The ‘Airlift Program’ and the Making of a ‘Glocal’ Citizen: Exploring the Nomadic Subject in Philip Ochieng’s Biography, The 5^th Columnist: A Legendary Journalist (2015) by Liz Gitonga-Wanjohi

Abstract

The story of Kenyans who travelled to study in the United States of America, in what is known as the airlifts program and, its resultant implications on the project of the nation building, is well known. So much has been extensively written and documented in various forms on this subject from multiple and multi-layered dimensions and perspectives. However, my entry into this subject is through a critical encounter with Philip Ochieng’s life’s story, who happens to be one of the airlift beneficiaries to the United States of America, as reconstructed by Liz Gitonga-Wanjohi. I am especially interested in the way that his (Ochieng’s) life-story in this reconstruction is proliferated with aspects of nomadism. I discern nomadism in this discussion in a plural sense. As both literal and figurative, manifested through his practices of the everyday rituals of life. I argue that the nomadic tendencies, exhibited in his total lifestyle, define him as a glocal citizen: always oscillating between and betwixt the local and global spaces, languages and ideologies. In reading the nomadic subject, that is Ochieng, I consciously and cautiously, rely on Rosi Braidotti’s ideas of nomadic subjects as accentuated in her book Nomadic Subjects.