Learning Kenyanese

RIP Megaupload

2012-01-21T15:42:00.000+03:00

"I want to be like some terrorist, a socio-cultural terrorist. Radical and careless." _ Mehul Gohil, Farah Aideed Goes To The Gulf War

Amid all the noise surrounding SOPA and PIPA - a fresh attempt againt the current freedom enjoyed by internet users in the USA - many pundits had already predicted a worldwide detriment if the two bills were passed into law, hardly a surprise given the way that US foreign and economic policy seems to dictate that of the rest of the world, especially those of us in the Third World. Sure enough, the first casualty has faced the firing squad and its dismembered head is being displayed all over the internets, much akin to the infamous Osama slaying. Friends, Megaupload is no more!!

Yes, the Feds launched an indictment against owners and managers of the file-sharing site that we have come to use and love so much on various charges of copyright infringement that goes into the hundreds of millions of dollars. In addition, access to millions of links to files hosted by Megaupload is now impossible since it has been completely shut down. Of course, the pain and loss is being felt not only by American users but nearly the entire internet universe, including my very own virtual front door. I happened to use Megaupload exclusively to up my Mixcloud-hosted mixes along with other miscellaneous .rar files for private distribution. I now have to deal with re-upping around 5GB of files with the obvious time and money implications (this is Kenya, high-speed net at affordable prices are still something of a pipe dream, you know).

This murderous event is perhaps a foreshadow of the events to come if at all SOPA and PIPA are passed by the US legislative system. Perhaps a complete shut-down of other common file sharing sites: Rapidshare, Fileserve, Zshare or the increasingly popular late comer, Hulkshare? It could spell the end of YouTube, Vimeo and perhaps even the transformation of Facebook and Twitter to such levels of redundancy that the Chinese internet space is already used to.

Besides, the war on internet based piracy could present an interesting backlash against the spirit of American foreign policy. In Africa and other parts of the Third World, this war may rejuvenate traditional forms of piracy - physical bootlegging of CDs, DVDs, books etc - run by organised criminal enterprises, enterprises that have been proven to have links to terrorism, especially targeting America as opposed to the second degree bootlegging stemming from internet piracy itself (eg. that 50 bob movie guy you normally go to).

To some extent I have always considered Direct and P2P file-sharing a gift to the Third World, something like international donor funding only of the intellectual property kind. I mean, the way things are just do not support anything else!! Distribution of movies, books, films etc etc to Africa (and Kenya in particular) is currently pretty shitty as opposed to the vinyl 70s and 80s for example. physical distribution is expensive while internet-based distribution models such as iTunes requires retailers to own credit cards, while a majority of the population remains unbanked. Before the creators and distributors of intellectual property look for more innovative ways of marketing and selling their commodities to Africa (such as partnering with mobile money transfer systems such as M-Pesa) I do not see how the current status quo will fail to subsist.

The Machage/Kapondi/Miller Case: A Good Electronic Evidence Precedent?

2011-12-17T12:08:00.001+03:00

The Case

Earlier this year, MPs Fred Kapondi and Wilfred Machage along with businesswoman Christine Nyagitha Miller were brought before a Nairobi Court on charges of hate speech contrary to the National Cohesion and Integration Act, 2008. These charges were based on the facts that they were allegedly caught on video making inciting statements amounting to hate speech during the launch of the NO campaign team's secretariat on June 10 last year, right in the climax of the constitutional referendum debate. Edited versions of the video recordings were later broadcast by various broadcasting stations in their news segments, prompting the National Cohesion and Integration Commission to initiate charges against the three.

This is not the first time that a criminal case based majorly on video evidence has been brought before the courts. The Edward Kirui murder trial was the first of such, but instead of providing good precedents as to how to treat evidence that is electronic in nature, the judge instead (and correctly) concentrated on the creation of reasonable doubt by discrepancies as to the serial numbers of the bullet and alleged murder weapon. This present case thus provided (in the eyes of many) a fresh opportunity to treat electronic evidence with the weight it currently deserves, given the various amendments to the Evidence Act and the enactment of other statutes such as the Kenya Communication (Amendment)Act.

The Judgement

However, Nairobi Chief Magistrate Gilbert Mutembei's judgement of this case has again fallen short, reflecting the judiciary's stubborn stance and negative attitude towards digital evidence. He declared the video evidence inadmissible on the main ground that it did not comply with the provisions of the rules of evidence. To further elaborate, the Magistrate further observed that:

The cameramen who recorded the videos could not narrate to the court what the accused had said as they were concentrating more on the "quality" of the recordings than what was being said.Quoted: “Michael Mbugua as a camera man could not narrate to court what any of the accused had said because he was concentrating on quality.The second witness Geoffrey Wamugo who is a journalist did not testify that he heard the accused utter words ‘particularized’ in each of the charges” (In other words, the magistrate seemed to treat the evidence as secondary evidence that cannot be admissible until corroborated).
The video footage played in court as evidence was not the full coverage of what they said since it had been edited for broadcast purposes.
For any printed record or magnetic media to be admitted as evidence, there must be prove through certificates confirming the authenticity of the records.
The Magistrate summarized the failures of the prosecution as follows:
“The prosecution failed to comply with the clear provision of evidence as regards the production of electronic evidence in court,the evidence was critical and its omission is fatal in the case against the accused.”

The Law

Several questions spring form this ruling: Are there "clear provisions of evidence" as regards production of electronic evidence? Must the facts shown in/recorded by electronic evidence in general, and video evidence in particular, be corroborated by the creator or is the evidence good in itself? Should the video evidence be provided in full or can it be provided partially? What constitutes certification when it comes to electronic evidence?

In my opinion, the provisions of law that provide for the production of electronic evidence are far from "clear". Section 106B of The Evidence Act provides that such electronic records shall be deemed to be documents and admissible without further proof if certain conditions are fulfilled.Subsection 4 of the same section is what proves problematic and is, in my opinion, ambiguous as to whether a certificate is required to make any statements regarding electronic records or whether any matter stated in a certificate as regard the electronic record is good evidence in itself, in the same manner affidavits work. There is no provision as to the form of the certificate in question: Could an ordinary affidavit or even the witness statement of the cameraman and the journalist been sufficiently deemed to be certificates?

The Evidence Act is silent on whether electronic records should be provided in their full form (such as in this case, the entire recording of the event where the inciting statements were made) or whether they can be provided partially, as in the case of news items showing parts of the clips.

Conclusion

It is hard to particularly fault Mutembei's decision. The relevant sections of the Evidence Act relating to electronic records are written in a manner that treats this type of evidence as documentary/paper evidence, leading to a lot of difficulties in interpretation. The very nature of digital evidence, as I had earlier pointed out, requires different and specific rules on how to deal with them. The current rules are scanty at best and fatally ambiguous at worst. Digital evidence can easily be tampered with and altered at the mere click of a button. Mere certification does not guarantee the integrity of this type of evidence. Other techniques such as time-stamping and the use of experts to analyze electronic records should be explored and integrated into these provisions. The only good that has come out his judgement is perhaps it creates the precedent that if video evidence is to be produced as evidence, it shall be produced in its entirety as originally recorded and not in edited form.

In addition, the prosecution has once again come out as the main undoing of a seemingly straightforward case. The prosecution did not consider it important to secure the original recordings but instead chose to rely on snippets from news broadcasts - more like presenting to court the relevant pages of a past judgement instead of the entire document with the relevant parts highlighted. From what I have gathered so far (until I read the entire judgement and not just the reports), the prosecution seemed to have been casual in gathering the evidence, authenticating the evidence and producing it in court. But then again, with the silence/ambiguity of the Evidence Act, it is hard to blame them as well. This case exposes the extreme difficulty with which the judiciary and the entire legal profession in Kenya is still trying to deal with electronic evidence. More are on the way, without a doubt...let's watch.

Huff, Puff, Sting: Lumumba's First TKO?

2011-08-23T12:36:00.006+03:00

"Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee!" _ Muhammad Ali

The state at helm of the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission (KACC) since its inception way back in 2003 has always been a reflection of the state of the entire machinery itself. Aaron Ringera first took the helm with declarations that all sorts of "small fish, big fish and little fish" running the risk of falling prey to the brand new anti-graft nets. However, by the end of his second term, Ringera had little to show in terms of "big fish" notwithstanding the fact that 4.6 billion shillings worth of omena-like dealings had been detected and prevented in the space of four years. Attempted recovery of proceeds from the Goldenberg scandal and other misdeeds abroad had fallen flat on its face. In fact, the highlight of Ringera's directorship was the huge row arising from the debate as to the legality of the process that led to his re-appointment for a second term.

When PLO Lumumba replaced Ringera last year, the general perception was that the status quo would subsist - more huffing and puffing (with a lot more eloquence this time) without any tangible results. Indeed the status quo seemed not to have changed at all and things began to take the form of yet another omena fishing expedition. Most of the high profile corruption cases seemed to be heading towards failure in court and our TV screens were awash with the somewhat thrilling footage of bribe-taking traffic police men and women being chased into banana plantations as a testament that the KACC was "working".

