The following was written by Kenyan Charter Team member Alex Njeru 

I was born in my grandfather’s home, in a village called Ol-Moran, nested in the Laikipia plains of Kenya, a place where rains often failed, condemning villagers who either depended on the rain for crop farming or pastoralism to drought and suffering. It was a beautiful and blissful place, when there were no ethnic clashes, drought, or marauding elephants in the crop fields. At times zebras grazed alongside cattle and goats. For the large part I was brought up by my maternal grandmother. She has remained an inspiration in my life although she is now deceased. l later moved in with my parents in Nyahururu town, about 80 miles away from the village of my birth where I started my education. I maintained a strong connection with the Ol-moran, first because my heart had already established Ol-moran as the arena of my dreams, and second because my grandma treated me like a prince. She would leave no stone unturned in getting me my favourite delicacies; roast ‘gwaci’ ¹   (sweet potato) and ‘nathi’ ² goose berry.

Those aware of the political environments in Kenya in the 1990’s know that those were tumultuous times for the country; the country was getting acquitted with a new era of multi-partism after years of authoritarian one party rule. There were ethnic clashes every half decade and more so after the general elections. Ol-moran suffered because it lies right at the demarcating point between southern crop farming communities and Northern pastoral-nomadic communities. The clashes of culture and the economic organization sometimes were manifested in the most ugly and violent of ways. My grandfather went from a being proud owner of a sizeable herd of goats to a man without single goat kid, when raiders made away with his flock.

It was after the goat raid that the long trek from my grandmother’s home to the Pokots’ Bomas to barter grain for milk was born. I liked tagging along; I liked the feeling of the first rays of the morning sun kissing my forehead as the sun peeped from the Eastern horizon. I kicked hedgehogs on the way, liked and liked turning baby tortoises over, which was and still is taboo, acts for which I was roundly chided, I watched ostriches scamper away and the zebras graze gracefully, quite oblivious of the file of humanity’s women with grain laden baskets on their backs trudging on through shrubs with the expectation that they would go home with milk. I also tagged along because most of the times, a Pokot woman whose boma* we visited had taken a liking for me, for my morning trek she had taken to the habit of rewarding me with a gourd of sour milk just for. She even taught me her community’s war songs and dances.

 Trade in many ways brought the locals together, tribal enmity was forgotten when trade was going on. This was especially evident on market days, which the locals called ‘the auction,’ that happened every Tuesday of the fortnight. The energy, the perfumed ointments that locals applied on the market day, some children even missed school during market day, and the sea of humanity that turned Ol-moran from an otherwise sleepy village to a place bubbling with entrepreneurial energy. Traders came from hundreds of kilometres away. There was an unspoken code of conduct during market day’s tribal flare-ups and altercations were rarely witnessed during these market days. Samburus, Pokots and Kikuyus met in the market and exchanged and friendships were forged , until politics ruined it.

In essence the market spaces for individual traders were no more than spaces dug and raised on with gravel on dry ground, the market spaces were unmarked, but each and every trader new their grounds and a place of work, on market day the traders coordinated themselves, there were no local authorities to issue permits ad licences, in my mind I have never seen a freer market.

I was amazed the other day when I visited my grandpa and realized that a beautiful modern town had risen almost spontaneously around the market place, brick structures had come up around the open market quadrangle. A modern township with; bars, electricity, a water well, satellite television halls, for the purposes of catching the all too popular English Premier league and a recognizable main street had come up.

The people of Ol-moran, be they; pastoralists or crop farmers had their poverty in common. Earlier in life I always wondered why the government would not do something to eradicate their poverty, because I thought that the government had it in itself to solve all of mankind’s problems. Today, I am none-the-wiser I certainly know that no government can lift people from poverty without driving other sections into poverty. That the only way to solve mankind’s poverty was to let mankind’s ingenuity take lead, because every man and woman is born with the insatiable desire and zest to improve their lot, that is true for those born into royal families and for the untouchables as well.

My moment of epiphany came in when I was researching for AfricanLiberty.org’s essay competition. Sponsored by Network for Free Society, it was then that I realized the greatest fallacy that ever was about Africa’s economic history. Over time we had it ingrained in us that it was second nature for Africa to be collectivist and becommunal. African economic history selectively left out the aspects of pre-colonial Africa where African’s owned; hunting tools, land, animals. Sections of African history where individuals and particular communities were known for one trade or another, say; metal working, pottery and other trades was also relegated to the periphery.  Texts about how Africans lived together and helped each other were pronounced. In short, economic historians misconstrued African brotherliness and neighbourliness for socialism, and communism, and alas the myth that inextricably linked Africa and communalism was born.

Since I discovered the greatest lie that ever was about Africa’s a economic history I have lived my life trying to alter that have Africa and the world see the true picture of her economic history.