Whenever I travel, I like sharing
experiences, lessons and ideas that can help us be better, develop
faster and reach further. This time I’m traveling through Luxembourg,
Brussels, Cologne and The Hague, in the company of 70 law students, who
represent the diverse social and ethnic diversity of Kenya. They are
Christian, Muslim and Hindu; rich, middle class and poor. They have only
one thing in common: They are all extremely clever.
The
students are amazed by the beauty of an organized life and the harmony
of the expected, by serious social and intellectual engagement. Most of
them had never travelled before. They had never been on a plane or even
seen the sea. Some had never gone beyond their homestead.
NOBODY HOOTED
In
Luxembourg, our bus driver, Henk, took the wrong turn and met with a
low bridge. The bus is a double decker; it could not pass under such a
low bridge, and the driver had to reverse. It was a main road. Drivers
got frozen all around us. They gave way, and nobody hooted in spite of
the amazing jam we caused. People seemed sympathetic. If this had
happened in Nairobi’s Bus Station we would still be there, trying to
reverse.
In the cities we have visited, traffic
flows, lights are obeyed and zebra crossings are respected. In fact, as
Maliha observed, as soon as you set foot on the crossing cars
automatically stop. We have seen only a minor accident. It was caused by
one of us, who tried to cross the road in the Nairobi style, throwing
himself on the road far from the crossing. This was a typical Valley
Road crossing, where pedestrians disregard the bridge and skilfully
balance their steps in between speeding cars.
The
youngsters have also noted that there are no traffic policemen on the
road. There is no Alcoblow. Germans drink a lot, but we haven’t yet seen
any drunkard. It seems people respect the rule of law.
This
was bound to arouse the attention of any clever law student. Legal
education trains them to constantly think of ways of circumventing the
law without facing the consequences, which translates into a subtle
attitude of misuse of freedom.
TRUST AND SECURITY
Not
only was the harmonious traffic flow surprising to the young students,
but they were also been taken aback by the levels of trust and security.
One can walk in Cologne or Luxembourg at three in the morning without
fear. Shop security is scarcely attended to. Bikes are available for
hire in the street but no one steals their wheels or brakes.
Certainly
the first reaction of many is: ‘I want to come and live here’. But then
a second more noble thought sets in: ‘I want my country to become like
this’. Is it possible? Can it be done?
I wrote last
year an article about Singapore, Jakarta and Nairobi. We were then
looking East. But we will never get a full picture of the road ahead by
looking only to one side, more so when the East developed by emulating
the good things it learnt from the West.
Truth be told,
Europe has a long history and they have arrived at their levels of
development after many centuries of trial and error. Well, we can build
on their experience. We do not need to go through the same mistakes. We
should not just jump into imitation. Europe is far from perfect. They
have their challenges and we have discussed some in previous pieces. But
they have tried.
Africa’s beauty is unparalleled.
Kenya is a jewel. Tiny Luxembourg, sea-reclaimed Netherlands and small
Belgium can only envy Kenya’s natural beauty. But there is something in
those countries we can emulate, a sense of honesty. Our usual response
that ‘This is Africa’ is the motto of the defeated…the motto of the
‘also-rans’. We can be better. We only need to get organized. We started
on the right steps a few years ago, when we focused on reforming the
Judiciary. But we are losing momentum, and impunity is still rampant.
"NEVER IN A HURRY"
Henk,
our bus driver, is an amazing man. At a rest stop in a Dutch petrol
station he said to a shop attendant: “You know, these people are always
ten minutes late and they walk slowly. They are never in a hurry!” The
students have tried to explain to Henk that time in Africa is rather
subjective, that ten minutes can mean plus or minus thirty or sixty
minutes. In fact, they said to Henk, “when we say we meet at four, it
doesn’t really mean four, but anytime at around four, whenever everyone
arrives.”
Soon after, during a stopover somewhere
between Brussels and Luxembourg, Paranta was left by the bus. Paranta’s
classmates were joking that Paranta, being a Maasai, could walk all that
distance. He was lucky to get a lift from a well-wisher who drove him
all the way to Luxembourg and dropped him at the Hostel. This taught him
that for Henk time is objective, and this lesson has improved our
punctuality.
The fact is that we have an amazing human
capacity and natural riches. We can impress any academician in the
world. At the University of Cologne we had an exciting exchange of ideas
with Prof Claus Krass and his team of post-doc students. They were
impressed by the quality and knowledge the students exuded in the
academic exchange.
Where is the problem? And where lies
the solution? One of the students voiced something we all had at the
back of our minds: We don’t develop because we do not want to. We do not
dare to say no to corruption. We easily tolerate mediocrity.
Might a change of values be the beginning of change?
Dr Franceschi is the Dean of Strathmore Law School. Lfranceschi@strathmore.edu Twitter: @lgfranceschi
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