It thus follows that many had been caught by surprise yesterday's claims by PLO that Assistant minister Cecily Mbarire and her husband had allegedly approached him to compromise the investigations into the scandal that has bedeviled the Water Ministry, and that the duo had unfortunately escaped the dragnet of the "sting operation" that the good Director had laid out for them. According to what I gathered from the director's statement (which at certain points sounded like part of The Wire's script), Ksh. 100,000 was held out in his direction by Cecily Mbarire and her husband, Dennis Apaa, possibly in an attempt to turn things around and accuse him of demanding a bribe. Of course, Hon. Mbarire has termed the allegations as untrue and malicious.

Whether this incident goes further than this or not, PLO (and the KACC in general) has scored vital points in its war against high profile corruption and has also highlighted the state of the commission at the present moment. If the allegations are indeed true, this may highlight how high up the ladder the agents of corruption are willing to go, or have previously gone to protect their interests. Additionally, his public rejection of these corrupt offers could also be a testament of the effectiveness of the vetting culture that has recently been embraced. Having been one of the first public officers appointed after a very rigourous vetting process, it is unlikely that he will want to be among the first to fail the integrity test.

If indeed a sting operation was launched and failed due to a tip off, this could be an indicator of the disadvantage of not granting the KACC arresting powers and thus their need to collaborate with the police/CID. We all know the corruption problems our police force is plagued with. Couple that with the nature of high level corruption being very confidential and need to share sensitive information across these two institutions in order to effect an arrest, and a leak looks very likely in this scenario. The Prevention of Corruption Act (the law establishing the KACC) needs to be reviewed to grant the KACC some form of arresting powers.

All in all things are looking very good for Lumumba at the moment. He has dealt a significant sucker punch at the seemingly impenetrable walls of high-level corruption and scored vital public confidence points while at it. Like the boxing great, Muhammad Ali, PLO Lumumba is slowly coming out as one who can REALLY talk the talk and is not afraid to get into the ring either. Let's watch...

UPDATE: Well, this sadly proved to be PLO's last fight. Barely days into the Mbarire incident, the KACC top brass was fired - a move clearly machinated by Parliament, perhaps stunned by PLO's surprise attack on the status quo of impunity.

Beef With Soap & Hearing Aids

2011-01-18T16:31:00.017+03:00

Dear Kenyans (preferably those in the Navy or those with private yachts),

Happy New year folks!!! I know we are almost into another new month but it seems like the year has simply refused to take off just yet....for me that is. Its like am in a dream that I cant wake up from and in this dream, I'm just looking at a pendulum swing left right, right left, like something is bound to happen really soon. Its quite sad but I guess I am not in isolation. Kencell...or is it Celtel...or is it Zain...or is it Airtel...Never mind, that telecomm company with half of a hearing aid kit as its logo is in the same boat and they are desperately trying to call for help but it seems they are the only one with the hearing aid in a nation of deaf mtejas.

Yes, I feel like Hearing Aid Co. is making its last clutch at the straw before sinking into another logo in the name of their new promo - Feelanga Free 1 bob per minute. But Rene Meza doesn't seem to have profit on his mind right now, all he is intent on doing right now is grabbing Safaricom's Bob "Call-More" by the nuts until the new logo design is completed. No wonder their old logo is still scattered along some parts of the country...

I'm all for saving that hearing aid logo, because its really good looking. and in fact one of the best there is around so I'll be taking most of my calls on Airtel hoping that we wont return to the dark days of pink Kencell and their mundane advertising:

Speaking of mundane advertising, I can see a couple of chaps stuck with me and Hearing Aid Co. in this vessel of misery. In true Smallville fashion, a meteor fell into one of Bidco's oil processing facilities and out came a man in a dazzling white suit weilding amazing bars of soap of different colours that could wash off nearly everything a few centimetres short of corruption on a Kenyan politician's psyche... and thus Nuru Multi-Purpose Soap was born. Check the amazing promo ad for it below:

A few of us however sat back halfway through the dazzling display and pondered: If the SOAP is MULTIPURPOSE, why then are they showing us DIFFERENT SOAPS used for DIFFERENT PURPOSES??? Why not ONE, yes, ONE MULTICOLOURED and MULTIPURPOSE SOAP???. *sigh*

And indeed, like Noah's Ark, this boat was not devoid of animals and what better animal than to have a bull, yes, perfect to pounce on when me and Rene Meza are in need of some beef. The only problem with this bull is that he is busy hawking... wait for it, wait for it....BEEF FLAVOUR!!! *facepalm*, that even knocked the decibels of mundanity off the Hearing Aid and the Soap(s)...I was lost for words really when this Bull ( his name is Beefy Bob, I'm told) tried its sales pitch on me. At least a friend of mine recovered and managed to get some thoughts through:

"Beefy Bob on the other hand is the one that disturbs me the most..first,that nose of his is enormous. Secondly why in God's good earth would i want vegetables to taste like BEEF...if its beef i want to taste, i will go hunt down a cow (or just go to njoro's butchery) and cook the fleshy substance!And when a talking beef is trying to sell his own flavor then he should be held suspect..or taken through psychological treatment to regain his self-worth!"

SOMEBODY HELP ME GET OFF THIS BOAT!!!

Signed,

Deceased-in-Advance.

Quo Signo Nata Es?

2010-12-20T14:38:00.005+03:00

"Im gonna buy a gun and start a war/ if you can tell me something worth fighting for. . ." - Coldplay

Sometimes suicidal thoughts permeate your mind when you are writing a mwakenya for the 20th page of your 200 page handout a day to an exam, as you watch four o'clock news when someone called the Attorney General comes up smiling to announce as he has for the past 12 years, that yet another politician can take away our few billions due to our lack of evidence but, somewhere in that glint of his eyes, comes the message of "Ye who be without sin cast the first stone". . . And you remember how u bribed the electricity bill man to "misread" the metre. In the same spirit will another man called The Speaker come and tell you that your politician is already highly taxed. . . And then somebody called the President, who has never as much raised his voice at a kitchen cabinet for taking away the national cake to their own houses, is at pains to describe to you how he is sleeping with only one woman. . .officially that is.

And in other news, your neighbour was beheaded yesterday. By Mzee Xs boys and their friends. . . These people who purport to be the true descendants of the Mau Mau. . .deprived of their birthrights. . . Yes, we owe them for life for our liberation? Then you wonder if freedom fighting was a sacrifice or a contract to paid mercinaries. . . And if its the latter. . .you wonder who is supposed to bear the burden of a contract that they were not privy to?

You get a chance to shout out to your homies on The Beat. . .then it hits you, one pal died in a supermarket fire as he struggled to get through a locked emergency exit. Another was felled by police bullets in his own house as they pursued suspected robbers. . . You don't raise your voice so that you don't lose excess calories given a meal a day requires the tendencies of an anorexic teenage model wannabe. And you find yourself shouting out to "Kalonzo kalonzo hivi. . .Ruto Ruto hivi" to show mercy on the rest of us and "shukisha unga chini ili pia sisi tuweze kula kiasi hivi".

You stoop down to drop a coin to the beggars bowl as his counterpart picks your pocket. . . Its a crime to seem so "sufficiently philanthropic" these days. . .apparently. Then you curse yourself for having not got a car by now. Preferably one with tinted windows so that you cannot see these children of lesser gods. . .scum who don't appreciate mercy. . . You curse yourself for having ignored the sign "DON'T FEED THE MONKEYS" as you walked through this zoo. . . Monkey see, monkey do. .so chances are you're a monkey too! That random beggar there had knelt in a semi-Ghandi stoop, much like you had done after the office bash when your boss demanded a blow job to move you up the corporate stratum. . . Sigh!

And you begin to contemplate how the hell you refused to sign that illegal cheque at the office, gotten your cut and shut the hell up. . . Dignity seems to be only preserved for those who can feed it with another's blood. . .

And then your eyes acquire the strange glint you had detected when Kamlesh Pattni pleaded not guilty. The same glint in Eric Kiraithe's eyes as he dismissed police killings on camera as movies. The same glint in their eyes as we watch the entertainment show called "KTN News at 9" as these comedians juggle your life in their hands. . .as these magicians show you how your tax money can disappear. . .how your oil, maize and even votes can disappear into thin air. . . And at the end we all give them a standing ovation for putting on a great show. Bravo bravo!!!

May he minus sin cast the first stone? If so, then may the one with a bigger speck in their eye be hit with a bigger stone. . . In a few seconds, we will have 210 dead bodies. . .all of them with names starting with "Hon. XYZ."

And you dismiss yourself for trying to think a bit too smartly so you try and remember where you'd kept your marijuana blunts. . .maybe that will help clear the air, all puns intended. . .

