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There's no such thing as a gambling nation

1/8/2016

18 Comments

 
PictureA man loads coral stone on a cart in Lamu. (Source: CNN)
,Almost exactly a year ago, my husband and I were a newly married couple heading out to Kenya’s south coast for our honeymoon. We were on an emotional high; first, we couldn’t believe that we had met, let alone gotten married, and even then, we were amazed at how our friends and family were so excited for us, that they helped us celebrate our wedding. Initially, we hadn’t thought that anyone would care, especially for an older couple like us.  That’s why we had initially fantasized that we would say our vows in a 10-minute window offered by our church during the Sunday morning service.  And life would go on as usual.

But evidently, that didn’t happen, since now we were headed to Diani.

We drove out, crossed the Likoni ferry (which always gave me ulcers even when I was a freshly minted teacher in Kwale county over twenty years ago) and we arrived at the hotel in the night. As we got closer to the hotel, we began to ask whether we were really at the right place, because it looked dark and uninhabited. Our GPS said we were at the hotel, but we had to ask the security to confirm if indeed we were.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Our time at Diani was a time of bliss, but the time of love is always also the time of revolution. And so, while we were happy to be cut off from the world, we realized that it wasn’t just us who were cut off; it was the whole region that was cut off. There was little socioeconomic  activity going on around us. For the longest time, we were about the only people in the hotel, yet the kitchen and housekeeping staff were at work. It was so eerie, that during one meal, we asked the waiter how the business was doing. He said it wasn’t good, but at least they were still at work. Other hotels were closed. 

On one of the nights, we went out looking for a club so that we could have a change of scene. Many of the clubs were quiet. We eventually landed at one where people eventually walked in, but by the time they did, we were done for the day.

And then there were the gentlemen – popularly referred to as beach boys - who would come by every morning to sell artifacts, asking us to “promote” them. We eventually struck a friendship with one of them whom we paid to take us to the coral reef. On one of the days when we walked along the beach, he told us of his dream to become a tour van driver, since that was where the money was, except he didn’t have money to go to driving school. All this young man wanted was a driving license. And he couldn’t get one.

The absurdity of the whole situation hit home one day when we were doing our usual morning prayer. After thanking God for the day, for us and for the gift of marriage, my husband said: “And God, we pray for Diani.” And then he sighed. He then expressed to God his bewilderment at the depressed economy, and prayed for a breakthrough for the region.
 
By the time we left Diani, we had figured out why the hotel where we were staying was still open: it was owned by the same people who own one of Kenya’s sports betting companies. The hotel owners were not really that invested in Diani’s economy, which is to be expected. Gambling doesn’t inspire social consciousness, since money comes in anyway, without much work being done.

We then decided to break our return home with a stay at Voi, which one of our cousins arranged for us. At the hotel, as we were given instructions on meals, we were told that the crowd we found eating dinner would be leaving the next day, and so we would be eating in a different hall because we would be about the only guests left in the hotel. We enjoyed a drive in the dry Tsavo national park, and soon after, we returned home to our new life. Our hectic life. 

However, I am still haunted by this lie called tourism, which, our leaders tell us, is the cornerstone of our economy. In every ad, in every wildlife documentary, we’re shown the amazing wonders of our country and our wildlife. But the cameras don’t show us the in-between days of little action, as the camera crew waits for the next time that the pride of lionesses goes hunting and finally kills their food. They don’t show us the empty hotels and beds, the staff going home to wait for the hotel to call them back when the next batch of guests arrives. They don’t tell us about the limited social services at places like Diani that lack even driving schools where young men can become tour van drivers, like the other men from upcountry whom they see bringing tourists. 

