U.S. CORPORATION DESTROYS KENYA COMMUNITY By Grace Lee Boggs Michigan Citizen, March 4-10, 2007

Dorothy Owiti comes from Siaya Province, the region of Kenya on the eastern shore of Lake Victoria where the father of presidential hopeful Barach Obama was born. At the World Social Forum, which recently ended in Kenya, she described how the lives of her people have been destroyed by Dominion Farms, an affiliate of Dominion Group, the Oklahoma-based global corporation. In the United States Dominion builds for-profit prisons and federal buildings.

Dominion Farms moved into Siaya province in 2003 through an arrangement with the local and state authorities. After several years of negotiations, Dominion CEO Calvin Burgess leased public land from the government on a pledge to develop a high-tech fish and rice farming operation that he promised would bring jobs, reduce hunger and make Siaya and neighboring Bondo provinces the "breadbasket" of Kenya.

Until Dominion came along, the people of this part of Kenya made their living drawing water from the local Yala River. They raised goats and cows and farmed small plots of land. Widows and children harvested papyrus and sisal from the nearby swamp from which they crafted rough mats and baskets. A major habitat for endangered fish and birds, the Yala Swamp is recognized by environmentalists as one of the richest and most delicate ecosystems in East Africa. The half-million or so local residents weren't rich but they were self-sufficient. Now they are forced to live on the generosity of churches or on the corporation's handouts.

Or they migrate to Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, and survive how they can. As a result, Nairobi is now popularly known as Nai-robberi.

"Development should not bring harm to the local community," said Owiti at the World Social Forum. But that is just what has happened. In the last four years Dominion Farms has built a dam on the Yala River, drained much of the swamp, subjected the fields to aerial spraying and drowned not only public land but, residents claim, private property without legal authority.

Dominion offered residents compensation to leave their homes (generally 45,000 Kenyan shillings, approximately $64). Many, like Salome, a local grandmother, refused, but their land was submerged anyway. "I grew cabbages, I made mats, I planted maize and millet. Now all my fields are flooded," said Salome.

For those that remain, the company's dam blocks access to the river, the one available source of fresh water. "Now they want us to use standing water," explained Paul Obeira, another Yala Swamp resident. But with the standing water comes infection. Malaria and typhoid rates are rising. Now aerial spraying is killing livestock. "I have lost 110 goats and our women are suffering from health problems because of the spraying," added Obeira. Dominion Farms has applied for a permit to spray the pesticide DDT, which has been banned in this part of the world because of its negative health consequences.

In Siaya, the managers at Dominion Farms erected a massive thirty-foot cross over their compound. According to Kimani and several Yala Swamp residents, the company threatens residents that opposition to the project constitutes opposition to God's will. Some say they've been threatened with crucifixion.

"It's a classical colonial strategy to use the cross to hoodwink the people," says Cecil Agutu, organizer of a residents' support group, Friends of Yala Swamp. "At least [under colonial rule] we could see the British. Right now we have one American who flies in and out on a private plane. We can't even see him and yet he controls our resources."

“Recolonization by Globalization” is what people in Africa, Asia and Latin America call this destruction of their communities and their way of life.

When we shop at Wal-Mart’s because we think their low prices save us money, we are aiding and abetting this “Recolonization by Globalization.”

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