Listen to the patients crying at Afya House

Three days ago – at godly hours around government square in Upper Hill – two desperately aggrieved patients from the Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH) breached the multilayered security cordon at Afya House storming the main boardroom to burn down the entire floor with fire under their bellies.

They not only crashed into a live press conference that had been convened by the ministry bureaucracy to explain in diagrams the Social Health Authority (SHA), but they also pointed fingers at those, in their opinion, who had been sleeping on the job. For seven minutes straight, they succeeded in stopping the press, and the country, too.

Grace Njoki and Diana Akoth – who was holding her distressed newborn baby as she was dispensing instant wisdom to the Afya House mandarins in-situ – are representatives of the socioeconomic barometer as it currently is on the ground in Kenya.

They might have been only the two of them putting their bodies on the line to register the pulse live on blast for those who matter to take cognizance of, but one thing is certain: that they have a legion who were cheering them on from within and without the country, and this is what should worry those entrusted with turning down the heat inside the Kenya Kwanza kitchen.

Contrary to popular belief, Kenyans are easy people to work with – they might not look like it on the surface, but they really are. Those who religiously read a chapter a day to keep ignorance at bay have consistently informed us that literature records are of the view that few countries in the world would hold a candle to us when it comes to raw grit and hardwired brilliance.

We perform well inside the oven when others melt in less heat. For all its worth, we would be the hardest to beat in any contest on a level-playing field. This is according to common knowledge.

Leading a country naturally endowed with such a shining human resource talent pool requires only two prerequisites; a government that doesn’t leak from the top, and a citizenry that meets its government halfway. From the episode two days ago at Afya House, it’s crystal clear that that both conditions are finding it difficult to be met, and there’s no indication the fire generating from the chaos will refuse to boil my grandmother’s yams.

Neglected members of society

Make no mistake, what happened at Afya House three days ago has nothing to do with the Social Health Insurance Fund, or Authority – whichever acronym lifts your boat. The happenings are a manifestation of a deeper rot that has been metastasizing since the Kenya Kwanza government went back home to celebrate an unbelievable turnaround of events more than two years ago. 

Storming a government building to stop a live press conference convened to shower praises at a faltering programme is the lowest any citizen can go to express desperation at a government speaking at cross purposes on policy matters pertinent to the survival of those they took an oath to preserve and protect.

It’s even dire when the gatecrashing is done by the vulnerable and neglected members of society. If the government is not careful, a norm is on the verge of being mainstreamed into the public psyche. The next thing we know, a presidential function might fall victim of such an uncoordinated public blowout. We shouldn’t reach there, but who is listening anymore?

A critical health service delivery portal like that of the SHIF should be the last to crash on any given second, let alone for seven days on the bounce. And when it crashes, or malfunctions, or both; there should be a dedicated standby team to run in with the spanners regardless of time of day or night. It should be made a criminal offence for anyone to derive a salary from the public purse after watching paint dry as the SHIF payment platform gathers dust from weeks of disrepair.

When I was growing up, there used to be a shared belief that public service was supposed to be meant only for those with a higher calling for duty. Now that I am old and can see clearly, there needs to be a revision of the curriculum to accommodate the current laissez-faire attitude among those brandishing GoK badges. 

Disinterested in public service

The government of Kenya cannot put their hands up and claim they haven’t been watching and reading acres of media segments dedicated to policy advisory on the public pulse. It’s either they are totally disinterested in public service for the public’s sake, or they shifted their gaze away from issues that advance common good, or both.

You can bet your kidneys that what happened at Afya House three days ago will certainly happen again, with unerring frequency, if someone in government doesn’t remove their heads from the sand and stabilise the zigzagging trajectory in which public service has been journeying lately.

Public servants can choose to wave away the prevailing events as a flash in the pan and go back home to sleep as they have been doing, or they can wake up and stop the alarm bells from grating their ears for a peaceful sleep for all of us. When you see Kenyans taking matters in their own hands and throwing caution to the wind to get service that’s overdue to them, there’s need for the government to stop and reevaluate their social contract with the people before things boil over again, as they did last June.

This country is the envy of many around the world, there are citizens from other countries who would kill to belong here. How those in public service have failed to embrace this latent potential and turn it into a world class benchmarking success story is beyond the imagination of many a Kenyans who just want to live well and pass on the happiness to the next generation.

We will remain true to our God-given calling of convincing public servants that it’s still possible to be in service for your people without the encumbrances of hubris and personality politics. Public service is still a noble calling that we all should embrace with humility and sacrifice, because when the bell will finally toll on us and we’re asked what contribution we made to creation, those who’ll have given their all will stand tall among angelic giants and ask for the softest life in the afterworld – and they would have deserved it.