But Frantz Fanon, writing towards the end of his short life, did warn us that that’s what tourism does. It does not encourage growth. It does not invest in the “brains and muscles” of the citizens. It doesn’t think about the nation or the environment; it cares only about money.  We’re willing to sacrifice our wildlife – our own heritage – for roads and apartments, as we’ve done with the Nairobi National Park, when we find that buildings bring more revenue to personal coffers than tourists do to the national ones. Because tourism relies on Europe, and on their citizens feeling inspired to visit us, we have to wait for Europe to tell us to save our own parks and wildlife, or to honor our environmentalists, while our own government beats up our environmental heroes and fails to do something as simple as name a road after Wangari Maathai.

The cornerstone of tourism is enjoyment and relaxation of the rich, rather than the dignity of the citizens through the access to wholesome recreation and education. That is why our forests like Karura, or even our children’s playgrounds and university lands, are grabbed for the construction of malls and hotels. The grabbers are not creative enough to even say that they are building a referral public hospital, so that at least we Kenyans can be consoled that we’re benefiting from the evil. Land is always grabbed for hotels and malls. For the relaxation of people exhausted from stealing from us.

And yet, Fanon warned us that this will happen, except that we Kenyans don’t read books like The Wretched of the Earth. That’s theory, we’re told, and what we need is practical knowledge. And so Kenyans don’t know how eerily predictable it is for tourism to share such similar characteristics with gambling. Here’s the prophecy of Fanon:
In its decadent aspect, the national bourgeoisie…establishes holiday resorts and playgrounds for entertaining the Western bourgeoisie. The sector goes by the name of tourism and becomes a national industry for this very purpose…Because it is lacking in ideas, because it is inward-looking, cut off from the people, sapped by its congenital incapacity to evaluate issues on the basis of the national as a whole, the national bourgeoisie assumes the role of manager for the companies of the west and turns its country virtually into a bordello for Europe. 
Diani, and most of the coastal region, are suffering from our government betting, year after year, that tourists will visit Kenya. But like in any other gambling, we invest and lose more than we win. And we win so little because our winnings are dependent on factors gloriously out of our control, be it terrorism local or foreign, a natural disaster as far away as Asia, or, on a more positive note, better and cheaper tourist attractions on this continent and abroad. But rather than invest in education and in an empowered citizenry that can cultivate, create, manufacture and invest, the country’s elite have decided that Kenya – and especially the Coast and the Mara – is only good for what the Lord has made. Our elite do not invest in the people, who are co-creators with God because they are made in God’s image. And the most under-developed areas are the ones with most of the tourist attractions.

Not surprisingly, the gamble of tourism has now evolved into the gamble of betting. As was reported by the Sunday Nation yesterday, we’re spending a whopping 3 billion shillings a month on betting. People who should be in the shambas, in the schools, in the factories, or in the labs or anywhere else creating wealth are, instead, on their mobile phones. 

And because our media are receiving advertising revenue from these companies, they are sugar-coating gambling by depicting it as a personal choice, calling us a “gambling nation” instead of a “gambling den,” and telling us that betting is like “any sport, [where] some are winning handsomely while a vast majority loses their money.” And to add insult to injury, they put that headline right above the expensive footer advert inviting Kenyans to win over 100 million shillings twice a week.

Gambling is not, and can never be, a sport. Gambling is not like a marathon where one’s physical training boosts a person’s health, whether they win the marathon on not. In gambling, training is losing money many times, and sometimes losing one’s life. Gambling is an addiction. To call it a sport or a business is as reckless as saying that alcohol is a beverage like tea or that snuffing cocaine is like smoking a cigarette. 

But the tragedy is that since Kenyans shun theory, educational institutions are powerless to help our students understand the hell that we have invited into our nation. Many times when I raise concern about gambling on social media, wananchi tell me that those who gamble are greedy pigs seeking to make a quick buck, so it should be seen as a personal weakness, rather than a social problem. They genuinely wonder at the relevance of my question as to whether alcoholism and drug addiction should also be treated as a personal weakness. 

The press, who like to call themselves our watch dog, don’t get it either. And with the advertising revenues from betting companies, they can’t get it, even if they wanted to. 

