Kenya's Whining US Diaspora Should Just Get on with it

The opening demands were reasonable enough, even noble: a better investment climate back home, better use of taxpayer money, and provisions for voting in whatever state they are in (even if practically impossible).

Kenya’s US diaspora (nobody really seems to know the population, with figures of up to a million bandied around) surely knows its worth: according to its own figures, it remits nearly $2.5 billion a year back home and so would understandably want absolute value for their money.

But there was more to come. Kenyans back home were treating them with “hostility”, especially at the airport. Would immigration authorities make it easier for them cart in their Gucci or Louis Vuitton suitcases for their vacations without undergoing bothersome procedures?

“Our belongings are searched arbitrarily and duties are levied without explanation or receipts,” one spokeswoman told the $220-a-seat Kenya Diaspora Conference that included visiting Foreign Affairs ministry bureaucrats, to a reported standing ovation.

Never mind that most "local" Kenyans also undergo this looting and that at most American airports, it gets worse with their privacy regularly invaded following full-body scanners and pat-downs introduced by the federal government recently.

On online forums, Kenya’s US diaspora is regularly berated for having an inflated sense of entitlement, not least fanned by the awe accorded them by those on "the ground". Chasing the American dream is bigger than anything you local folks could ever get up to has been the ready refrain, especially post-Obama.

Kenya holds a General Election in March, the first under a new constution labelled as one of the most progressive, and the diaspora's demands have kept up with the high-stake polls. The country's election commission has been comprehensively sued for, among others, failing to provide for electronic voting, which is not even available back home.

The revolving doors of frontrunner politicians trooping in to woo the diaspora have also further bloated the collective ego of some. Yet a look at their attitude suggests their agitation for preferential treatment by the Kenyan government is only worth its weight in achieving the ideal of universal suffrage: only one in four would cross state borders to vote, a new poll showed.

In other words, despite the enthusiasm on show, unless a voting centre is around the corner, few would be bothered to make an effort, citing the expense and distance involved. Tell that to the "locals" who will be travelling home overnight on rickety, unroadworthy buses and on non-existent roads, and at a time their incomes continue to lag behind the cost of living.

The real reason for the politicians’ self-serving visits to the US has been in extracting donations to finance their largesse-heavy cash-for-votes campaigns, yet only 25 per cent of diaspora Kenyans would contribute. Who's fooling who here?

The jury is still out as to whether the diaspora can decisively tip March's election in favour of any candidate, for reasons as varied as questionable turnouts, to being out of touch with grassroots politics. Many living abroad invariably tend to vote for suave urban-type politicians, while the rabble-rousing populists carry the day in the more vote-rich rural areas.

Many of the"locals" will be standing parched in the hot sun all day, grappling with grossly inefficient polling stations and a ballot paper a mile long. Not to mention the risk of being tear-gassed by trigger-happy anti-riot cops, or being attacked by a motley of rag-tag militias ranging from coastal separatists to hired political goons.

Expecting Kenya’s cash-strapped election managers to provide air-conditioned voting booths at their doorstep and equipped with fancy voting equipment (which presumably does not allow for hanging-chads a la Gore-Bush circa 2000), is stretching it a bit too far for the diaspora.

What will they ask for next, prawn sandwiches, Evian bottled water and an oxygen tent to help them vote?

Kenya’s economically-important diaspora would do well to knuckle down and vote with minimum fuss, like the 18 million on the ground back home.

By Lee Mwiti
Twitter: @ShrewdAfrican

This blog was originally published in Africa Review.

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