As is the Kenyan way, I will start this out by sharing a joke with you all. To keep things lighthearted, even if it’s just for the beginning. We poke fun at everything, finding humour in the unlikeliest of places and this joke originates from a truly unlikely place. When a serving of chips mwitu — chips (fries for the Americans amongst us) sold at roadside stands with dubious sanitation practices — coats your mouth in grease the consistency of petroleum jelly or a weird after taste lingers, needing to be washed away with a swig of fizzy soda, it will illicit laughter from whoever you tell. Cue the infamous joke:
“Did you eat chips fried in transformer oil?”
Yes, transformer oil. Some of the humour is lost in translation. Unfortunately, the cadence and intonation used to express various emotions in Kiswahili cannot be replicated onto a two dimensional screen, but I can assure you that the recipient knows it is said in jest. Admittedly, I was late to the party when it came to understanding the implications behind the “joke”. When I first heard it, I couldn't tell you what a transformer was. My mother would point them out on walks if she remembered. They were simply a feature of the landscape to me. At thirteen years old, following a school news report I put together on the 2013 Horse Meat Scandal, the chips and transformer oil association hit me. Immediately, alarm bells sounded off in my head. While I didn’t have the capacity to fully understand the health implications at the time, my curiosity drove me to find out whatever I could from the people who used the looted transformer oil in their businesses.
It wasn’t hard to get the roadside vendors talking. Most swore they personally oversaw the selection of the best ingredients available. Irish potatoes grown in Central Kenya, purchased by the sackful from the bed of a farmer’s pickup truck. A choice of wholesale chili and tomato sauce poured into the paper serving bags from refillable squeeze bottles, both would lightly stain your fingers blush pink. They pointed to the twenty litre jerrycan nearby — usually yellow and plastic — which held the remainder of their cooking oil. A branded sticker on the side of it was their symbol of legitimacy. My concerns were flipped into a marketing opportunity. A pitch on why their kiosk is the most trustworthy of all the ones that line their street. Except the catch was the opaqueness of the jerrycans and even if they were see-through, the average person cannot tell the difference between transformer oil and vegetable oil on sight alone. For a few vendors, my questions roused some suspicion. I received measured responses from smiling mouths that didn’t quite match the narrowed eyes they shared a face with. I was asked how my chips tasted. Fine? Then there weren’t any problems. I was free to look into the oil myself, if I so wished. Being salespeople, they indulged me with a jovial demeanor. However, I did catch onto their expert skills in evading my straightforward questions, and from there I got my answers. Chips were a meal of convenience for my siblings and I, but mostly for my mother. Only eaten on days spent out shopping around Nairobi’s CBD and its equally hectic environs. I would not be able to tell you if I have consumed transformer oil, and if so, the quantity of it. Frankly, it is something I’d rather put out of my mind. For the people who rely on cheap fast food to satiate their hunger on a daily basis, they do not have the luxury of picking apart the origins of the food they consume.
When this Al Jazeera article was released in 2014, our economy was on the rise. The Kenyan shilling held steady against the US dollar at a conversion rate of 86 shillings to a dollar. The use of transformer oil in cooking was not a total necessity. It was a lucrative side hustle for unemployed youth. As shown in the pictures within the article, not even a seven meter tall electricity pole, electrocution and potential death could deter a planned siphoning operation. No transformer oil meant no electricity. Citizens were very vocal about the disruptions the increasingly frequent power outages caused them. Essential amenities were cut off at inconvenient times, impacting the daily lives of many and businesses in impacted areas registered significant financial losses. When the money became affected, Kenya Power and Lighting Company (KPLC) in conjunction with the Government, took action. Vandals faced a ten year prison sentence if found guilty in court. KPLC made the switch to oil-free transformers in high vandalism areas. Both efforts saw a reduction in vandalism, power outages and an added benefit unknown to the public was their decreased chances of encountering the carcinogenic chemical present in transformer oil, Polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB).
The paragraphs above serve as a gateway into broaching the broader discussion of food adulteration and scarcity; two tightly interwoven issues with a thread of climate change concerns added to the mix. As the war continues to rage on in Ukraine, Kenyans are now feeling the effects of a conflict taking place over eight thousand kilometers away. Three events over the past few years, one a singularity and the other two ongoing, have wreaked havoc on the livelihoods of millions of Kenyans. The first event in the sequence was the invasion of locusts in 2019, then the COVID-19 pandemic steamrolled its way through, eroding the immune systems of those infected by the virus, disrupting supply chains, destroying the economy as we knew it and now, the steadily worsening drought continues to cripple us. The war in Ukraine might prove to be the final blow, leading to all out catastrophe. Kenya is heavily reliant on foreign imports for fuel and energy, wheat and fertilizer; key inputs in the agricultural and manufacturing sectors of which a combined total of 39% of the country’s GDP is derived from. In the past, Kenya benefitted from trading with both Ukraine and Russia. We have enjoyed vegetable oil imports from Ukraine, Fertilizer from Russia and sizeable imports of wheat from both countries. The volatility of global oil prices is another added pressure the Kenyan economy has to contend with. The discontinuation of previous subsidies which made fuel more affordable to Kenyans compounds the intensity of the effects brought about by the aforementioned instability of global oil prices. A dramatic increase in the prices of commodities countrywide can be observed. By losing the previous agricultural and manufacturing capacity we had pre-war, our GDP growth will reduce leading to increased rates of poverty.
