Opinion by Bior Garang – Student Writer
From the first day, it was proposed as a public holiday, October 10th was destined to always be a controversial day in Kenya.
Although the Kenyan government had officially renamed the day ”Utamaduni” day from its more meaningful full ”Huduma” day in 2020, global calendars are yet to be updated to reflect this new normal.
The story of how things got untidy for October 10th goes back to the days when in Kenyan history rulers were in the habit of instituting special days to remember their legacies. Historically, October 10th marked the ascending to power by the second president of Kenya, the late Mzee Daniel Torotich Arap Moi, and as such he had to set aside this day to remember his legacy. Thus, Moi Day was inked into the countries’ executive orders and later into the constitution.
In 2010, when the Kenyan constitution got amended by popular demand and officially enacted, Moi Day was the first victim of mass dissatisfaction, given that the day reminded many of the infamous one-man party rule. However since its removal had legal implications a landmark judicial judgment by Kenya’s Supreme Court in 2017 advised and ruled that instead of removing the holiday from the Kenyan calendar, it should be renamed and given a new significance.
In a rushed attempt to be constitutionally correct, the then Government of President Uhuru Kenyatta renamed the defunct Moi Day, Huduma Day a term refereeing to service in the native Swahili Language in an attempt to reflect the holiday’s new spirit. From 2017 onwards, October 10th has been honored in Kenya as Huduma Day.
After nine years of the 10th of October existing as Huduma Day, the Controversial Handshake that ushered in the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI), needed to have something memorable and December 26 was set aside for Utamaduni day to cement BBI’s importance.
Unfortunately, the architects of this scheme were unaware that according to global laws, an internationally recognized holiday could not be renamed by a specific country, and as such a day had to be found. The low-hanging 10th of October was up for grabs again and the Handshake Government of BBI then re-arranged the Kenya National Holidays to have Utamaduni Day fall on October 10th and Huduma Day erased from its calendar.
Despite the 10th of October being re-instated as Utamaduni Day the state did not give a way forward on how it would be celebrated and as such, Kenyans are left to be creative and create communal activities to mark Utamaduni Day, further deepening the controversy around this day.
So how does utamaduni day resonate with South Sudanese Kenyan refugees?
In a recent UNHCR African Refugee situational report, Kenya is now the second biggest refugee-hosting country in Africa after Ethiopia. The majority of these refugees are from the neighbouring countries of Somalia (53.7%) and South Sudan (24.7%).
Given that Utamaduni is a Swahili word for culture and extension Utamaduni day being a day to celebrate culture in Kenya, refugees communities who bring with them diverse cultural heritages that become a part of the wider host country cultures would at least on this day also get embraced in the cultural festivals.
However,given that Kenya is one of the countries that practices the callous refugee encampment policy, these refugees by law are congregated together in refugee camps with very few who can survive on their own by precariously residing in urban centres.
As the second largest refugee population in Kenya with over 30 years of protracted stay and making up 24.7% of the total refugee population, South Sudanese refugees in Kenya have defied the encampment policy. Consequently, there have been a huge number of South Sudanese refugees settling in urban areas, many usually co-living with other non-refugee family members who might reside in urban areas as South Sudanese immigrants in Kenya.
Recent UNHCR Urban Refugee statistics show that Eldoret alone has 2,746, refugees while Nairobi, Mombasa, and Nakura collectively have 88,88.
Local South Sudanese community estimates shows the top three urban areas with the largest number of South Sudanese populations being Nakuru, Eldoret, and Nairobi, in that order. Eldoret has the second largest South Sudanese population in Kenya with the South Sudanese community making a lot of local headlines with some being positive and other not so positive.
To cater to these large urban refugees populations the Kenya Department of refugee services, which previously had Nairobi and Mombasa, established additional Urban Reception Centres in Nakuru and Eldoret, with the Eldoret field office being mainly a subsidiary of the main Kakuma Field office.
In Eldoret whenever October 10th arrives for the South Sudanese refugee populations, instead of showcasing their rich cultural heritage and joining the festivities with their Kenya brothers, this day is marked in silence as a reminder of how difficult life as a refugee can be, especially when the authorities mandated to fight for and protect your rights as a forcefully displaced person are the same individuals violating them.
The great Silence on the 10th of October from the Department of Refugee Services
On their website, the Ministry of Interior & Coordination of national government state department for interior and citizen services: Department of refugee services, retraces its origins back to the colonial eras when after independence a Secretariat was set up by the Government under the Ministry of Home Affairs to handle refugee registration, documentation, and settlement programs.
As one of their constitutional mandates the Department of Refugee Services is empowered under Section 8 of the Refugee Act 2021 to “initiate, in collaboration with the development partners, projects that promote peaceful and harmonious co-existence between the host communities and refugees.” Given that sharing of cultural heritages has been known as the best way various communities can understand their diversity and form stronger harmonious bonds of unity and peace for better co-existence, it thus becomes surprising to note that instead of vigorously organizing for the October 10th to be a day where refugee populations all over the country should showcase their cultures and celebrate the diverse cultural heritage Kenya has with their refugee populations, the Department chooses to remain silent.
The failed Eldoret Department of Refugee Services
Given the favorable geographical positioning of Eldoret, with it being a central locality with most refugees entry points in Kenya, and the fact that it had over the year become home to a sizable South Sudanese population, Eldoret was picked to host one of the Department of Refugee Services’ field offices.
Instead of this turning out to be a blessing for the local refugee populations as services would be brought closer to them, the Eldoret Department of Refugee Services field offices has proved a nightmare for many starting from the very basic inability to locate and find it, to the overall breakdown of service delivery.
The invisible Department of Refugee Services.
When one is a new refugee in need of services rendered by the Department of Refugee Services in the Eldoret field office, then your woes start from the initial struggles of first locating the physical location of these premises. The office has developed a reputation of being known as “the invisible department.” In addition to there being no directions to where the actual offices are located, the offices by design were tucked away into the last room of the last building in a very complicated unmarked immigration compound-complex. Finding the department then becomes an act of rudimentary topographical positioning, involving asking strangers about the whereabouts of an office they might have never known existed
We are not here for you Department of Refugee Services
When by some miracle you finally locate the offices you will be met by stern-faced officers whose physical and emotional language tells you that they are not happy to be there and your presence is another painful transaction to be suffered. When you get brave enough to ask what you are after from the first desk, which is always manned by an official who is unprofessional on the best days.
The Nightmare Department of Refugee Services for refugee students
After going through the initial screening questions and humiliating procedures where no single officer ever seems to be aware of what exactly they should be doing and how they should be doing it, the very dreaded question that every student fears is asked of whether you have ever applied for any alien ID before.
Now for those unfortunate students who might have applied for this unholy student Alien ID, the beginning of their nightmares that usually spans up to five years of being sent back and forth with no clear explanations or instructions on how to end the cycle.
Finally, when one is at the end of their wits and hasn’t given up on applying for a refugee Alien ID the poor student is then told to by some miracle to make it to Nairobi without any travelling documents or assistance and locate the Ministry of Interior, where they will apply for a session request to be removed from the same system where they will be re-entered in afresh as refugees status. This is something that would have not taken them more than an hour over a simple phone call, but instead takes unimaginable psychological as well as financial toll on the unfortunate refugee students who, apart from battling the horrors of being a refugee in a foreign country, suffer torment and damage in the hands of those expected to protect and service them.