Walls start whispering everywhere, you nearly pee in your pants and wake up screaming. . .it was all a dream! It was all a dream? How wrong that sounds makes you wonder what kind of a madman you are!

- Lost and found thoughts from March 18, 2009

New Safaricom Ad: Niko Na Qantas?

2010-11-21T23:43:00.013+03:00

Safaricom have done it again...they have secured another feather to adorn their advertising cap with their new TV spot, the second to promote their well known tag line of "Niko Na Safaricom" and to celebrate 10 years of dominating the mobile telephony market to a virtual monopoly. Most of those who have viewed the ad are quite impressed, judging from the loose information I have collected through physical and social network convos that I have been privy to. True, the ad's cinematography is amazing to say the least, the panning and quality of the shots transform some of these locations into a Sangrila, a Narnia, a utopia of sorts, and even if Mt Longonot, Hell's Gate or the Tana River is just a stone's throw away from your living room for example, that ad will make you feel as if you have never seen it before!!! That alone did it for the ad, the song, well, not so much, the song works for my 5 year old niece though. All in all that was a great job from Redsky, Safaricom's ad agency. Here's the ad below:

However, not everybody is going all gaga about the ad. There is a level of skepticism about the ad on two fronts, one completely flimsy and the other quite credible concern. Well, the first group is of the opinion that the majority of the shots must have been lifted from some other location than Kenya thus beats the logic of packaging a company that has solely been serving Kenyans for the past years ...BUT that probably means that many Kenyans have forgotten the pictures on their Heinemann Primary School Atlases and the Kenya Tourist Board really has a lot of work to do in terms of sensitizing locals on what this country has to offer. I linger with this group only to the extent of this location below. Where is this place???

The second, more serious group has been struck by a serious case of déja vu by this ad leading to a mini protest because this other ad made for Australian airline Qantas in 2009 dubbed "The Spirit Of Australia":

The concept of the two ads are uncannily similar, ain't it? The traditional singing style, the soloist at the start, concept of a choir, the sweeping panoramic shots, the standing position and movements of both choirs etc etc - its almost like the different choirs were moving around together and performed in the same blimey day!!! The question that this second group are asking now is whether this was just plain coincidence or whether the Safcom people specifically copied and pasted the concept and soul of the Qantas ad. I mean, these ads are fraternal twins, or siblings of the same father at least!!!Look again:

Prima facie, one can be tempted to conclude that Safcom's people have committed a heinous crime of idea theft, an act of blatant plagiarism by lifting the Australian ad's concept almost to 80% congruency without (apparent) permission from the owners of the rights for the Qantas ad concept. Somebody on YouTube even intimated that Qantas should take some legal action and seek some sort of royalty payments from Safcom or indeed Redsky. Well, no matter how blatant this 'theft' may seem to all of us, any action on the legal front is a LONG shot! Lemme try to explain why.

1. General Perception of Plagiarism
Plagiarism (wrongful appropriation or publication of another's original works or ideas) is considered one of the softest of offences and is not even perceived as a crime proper the way something like copyright infringement would. This is main because of how problematic it would be to legally prove the aspect of original ideas or works. In this case for example, we have no idea what inspired the Qantas ad, could have been anything and could even end up being someone else's thus where and how the buck stops as regards original thought process is still way too complex to be handled in a legal manner. There other minute differences in the two ads that would make a case for plagiarism even harder. In Qantas kids are singing, in Safcom its adults. In Qantas the locals are spots from all over the world, in Safcom the shots are purely Kenyan. The language and contents of the songs are different. Its not as straight forward as this case right here. Conceptually, plagiarism remains the province of moral and ethical arguments, where it is your reputation is at stake without the risk of hard legal penalties from proper judicial bodies.

2. Not Fitting In Unfair Competition Argument
An angle whereby plagiarism can be considered on a legal front, depending on the relevant statutes in place could be from the viewpoint of unfair competition where in a given specific area of specialty, one competitor stands to unfairly gain from lifting a concept originally developed by another competitor. This certainly cannot be the case between Qantas and Safaricom as they are in two completely different markets and their actions are unlikely to affect the other corporation's profit margins. The only fitting argument for unfair competition would be between the agencies that made the ads, and still the bars set for proving outright plagiarism will be damningly high.

3. General Attitude Towards Plagiarism in Advertising
Plagiarism was not considered as a problem per se in the advertising world until only recently where increased competition and thus the increased need for uniqueness in one's copy writing portfolio has made the sector finally notice the elephant of plagiarism in the room. The spirit of the whole ad business all along has been to pick up ideas from all over and trying to come up with a statement that fits into your client's needs (discussed further here and here) . Its almost like using papers and articles to do a research project for academic qualification. At the end of the day these people do it more for commercial gain than for its artistic or intellectual property value. Even the silent 'always give credit to/cite your sources' anti-plagiarism maxim fails to come in handy here since it would be quite hard to cite idea sources in an ad spot for ANOTHER company who probably need the entire spot to market themselves and not roll credits. All that is done when a plagiarism case pops up is that people just sneer and mutter amongst themselves as to how things have gone to the dogs and then its back to business as usual.

In conclusion, there's nothing really to moan about. Its not our beef, as many rappers would say. But still this should just be a sign of how much Safaricom goes in terms of innovation and in-built ideas. Majority of their best stuffs, from scratch card designs (Alternative Media Limited v. Safaricom) to even M-Pesa were products of outsourced and cheekily borrowed ideas. Comparing the two ads, i think the Quantas one whopped Safcom's because of how it is more involving and interactive while the Safcom one just wows us with the locations and that's just it. However, I also think the very first Niko Na Safaricom ad, the one depicting kawaida Kenyans going about their daily lives with the classical tune was really good. So good they shouldn't have made another one...

Standup Cross-Examination Comedy

2010-10-24T22:22:00.008+03:00

The Kenyan Prison system is probably one of the best places to look for reputably sound advice as regards those tenets of criminal law concerned with serious offences. This is mainly because the justice system as a whole is seriously backlogged and thus very slow in administering justice. This means that a person accused of a serious criminal offence and goes through the process of appealing guilty convictions from the magistrate's courts all the way up to the Court of Appeal will be in remand prison for a LONG DAMN time. The keen and more studious type will probably scour the criminal legislation and have it at their fingertips soon. Besides, its their life and freedom at stake here. These "gurus" soon become well known as consultants within their prisons and many will run to them for advice on how to counter the Prosecutor's case in court with at least an amount of confidence. Combining this quick advice one gets from the prison gurus and the sheer consequences if convicted for a serious crime can make the accused defend himself with the pomp and flair of a seasoned lawyer.

Open Court: where the magic happens....

I was witness to such an ego-pumped-and-ready-to-go fellow last week at a random out-of town magistrate's court near you where he and two of his pals were charged with the offence of violently robbing a well known English teacher of a nearby village school of his Nokia N95 worth 6500/- and money. Lets call him Akuku Danger and the teacher Oluoch Jamaranda (obviously not their real names in the spirit of identity protection). Unknown to everybody in court, both gentlemen are extremely eccentric people thus nobody would ever have anticipated the priceless rib-cracking dialogue that would follow when Akuku Danger was called upon to cross-examine (ask questions to) the complainant, Jamaranda. Although I have chopped out the less entertaining bits, the cross examination went something like this:

COURT CLERK: (to AKUKU DANGER) Do you have any questions for the Prosecution Witness?

AKUKU DANGER: Yes, your Honour, in fact I have several questions for him.

COURT CLERK: Proceed.

AKUKU DANGER: (to OLUOCH JAMARANDA)Now, Mr. Jamaranda, you said you first spotted me at the bar where you were watching football?

OLUOCH JAMARANDA: Thats correct.

AD: And then you also say that you concentrated on the football match the before leaving to meet your friend, Sharon in another part of town. Were you really concentrating on the match.

OJ: Yes, I was.

AD: The match was between who and who?

OJ: It was between Aston Villa and Chelsea.

AD: If you were concentrating on the match the whole time, how then could you have seen me?

OJ: I severally glanced around the bar and I saw you.

AD: Am I so attractive that you saw only me within that crowd of people?

OJ: (perplexed) I do not find you attractive in any way Mr. Akuku.

(Murmurs around the Court)

AD: You also say that after the match you went to meet your friend, Sharon at another part of the town?

OJ: Yes.

AD: Where exactly?

OJ: At a bar called Meeting Point Bar.

AD: What does Sharon do for a living?

OJ: She is a bartender at the Meeting Point Bar.

AD: If I tell this court that you and Sharon got extremely drunk at Meeting Point Bar, would I be lying.

OJ: That is a lie, Your Honour.

AD: But HOW?? Why would you go to a bartender's in the middle of the night if not to get drunk?

OJ: That is not your business, but we did not get drunk, we just drank a little then left for home.

AD: You say in your statement that you had a torch.

