Sarah and Sarah sans Lipstick

On September 10, Jack Tapper posted a piece on the Political Punch Blog titled "Obama on Letterman: If That's What I'd Meant, Palin Would Be the Lipstick, 'McCain's Failed Policies' the Pig." The piece, containing mostly quotes from Obama himself, is worth reading.

Notably, it contains this account of Letterman's late-night TV dialogue with Obama:

To audience laughter, Obama says, "In Illinois, the expression connotes the idea that if you have a bad idea -- in this case, I was talking about John McCain’s economic plans -- that just calling them change, calling it something different doesn’t make it better. Hence, lipstick on a pig is still a pig."

"What I like about this scenario is because they -– the Republicans -- demanded an apology," Letterman says, "so that means there had been a meeting at some point somewhere along the line (of) they got together and said, 'You know what? He called our vice presidential candidate a pig.' Well, that seems pretty unlikely, doesn’t it?"

"It does," agrees Obama. "Keep in mind that, technically had I meant it this way –- she would be the lipstick!"

To-day, I posted this comment on Tapper's Blog:

All I wanted to say here and "right now" -- not discordantly I hope (yes, hope) -- is that Sarah Palin's first name makes her the namesake of Obama's Kenyan grandmother, whose first name is Sarah too. But you knew that already!

Would Sarah invite Sarah to Alaska, after Obama's inauguration January 20th next? That would be a truly wonderful global connect. In doing so, Sarah would have the opportunity to ask Sarah what her middle name is, or how it came about that there is such a meme at Kogelo.

There is a history there worth hearing: of journeys from Alego and sojourns in the Kendu Bay area and all the way back to Alego.

And Sarah would, graciously, accept an invitation to Kogelo. And it would be doubly wonderful.
But Sarah wouldn't stay more than a day or two in Alaska, far from it; and far as that place is from anywhere (except the Siberian permafrost)!

There is no permalink there!

Nor will she in Washington, D.C., glorious as what will have brought her to that world capital may be (she's made that abundantly clear to all who understand Kiswahili and Dholuo).

See, she doesn't care much for winter! Don't ask me if she has ever felt its full freeze -- its relentless squeeze upon the ear, outdoors -- as I have. And a bunch of "unaccomplished" thieves, knowing she is away, might try again (as they did this week) to break into her iconic home at Kogelo.

She has a home there, you see, not a house. The difference was settled long ago.

In D.C., however, she will not wonder why a whole nation, with all that wealth, will want her grandson to put up in a house, and not a home, even if it be the House. She knows the difference in these things, and she loves the thought.

Let me add: Alego's Sarah and Alaska's Sarah are worlds apart, but they share thir deep love of family -- though Mama is the more reticent. And they share another thing -- their belief in the value and durability of families. However, to Alego's Sarah, unlike Alaska's -- I dare say -- lipsticks are for others. For her they would be dwanyruok!

Language: Wiki Language

The Kikuyu of Kenya are a Bantu-speaking ethnic group. They speak Agikuyu. The Luo, on the other hand, are Nilotic (that is, of the Nile valley). They speak Dholuo (a word which, thanks to the insistence of certain scholars, has become part of the English lexicon now). These two are very dissimilar groups in important ways -- culturally, economically and (in particular?) politically.

Geographically, too, they have traditionally occupied quite different topographies of the land. The Kikuyu have concentrated in the central highlands, generally "around" Mt. Kenya, which is one of the two highest mountains in Africa. The Luo are predominant in the lowlands to the west -- in the basin of Lake Victoria (the largest in Africa); though, unlike the Kikuyu, have kin traditionally scattered "all over" eastern and central Africa. Central is Central and West is West -- but did the twain ever meet before, say, 1890?

There are a few puzzling similarities which make this question pertinent, certainly. For example:

1. In Agikuyu, as I have known for years, though the similarity struck me only a few months ago: When you want to say, "Let's go" you say, "Nitothii" (or simply, "Todhie", which is what I remember from all those years of living in Makongeni and going to school at "Sentii"). In Dholuo, you say, "Wadhi."

2. In Agikuyu, when you want to ask, "Where are you going?" you say, "Wathii ku?" (or "Wathie ku?"). In Dholuo, you say, "Idhi kanye?" (or even "Idhi kure?).

Sasa? Is this symptomatic of one origin deep in the African past (of course it is!), or merely chance similarity. You tell me.

But, if yes, how long ago? Under what circumstances? Where? In the Sudan? Cameroon? The Congo? Uganda? Ethiopia (Karumba's Ethiopia?)? Just here in Kenya?

They do have different physiques, generally, perhaps because of terrain and diet; and because of all the places they have separately been, kalausi-like, all these millennia. Yet there is an occasional hilarious comment in certain circles that the Nyeri Kikuyu are really not Kikuyu, but Luo (whom they are, many of them, as dark as) who now speak Agikuyu.

Of course all Africans, all humans, have one past -- here in Africa.

All humans! Is that why, as Philip Ochieng claims, "Hera" -- that four-letter word -- means the same thing in Greek and Luo? Is that not why we all have spoken language?

