Shem Migot-Adhola, the dreamer who deployed wit in every battle he fought

I first met Shem Migot-Adhola (Arudhi) when, in January 1962, I was admitted into Form One at Maseno School. Shem was then in Form Three with his close friend Willis Okuthe (koko).

It was Willis who welcomed me into Britton dormitory, and thereafter became my mentor and friend. Through this connection, I slowly became a close acquaintance of Shem. I readily became their errand boy.

At this moment, Maseno school boasted of having two weekly Wallpapers “Mambo Leo” published in Kiswahili, and its sister Masop published in English. Shem and Willis edited and published “Mambo Leo”. To ascend to the fraternity of “Mambo Leo”, one had to have had an urban background from where they would have acquired fluency in Kiswahili.

Shem had his background in Nakuru, and Willis in Kisumu, while I got assimilated by virtue of my Kitale upbringing. When both Shem and Willis were promoted to Form Four, they handed “Mambo Leo” to me, a role I faithfully executed for the next three years. Through soliciting and collecting articles for publication, I had to submit, on a tight schedule, articles to Shem and Willis for final decision.

During this process, I found Shem to be a person who paid special attention to details, logical sequence in the flow of thought and themes. He was an admirer of creative thinking and original ideas. Shem and his two classmates, Willis and John Ouko Ojal (now Dr Ouko Ojal, currently resident in Germany) exhibited a high level of commitment to physical fitness as an important element in intellectual development.

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The trio was able to conquer Mt Kilimanjaro as part of a team from the Outward Bound School. On their return, they exemplified the concept of DIY by fabricating homemade keep-fit equipment which they maintained till they left the school at the end of their Form Four.

On moving to Form Four Shem was appointed the School Captain, a highly prestigious and challenging position that was normally the envy of many. Willis on the other hand was named house captain of Britton dormitory. During his tenure as school captain, Shem exhibited rare qualities, quite a contrast to his predecessor the late Justice Andrew Hayanga.

Shem was approachable, humble, and unassuming, always maintaining close contact with the general student populace. Having grown up in urban Nakuru, Shem had developed a deceptive simplicity that camouflaged the deep insight into the small but important issues that mattered in the lives of ordinary persons.

On completion of his ‘O’ level, Shem easily made it to Alliance High School where he pursued what we termed “arts subjects at ‘A’ level. At that time Maseno did not have ‘A’ level classes. He later joined the University of Dar es Salaam for his studies in Sociology. While at Dar University he made close working relationships with a renowned Canadian scholar, Richard Stren. Through this friendship, Shem recommended I assist Richard in his research project on the challenges of urban housing in Mombasa.

I readily performed the role in 1967-68 while waiting to join the University of Nairobi. Perhaps it was as a member of the infamous “Dream Team” that came into action under President Moi in July 1999, that I had more interaction with Shem. By the time of his joining the team, he was a consultant with the World Bank. He was assigned to the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development.

It is important to remember that the reason Moi was forced to accept the “Dream Team” was the rigid stand taken by the donors in their dealings with Kenya. Led by the World Bank and the IMF, these global financial institutions had suspended support for Kenya citing mismanagement of the economy and corruption.

The “Dream Team” was expected to stop the rampant corruption and bring order to the management of key sectors of the economy including Transport, Public Finance and Agriculture, which were considered critical. These areas were to be overhauled.

By installing Dr Richard Leakey as the head of public service and Secretary to the cabinet, it was expected that attention would be placed on governance issues. Members of the team were under pressure to deliver as it was widely acclaimed that the team had “hit the ground running”.