OJ: Understand me please, I said my phone had a torch not that I had a torch.

AD: There was a full moon outside, what then would make you use the torch in your phone?

OJ: I was crossing a railway crossing and I couldn't see well.

AD: Ah, so you don't see well, even in the full moon. Okay. You also say in the statement that "the trio, one of whom I identifed as Akuku Danger, ran after me tripped me and proceeded to start beating me..." Do you see any one here today called Trio?

(laughter)

OJ: My friend turned enemy, in education a group of three people is called a trio...Don't display your ignorance here.

AD: Can a thief beating and robbing you really allow you to see his face?

OJ: Some thieves are amateurs so they are careless when robbing other people.

AD: Now, in church, in the market place or in court, where are you supposed to tell the truth?

OJ: Everywhere, really?

AD: So tell the court the truth about who Sharon was to you?

OJ: She was just a friend.

AD: So, any other man could be a friend to her just the way you were a friend to her?

OJ: Understand me please, there is a friend then there is a lover, Sharon was just a friend.

AD: At your age, have you ever known that men sometimes fight over women?

OJ: (Irritated) The first time I knew of men fighting for a woman, somebody in our village pointed out that scar on your face for me!!!

AD: If I tell this court that Sharon was prostitute that you had picked up at Meeting Place, would i be lying?

OJ: (Shouting) THAT IS A LIE!!

(Laughter galore. Magistrate interrupts and reminds accused to stick to asking questions relevant to the case)

AD: How long did the attack take?

OJ: Around ten minutes.

AD: How can three people who told you that they would kill you spend only ten minutes with you? What saved you from these men?

OJ: I was screaming at the top of my lungs so much so that the people in the surrounding area heard my wails and ran towards the scene of crime to rescue me.

AD: You say Sharon witnessed the attack and theft, why hasn't she testified?

OJ: You have intimidated her and threatened her life.

AD: How? I have been in jail all this time, how could I have threatened her. Is my voice so loud that you can hear it all the way from the cells?

OJ: You have been sending emissaries who have threatened both me and Sharon in the prescence of my mother and father and am sorry to say, we also heard from them that one of you is taking ARVs. That will not stop us from pressing supplementary charges against you nonetheless.

(Magistrate warns Jamaranda to stop being too wordy or he will be held in contempt)

AD: Can I, Akuku Danger, possibly own an Nokia N95 like the one you claim to have lost?

OJ: Yes, anybody can own such a phone if they want to, even by theft!

AD: Did you indicate the serial number of the phone in your statement?

OJ: I couldnt record the serial of the phone because you had done away with the SIM card when police recovered the phone.

AD: (laughs) Now YOU stop displaying your ignorance!!! You clearly don't know what you are saying. Now in the statement you say we maimed you. What do you understand by the word "maim" as an English teacher?

OJ: (pauses, sensing a trick question) MEM, has several meanings. One of them is the short form of memory, but I also want you to note that my memory functions were working perfectly even as you and your colleagues hit me with wooden planks. My Central Nervous System was AUTOMATIC.

(laughter galore. Magistrate interupts Jamaranda and reminds him that he had already testified and what he is doing now is testifying afresh which is not allowed)

AD: Your Honour, I have no further questions... Mr. Jamaranda has already displayed his ignorance far enough.

The Magistrate then adjourned proceedings for 15mins. probably to laugh her head off from the privacy of her office. Pure, unadulterated comedy right there!!! Top Comics are probably easiest to find at the courts...LMFAO!

LSK List of Shame: Genuine Concern or Strategic Lobbying?

2010-09-20T12:56:00.009+03:00

Things are finally beginning to look up in terms of implementation of the provisions of the new Constitution that Kenyans okayed with a 69% majority on 4th August and promulgated on 27th August 2010. The first highlight of the implementation process has been the publishing of the Commission for the Implementation of the Constitution Bill 2010 that seeks to set up a body of competent vetted professionals to formulate and manage mechanisms that will be employed to ensure the proper implementation of the Constitution. Hot on the heels of that development, the Law Society of Kenya (LSK) in collaboration with Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA) and the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) are coming up with a list of lawyers who they want to be excluded from being considered for the post of Chief Justice when it falls vacant in February under the implementation timeline, a move that I find both positively interesting and negatively queer at the same time. Let me to explain how this List puts the LSK in a rather curious position.

First off though, it is interesting to note how Kenya has become one of those countries that employ ‘the list method’ in administration of justice. It works very simply – a scandal of any sort gets into the public limelight and pressure mounts on the government to act. A relevant commission is set up to deal with the matter and at the end of its proceedings, said commission will have come up with a list of suspects, forward them to the Executive for further action. The suspects, if named publicly, huff and puff in the media for a while and then the long silence prevails as the amnesia epidermis hits the entire country once again. We have seen it through the corruption scandals of the Moi government and more recently the famous Waki List of Post-Election Violence Suspects.

This culture reminds me of my days in high school when reams upon reams of paper was wasted by prefects in making lists of miscreants and “intelligence” on those planning to start terror attacks on the school or just general defaulters. These lists were sent to the Deputy’s Office and, being a very efficient man, he arranged the deluge of A4 foolscaps chronologically and according to the degree of the offence so that at one time in the future he would mete out punishments. Unfortunately, the chap was also a forgetful man and when we discovered this trait, when called to the office for a bit of nyaunyo or tree uprooting dispatches, the braver groups of ‘punishees’ would adamantly insist that he had already punished them the day/week before. He would desperately fight with his amnesia for a bit, ask some testing questions like what tie he was wearing on that day (I doubt if he remembered himself) and finally dismiss the lot. That is how we farted on justice back in the day, and it soon became a matter of pride to be on a Punishment list. However there were other unique lists which, if you had the bad luck of being an item, no matter how well you defended yourself and even if you truly had already been punished, you still got your ass whopped and an extra punishment to boot. These were lists from the Deputy’s very reliable spies among the normal rabble of students who did a lot of snitching and got lots of privileges in return and the very good ones were promised a prefect appointment in future.

Fast forward to the present day and here is the LSK trying to formulate a List of Miscreants within its ranks and advices the government NOT TO EVEN THINK about considering these lawyers for the post of CJ. I find this positively interesting because naming and shaming lawyers by one of their own is not considered normal practice in our legal sector. Lawyers, or rather Advocates, in this country seem to have developed an allegiance code of sorts amongst themselves. Something like the No-Snitching code of the Black American community or the extreme loyalty of the Sicilian Mafia, only a bit more elegant. They may want to tear each other apart in the adversarial stage of the courtrooms but hey, these are people who only recently read their asses sore in the same rooms and hostels at Law School. At the end of the day, the feeling is that lawyers should always remain “learned friends”. That is also perhaps why very few Advocates would be willing to take up a case involving a fellow Advocate, especially if such a case concerns some unethical conduct. Isn’t this what caused the formation of The Advocates Complaints Commission as a separate body to deal with public complaints against Advocates alongside the LSK’s Disciplinary Committee? Thus, the upcoming LSK List of Shame is a pleasant surprise to that extent. Finally the top brass looks willing to get past this No-Snitching policy and work on better exposing some of their members who do not have a good track record as regards their practice and conduct. Well done, kudos.

The queer bit about this List agenda is that the same group also say that the search for the next Chief Justice should exclude the entire Judiciary in addition to this Miscreant Gang of Unsuitable Listed Lawyers. Their reason for this is that our current crop of judges and magistrates are yet to be vetted afresh by a competent Judicial Service Body that is yet to be set up. Many people are reading this as a carefully orchestrated lobbying move to reduce the number of likely suitable candidates to fill the CJ position once vacant. I mean, when it comes to filling the CJ position, the ideal candidate will be someone trained in law with considerable experience in the practical intricacies of the same. In this country only three groups can at first blush possibly have this type of qualification – members of the Judiciary, Members of Parliament and lawyers in general. MPs are locked out because they have commitments to the electorate, leaving the judiciary and lawyers. Basic arithmetic will tell you that you only need to find a way of excluding judges and magistrates and voila, the post of CJ is successfully niched out to the lawyers hurray!!! Let us also have in mind that not just any lawyer fresh from school can be selected to occupy the CJ’s seat. Likely candidates are probably those lawyers with demonstrated clout, experience and commanding presence acquired from many years of research and practice. Without a doubt they will be well known to those in the profession’s circles. This shrinks down the number of likely candidates in this sector from the initial thousands to maybe a couple hundred. So, could it be that the LSK list is also just another move by individuals from within this group of a couple hundred to cut down on competition and thus ease the path to their vested ambitions? Smelly rat, anyone?