And neither does our government, who are now worried more about reaping taxes from the betting companies than about the companies destroying our soul. 

When our institutions are in bed with this evil, you’d think the church would collectively stand up and raise concern about this scourge. But their sights are on the games of politicians, namely the IEBC stalemate, and even on declaring some of the politicians God's anointed, so and they haven’t issued a public outcry about the increase in gambling companies. 

With no institutions to cushion us, we wananchi are on our own, being conned by the betting companies that the gambling is actually good for us because sports companies provide billions to sports in sponsorship contracts. Meanwhile, CS Hassan Wario remains so clueless, that at an UNCTAD forum two weeks ago, he would celebrate the government’s commitment to the creative economy in the paltry allocation of KES 500 million to sports and culture for the entire financial year. Another lottery promising new beginnings responded to Kenyans’ concerns about the rise in betting by saying that the lottery’s profits will go to a hospitals, in the hope that our concerns about public health infrastructure would go away.

But when one understands that betting companies are essentially sustaining sports so that we can go on betting on the same sports, then one understands, as Malcolm X would say, that we’ve been bamboozled. We’ve been had. We’ve been took.  And the perpetual losers are the ordinary wananchi of Kenya, whose recreational land has been grabbed, whose schools are burning, and whose education is too incoherent to offer intellectual tools to resist the onslaught of advertising and programming sponsored by betting companies. Like the young man in Diani, wananchi have been abandoned to gambling by a decadent political elite that has no national consciousness.

The field day enjoyed by betting companies does not make Kenya a “gambling nation.” It makes us a gambling plantation. The abandonment by Kenyan leaders follows the economic logic of the slave plantation and its offspring, the colonial settler economy. Like the plantations in the Americas, where African slaves cultivated, like the colonial settlers on the continent, the masters of this economy take away our freedom, dignity and self-actualization by making us rely on chance instead of on hard work, and making profits from this exploitation.  But just like Africans in the Americas, we in the homeland can still pray to God to trouble the water, and demand an economy that affirms that there’s dignity in the sweat of our brow and in the work of our hands, as reflected in the final words of our prayerful national anthem: tuungane mikono, pamoja kazini, kila siku tuwe na shukrani.
18 Comments
Peter Odhiambo
1/8/2016 08:45:02 pm

I totally agree, very insightful opinion piece.

Gambling should be controlled if not banned completely. There is no way this vice or practice can build a nation. It targets the most vulnerable demographic of the society, those likely to build the addiction to it. This business feeds on peoples desperation to reap huge profits. And just like religion, it targets those who are ready to cling on straws to make it in life.

Unsurprisingly, gambling entrepreneurs just like those faith merchants are some of the most successful business people.

Reply
Billy Mugambi
2/8/2016 10:21:49 am

Wow. Just, wow. Everyone NEEDS to read this.

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Muturi Kiriamiti
2/8/2016 10:56:07 am

You made my heart beat hike and my anger too. It is only a matter of time( I pray God saves us) and someone will bet our country away. Great opinion and insightful

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lydia
2/8/2016 03:16:14 pm

soon they will start instution to rescue addicted gamblers in which they will ask for huge money for consultation fee for the disease they infected the country with.

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Wandia
5/8/2016 01:56:53 am

So true. It's like the war machine that creates wars to create a market for arms and to lower the price of natural resources. So we use addiction as a war against people and create rehabs to fight against it. God help us.

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Jackie
3/8/2016 11:21:52 am

I'm not sure I understand you, so please help me understand: Do you mean that Tourism like Gambling is a vice?

Another thing I find puzzling, you've summarized your take on Tourism based on the coast & Tsavo (which has taken a hit as a result of 'security' concerns). Do those who depend on Tourism as their livelihood in areas like Samburu, Laikipia, Aberdare, Mara, from hotel staff to tour drivers, guides, tour leaders, consultants, Craft shops, local suppliers share the same sentiments?

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Wandia
3/8/2016 11:29:51 pm

I wouldn't know the opinions of tourism workers. Maybe you know of a research that has studied that?

