STONE COLD HAVEN

In an early episode of the fictional hit TV drama The West Wing, the show’s President Jed Bartlett vents his fury at his Director of Intelligence. In the plot of this particular episode, the intelligence folks fail to pick up hundreds of thousands of Indian troops and their war machinery marching aggressively towards the Kashmiri Pakistani border in a clearly provocative move that will not bode well for the two nuclear armed neighbours.

In disbelief, Jed Bartlett angrily berates his intelligence chief by pointing out that his motorcade can’t move from K Street in the middle of DC to Connecticut without being picked up on a weather satellite. Aaron Sorkin and his production team obviously did their research well in coming up with a realistic depiction of the plot that is the challenging project of moving the most powerful man in the world from location A to location B.

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There are fewer things in the world more cynical than a bunch of…let’s say, pin stripe suited men sitting in a board room (without any women present of course –,well, tell a lie, except for Mildred in the corner taking minutes or Deidra the tea lady who pops in once in a while to top up the biscuits and make sure the tea pot is fresh) discussing solutions about how to fight gender discrimination in the work place.

Or maybe, a conference about “The Kenya we want” that is fronted by the old school establishment of unsavoury, incompetent and outright dodgy characters who have had over 40 years to provide the Kenya folks needed in the first place but failed spectacularly. (Speaking of which – what was the point in holding a conference when the answer to the question of “What Kenyans want?” is succinctly captured in breathtaking precision in the Kenyan national anthem).

Anyway, it was interesting to note that once again, there was a “high profile” (this word is as abused as the word normal coz’ clearly, it’s a relative state of affairs) conference bringing together the good and the great who classify themselves as world experts on poverty alleviation and eradication.

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