I also find it totally absurd that the LSK can spearhead the formulation of a list discrediting its members and at the same time hold itself out as the best sector to search for the next CJ. That’s like presenting a catch of fish to be used in preparing a Royal Banquet and then you say, “There are quite a number of rotten fish in this catch but I assure you this is the best catch you will get!” but HALLOOOO, what’s to show that the entire catch is not on the way to rot already? Isn’t the LSK one of the bodies supposed to be dealing with cleaning up the filth in the legal sector through its Disciplinary Committee? What have they done about those in the said List or is just a List of convenience and strategic positioning? One of the ways the LSK can clear (a small percent of) doubt in our minds as regards their List is to publicise the damn thing and tell us what heinous acts the named have done so that their names shouldn’t even come close to the thought process of those supposed to facilitate the selection of the next CJ. They should also abandon the rubbish claim that the Judiciary can’t be considered as a source just because they are unvetted. Well, why not vet them first and then the successful ones can also throw they hats in the race if they so wish? I hear many of them judges have seriously gone back to their books to get a second degree just to give them a necessary edge during the vetting process also slated for around February, though most will probably quit than be vetted again. That notwithstanding, the Judiciary also has a number of very intelligent minds and the much needed experience required to handle a CJ appointment quite well.

Judges at a recent open day, image courtesy of Nation Media Group.

This is probably not the last of Lists we are likely to see from the LSK what with vacancies in the Commission for the Implementation of the Constitution and even the judiciary itself coming up. We may even have a bunch of officials running up and down the country supplying the general public with lists of lawyers they consider unsuitable to stand for Senators, Governors and even the goddamned Presidency come 2012. I don’t how exactly to describe this sudden sufficient philanthropy of the LSK. Many will probably call it inverse democracy where the people have the right to select those they feel should NOT bother to try and represent them. To me, it just sounds like high school all over again.

The Mnyambuliko Era of Kenyan Brand Advertising & Promotion

2010-08-19T10:52:00.044+03:00

"Nyambua vitenzi yaliyomo katika sentensi hii."

Everyone who has been educated via the 8-4-4 system has definitely come across this ominous set of instructions in their Swahili Language/Grammar examination paper at one point or the other. Nine times out of ten, your sweaty finger would pause at the word “Nyambua” for about two and a half seconds as your brain involuntarily froze. At least that was the case with me. Even though the instructions related to conjugating Swahili verbs and all, no matter how many times I encountered the “Nyambua” phrase, it always carried with it innuendos of savagery or is it outlandish undertones. Just say it out loud. NYAMBUA... Has a strange ring to it, don’t it? Never mind that it bears an uncanny resemblance to the word “nyamba” which is Swahili for polluting the air. I also had the liberty of borrowing somebody’s Kamusi and discovered that “Nyambua” alternatively means to “pull apart or to tear into bits”. The very action of nyambua-ing a verb involved transforming the verb into funny sounding syllables, nothing far from this Congolese’s attempt at constructing a Swahili sentence:

Mimi banapenda basichana bana batako bakubwa bakubwa!!!

Resultantly, I always secretly admired colleagues who could grasp this Nyambua monster by the nether regions and manipulate it with ease from the “Fanya” right down to the “Fanyiza” cartegories and I accorded them the degree of reverence one would normally accord to those who speak in tongues. They could not exactly fill half of a minibus either…such abilities are not strewn aimlessly across the gene pool, certainly not! Another thing I suspect about this especially talented class of people is that they currently form a very influential part of Kenya’s Marketing and Advertising sector.

I make this claim because, all of a sudden, branding, marketing and advertising in Kenya is in a strange “Shock-Value Phraseology” phase. Of course we have previously been known to come up with strange but pretty functional brand names such as Ng’ombe Barbed Wire ( pretty straightforward - “Nataka Fence ya Ng’ombe” must have been a popular phrase back in the day).I wonder how functional today’s branding is. Here is a random example --->somebody decided to launch Ndole Paper Bags into the market recently… I’m not sure he/she/it had functionality in mind. Perhaps it’s a spin-off from the entire #FingerOfGod fiasco. Never mind that Ndole brand, for some strange reason, only brings me thoughts of ~~ass fingering, you know, like in the porno movies~~… never mind.

The TV ad that the CCK placed for its SIM card registration campaign also has its fair share of shock value. I mean, who expected the dude playing the extorting goon would say something in the lines of:

"Tuma one hundred thao ama UTAJUA MALENGE NI MBOGA!!"

Which self respecting swindler would dare issue such a hilarious threat? Anybody who'd receive such threats on the phone would probably have that ten second you-didnt-just-say-that-did-you kinda pause, the same brain freeze that Nyambua related questions and statements usually carry with them.

"...utajua malenge ni mboga..."

I find these new developments extremely intriguing because its like a whole new "big bang" in the basic fundamentals of how products are branded and promoted in Kenya. Its like some Einstein sat down everybody in the marketing game and delivered a Mnyambuliko Advertising Symposium resulting in the strange things we hear on TV or on the radio. The trend is quite obvious to those who have been keen to notice. Some sort of template is being used nowadays to brand and promote almost every product based roughly on the following four steps:

The product/service/promotion should either fully or partly be composed of Swahili words
English words should be "swahili-ized" as much as possible
The most important element of the (partly or fully) Swahili/Swahili-ized phrase is the verbs
The verbs must be nyambua-d in the most appropriate manner capable of attracting the potential market

Just switch on your TV or radio or flip a few pages of any newspaper and you will see these four rules in full force. This could explain the upsurge of the M-Pesas, the M-Keshos, The Hazina bank accounts and such. Its pure swahilization here. The strategy here may be to appeal to a larger portion of the population, those who feel more at home with anything other than English. No doubt a service such as M-Pesa would have sounded seriously bourgeois and elitist if the peeps at Safaricom could have settled for a English-based brand name. Now the service has outsmarted the banking sector so much so that banks like KCB are quickly adhering to the Nyambua Principles too with their Bankika bank account (ie. Rule 3 and 4 in action transforming the verb "to bank" to a Swahili verb nyambua-d in the "fanyika"cartegory thus "bankika").

Another motivating factor for Swahilization and Mnyambuliko tactics is also how appealing these verbs sound after undergoing the Nyambua process. A nyambua-d phrase sounds like a subtle command almost hypnotic to the reader or listener "Ponyoka", for example, is a popular nyambua-d verb in advertising promotions today mainly because it gets the part of a Kenyan's brain that is completely intrigued with free stuff and getting away with some loot of sorts that does not really belong to them or just stumbling upon some easy wealth pinging like its hooked on broadband. Isn't that why we have been calling the spate of G4S million shilling heists 'Ponyoka na Mamilioni'?

"Fichua"on the other hand creates an illusion of an intimate secret being imparted to you, almost like being told how you can own shares in Goldenberg International or something of the sort. That is probably why so many people do not find Royco's recent promotion, the one that went something like "Fichua GITHERI ushinde", even a small bit hilariously outrageous. Fichua githeri, really??? *LMFAO*

And then there are those ones that make the potential market sound like they have completely tupad mbao and they should style up and get the memo - "Amua" being a prime example of this category.

The way things are going, the more outrageous it sounds, the better the strategy, and even better if the persons endorsing the products have a uniquely nyambua-like personality. Pesa PAP! is now a household phrase. And who even thought of Blue Triangle Cement's "Gundua na Matendechere"? Here, you will hardly find an Eva Mendes look alike be endorsing products and services in this day and age of nyambua. It will most likely be Inspector Mwala and Papa Shirandula doing the honors.

All in all, I think its an exciting time for advertising and marketing in Kenya as a slightly more liquid lower middle class emerges leading to more and more businesses trying to grab a piece of the masses, those who speak Kiswahili everyday, those looking for a clean break or some opening to break through economic barriers, those who eat githeri at lunch time, those who never fail to catch an episode of Tafrija on Citizen TV etc. etc. Who said it would be easy wringing cash out of a Kenyan's pocket? If it means resorting to the old ways of Mnyambuliko, so be it!!! I still remain in awe of those who have this special talent and how now they have taken this talent to TV, radio, web and the papers too! Pongezi maradufu kwenu!!! Somebody cue that chick who used to sing weirdly at the start of that 90s KBC Kiswahili quiz show:

"Kiswahili Kitukuzweeeeee....
Kuwa ni lugha ya Taifa..."

*random blogpost inspired by the fact that nearly everybody in my twitter timeline is tweeting in Swa today*

Rape by Deception: Taking Soap Operas to the Courts?

2010-07-21T19:02:00.012+03:00

“Wait”, she said, pushing him back, “Before we do this there is something you need to know. . . I’m a virgin.” Her eyes shone with a mixture of anxiety, excitement and expectation.

His dreamy eyes looked back at her with the same fire and he responded in a husky, near-choking tone:

“Well, I’m a virgin too!”

- Excerpts from “Discussions” co-written with popeboyslim, yet unpublished.

