NAIROBI, Kenya, May, 6 – When I saw Jonathan Swift’s Book, Gulliver’s Travels in a window display at the Mount Kenya Bookshop in Kakamega town in 1983, I impulsively walked into the bookshop and bought the book.
I didn’t know the author of the book. I, however, thought there was something in the book because I had heard President Mwai Kibaki, then the Vice President and Leader of Government Business in Parliament, talk about the book. I had heard him cite the book when moving a motion to prorogue, to discontinue Parliamentary business, before breaking the session, for a vacation—the equivalent of school holidays for students.
Kibaki had cited Gulliver’s Travels, saying the recess gave the MPs the opportunity to visit their respective constituents and other places, like Gulliver did—and come back to parliament with new insights and knowledge useful to their legislative function, when the Parliament reopens.
I had not heard of the book or its author. I bought the book largely because the man who determined the prices of things—from household goods like sugar, salt, and paraffin, to cigarettes, cement, and corrugated iron sheets—had favourably mentioned the book.
It was not just a Vice President that fascinated me as a child in the mid-70s and early 80s. It was partly the power to determine prices that fascinated me about Kibaki and the immense respect elders in my village had for the man.
As a child, every 15th April, or thereabouts, I saw adults glued around a transistor radio, listening to the voice of a man reading something called a budget. Whatever he was reading, all that people talked about after were the prices of things we valued the Voice had changed.
“That must be a powerful man who can say “let the price of this and that item be this or that,” I thought in my mind.
I wanted to find out what the man adults revered had read in Gulliver’s Travels that induced me to spend five shillings—part of my pocket money—to buy the book.
His demise last week reminded me of that afternoon when I spontaneously bought a book from Mount Kenya bookshop, which sadly closed its doors some years later.
It was through that book, which I read on “the advice of President Kibaki”, that introduced me to classical works—books modern scholars now question their utility in the education of children in an industrializing and knowledgebase economy.
The enduring relevance of classical works—be they in Literature, Economics, Philosophy, Political Science, and natural sciences—is discernible through the vision, purpose, and values Kibaki evinced in his words and actions.
An educated person could easily see traces or the influence of the greatest ideas that have animated mankind’s search for meaning and purpose in public utterances Kibaki made. The utterances in question were perpetually responding to policy problems and challenges Kenya has faced over the years.
A Librarian at the Library for the Cabinet Office at Harambee House in 2010, told me that President Kibaki always sent someone to borrow titles in the Library whenever he conducted official business from there.
Some six or so years ago, I found myself, together with young cameramen from the Ministry of ICT at Muthaiga Golf club. We had wandered into a well-stocked library, similar to the Jomo Kenya Memorial Library at the University of Nairobi. The Librarian we stumbled into warned us that the Library was off-limits to non-members.
He, however, told us that Kibaki was an avid reader of the books in the Library. I got surprised that there were more than sticks, clubs, bull carts, putters, sunglasses, golf pull carters, and other equipment on a golf course.
I discovered that golfers care as much about the body as the mind; the fitness of their body and their minds.
Seen in this context, one begins to understand the massive investment in basic Education that Kibaki Presidency began with the free primary and free day secondary education programmes in 2003 and 2008 respectively.
The basic education programmes saw a phenomenal increase in the enrolment of children in formal schooling upon his ascension to power. The full implication of making education accessible to all Kenyans regardless of socioeconomic background is yet to be felt. The ripple effect will continue long after Kibaki is gone.
All successive administrations will do—like the Kenyatta administration has admirably done—is to ensure that no child is left behind in access to inclusive quality education. The 100percent transition to Secondary Education is one aspect to improve, to make better—for Kenya’s children—what Kibaki began.
Eminent Scholar of Education Maurice R. Berube has analyzed US presidential programs in education, the reasons for their implementation, and their correlation to national educational outcomes.
He has done this in a book, American presidents and education. While many US Presidents did impact education in the US, he specifically mentions Presidents Lyndon Johnson, Ronald Reagan, and George Bush as having had a significant impact on education policy in the USA.
It is probably too early to document the full implications of Kibaki’s legacy on the political, economic, and social fortunes or life in Kenya. Looking back after a reasonable distance, Kibaki’s imprimatur, his imprint, on Education will be fully unpacked.
Kibaki may not have been my teacher. However, as my hero, I count him as one of the few men and women—outside formal schooling, and outside my blood relatives—who helped shape some of the intellectual furniture and discipline that animate my life.
I count Professor Henry Indangasi and D. H. Kiiru as the men who formally introduced me to European Literature. However, it was President Kibaki who informally introduced me to European Literature through his passing reference to Gulliver’s Travels in his humorous speech in parliament in 1983.
My fundamentalist respect for classical literature is traceable to the intellectual furniture and discipline it imparts to readers—particularly to young readers.
The glowing tributes that I have seen leaders give Kibaki are in fact a kind of standing ovation to the liberal education curriculum President Kibaki had—courtesy, I believe, of great educators who took him by the hand all the way in Primary and Secondary Schools in Central region to the London School of Economics.
Farewell, President Kibaki!
The writer is a communications officer at the Ministry of Education.
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