The Nature of Work
If, before 1988, you ever visited the famous Kenya Institute of Administration (KIA) at Kabete - later renamed the Kenya School of Government and previously known as Jean’s School - you might have noticed a prominently displayed glass box outside the main plenary hall with a simple message titled:
WORK
If you work for a man
In heaven’s name, work for him.
Speak well of him
And the institution he represents..
If you must constantly growl,
Condemn, and eternally find fault
Resign your position.
And when you are outside,
Condemn to your heart’s content.
Elbert Hubbard
(1856-1915)
Background
I first came across this message when I found myself in a rather delicate and awkward situation. I had been elected Dean of the Faculty of Commerce at the University of Nairobi two years previously, that is in 1985. I was at the time Chairman of the Department of Accounting where I had served for a couple of years after acquiring a PhD from the University of California Los Angeles(UCLA) in 1981.
For me the attainment of that distinction was the apex of a decision that I had made in 1967 when I joined the same faculty and chose accounting as my area of interest. This I did for one main reason: I had no clue what it was all about and wanted to explore this uncharted territory. It also came at a time when, in retrospect, I started wondering whether my youthful infatuation with mathematics and English literature was really sustainable.
And so I sank my youthful mandibles into the tender limbs of a Catholic monk called Luka Pacioli. He was the inventor - or, at least, the first writer - of the double entry system that is the basis of modern accounting practice.
In case you are not familiar with the terminology, it is a system that says: There are two sides to a financial event - the giving side(debit) and the receiving side(credit). Or the other way round in case you are on the flip side of the event - known today as asset side and liability side. Hence, the creation of the now familiar balance sheet. Of itself not a major discovery but for those in the financial world, it is a religion.
Hence my infatuation with this strange profession of accountancy which I vowed to follow to its logical end - a doctorate which, to my knowledge, no one in Kenya had ever done. A decision that was going to change my life forever.
Back to KIA
During the previous few years, there had been constant political bickering between the supporters of the second president of Kenya, Daniel Toroitich Arap Moi, and those still allied to the first president Jomo Kenyatta who had died in August 1978. At that time, I was doing my doctorate at UCLA and was not too familiar with the politics of the day.
Things had been getting hotter by the day as Moi tried to assert his authority to an unwilling bunch of Kenyans mostly from the central province where I came from. I had little interest in politics.
Until that day on 1st August 1982 when all hell broke loose in the hitherto quiet nation when an overzealous bunch of soldiers from the Kenya Air Force tried to take over the running of the country. The day is forever etched in my memory in that as soon as I got home from a friend’s pre-wedding party, I found my two-year old son seriously ill and we had to rush him to Gertrude’s Garden Hospital in Muthaiga. When we got there at around 1.00 am, we had him admitted and were advised to go home and return in the morning.
That was where we became aware that something was terribly wrong because of the loud boom sounds coming from outside. I asked the nursing staff why “these Asians” were being allowed to do their fireworks so late at night.
It was not until morning after we got home that we learnt the truth...
It became clear that, after the failed coup d’etat, Kenya was never going to be the same again. But, like they say in the good book, that is a story for another day.
In Exile at KIA
And that is how it happened that one day in 1987, the Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Phillip Mbithi, called me to his office and delivered the earth shattering news: It had been decided that the Faculty of Commerce relocates from its original home in the Gandhi Wing of the main campus to KIA in Kabete some 10 kilometres from the city centre.
“Why?”, I dared ask the VC.
“It is a government decision. To reduce the level of radicalism at the university”.
He also informed me that even the Faculty of Law was also being moved to Parklands to take over the campus housing the Kenya Secretarial College. That explained it all. The two faculties were seen as centres of opposition to the government of the day and since they had so much in common - the law faculty was, in fact, hived off the commerce one in 1970 when the University of Nairobi was created. Somehow, both faculties attracted the same kind of uncontrollable minds and this had to stopped.
That is why, later in the same year, I had the unenviable responsibility of transferring over 1,000 students and staff to take over the KIA campus. But, I had one small personal problem: The principal of KIA was none other than my mentor and big “brother” from my clan at Ndakaini. We even bore the same name of our grandfather: Kimura - he was JD and I was JH.
On consultation, we agreed that yes, we were going to obey the directive but we were not going to destroy an important national institution like the KIA. And that is how, after a harrowing experience, we proposed that the campus be split into two sections - one side housing the faculty and the other the institute. An agreement to share the 129 or so acres in an amicable manner was, after some high-level clandestine negotiations, accepted by the government. On condition that the faculty took over the main facility where KIA administration block and sports fields were located.
One of my worst nightmares was taking over my cousin’s office as he went to scrounge around in the lower part of the campus for a new place to locate the Principal’s and other offices.
Back to “Work”
In Elbert Hubbard’s statement, the message was very clear: If you are employed by someone and he is the one who pays you a salary for keeping your family alive, do as he says. Without questioning why he had to give you some instruction which may be untenable to you. Just obey.
This, unfortunately, was the training that was being inculcated into the minds of the civil servants who went for training at KIA. The high priest of this philosophy was one Habel Nyamu, a principal of this institute in an earlier period. He is, in fact, the one who put up that famous plaque just outside the gate to the principal’s office to emphasise the point.
The campus had been inherited from a British colonial training centre called Jeans School, Kabete. I have no idea who Jeans was. And, frankly, I have no desire to find out. The damage to my psyche, and that of my brother, had already been done.
After settling the faculty in the place and waiting for a decent interval, I asked the same VC to let me go on sabbatical leave for 3 years. That was in February 1993.
I never returned.
JH Kimura,
PhD July 2018
As I write this, it is Valentine’s Day, 14th February 2020. A momentous day but not for the reason you may think. Reason, two days ago, Kenya buried its second President by the name Daniel Toroitich Arap Moi. He had finally died on 4th February 2020 at 5.20 am at a hospital in Nairobi at the ripe old age of 95 years where, we learnt later, he had been admitted for 112 days on a life support system that Kenyans were not told about.
But, no matter. Many Kenyans were not even aware that he was still alive after he unwillingly gave up power in December 2002 in a remarkable handover to Mwai Kibaki who became the third President of Kenya. He had held on to power for 24 years, which is four years less than the 28 years he lived in chosen isolation at his palatial home at a place Kabarak. Living at great cost to the taxpayers of Kenya whom he had terrorized as president.
Like the Wagikuyu people say: “Wa thi ino urihagirio o thi ino” (The sins you commit while alive will be finally paid for right here on earth). Or the Swahili saying: “Malipo nihapa hapa duniani.Ahera ni hesabu”. Even his terribly costly burial was borne by the same taxpayers.
The tragedy of Moi’s life is that he lived a double or treble life - like Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde”. Most Kenyans knew just one of his many faces. Which one did you know? Which one did he die under?