Rape is classically known to be a brute affair involving a crude character forcing his/her will upon an unfortunate non-consenting victim, leaving the latter with physical and psychological trauma possibly for life. The setting for this act is perceived as totally unromantic and the perpetrator receives the wrath of society for the beastly act usually in the form of long prison sentences on conviction. However, with societal interactions becoming more and more complex, the crime of rape is gradually infiltrating the province of that class of acts associated with the most civilized, suave yet most deceptive of human mannerisms – Seduction and Romance. A school of thought is emerging with the argument that the various “sweet-nothings” and misrepresentations that one makes in the course of seducing one party leading to consensual sex are capable of classifying the sexual activity as rape, despite the apparent consent.

The courts seem to be warming up to this school of thought evident by Monday’s conviction of a Palestinian man by a Jerusalem court on the charge of “rape by deception” after he had consensual sex with a Jewish woman to whom he had given the impression that he was a Jewish bachelor seeking a serious relationship. The court established that the woman would not have consented if she had the knowledge that the accused was not a Jew and thus the sex was obtained under false pretences. One of the judges further stated:

“The court is obliged to protect the public interest from sophisticated, smooth-tongued criminals who can deceive innocent victims at an unbearable price – the sanctity of their bodies and souls. When the very basis of trust between human beings drops, especially when the matters at hand are so intimate, sensitive and fateful, the court is required to stand firmly at the side of the victims – actual and potential – to protect their well being.”

Notwithstanding the public interest pressure amid the history of sour relations between Jews and Arabs in Israel, the court’s decision merely represents both jumping too high and stooping too low when analyzing the question of consent in rape. Let me explain.

By attempting to break down consent into real consent and apparent consent informed by misrepresentations on the part of the alleged perpetrator, the court is trying to elevate the sexual act into a legally enforceable quasi-contract with criminal consequences on breach. How ambitious! This contract does not even have the characteristics of a normal contract where if one says YES they mean YES. Of course, for such an attempt to be successful, the court would have to analyse every single event and statement made prior to the sexual encounter. In this particular case, there must have been some amount of flirting that went on. Flirting as we all know involves the making of preposterous statements that shouldn’t even be reproduced in court.

My question to the court is whether they satisfied themselves that the Jewish lady consented to sex only on the basis of the accused’s claim that he was a Jew and not on the basis of statements such as “I would die for you, darling. I’m your Romeo, can you be my Juliet”etc. etc. etc ad nauseum. Did they establish whether the woman was just having one of those horny days where she just wanted to get some no matter the source? Or was the dude so fine that she just had to get a piece of that? Also take note that this woman consented to sex within the same day of just meeting the accused, raising doubts as to the seriousness of the relationship she intended to have. The psycho-social dynamics surrounding what triggers consent to sex are too many and hard to establish for any court without a mind reading device (in other words, ANY court). I shudder to imagine the kind of litigation floodgates this case opens – people can even be taken in for falsely representing that they are virgins or that they can give head if courts adopt in this line of thought!

At the same time, we also know that the values and principles that inform emotion-fuelled activities such as relationships and sex are too abstract (read frivolous) and subjective (read petty) to the extent that their inclusion in courts is tantamount to transforming the courts into talk shows. If courts start addressing things like “true love”, “the one” etc. what would Tyra and Oprah be up to? For the court to think that they are protecting “innocent victims” is quite fallacious especially in this particular case. The court has attempted to stoop as low as governing romantic interactions, a realm unfit for an objective umpire such as a court. They better leave it to institutions such as family, friends and perhaps even the entertainment industry through soap operas to try and instill measures to mould cry babies such as the one in this particular case into making sane individual decisions about romance and what not. Further, it is unfair to label one a (petty?) rapist in the light of such grey-area circumstances given the massive stigmatization following such a labeling.

But still, the sex must have been great…

MPs Salary Boost: Let's Use the Referendum to Our Advantage

2010-07-01T02:44:00.009+03:00

"Human nature is that employers want to pay less to their employees; while the
employees want more to justify the work done." - Walter Nyambati (Vice Chair of Parliamentary Service Commission).

Imagine that you are an employer of any given business venture employing thousands of individuals across the country. You are startled one slow Wednesday morning by one of your employees rushing into your office, looking like he is on the verge of imparting a very intelligent idea that could catapult the business to unimaginable heights of success. You ignore the fact that this employee never even bothered to give a courtesy knock on the door before bustling in and wait for him to catch his breath before he finally speaks.

“Hey, I was finishing up with my KRA tax returns when this AWESOME idea hit me,” he quips excitedly.

Ah, just as you had suspected. An idea. You lament within yourself on why you had never seen potential in this particular worker as you try hard to conceal your excitement.

“Carry on,” you say.

“Well, since my net income tax has increased since the Budget reading, I was thinking why can’t you increase MY salary to cushion my ass. Forget about the other guys let them suffer; it was MY idea after all, wasn’t it? They aren’t half as smart as me, no way! And si you know me and you are tight like virginity, eh? Just do me like that, boss!”

The mere guts of this employee will no doubt shock you while his unpretentious beleif that he should receive special treatment for having such selfish thoughts will disgust you as well, and this employee will probably be on the top of your TO FIRE list.

The exact same scenario played out yesterday when Parliament unanimously passed a report by the Parliamentary Service Commission that proposes to hike their already hefty salaries of Ksh 851,000 to Ksh 1.1 Million! They did this with a maniacal speed and enthusiasm, reminiscent of a hyena grovelling over a corpse and constantly looking over its shoulder in case vultures had arrived to compete for the leftovers. When it was all done and dusted, out they came ready for the cameras. These beggars on horseback emerged from the August House armed with a sole reason as to why they wanted Kenyans to dig deeper into their pockets and donate a further Ksh 300,000. The underlying motive quickly emerged in the many words spewed by the law makers – we had wanted them to pay tax on their allowances and this new development would enable them to do so.

What kind of goddamn reasoning is that? Even a 70 year old colobus monkey with sight and hearing impairment would find that kind of reasoning utterly senseless. The initial sentiment among Kenyans was that we wanted to these MP(igs) to pay tax on their current allowances as they stand today. For the MPs to vote to increase their salaries and then also unanimously voice that now they will be ready to pay taxes on their allowances means only one thing – THEY WANT US TO PAY THEIR TAX FOR THEM!!!! They do not want to feel the pinch of the tax burden as the average mwananchi does every month. Do they think that we are all so ignorant that we cannot detect the trickery up their sleeves? Alternatively, if they give us the credit of occupying the same tier of intelligence as them, what makes them think they are so special as to deserve such preferential treatment?

They say they “do a lot of work” and that the kind of responsibility they shoulder in the development of the social, political and economic spheres of the country cannot be even remotely compensated by the kind of salary they earn. What work? How many times have we seen empty seats when Parliament is in session? How many times have the few that care to attend normal Parliamentary sessions napping their blinking heads off? How many bring shame to our living rooms by the ignorant and misleading statements they make in press conferences every day, hoping to make to make the cut in the weekend’s edition of Bull’s Eye? How many times do they give themselves random vacations to eat nyama choma at Naivasha or cavort in the sun and sand of Mombasa in the pretext of going on a retreat to discuss constitutional issues? How many have pledges in Harambees form years back that they have not fulfilled? How many occupy their seats thanks to massive rigging and corruption?

It is yet another sad day in the history of Kenyans, an added reminder that we are being held at ransom by a handful of individuals with selfish interests .Where are we to turn to for redress? The two principals, perhaps? Kibaki will no doubt remain his silent self, Raila on the other hand will probably need the extra cash boost of nearly a million shillings to up his health insurance cover, now that little bumps in the car could mean brain surgery for him. Don’t expect much from the fence sitting Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka either.

On a different tangent, why can’t we be the ones to take control and for once put these people in our shoes and make them experience how it feels to be controlled arbitrarily? I suggest that we threaten to boycott the referendum process as a whole until they get rid of that report, and instead effect tax on their current allowances. I’m sure such a move would get the majority of MPs miffed and that would be a true test of the extent in which they value their country more than their stomachs.

Video Evidence: Edward Kirui Case Turning Point for Evidence Law in Kenya?

2010-06-23T09:30:00.005+03:00

The whole country is probably still reeling from the shock decision by the High Court in Nairobi to acquit, Edward Kirui (pic courtesy Nation Media Grp), a police constable accused of shooting two people at the height of the post election violence in January 2008, an act which was captured in a video recording. The catch – the serial number to the rifle issued to Kirui was did not match the killer bullet. That was enough to secure the constable’s freedom amid the hue and cry of “WHAT ABOUT THE VIDEO EVIDENCE????” in certain quarters.

Here is a glimpse of the video recording:

Yes, the video evidence clearly placing the constable at the scene and showing him firing at the deceased seems to have been shoved aside without much consideration, why was it not considered with some appreciative level of seriousness as the ballistics report had? This has sparked off a new debate by legal pundits trying to explain the reason behind this relegation of the video evidence. My own discussions have yielded a very shocking revelation into the awareness (or lack of it) of the legal fraternity and the public of legislation touching on electronic/digital evidence.

