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I guess a visitor knows when he is no longer needed at the host’s house.
Little hints start being dropped. An intelligent and honourable individual would pick up on the hints and make a quiet exit.
Not the foolish one, who would keep hanging around despite all the humiliation thrown at him. In an African home, he becomes the single cause of drought in the house when taps run dry.
He miraculously fills up the pit latrine from the reduced food now given. He gets blamed for depleting the eggs from infertile chicken and wearing out the television.
One can move from being the most welcome guest to the most distasteful creature in a blink of an eye.
The academics and invitees to conferences in the UK must now feel like unwanted guests following the sustained visa refusals for them to attend events in the UK.
It is still unclear as to why the UK has allegedly been on a roll in declining record number of visas for African experts wishing to attend events in the UK.
Top on the mind of most conspiracy theorists is that it is all a racist agenda. In that the old colonial master has turned his back on African experts in favour of the white ones.
It is very easy to jump on a racist bandwagon when it comes to what Africans would consider unacceptable behaviour by their white counterparts or former colonies.
For someone who has had a stint in Europe, I will tell you black people pull the racist card all the time. But are we always right even when it is entirely our fault sometimes?
I remember the first time I drove on English roads. I just wheezed past traffic lights without a glance as long as the exits around me were clear. I sped along any avenues.
When I got in trouble with the police, I cried racism till I turned hoarse. The bad habits I acquired in Nairobi where traffic lights never worked so our hapless police could get excuses for bribes, where driving drunk is the norm and an avenue being a wide open road I could speed liberally on, got me in trouble in a place that traffic rules are feared more than God.
Our unsavoury behaviour that we have let to fester in Africa, mostly borne of corruption, is what seems to create tension wherever we travel abroad.
During my driving lessons, I could distinguish the different traffic lights on the Driving Theory booklet. But once I hit Nairobi roads, the reality was something completely alien to me.
I was met by traffic lights that never lit, with the light bulbs gouged out and loose wires being the only evidence of lights having once lived inside the poles.
I remember them being permanently locked on red, but cars still sped past them. To me red light always meant Go!
At my first visit to England, I was under the impression jumping traffic lights is a global phenomenon and I easily did it.
As old habits die hard, our bad behaviour on the roads is translocated elsewhere. Hence, why many Kenyans commit traffic offences abroad.
Unfortunately, if it’s a place with strict traffic codes, then it becomes a bother to many who end up paying for their malfeasance with time in prison should injury or even death occur through negligence.
Just as Kenya’s chaotic traffic lights analogy, we have rules in place in many of our organisations but do little to enforce them.
The problems affecting African universities and research centres are analogous to our road traffic lights.
They’re there to educate and produce exemplary citizens, but the opposite is happening. They’ve acquired notoriety like our chaotic roads for being lawless, corrupt and lazy.
Our fraudulent behaviour now starts even earlier with principals in schools busy exchanging spaces for cash to the detriment of clever but poor pupils.
Universities, especially in Kenya, have become factories for churning out fake degrees.
Lying in exams and thesis is something that has now been exported abroad, especially to the UK and US, where at a fee a university student abroad can have his/her work done in Kenya.
It’s easy to assume that visas are denied for racist reasons or fears by developed countries that successful visa applicants will refuse to return home.
However, could it be that the calibre of those who purport to attend these events are not qualified to be there in the first place?
That they are professors and doctorate fellows in name only and what they call a PhD degree was in fact faked within the universities?
I can’t imagine the security implication of people with fake documents in any given country.
Kenya bears witness with the 1998 US Embassy bombers allegedly acquiring fake Kenyan documents.
Why should foreign countries not be concerned for their security, education standards and research programmes given our production and tolerance for fake academic papers and IDs?
By compromising the integrity of education and research institutions, we have lost credibility in the world. For them to earn respect from their peers globally, they must restore credibility in education first.
Ms Guyo is a legal researcher in Kenya and the United Kingdom
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