By David Sibbald. Last week’s announcement by Kofi Annan of a power sharing agreement between the two protagonists in Kenya was a welcome one. I wonder whether there’s any sense of personal responsibility felt by either Kibaki or Odinga for the carnage their organizations have caused over the past few months – 1500 people killed, 400,000 displaced, economy wiped out and Kenya’s international reputation severely tarnished. Personally I doubt it. They and their inner circle live in a world disconnected almost entirely from the people they’re supposed to represent.
I returned from a trip to Kenya a couple of weeks ago and everyone I talked to from market traders, middle class lawyers, teachers, school kids, city people, rural people had a universal sense of disillusionment with the political class in Kenya and blamed them squarely for all the troubles. There have been an encouraging number of non-political movements established to try and bring back the sense of community that has always characterized the majority of Kenyan people. We’re going to be working with Wakenya Pamoja http://www.wakenyapamoja.com a group of Kenyan musicians and artists to help them re-vitalize the country’s youth. These initiatives are going to be really important long term as I suspect it won’t be long before both groups of politicians revert to form and go back to spreading a message of division amongst their core supporters, they’ve got form in this area and you wouldn’t expect them to change, particularly once the focus of international attention is removed.
On a more positive note we made some great progress in establishing Johari Botanics – a not for profit social enterprise producing organic oils, perfumes and soaps – and we’re hoping that we’ll have some samples to show and sell at the July 10th Sumerian Foundation summer event in Edinburgh. We’ve signed a technical co-operation agreement with the University of Nairobi to compliment the educational program we’ve been running for the past year with the Kenyan Institute for Organic Farming. http://www.kiof.org/ We’re in the process of converting a house at the Kandara Children’s Home into an organic botanicals lab where we plan to work with the University and creative people from Johari to put together our first product ideas. We’re also in the process of purchasing a couple of acres of land near the children’s home in order to build a small production facility. The long term model is to engage with KIOF and the local farming community in the Central region of Kenya and guarantee to purchase organic botanicals as the base content for our Johari Botanics range, create employment opportunities for the older kids in the orphanage and for the local people in Kandara. The level of enthusiasm from community leaders around this initiative is really high and we’ve got high hopes for its long term success.