A vast majority of Kenyans (lawyers and members of the judiciary included) have the following perceptions:
1. Electronic Evidence – evidence in digital form be it e-mails, SMSes, video recordings, GPS positioning readings, chatroom message transcripts etc. – are generally not admissible in Kenyan courts.

2. Even if video evidence is admissible, it cannot possess similar weight to other forms of evidence such as documentary evidence and thus must always be relegated in favour of another form of evidence in case of conflict. It can only be admissible as corroborative evidence, that is, that type of evidence which is not stand-alone but requiring bolstering by other ‘more solid’ types of evidence such as DNA test reports, ballistic reports or witness testimony. This school of thought rests behind the mentality that “video evidence is like presenting a copy of Jurassic Park in court to prove that dinosaurs exist”.

However, very few are aware of the fact that the enactment of the Kenya (Communications) Amendment Act, 2008 – or in short, the KCA Act - in January 2009 had the effect introducing several new sections to the Evidence Act providing for the admission of electronic evidence, collectively known as Part VII of Chapter III of the Evidence Act. For good measure, the KCA Act also provides for the admission of electronic evidence in criminal cases, reflected by the changes it makes to the Penal Code. This fact immediately brings out the first perception as false since there is legislation that provides for the admission of evidence that is in digital form in Kenyan courts. This bit of the KCA Act went largely unnoticed due to the unfavourable publicity the Act had gotten in its previous life as the notorious Media Bill.

As regards the second perception, one would first have to ask him/herself: Is video evidence within the bracket of those types of electronic evidence admissible in Kenyan Courts? This prompts an analysis of the wording of the new sections of the Evidence Act. The KCA introduces Section 106 B which grants admissibility to “any information contained in an electronic record which is printed on a paper, stored recorded or copied on optical or electromagnetic media produced by a computer”. At first blush, the mention of the words “record” and “computer” sends alarm bells as a quick interpretation of this section would mean that only those types of evidence produced by a conventional computer as we ordinarily know it ( screen, CPU, keyboard, mouse assembly) is admissible.
The KCA Act and the Evidence Act make no attempt at defining “electronic record” leading to the most logical assumption that these are records in electronic form. Now, the KCA Act defines “electronic form”, with reference to information, as :

any information generated, sent, received or stored in magnetic, optical, computer memory, microfilm or similar device.

Thus the term electronic record would include those records generated and stored by media other than the conventional computer and this includes digital video recorders. Another sign that this is the correct interpretation of the term is shown by the KCA Act’s rather wide definition of “computer” as:

any electronic, magnetic, optical or other high-speed data processing device or system which performs logical, arithmetic and memory functions by manipulations of electronic, magnetic or optical impulses, and includes all input, output, processing, storage, software and communication facilities which are connected or related as a system or network.

As regards the whether video and other such types of evidence is inferior to the traditional forms of evidence such as documentary evidence to the extent of requiring corroboration to be of use, one would have to refer to past precedence. Unfortunately, the Edward Kirui case is the first such type of case in the Kenyan jurisdiction. The general traditional trend has been to clump video, graphics and audio evidence as real evidence which usually has to be supplemented by witness testimony to be relevant. The recent trend, especially with the enactment of e-evidence legislation in many jurisdictions, is to instead treat this type of evidence as being in the same class as documentary evidence and thus being able to stand on their own. This shift has been motivated by reasons best revealed by the words of a South African scholar Hofman:

"This view (that graphics, audio and video are regarded as real evidence) is conceptually simple and appeals to those who dislike excluding any evidence. But it does not take account of the way graphics, audio and video are, to an ever-increasing extent, recorded, stored and distributed in digital form and fall under the definition of a data message. This means that graphics, audio and video now resemble documents more than the knife and bullet that are the traditional examples of real evidence. In data message form, graphics, audio and video are susceptible to error and falsification in the same way as data messages that embody documentary content."

The trend is thus to classify video evidence as an electronic document of sorts and thus, in cognition of the great ease at which they can be modified or altered, to also subject this type of evidence to certain requirements to ascertain its authenticity and integrity. The value of video evidence has been outlined by judges in other jurisdictions (see S. v Baleka, January 2005, Contemporary Labour Law Vol.14 No.6, 5) ) as among others:
• Not fading from human memory as human testimony
• Providing a clearer objective view than the account of a human being
• Being able to retain not only the words but the non-verbal communications of those on camera

The nagging question concerning the Edward Kirui case is whether Justice Fred Ochieng’ dismissed the video evidence on the ground that such kinds of evidence was not normally admissible without corroboration or whether he considered the video evidence admissible but not adequate to prove the identity of the killer of the deceased. The decision seems to be based on the first sentiment since there were witnesses who claimed to have identified Kirui from the video recording, a fact that would give the recording more evidentiary weight than the mismatched serial numbers in the ballistics report if Justice Ochieng’ had considered the video evidence as stand-alone evidence subject to the observation of an reasonable, objective person. On the flipside, the judge did not address the question of the integrity and authenticity of the video recording indicating that all parties considered it real evidence and not as a data recording capable of manipulation.

Summarily, this decision casts in doubt the admissibility of video evidence in particular and electronic evidence in general as well as the standards for measuring the evidentiary weight of electronic evidence. It reveals the underlying unpreparedness of the entire legal system in dealing with matters concerning electronic evidence. If such a seemingly straightforward case causes us to scratch our heads, then I shudder to think what future cases, such as the post-election hate messaging that involved a sheer number of electronic media and participants, would cause a problem for prosecutors and judges alike.

The legal system should wring itself free from the traditional rigid approach to evidence which gives much preference to paper-based and other traditional forms of evidence before they are swept by the Information Technology wave that embraces use of ICTs in nearly every sphere of life. More and more crimes will be caught on video. There will be an upsurge in digital crime. The best evidence of infidelity may soon turn out to be a video of one’s spouse caught being unfaithful. Electronic evidence is silently creeping into the stuffy and seemingly already crowded room of evidentiary relevance and yet nobody seems to take note. We best make ourselves ready.

Lights Please: Of Saxophones and Bull's Eyes

2010-02-18T15:30:00.001+03:00

… she couldn’t hear me
I told her all about how we been livin’ a lie
And that they love to see us all go to prison or die
Like baby look at how they show us on the TV screen
But all she ever want me to do is unzip her jeans
…
And all that next shit I was previously talkin’
Is now that wet shit that I’m currently lost in
And while that sweat drips, I am reminded
All the times my brother told me that pussy is blindin’
I’m findin’
The more I grow, the more y’all seem to stay the same
…
“I know you wanna change the world, but for the night please
Just reach over and hit the lights please”

– J. Cole

Among the many many many peculiar habits Kenyans have (apart from resigno-mania, remember-phobia, sending kidnappers ransom money by M-Pesa amongst other things) perhaps the most peculiar is the way we feed hungrily on what can be termed as scandal. The media understands this full well and makes sure that we get our daily dose of sakata ya mahindi and a “few”million shillings here and there being made away with and the Gossip column on Pulse magazine. The media itself sometimes falls victim to these spectacles, all the more for us to enjoy and have a good laugh about in our facebook or twitter accounts.

The kind of scandal we tend to enjoy will depend on the various age groups we are in, of course. You don’t excpect a 65 year old pensioner to prefer Gossip Girl over Naija flicks now? The interesting part of this distinction is that one age group will tend to wonder why the other does not participate with as much zeal when it comes to one scandal or the next. The events of the past few days provide an excellent environment in which to witnesss this phenomenon. Over Valentines, the two principles of this country, Prime Minister Raila Odinga and the President, Mwai Kibaki were engaged in a battle of sorts concerning who had the power to suspend certain Ministers and civil servants implicated in corruption scams of shoking propotions. In other news (or rumours), allegations about a popular news presenter quitting her job and abandoning her fiancé due to relating to a suspiciously named Church have also been doing the rounds and has been the subject of furious discussion all over Twitter and Facebook. Obviously the older, more responsibility laden Kenyans have more interest in the corruption scandals than intruding into the lives of ‘celebrities’, whose lives they cannot afford to emulate without being handed a bankruptcy order .

It is from among this group that an interesting question arose in the Church-Presenter debate, going something along the lines of “What if younger Kenyans had the same zeal for following stories of grand corruption and econo-political misdeeds as they do for getting a low-down into the private lives of news presenters and musicians or golf players?” The younger generation (circa 1980s) seems to have little or no interest in what the older peeps perceive as the real issues. This same younger generation is wondering what this grumbling older generation have been doing if they really have been keeping in touch with the “real” issues and the general quality of life has not changed at all. Let’s make a somewhat shallow analysis of these two opposing yet congruent views.

