– Kenyans love their politics –
Beyond UNEP, the last 10 years have been for Steiner and his family a cultural immersion in all things Kenyan.
Perhaps having learnt from Safaricom’s Bob Collymore’s faux pas, he professes an appreciation for ugali and nyama choma whose consumption, he says, his family limits to a weekly meal.
“In UNEP we’re always trying to persuade people that we shouldn’t necessarily aim to eat meat every day so we do it in rations,” he explains.
He also counts as among his successes his ability to stay above the politics of the day marvelling at how much it informs social discourse.
“By that I don’t mean to be in any way patronising. I think what is striking for everybody who comes from outside and arrives in Kenya is there is a very vibrant political culture. There is free speech, there is a media that reports on politics, there is debate, and newspapers. I think sometimes Kenyans underestimate what an extraordinarily alive political culture they have.”
That’s not to say the political class hasn’t influenced him, or more specifically his fashion sense, in making the green tie his trademark. “I saw the first George Bush wearing a green tie at a press conference at the White House and I thought well that looks like a nice colour so it wasn’t an act of ideological fashion.”
Over the last decade Steiner has borne witness to the post-election violence that rocked the country in 2008 and seen Kenya rise from the ashes of that tragedy to adopt a new Constitution.
But still, he says, he sees flashes of that conflict in the political discourse of the day and wishes Kenyans could channel that, “political energy and talent,” more constructively as witnessed after the September, 2013 attack on the Westgate mall.
He was in New York at the time, he says, but flew back as soon as soon as his wife called him and informed him of what had happened, to stand in solidarity with Kenya.
“It was sad to see the pain and grief that it caused to Kenyans and yet at the same time see the extraordinary response that it generated was both a very sad moment and also a moment in which we all grew closer whether as foreigners who work here or Kenyans from all walks of life. It was an extraordinary moment in which those who sought to hurt Kenya made the nation stronger.”
Along with his experience as UNEP Executive Director, it’s these memories of the last 10 years that Steiner takes with him as his term comes to a close in the same season it started.
