I remember meeting him. I remember meeting him so clearly it seems just like yesterday.

There were a handful of us in the lecturer room on the first day of the Writing for the Screen class in 1998.  None of us knew him personally, but his reputation preceded him.  We had been told he was one of the most brilliant minds of his generation.  That he was the next ‘It’ kid.  The next big thing on the African film scene.  He had already won several awards for his directorial debut in 1993 and subsequent successes.  The buzz around him was full of expectation and promise.

When he walked into the class a few minutes late, we were willing to forgive him for his tardiness.  He looked nothing like a brilliant mind, but who were we to judge.  After all, from our limited experience, artistic types were always eccentric.  Always bohemian.

He wore a nondescript brown embroidered free flowing African shirt on top of a cream polo neck despite the fact that it was 28 degrees outside.  He tucked these two poorly paired tops into his beige trousers, which he accessorized with a large plain black briefcase.  He was surrounded with an air of expectation and excitement and he breathily introduced himself to us, with the enthusiasm of a five-year-old at Disney Land.

Over the next 10 weeks we explored the beauty of the silver screen.  We pored through pages of some of the best scripts, debated camera shots, lighting, storylines, characterization and casting.  We laughed at his jokes and cried when he spoke about the pain of being seperated by time and space from the love of his life in Australia.

I did my best work in that Writing for the Screen class and was proud of the A+ I got for it, but I was extremely sad when the semester came to an end.  He was an inspiration and I carried a lot of his ‘nuggets of wisdom’ with me for a few years after that.

But that was then.  And this is now.  And I can’t believe what has become of my old college professor, Dr. Alfred N. Mutua.

I can’t believe my professor is the same man who pompously calls himself “Baghdad Mutua” in a feeble attempt to make his position as Kenya government spokesperson more important than it really is.  I am baffled by his inhuman spin on the situation in Kenya and the amateur way he downplayed the mediation efforts of African Union chairperson John Kufuor, claiming the Ghanaian president visited Kenya last week to have a cup of tea with his old friend Mwai Kibaki.

It was with much horror that I viewed Mutua’s webpage and saw with my own eyes what a megalomaniac he has become.  He is a man so consumed with his perceptions of his own self-importance that pictures of him being interviewed by Chinese journalists make for the top story on his official webpage instead of the humanitarian crisis across the country.

According to Mutua, there is no crisis in Kenya.  Clearly my college professor is deaf and blind and is being advised by a group nincompoops.

Joseph Karoki characterizes the change in my one-time mentor thus:

Dr. Alfred Mutua has become a symbol of dysfunction, inaccuracy and his performance as the Official Government spokesman can only be described as impotent. Listen Alfred it takes a special kind of stupid to say (things like) this.

Another day, another fallen god.

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On other issues pertaining to our Sister on the Eastern Side, Joseph Karoki’s Insight Kenya blog is absolutely brilliant.  It is a rich daily roll of pictures, news and views on the ongoing situation in Kenya.  It is worth a visit and another and another and another …