Gallup Poll: Latest Numbers From Kenya

Results of the most recent Gallup poll in Kenya -- conducted between June 19 and July 9, 2008 -- were released to the media on Monday, September 8th. Though the poll covered a fairly wide range of issues, the two leading newspapers ( Daily Nation and The Standard) headlined the poll results with the public's verdict on the President's and the Prime Minister's performance. So let us start with that.

President Kibaki's approval rating stands at only 63%, while Prime Minister Raila Odinga has a rating of 85%. This large, 22 percentage-point, advantage for the PM is surprising only in its magnitude and not in its skew. It reflects the general perception that the PM has been more visibly active in public affairs than the President, since March. The President's laid-back approach to things (all things considered) is well known, if not legendary. Has it not often been claimed that he never found a fence he didn't (wouldn't?) sit on? In the end, though, he seems to always have it (have things go) his way, doesn't he?

In contrast, Raila thrives on media attention, and is patently indefatigable. Moreover, while the President's role is clearly defined in the constitution, so that Kibaki does not have to endeavour to carve a niche for himself, or to prove himself, the PM's role continues to lack clear definition, and one suspects that Raila seeks to define it, in the public's eye, by word and deed -- on a day-to-day basis -- if those (including him!) who should do so constitutionally are dragging their feet.

In the process, though he is supposed to coordinate, he ends up seeming, or falling to the temptation, to take over the roles he was supposed merely to coordinate. He has been learning on-the-job, without much of local experience to draw on. Jomo Kenyatta's 12-month stint in the PM's seat so long ago (from December 12, 1963 to December 12, 1964) has not been much of a help in the absence of written memoirs and in view of the dramatically different or changed circumstances.

He has, in other words, been learning by doing -- and ruffling some feathers in the process. But the public sees all this as hard work. At least two ministers (Uhuru and Mwakwere) and/or their supporters have publicly complained that the PM is encroaching on their ministerial turf. I suspect that several other ministers have had their feathers just as ruffled -- though the public sees all this as whining, and the whining as not being in the public interest. That's just one step away (isn't it?) from being reshuffled, if it were not for the "letter" of the Grand Coalition agreement.

The truth of the matter, however, is that the PM has a habit of appropriating ministers' shine and basking in their limelight -- and he sucks out all the oxygen from the room. And the point is that he should give ministers a chance to get some credit for work well done, for that is a major component of what motivated public servants thrive on. It would be worrisome, long-term, if, in the structure of our politics, the PM should be the only minister who should shine. It would be worrisome because it would distort our politics and the structure of our public administration.

Let us now turn to other issues covered in the poll. When asked to identify "the most pressing problem that the coalition Government must address", the respondents mentioned the following (the figures in parenthesis represent the percentage of all respondents who mentioned a given problem):

Poverty (17%)
Inflation (17%)
Creating Jobs (11%)
Constitutional Reform (9%)
Unemployment (7%)
Resettlement of Internally Displaced Persons (7%)
Land Reform (7%)
Food Shortage (6%)
Education (3%)
Tax Reduction (2%)
Violence (2%)
Insecurity (2%)
Prosecution of Those Implicated in Post-Election Violence (1%)
Health Care (1%)
Road System (1%)
Water (1%)
Electricity (1%)
Other (1%)
Don't Know or No Response (2%).
[The percentages do not add up to 100]

Nominally, then, the top ten problems are: poverty, inflation, an insufficiency of jobs, constitutional reform, unemployment, IDPs, land reform, food shortage, education and taxation. But we need some aggregation here. That is to say, certain problems can be "collapsed" to give us a shorter list.

The need to create jobs arises only because there is unemployment, and when the two problems are combined into one (say, unemployment) we get to (18%). Poverty and unemployment are twins, and these two give us a "super problem" (even before we include food shortage)accounting for 35% of all responses. In a similar vein, the IDP problem is directly intertwined with the land reform problem, violence and insecurity (which are not in the nominal top ten) and the problem of dealing with perpetrators of post-election violence. Taken together, these five problems account for 19% of the responses.

Based on this re-aggregation, we get the following top 5 problems, which account for 86% of all responses:

1. Unemployment and Poverty (35%)
2. Land Reform, IDPs and related Insecurity and Violence (19%)
3. Inflation (17%)
4. Constitutional Reform (9%)
5. Food Insecurity (6%).

It is surprising that the water problem ranks so low. It would likewise be surprising that constitutional reform is among the top five problems, except that, in the eyes of Kenyans, a successfully concluded constitutional reform agenda would provide a consequential answer to two other problems in the top five: Land Reform... (19%) and Food Insecurity (6%). Inflation compounds unemployment and poverty, as well as food insecurity. It is an ever-present challenge to those who must govern -- and to those who struggle the most, daily, against hand-to-mouth existence.

On top of the list of Kenyan's problems "right now", unquestionably and expectedly, are the twin problems of unemployment and poverty (35%). It would have been surprising if the Gallup poll had found otherwise. But, in that case, did the Gallup poll set out to establish the obvious? Far from it. What is important in the poll result is the relative magnitudes of the problems, as seen by Kenyans at this time. So, we now have a kind of baseline, from which we will track future trends. Who knows: the water problem may begin to rise in subsequent polls, and likewise the health problem. On the other hand, the IDP and land reform problems might decline -- but hopefully only in step with their proper resolution, rather than due to official neglect and a diversion of public attention.