In Northern Kenya — the region hit hardest by the drought conditions — the World Food Programme projects an unprecedented 1.2 million people will face emergency levels of food scarcity in the final months of 2022. Foreign aid did a good job of providing assistance to affected people in these areas in the past. In the present, the cost of aid has increased, reducing its effectiveness in reaching people in more remote parts of the country. Some states have chosen to divert funds away from their programmes in Africa to help support the Ukrainian refugees being admitted into various European countries. In other parts of the country, maize flour, a staple in the Kenyan diet, faced strict rationing. Stock was removed from shelves and placed under cashiers desks who received instructions to hand out no more than two packets of flour to each paying customer. Importing maize from neighbouring East African countries became a less viable option as their own yields were affected in the same ways ours were — more expensive fertilizer and drought, leaving them without a surplus for us to buy from. Heads of livestock have already perished by the millions. Once again, drought is to blame for the few and far between areas of grazing many pastoralists will be forced to compete over. For farmers with more modern methods of production, the price of animal feeds with maize and wheat listed as bulk ingredients have, unsurprisingly, also gone up. The animal products they now produce, as with every other commodity, are being sold at higher prices.
Unfortunately, times of scarcity encourage food adulteration and fraud. In March of this year, June Namwano’s TikTok went viral. She explained how she was conned out of 20 litres of cooking oil when she discovered that the jerrycan she had purchased was mostly filled with water. Peering back into years past, stories of cat meat used in samosa filling, donkey meat sold to restaurants in place of beef or poultry injected with HIV medication were met with a casual attitude. Like the chips and transformer oil story, jokes are still made today about tough “donkey” meat, fat “ARV” chickens and samosa “miau/meow”. The temptation of widening their profit margins initiated the fraudulent activities of the vendors in the forenamed scandals. With the weakening of the Kenyan shilling, now 120 shillings to one American dollar, there is greater potential for adulteration and food fraud to be established as a common occurrence along every branch of Kenya’s food industry, and frighteningly, the medical industry as well. In addition to the starvation many are projected to face, the health of those able to feed themselves is also at risk. When there is a deviation from standardized food production and sanitation practices, an open invitation is issued, welcoming a host of chemically induced illnesses and zoonotic diseases. Vigilance is a luxury only the rich can afford. As the government seeks to tighten spending budgets and rumours of the implementation of new austerity measures fly freely amongst the public, there haven’t been any promises made as of yet to increase spending in healthcare. Expecting more diligent inspections of farm produce and unregistered roadside vendors when past efforts were less than stellar would be totally unrealistic. Without a healthy population, our workforce will be diminished and a negative feedback loop will send us deeper into an economic crisis we may never recover from.
Due to the information presented, it cannot be disputed that the war in Ukraine stands to threaten not only the economic growth of Kenya, but also the health, wellbeing and quality of life of majority of its citizens in multiple ways. At the start of the war in February, there was resistance in outward showings of support of Ukraine within the populace. Language used in mainstream reporting to describe the Ukrainian refugees showed a clear bias when compared to the language used for non-European refugees, with People of Colour placed on the receiving end of the most unfavourable representation. This report does a good job of compiling several incidents where this bias was evident. Included in the linked article are substantiated claims of evacuation services denied to non-European students trying to escape the conflict in Ukraine. The sympathies of Kenyans went out to the People of Colour facing unfair treatment as they tried to flee from a dangerous situation. These reports somewhat soured Kenyans towards the plight of the the Ukrainians. Those who helped them were accused of maintaining enough energy to be discriminatory when larger things were at stake. A few months into the war, the Ukrainian embassy in Nairobi included an MPESA (mobile money service) paybill number in several social media posts, appealing to Kenyans for donations. The already present irritation Kenyans harboured towards Ukraine grew. It felt insensitive to request money from citizens of a developing nation, many of whom hadn’t yet recovered financially from the pandemic and were struggling to keep themselves and their households afloat as the cost of living skyrocketed. The knock-on effect created by Russia’s aggression has evolved beyond impacting the social ideologies of Kenyans. The effects are now tangible.
Kenya’s track record in implementing long term solutions to the problems plaguing their citizens has been rocky. The current administration has a political dilemma on their hands as they explore all available options of alleviating the suffering of Kenyans. One route would see the government striking a trade deal with Russia for oil and a continuation of imports of chemical fertilizers. President William Ruto opened up about his willingness to trade with Russia again. The other would be to stand by the European Union and non-member states within Europe in their condemnation of Russia’s actions which would mean supporting the sanctions imposed on them by the EU. Historical — read colonial — ties are on the line. Striking a deal with Russia, from the outside looking in, is a short sighted one. However, there’s no telling how long the benefits of it would reflect on Kenya’s economic growth. The new Prime Minister of the UK, Rishi Sunak, has courted Kenya with a new pledge of financial backing aimed at promoting sustainable projects in Kenya to tackle the effects of climate change while uplifting the economy in a clean, green way. If the government can place its focus on subsidizing wheat, maize and other food products, they can mitigate the predicted decline of public health that would occur if food prices remain as high as they currently are. Hopefully, this will be the assistance we need to dig ourselves out of the deep ditch we find ourselves in. On the ground, the opinions of Kenyans jaded by the incompetence and corruption of previous administrations have been surprisingly optimistic. Only time will tell how everything will pan out for ordinary Kenyans. If even a fraction of the political promises made by Western nations and the Kenyan government are upheld, millions of people and generations yet to come stand to benefit in a massive way from the decisive action taken in the present.
