KEY POINTS:
Two Kenyan guards next month stand trial for the brutal slaying of Kiwi Olivado worker Julian Nathan, whose body was found at his apartment in Nairobi last September. The 76-year-old's death hasn't stopped the New Zealand company from pursuing its plans for a local oil factory however. Two weeks ago chairman Gary Hannam spent a week in Nairobi with his son Hunter, meeting the avocado farmers who will supply the Kiwis, and dodging violence in a country spiralling out of control. Here, he records his impressions.
THURSDAY JAN 24: Our flight to Nairobi was sparsely populated, most passengers travelling on to Dar es Salaam. My son Hunter, 24, and I had planned to begin our business trip to Nairobi a week earlier, but reports of fresh outbreaks of violence persuaded us to heed the advice from our Kenyan employees to wait.
Olivado employs 15 fulltime local staff, most of them Kikuyu but some Luo and other tribes from the Rift Valley region, the seat of much of Kenya's unrest. There has always been a strong camaraderie among our staff, and this appears to be unchanged.
Since the election I had been in daily contact with two senior staff members and had temporarily halted a field operation to avoid any danger to the field crew.
The avocado season begins in March, however, and a great deal has to be done in preparation for our first full season. So, to the delight and relief of our staff, we ignored the dire warnings of media and governments. And as we drove from Jomo Kenyatta airport into the city, it was as though nothing had changed; perhaps a little less traffic congestion on the notorious Mombasa Rd, and not so much of the light-hearted hustling from the highway hawkers.
Friday/Saturday: A meeting with the EPZ (Export and Processing Zone Authority) on Friday established that as far as that government agency was concerned it was business as usual.
The EPZ supports and encourages foreign investment in Kenya and it appreciated our determination to continue with our project. As far as it was aware, we were told, no potential investors had as yet given up. With the authority's approval to move our plant from its inadequate factory on the outskirts of Nairobi to a more suitable building closer to the small farmers who supply us, we drove out of Nairobi the next day in search of a temporary factory.
Our goal is to buy all our avocados from small farmholdings, and we are organising organic and fair-trade status for the more than 600 farms which will eventually supply us. Most of these small farmholdings are northeast of Nairobi, in the lush highlands around Thika, and it's here, in quintessential Africa, that we want to establish a custom-built factory in the next year or so. For the moment, however, there are several unused factory buildings around Thika, and one of those will house our plant, for this year at least. Saturday was an interesting but uneventful day, with no signs of unrest.
Sunday: Coffee and breakfast at one of Nairobi's deservedly famous Java House Cafes, where the coffee rivals the best that Ponsonby Rd has to offer. The Westlands Java House, in its comfortable middle-class suburb, was as popular as ever, families and couples relaxing over their coffees in the gentle equatorial sun.
The Nairobi Game Park, 117sq km of African wildlife experience in the Nairobi suburbs, was quieter than usual, probably a reflection of the reduced tourist numbers. Tourism was Kenya's No 1 foreign exchange earner before the violence which began after elections last year.
Monday: We toured the Thika area again, visiting prospective factories, this time with several of our employees from varying tribal backgrounds, which led to some interesting discussions.
All agreed that the riots in the slums and provinces were not politically driven, but over longstanding tribal and land issues. Philip, our electrician and a member of the Luo tribe, lamented the stupidity of his fellow Luo, who have destroyed much of their principal city, Kisumu, cutting off water and electricity supplies while driving out the Kikuyu, looting electrical goods shops and, ironically, leaving
themselves unable to use their booty.
It was strange, our crew agreed, that within minutes of the election result being announced gangs of thugs in some of the disputed territories had already set up roadblocks, indicating that these riots were not spontaneous uprisings of anger. One of our staff reported having seen a politician who had been voted out of office paying a gang at a roadblock.
Some of the major offenders, they claimed, were members of the Kalenjin tribe, whose leader, Daniel arap Moi, plundered Kenya during his single-party rule from 1978-2002, and whose successor William Ruto, the Eldoret MP, is Opposition leader Raila Odinga's deputy.
How much of this is fact and how much conjecture, we don't know. But during our week in Nairobi we did not meet one Kenyan who condoned the violence or had any sympathy with the politicians whose personal ambitions were fuelling the flames. They all echoed the pleas of a television commentator during the week: "Please give us our country back."
Tuesday: Each day we watched the early TV news and called the crew to see if anything untoward had happened. This morning we heard of the murder of opposition MP Melitus Mugabe Were and were alarmed for the first time. Our factory is located in Were's electorate, Embakasi. One of our staff who had come from the city reported mobs, police and tear gas.
Our security company advised us to leave the factory by mid-afternoon so I cancelled appointments and went to our hotel. The crew headed out to Thika to continue signing up farmers and mapping farms.
We heard later, however, that the mob had quickly dispersed, and there appeared to be little fallout from the murder of Were; perhaps because his affiliation with the opposition party was tenuous, and he, a Luo, was married to a Kikuyu.
A banned sect claimed responsibility for his murder, and Kenya lost a young and promising politician.
Early that evening I met a local contact who is close to the Kibaki government and was a contestant in the Juja electorate, now notorious as the prime example of the Kibaki party "rigging" results. The electorate vote was reported to the EU observers by the Opposition as being much less than the final result. My contact was at the electoral counting station and noted, as has the Electoral Commission, that the Opposition's reported figures were early results from less than half of the polling stations. In a Kibaki stronghold these figures were obviously less than the final tally. There seems to have been a great deal of misinformation surrounding the election results and Western observers may have accepted such misinformation as correct.
We had noted during pre-election time in Kenya last year that much of the Opposition election campaign focused on predictions that the election was going be rigged by Kibaki.
Wednesday: More visits to factories. The uncertain environment makes us more circumspect in making long-term commitments, such as buying land. But our field crew reports good progress in signing up farmers who are enthusiastic about dealing directly with the oil producer. In the past they have been severely exploited by the middlemen who receive four times the return of the farmers.
Thursday: The day we left, Hunter and I had planned to visit Limuru, about 15km from the city towards the Rift Valley area. Overnight, in the town of Kikuyu, 10km from Nairobi, young thugs had blocked roads and evicted non-Kikuyu from their homes.
The local MP had immediately travelled to the area and had stepped in front of the mob and told them that retribution was not a solution - a remarkable and welcome event in the vacuum of leadership since the election. The mob dispersed but it was still a no-go area.
Instead, we went to Thika to have dinner with the crew and review the day's field work. Unfortunately, the thuggery had spread to Thika. In a nearby town where we had visited a potential factory the day before, a non-Kikuyu had been shot dead. Non-Kikuyu in Thika were sheltering in the police station.
I was shocked that this quiet area had been affected. Rather than taking a risk, we decided to bring our Luo, Philip, and another fieldworker from a different tribe, back to Nairobi.
Several of our Kikuyu farmers expressed fears about having non-Kikuyu on their farms - not because they were personally unhappy about it, but because they feared possible reprisals from marauding bands of young Kikuyu thugs.
We left Nairobi a week after we arrived, fortunately never having experienced direct contact with the violence that is widespread in the Rift Valley and in the always volatile Nairobi slums.
What Kenya desperately needs is young, strong non-tribal leadership. Neither of the current contenders fits that bill. The current generation, as represented by our staff, wants peace and prosperity, and good leadership. We are hopeful that sense will prevail in this beautiful but benighted country.
And we intend to return later this month to play our small part in Kenya's road to prosperity.
