Heck, I miss Mama Lucy

Edward Indakwa
The last time I saw First Lady Lucy Kibaki in public, she was dancing at the promulgation ceremony for the new Constitution. And let’s be fair here – Mama can shake a leg.
Those who watched the ceremony will recall that she outperformed all the half-baked choirs and ‘professional’ musicians assembled.
As I absent-mindedly wondered why no one had bothered to invite Prof Ngugi wa Thiong’o, our celebrated man of letters and freedom fighter, to pen and read a poem during the event, my eyes strayed to Ugandan leader Yoweri Museveni.
His face was covered in total disbelief, for right next to him was the First Lady dancing herself lame. You can bet that was a spectacle the warrior had never seen in his long and illustrious life. But then he doesn’t know Lucy, easily the gutsiest girl this country has produced in recent years. And we make them by the dozen.
Spirited fighter
That, by the way, is the reason I miss the old lady. She’s just vanished, which is a bit of a shame because there are certain issues hovering around that require a spirited fighter who speaks her mind and backs it up with a double-barrelled shotgun.
First is this narcotics menace. Forget illicit brews – that is small fry. The people who deal in drugs are so powerful that none other than the police commissioner has admitted that they frighten senior police officers.
Yet I have this childish belief, a juvenile reverence that boys hold for their mothers, that if Mama Lucy took the war to them, they would scatter. Yep. And then there is this whole rising cost of living business. Some wag, a journalist naturally, went so far as to suggest that the way things are going, families will start eating ugali on Christmas Day.
I know there is a parliamentary committee going around gathering facts on this but if some scoundrel is hoarding maize, I would love to have them installed at a public baraza where the First Lady is holding court and watch them squirm.
Being a mother, the fact that millions of children sleep hungry daily would infuriate her to no end. I can even picture her tearing into the thieving rascals like an enraged mother hen.
But talking of children, what’s all these nonsense about a few crooks pilfering Sh4.2 billion meant for educating small children – the oft-touted leaders of tomorrow?
I know some people have vowed not to resign and there are rumours that investigations are ongoing, which could mean anything.
We are still investigating the Anglo-Leasing scum, pun intended, right?
My good friend Okiya Omtatah should therefore stop shouting himself hoarse at Jogoo House and invite Mama Lucy to hold cordial and fruitful discussions with the mandarins in that hallowed place.
When she exits the building, there will not be a single thief standing. And you can take that to the bank.
Failed state, my footLast week, our boy Daniel Rudisha was doing his 800m thing, which is to say he was kicking serious butt. Even as he left jokers gasping in his wake, news emerged that yet another Kenyan lad, a junior, was running this 800m thing like a wizard.
Put plainly, in a year or two, Rudisha can choose to herd his goats and send this young boy overseas to kick 800m butt.
But as Rudisha was doing his thing, it emerged that Kenya had been chosen as Africa’s second most preferred investment destination, particularly in the area of mobile telephony and IT.
Would you believe that we’ve laid computer cables from Mombasa all the way to Malaba and we didn’t pinch a single wire?
In the same week, someone mentioned that three spanking five-star hotels will soon be completed in Nairobi. Not one, but three. Because people who build hotels are not in the kiosk business, they obviously know they will have customers beyond 2012.
In this country, virtually every village town boasts of a university campus. We are putting up big hospitals and roads all over the place. Our kids enjoy – not so – free education and mosquito nets. Condoms are free.
Our daughters in primary school will soon be getting free sanitary towels. Our MPs even pay tax. Even better, we interview judges on television, shout ‘unga!’ in the Prime Minister’s face and get away with it. Most of our prisoners are saved and we don’t lash criminals in public or hang them.
Our Constitution is juu zaidi and our electoral body conducts constituency elections as quickly as you’d count ten people in a room. Refugees from banana republics come running here. And someone still thinks we are a failed state?