As it turned out, there were obstacles and bumps on the road to that very ambitious expectation. On his part, Shem set out to reform key infrastructure and agencies within the agricultural sector. Agricultural Finance Corporation (AFC) was a key player in the transformation of the sector through its provision of credit to the farmers. I was then the HR Manager at the corporation’s head office. In this position I interacted regularly with Shem, providing him with a reliable link into the workings of the corporation. I was able to apprise him of the major challenges facing the corporation with suggestions on how some of the pitfalls could be obviated or overcome. He was able to get firsthand information on the frustrations that the ordinary farmers were going through, particularly in the manner the loans were disbursed and subsequently lost their properties through auctions. He would have to confront head-on the cartels who owned large-scale farms in Transmara, Narok and the North Rift.

He sought to transform the (AFC) into a responsive agricultural credit delivery vehicle, free from the grip of cartels of large-scale farmers and the overload of bad loans. These loans were initiated by senior mandarins in the corridors of power.

While the “Dream Team” believed that they would restructure the Monolith that was the civil service through rationalization of the manpower complement, a manpower audit, and delayering of the bloated civil service, the senior bureaucrats at the ministries would not let go of their sources of power, numbers.

It did not help that the Directorate of Personnel Management was headed by a former provincial commissioner Joseph Kaguthi. It is worth mentioning that all the products of the provincial administration were brought up to believe in the hierarchical layering of positions with numbers whether substantive or supernumerary. Manpower audit was anathema.

The “Dream Team” was bound to fail in attempting to “cause redundancy”. Other members of the “team” also faced institution-based obstacles, particularly from the senior bureaucrats who felt threatened by their “intrusion” and mounted covert resistance to any changes to the status quo. It was not surprising, therefore to any keen observer, that once the World Bank and IMF resumed funding budgetary support programs, the Moi government was literally done with the “Dream Team”.

They had facilitated what they were meant to do and so their “sale by date” was nigh. In silence, the “Dream Team” faded into history with Sally Kosgei taking over as the head of public service and secretary to the cabinet. This came to the dismay of Richard Leakey, yes, the famous environmentalist who did not see the monster in the bush.

Through all my acquaintance with Shem, and my personal observations of his performance in both public service and in academia, Shem was a man of convictions. A man who believed, and lived in intellectual honesty, committed to the pursuit of excellence in whatever subject was a challenge of pursuit. Shem lived a humble and simple life yet full of sophistication and depth of thought.

A consummate scholar, who harbored no pretense and hypocrisy never succumbed to cheerleading or singing to anyone’s tune. A MAN of INTEGRITY. More recently, when the Uhuru Kenyatta government insisted on carving off a piece of land belonging to Kenyatta University (to donate to the WHO), without following the legal process, Shem as the chairman of the university Council would not have it. He and his board were unceremoniously fired. But he stood his ground and walked away with his head up in the sky.

In his day-to-day life, Shem never engaged in fighting imaginary “windmills” of Don Quixote fame. He had no time to waste on uncontrollable externalities. Once he saw no path to the defined goal which he had set to attain he simply retreated to silent observation.

In all his scholarly life, Shem preoccupied himself with addressing contradictions afflicting our society, in a holistic approach. He spent his energy confronting these contradictions in a way that reflected solution-oriented and result-based outcomes. Never was he ever distracted by artificial and abstract shortcut solutions that were likely to end up in futility. As a scholar, Shem was never carried away by bandwagon approaches to themes, hidden behind loud-sounding linguistic imperialism. Shem remained an amiable introvert, steadfast in the copious production of erudite monographs on both urban and rural sociological issues that critically impacted the lives of the ordinary descamisados, the misused lumpens.

As we say the final farewell to Shem Migot Adhola, we also bid farewell to disciplined scholarship, consummate intellectualism, and convictions. Beneath the façade of simplicity and aloofness, lay a treasure of witty humour and silver-lined sarcasm that made him stand out as a rare breed. And as His Sun Sets In the Silence of Time, the rest remains immortalized in the epics of courage and excellence.

And in an anthem of hope, we say

Fare Thee Well Arudhi

Fare Thee Well Illustrious Son of the Land

Angira, a renowned poet with many anthologies to his name went to Maseno School with Prof Migot-Adholla