You missed my whole point about national decisions about our economic direction AS A COUNTRY. Your reaction is personalized, defensive and focused on the local to the exclusion of the national.

Probably reading Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth would help expand your perspective and see things more long term, not just about bread and butter. Besides, if "security" has had a negative impact on tourism, that's exactly my point - it is an industry that is dependent on factors so gloriously out of our control. We need economic activities in which we are more independent.

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Jackie
4/8/2016 09:04:33 am

Wandia, I was seeking clarification because I genuinely did not understand the relation between Gambling & Tourism. I was not attacking you nor was I being defensive (why would I be?) and I'm sorry it came out that way.

And I have read Fanon, which added to my confusion because he was referring to Caribbean Tourism in the 50's & 60's. Tourism today is different from then. Not to mention that Kenya as a Tourist destination is different from Tourism in Martinique, St Barts, St Lucia & other Caribbean countries.

In a nutshell I wanted to have a clear picture of your standpoint

Wandia
5/8/2016 01:49:49 am

Sorry, but where did you get the impression that the Wretched of the Earth is about the Caribbean?

And just to check, are you aware that Fanon was a French citizen? That Martinique and Guadeloupe are called overseas departments and are still part of France? So he definitely wasn't talking about St. Lucia. He even mentions the Mau Mau, Morocco, Madagascar, Guinea, Algeria... have you read the book?

Because he was a French citizen, Fanon was posted to work in Algeria for the French government, and then changed to fight for independence. That's where he was getting insights about the mistakes that newly independent African countries were making.

You need to read the whole chapter on the pitfalls of national consciousness. If you focus on defending tourism, you miss Fanon's main point, which was that the African bourgeoisie was not a genuine one in terms of intellectual and cultural outlook. So instead of being a creative class, the African bourgeoise were piggy backing on Europe. They did not grow industry and innovation. They invested in relaxation.

Tourism requires no creativity or production. It is a consumerist practice that just requires waiting for foreigners to come see what the good Lord made. Fanon was arguing that a genuine bourgeoisie - which we were most likely not going to have - would be interested in economic activities that engage the minds and energies of the citizens, not that wait for citizens of other countries to show up.

The tourism sector is bleeding Kenya. We are now about to bail out KQ. Hotels are empty. And every time tourism takes a hit due to terrorism or economic slump elsewhere, the government asks Kenyans to understand and invest more and try again. Maybe next year tourism will be better. Tourism is artificially sustained by the government because our politicians have grabbed land and invested in hotels. We should have dumped tourism and moved on by now. But our leadership doesn't have the mental capacity to think that way. Which is what Fanon was saying.

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Cornelius
7/8/2016 07:31:13 pm

Insightful post!! I think that this is just a part of the problem that we are facing as Kenyans. I believe at the core of this and other big problems that we are facing is due to the capitalist economic system we have adopted and adulterated. This system has made it possible for vices, injustice and service inefficiencies to become profitable by just attaching a price tag to it while disregarding the social bonds, connections and structures that had existed and attempted to maintain a societal equilibrium over the utilisation and sharing of resources by the members of society.
I think a serious analysis of our economic system and its policies need to be done by the so called "intellectuals", the bourgeois and mostly the proletariat, because its a systemic issue that is crippling souls and breaking the social bonds that we need to live full lives,.

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aquinata
8/8/2016 10:28:21 pm

Thank thank you thank you. it is my prayer that more will read this and together pray

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Ansieta Minyori
13/8/2016 12:10:18 pm

Deep, very deep and insightful. Just worried and wondering the small steps we need to take as a Nation to free ourselves from this yoke. But I guess awareness in itself is a great starting point. Well done

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White
13/8/2016 12:48:14 pm

we live in deniability as a nation, back in the days at the mention of the word 'TOURISM' globally Kenya wouldn't have gone unmentioned, we used to pride ourselves because tourism was our national heritage, with pioneers like Wangari Mathai fighting to protect our natural resources we were the epitome of the tourism culture in Africa, all this God given natural beauty has been destroyed and neglected by our own greed and selfishness nature.

