editor of African Journal of Sociology from May 1981 to January 1989. And from January 1991 to January 1995, I was the Kenyan Co-ordinator of the University of Nairobi-Indiana University Exchange Programme, which I and my Indiana contact co-initiated from scratch. The Department of Sociology, of which I was then Chairman, sent five Kenyans for Ph.D studies at Indiana University, Bloomington, USA. All completed their studies. There were also Exchange Visitors from Indiana.
I myself had visited Indiana University from January 18th to 30th, 1992. While there, I also gave a Guest Lecture at Lees College in Jackson, Kentucky, on January 27th, 1992. From June 12th to 30th, 1993, I was Visiting Professor at the University of Bayreuth, in Germany; and presented a paper at a Conference on “The Power of Identity – The Identity of Power.”
From 1996 to 1999, I was a member of the National Task Force for the Review of Laws Relating to Women (in Kenya). And on December 18, 1998, I was Elected by an electorate of some 170 academic staff members for a two-year term as Dean, Faculty of Arts, at the UoN. I beat three other candidates, including an “incumbent.”
As Dean, also became a member of the Senate of the University of Nairobi. More importantly, I was central to the launch of the Module II programme in the Faculty of Arts. I was re-elected for the second and final term as Dean in 2001. By 2002, when my term ended, our Faculty’s Module II programme had grown to be the third largest by revenue at the university – from zero to over 100,000,000/- annually! I am proud that Module II under my stewardship doubled the average take-home pay of all the Faculty’s lecturers – and thereby significantly improved their quality of life, which for long had been in “ICU”.
I took the early-retirement option and left the UoN in 2002 to vie for the Kisumu Rural parliamentary seat in that year’s General Elections. I was runner-up. I returned to the university. I tried gain in 2007, and was again runner-up, having been rigged out by ODM headquarters at the nomination stage, and having had to secure nomination in an alternative party. I am back at the University of Nairobi. On another occasion, I will write to show how dirty the ODM nomination exercise was, and to describe the extensive rigging machinery that ODM operated in Kisumu Rural for the Parliamentary and Presidential elections of December 2007. For the time being, here is one media account of the rigging that took place in Kisumu Rural; and one broader observation on the 2007 elections as a whole.
I have undertaken research and consultancies on key issues in Kenya’s development. Here is a sample of titles highlighting my area of specialization (Industrial Sociology), and my broader interest in development: (a) “Poverty Eradication and Employment Creation in Kenya: Conceptual Challenges, Policy Articulation and Plan Targets”; (b) Gerrishon K. Ikiara, Mauri Yambo and Gerda Merckx, An Integrated Policy Approach to Youth employment in Kenya (Addis Ababa: ILO/JASPA); (c) Training Needs Assessment of the Kenyan Informal Sector (Nairobi: KIE, KREP, KIM and MTTAT); (d) "Demand-Supply Linkages for Scientific and Technical Skills in Kenya: Constraints, Opportunities and Discontinuities" in a book edited by Denise Weiner and titled The Role of Scientific and Engineering Societies in Development (Washington, D.C.: American Association for the Advancement of Science); (e) Kirimi Mwarania, Eddah Gachukia, Mauri Yambo and John Alwar (Eds.), Children and Women in Kenya: A Situation Analysis 1992 (Nairobi: GoK and UNICEF); (f) Technical Training and Work Experience in Kenya: A national Tracer Study of the Leavers of Harambee Institutes of Technology and Youth Polytechnics (Nairobi: DANIDA).
I will soon publish a book of poems titled Field of Aaru. The book’s title is taken from that of the main poem in the collection, which revisits the post-election violence which gripped Kenya following the general elections of 27th December 2007. My “narrative” ends with the departure from Kenya of that great peacemaker, Koffi Annan, in February 2008.
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