There was once a man named Nasrudin. Nasrudin was a 13th Century man, and it is believed he lived his whole life in the area that is today known as Turkey. It was of course called something else back then.
Like all famous characters from that period and in that area of the Near East, Middle East and Central Asia, Nasrudin went by other names: Nasrudin Hodja and Mulla Nasrudin Hodja, to name just two.
Known throughout the Middle East even to this day, Nasrudin is remembered for his funny stories and anecdotes. A satirist, populist philosopher, Sufi and wise man, Nasrudin appears in thousands of stories in which he is sometimes witty, sometimes wise, but often a fool or the butt of a joke, earning him the moniker Mulla Nasrudin, the wise fool of Eastern folklore.
On the surface, most of Nasrudin’s stories are told as jokes, but they work on many levels. There is the joke, but when you turn it over in your noggin, the humour works its way to profound thought. One such story is that of Nasrudin’s ring, and it goes:
Nasrudin was at his house when he lost his ring in the living room. He searched for it for a while, but since he could not find it, he got up off his knees and started making his way out of the house. As he was leaving, his wife asked, ‘Mulla, where are you going?’ To which Nasrudin replied, ‘I am going out to the yard.’
Once outside, Nasrudin got on his knees and started looking for his ring. A neighbour happened by and decided to do the neighbourly thing and help Nasrudin look. But after some time without success, the neighbour asked, ‘Where exactly did you lose your ring?’
And Nasrudin said, ‘Inside my house.’ Exasperated, the neighbour asked, ‘Then why are we looking for it out here?’
‘Because there is more light here,’ Nasrudin answered.
Remember what I said about Nasrudin’s stories working on many levels. This one is the wise man hidden in a fool’s behaviour and is meant to show us the folly of our human tendencies. The folly this story is shining a spotlight on is our tendency to look for solutions where we think it will be easiest to find the answer, instead of looking in the place where the solutions are.
I can’t think of a better example of this folly than the proposal that Kenya Airways (KQ) take over Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) from Kenya Airports Authority (KAA) for a period of 30 years. If you missed it, basically Kenya Airways has been on a quest to get its hands on JKIA (and its revenue) so as to turnaround the airline’s debt-ridden, perennial loss-making fortunes.
Now, I won’t speculate as to whether it is mismanagement, incompetence or corruption that has led to KQ being in all this financial trouble, but whatever it is, KQ lost it in-house. But rather than look where they lost it, get its act together running its core business, KQ and proponents of this takeover-JKIA plan are looking where it’s easiest to find an answer, but the wrong place to look for answers to their particular set of problems.
Quite literally KQ, like Nasrudin, is out in the yard, on its knees on a JKIA runaway, looking… ‘Because there is more light here.’