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ONCHARI
13/8/2016 02:25:25 pm

Africans are not part of the human species!Am sorry to say that but even in the jungle animals are classified.Like in the wild cat family we have Tigers,Leopards,Lions, Panthers etc.In no day a tiger will be a leopard even if you pray the whole day!Have you ever wondered why Africans whether in America, Caribbean and afroasians are at bottom of the totem tree in the world?Its conventional wisdom that Africans have fallen into the grips of merciless money-grinding scoundrels who have laid a pitiless and cruel yoke upon their necks coz of their low intellectual levels. Its frustrating to try educate poor Africans even God left this continent long time ago!My fellow zinjanthropus(Paranthropus boisei) being uninformed is not sexy!Its not rocket science to see the carrot and stick approach of this money swindling companies!

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Maureen
13/8/2016 05:38:33 pm

Insightful read! Worth one's time on social media.

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Elijah
26/8/2016 11:31:52 am

I agree with you Wandia but I also try to understand the Kenyan youth when they engage in sports betting.You and I know very well that jobs in this country are bought.A good number of Kenyan youth have qualifications to get them employment but they dont have money to buy the jobs.

The situation has been made worse by the County governments.Job vacancies and tenders now belong to the friends,relatives(may I add mistresses) and campaign managers of the governors,senators and the all important MCAs.

The youth dont have money to buy jobs or tenders.If they become hawkers janju will be on their necks,they try robbery the police gun them down.There is rent to pay,mouths to feed,parents and siblings to support.What options do they have to make an extra coin? Betting.

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Wandia
31/8/2016 07:37:22 pm

I think I've said very clearly that gambling has become the only hope for youth whose government lacks the imagination to create avenues for the youth to earn a decent living. In no way do I not understand their situation. I think my story of the young man on Diani beach is evidence of the same. Or are you responding to something else I said elsewhere?

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S.D. Maundu link
30/7/2017 02:38:55 pm

I agree with and share your sentiments. Every major politician in Kenya constantly reminds us that "tourism is the largest source of foreign exchange after agriculture" without shame. What they turn a blind eye to is what "tourism" has done to us as a people. When they speak of what tourism has done for us, it is always in terms of "showcasing Kenyans as warm, friendly and welcoming". What it has done to us is to wreck our understanding of what it means to be gainfully and meaningfully employed. Especially in poor and, mainly, rural tourism hotspots, young people may be employed, even gainfully, but they are not meaningfully employed. Showcasing cultural artefacts such as our song and dance, our food and dress, is meaningful only of it is seen as part of our cultural renaissance as a people, not as the meaningless transmogrification of young men and women into prostitutes, the parading of youthful flesh for the pleasure of foreign, Caucasian users and abusers. I remember when Lucy Kibaki attempted to start a national debate on how young girls, some as young as twelve, were being sexually exploited on Kwale and Kilifi but the news media refused to write about it bar three reports in the Sunday Standard. Not the church nor the chamber of commerce saw fit to support her on her short crusade. (We were guilty too; because of who she was and what we perceived to be her weaknesses, we ignored her and termed her statements a distraction from the troubles of her husband's regime.) Today, the effects of converting Kenya into a bordello are all to plain to see. Young and old, the only thing that matters is a fat bank account at any cost. It is reflected in the metastasizing selfishness while in traffic, when queueing for a plate at a wedding reception, when stampeding out of an overfull stadium when For and AFC fans riot, when we all talk of "affordable" or "cheap" housing that we will build tomorrow, and when PSV crews will shove passengers out of moving vehicles just so they can hurry up to the next fare. The bordellorisation of Kenya has resulted in the suppression of community spirit, community values and social conscience.

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    Wandia Njoya

    African. Woman. Wife. Teacher.

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