It's Our Turn to Eat by Michela Wrong Read Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Michela Wrong
he did a lot of praying.
As he quietly came and went, reuniting with girlfriend Mary Muthumbiâan advertising executive who flew to London to see himâofficially registering his presence with a Foreign Office that expressed only polite interest, a silent question mark was forming. Fleeing the country, in a way, had been the easy part. What, precisely, was he going to do next?
As far as I could see, there were only two options. Option One: Leave government employment and keep quiet. Give the tapes and computer materialâyour insurance policy against assassinationâto a British lawyer, along with firm instructions that should anything happen to you, they will be released to the press. Make these arrangements clear to those in power, and assure them you will never give another media interview in your life and will never go into politics. Work abroad, go into academia, get married to your long-suffering girlfriend and wait for the affair to die down. Eventually, maybe five years down the line, you will be able to return to Kenya, and while ordinary folk will look at you with a certain cynicism and think, âI wonder what he knew?â, most will respect your discretion and commonsense. No man can single-handedly transform a system, and you will be joining the ranks of former civil servants with clanking skeletons in their cupboards. Your conscience may occasionally trouble you, and you will have to acknowledge that you tried and failed. But you will have got your life back.
Option Two was bleaker, more dramatic, and fitted straight into that Hollywood thriller genre. Lance the boil, go public. Blow thegovernment you once passionately believed in out of the water and say what you know. People who matter may hate you for all eternity. You may never be able to go home again, your family and friends may suffer by association, your colleagues may regard you as a traitor, but you will have done the right, the upstanding thing, and lived up to the principles that have governed your life. You will have shown the world that others may do as they please, but as far as you are concerned, âAfricaâ and âcorruptionâ are not synonymous.
Most journalists, I suspected, would urge John to choose Option Twoâit made for a fantastic story. I urged him to choose Option One. Those journalists would not have to live with the consequences. My old friend, it seemed to me, had already done his share, and his countryâs fate was not his burden to shoulder alone.
Initially, heâd planned a press conference. The speculation and allegations being published in the Kenyan press irked him, he said, and he felt he owed the Kenyan public an explanation. I quailed at the thought of the bun-fight that would follow.
âIf youâre going to hold a press conference, you have to be absolutely clear in your mind what youâre prepared to say. Are you going to spill the beans now? Are you ready to explain what actually happened?â
âNo, not yet.â
âThen donât do it. The most infuriating thing you can do to journalists is to hold a press conference and say nothing. Itâll drive them crazy. Theyâll either force you into making admissions you donât intend or rip you to shreds for wasting their time.â
Another idea he considered, urged on him by the few friends in London who were gradually discovering his whereabouts, was to record an âin the event of my deathâ videotape in which he named names and explained his departure. If he were killed, it would remain as devastating testimony. He toyed with the idea, but held off once again. Perhaps he was wary of creating such an incendiary tapeâwho could be trusted to keep such red-hot footage under wraps? But it was also a question of strategy. Johnâs modus operandi, perfected over the years, was to painstakingly think through every eventuality,harvesting the insights of well connected insiders, visualising
As he quietly came and went, reuniting with girlfriend Mary Muthumbiâan advertising executive who flew to London to see himâofficially registering his presence with a Foreign Office that expressed only polite interest, a silent question mark was forming. Fleeing the country, in a way, had been the easy part. What, precisely, was he going to do next?
As far as I could see, there were only two options. Option One: Leave government employment and keep quiet. Give the tapes and computer materialâyour insurance policy against assassinationâto a British lawyer, along with firm instructions that should anything happen to you, they will be released to the press. Make these arrangements clear to those in power, and assure them you will never give another media interview in your life and will never go into politics. Work abroad, go into academia, get married to your long-suffering girlfriend and wait for the affair to die down. Eventually, maybe five years down the line, you will be able to return to Kenya, and while ordinary folk will look at you with a certain cynicism and think, âI wonder what he knew?â, most will respect your discretion and commonsense. No man can single-handedly transform a system, and you will be joining the ranks of former civil servants with clanking skeletons in their cupboards. Your conscience may occasionally trouble you, and you will have to acknowledge that you tried and failed. But you will have got your life back.
Option Two was bleaker, more dramatic, and fitted straight into that Hollywood thriller genre. Lance the boil, go public. Blow thegovernment you once passionately believed in out of the water and say what you know. People who matter may hate you for all eternity. You may never be able to go home again, your family and friends may suffer by association, your colleagues may regard you as a traitor, but you will have done the right, the upstanding thing, and lived up to the principles that have governed your life. You will have shown the world that others may do as they please, but as far as you are concerned, âAfricaâ and âcorruptionâ are not synonymous.
Most journalists, I suspected, would urge John to choose Option Twoâit made for a fantastic story. I urged him to choose Option One. Those journalists would not have to live with the consequences. My old friend, it seemed to me, had already done his share, and his countryâs fate was not his burden to shoulder alone.
Initially, heâd planned a press conference. The speculation and allegations being published in the Kenyan press irked him, he said, and he felt he owed the Kenyan public an explanation. I quailed at the thought of the bun-fight that would follow.
âIf youâre going to hold a press conference, you have to be absolutely clear in your mind what youâre prepared to say. Are you going to spill the beans now? Are you ready to explain what actually happened?â
âNo, not yet.â
âThen donât do it. The most infuriating thing you can do to journalists is to hold a press conference and say nothing. Itâll drive them crazy. Theyâll either force you into making admissions you donât intend or rip you to shreds for wasting their time.â
Another idea he considered, urged on him by the few friends in London who were gradually discovering his whereabouts, was to record an âin the event of my deathâ videotape in which he named names and explained his departure. If he were killed, it would remain as devastating testimony. He toyed with the idea, but held off once again. Perhaps he was wary of creating such an incendiary tapeâwho could be trusted to keep such red-hot footage under wraps? But it was also a question of strategy. Johnâs modus operandi, perfected over the years, was to painstakingly think through every eventuality,harvesting the insights of well connected insiders, visualising