We, the younger generation have been born into a state that has been on a constant downward fall even before our existence began. Born in to Nyayo milk (RIP) and Nyayo Buses (RIP) and waving flags and singing songs for a man with an ivory rungu, a man who our parents taught us to revere with demi-good like awe. This same man, we later learnt, along with a bunch of his friends took up most of this country’s prime land and is now selling it back to some of us who have been labelled “squatters”. We have been born into a state where the only examples of success we see are those who rise through one act of corruption or a series of electoral fraud and crime of every imaginable scale. We see them every day during news broadcasts, in the business of running this country. To most of us, it’s just as shocking as the first day we emerged from our mothers’ wombs. However there are those amongst us who are awed by the antics of the older thieves and murderers in politics and the like. These are quickly taken up and apprenticed by the wazees for later packaging as “future leaders”.

The state of affairs is too unbelievably harsh for the majority of us to face, young or old. Your everyday average Kenyan is like a man in the first stages of suicide – he is in denial. Blatant violations of his rights and privileges take place every day and, to add insult to injury, these acts are replayed for him on TV screens and radio programmes, yet there he sits, enjoying it all, very much detached from the realities. This is why, no matter how much we try to deny this fact, it is the older generation that will keep running things in this country for quite a long time. Younger Kenyans have little or no interests whatsoever in who will determine the economic or education policy for the next five years after an election. Their (very limited) political party affiliations will arise either from the archaic paranoid and tribal notions inherited from their parents just as they inherit the type of religion they should subscribe to, or from meagre economic benefits they accrue in terms of a few hundred shillings for staging a protest in favour of an issue they know little about. We are so out of touch that a matter such as the Al-Faisal deportation procedure will take us to the streets as opposed to the fact that somebody implicated in allegations of corruption decides to stay in office and possibly influence the investigation of the same. It tickles us, instead of worrying us, that a Kenyan out there is so hungry that he would rather chew up his copy of the Harmonized Draft Constitution than read it!!!

We instead chose to run, to escape far away from these problems. We run to drugs, alcohol, sex AND religion. Its cooler to get high and get a good fuck on the way there than think about the Constitution. That aint our job now, after all what did we elect MPs for? Wasn’t it a genuine worry that the rationing programme by KPLC would lead to an increase in irresponsible sexual behaviour? Come Sunday after orgasming the weekend away, we get engulfed in praying for a miracle to save this country, a miracle to get us where Kamlesh Pattni was eight years ago so that we can also make it in the Corruption Hall of Fame. We do not find it amazing that we cannot agree about terrorists and Kadhi Courts while the Council of Imams and Preachers of Kenya and the National Council of Churches in Kenya can mobilise us to violently root out alleged homosexuals? We escape in the fantasy world of soap operas, second rate reality TV shows and Bulls Eye, thinking that someday somehow; somebody will sort our shit out. We borrow this cynical, escapist stance from our older brothers and sisters who were and still are caught up in the illusion that independence would solve all of our problems. Still caught up in notions the absolutism of the presidency and tribal mistrust.

The question will thus arise of who is better placed than the other in a firing squad – he who chooses to close his eyes and imagine that he is having a bad dream or he who stares right into the eyes of the men who are about to shoot him with the firm belief that help is coming from nowhere at all. No matter our remedy, false faith or steeping ourselves into fictional and temporary remedies is not the answer. The question to ask is when will he who has closed his eyes open them and join his colleague in putting up a fight to at least strike some fear into the weak thieving cowards who have held them at gun point for generations now. That is the question. For now let us continue playing our saxophones in the Finger of God!

Why I Don't "Listen" to Local Gospel Music

2009-12-14T14:14:00.003+03:00

"Sing to the Lord a new song..."

- Psalms 96:1

I think its safe to say that I am a fairly religious person. Right from childhood, I was inculcated to the schema of a Superior Being by my folks, a thing my infantile mind percieved as completely natural. Later, I was to realize this Christianity was more historical than natural. In fact it was part of administrative "extras" imposed by our colonizers in the name of civilization. Outside this paradox was the bigger argument of atheism versus possibilianism versus religion. Confusing as it all is, I have chosen to hover on the religious side of things for certain unexplicable reasons such as the idea of God being comforting. But I am not your perfect church type. I'm a sort of religious voyeur - the few times am in church, I cant help notice grown men staring at other people's daughters in a coveteous fashion right under the noses of pastors who may or may not be strugglin to put everyone to sleep. Still, I'm also sometimes in need of spiritual fulfilment in various forms including gospel music. However, I am finding local gospel moving further and further away from satisfying this need. Let me expound.

Big Bang
Gospel music these sides has come a long way. Remember Joy Bringers on KBC or power couple The Mwauras' Praise and Worship series? What about Reuben Kigame and Shari Martin's Rafiki Pesa hit and all those Prison choirs? Everything about it tended to target mature audiences and the kids were contented with Sunday School classics. Solid themes revolving around Bible verses was the norm. A few blips of rebellion in youth wings of some churches didnt get enough hype until foreign influences came into play. Ron Kenoly, Mary Mary, Kirk Franklin et al precipitated a religious big bang with a youth agenda, paving way for new age pioneers such as Henrie Mutuku and Rufftone. This in turn drew the younger generation to more interesting ways to explore Christianity.

Commercialization
Lets not forget that at the same time secular music was also developing and soon eclipsed gospel productions. Ogopa brought kapuka, taking people by storm and leaving our gospel strategists wondering what to do to fish more men. It was the release of Esther Wahome's Kuna Dawa that provided the light bulb moment. The single acquired a cult-like following from the secular crowd and it was almost immoral for any club or pub or secular radio station not to have it on heavy rotation at one point. Aha! A way had been found! Gospel producers and artistes' renaissance had a lot to do with the money and exposure kapuka musicians got. They wanted that too. . .man must live, no? It was something like the current trend of our religious leaders tryin to vie for public office - a capitalist lunge for economic survival!

The strategy change was simple. Gospel music was now engineered to contain what I call crossover potential. New age gospel singles and albums were created from a secular template. They adopted the architecture and design of a secular track with an attempt to staple a spiritual message atop it. This has so far manifested itself in various forms:

*Production/Arrangement: Using essentially secular music arrangement techniques. MOG's hit Let Him Go attained its popularity not from its content but from its use of the Diwali riddim also used initally by Brick n Lace for Love is Wicked. Autotune use is gaining fast popularity as well in gospel production.

*Secular in Past Tense: My good pal Philip Mwaniki refers to most gospel kapuka as "secular music in past tense". By centering on themes of past lives of partying, sex, alcohol, drug use and the like, these types of songs get good reception from the generic kapuka lover who just wants to hear "pombe, madem, sigara kubwa" and such catch phrases being mentioned.

*Lingala Systems: When was the last time you sang along to System ya Kapungala? At rave, most probably. Any Congolese would also be shocked that coupé décalé can be used for a gospel track. Notice how different Congolose gospel groups sound from their secular mates eg. Makoma.

*Lyrics: It gets hard to point out a song as gospel via the lyrics these days. You are often left guessing until its blatantly clarified that the song 'imebarikiwa'. Case in point would be Chit Chat's chorus to its debut single which goes something like:
"I la la la la/ I like your shoes/ the clothes you wear/your style. . ."
Now that sounds like a chorus Lil Wayne would endorse. Holy Dave makes it worse by spittin some ambiguous verses. The rest of the hip hope fraternity have fallen into this trap.

Paradox?
At the end of the day this trend hurts the youth gospel movement in Kenya. Many of those who follow this movement may do so for all the wrong reasons - to be part of an inverted coolness... Proponents of this trend defend it by saying one doesnt have to mention God or Jesus in a gospel track. They claim that new age gospel tries to pass a message in a way the youth can relate to and subtly introduces to a more flexible relationship with God. Really? It would be quite far fetched to imagine that a drunk man at Grill House singing along to Kuna Dawa will reflect on the intended message.

Am not trying to be conservative in any way. I think we have lost touch with gospel and somehow the initial objective is heavily diluted by how it has been packaged. Look at how other international gospel artistes do it. Mary Mary recently acquired a crunk sound but they still manage to pass clear cut messages and sell records while they are at it.

We are in the Grey Area Era of Gospel music in Kenya and that is why when a gospel track is playing somewhere, I will be in the vicinity with a glass of vodka in one hand, weed in the other and rubber dubbing some woman's ass...

The Times They Are A-Changin' : LOL???

2009-10-28T04:08:00.006+03:00

Come mothers and fathers throughout the land
And don't criticize what you cant understand
Your sons and daughters are beyond your command
...
For the times, they are a-changin'

- Bob Dylan

Individual to individual human being communication has come a very long way, fact. We should pity our Neanderthal anscestors to whom communication was most vital during mating seasons - whose head is the biggest, who can throw a stone farthest, whose genitals. . .- yes, John Locke, those were short, nasty and brutish times. We can also stop by the south african deserts and admire the Bushmen and Hottentots who boast an alphabet of click sounds à la Gods Must Be Crazy? Its hard even distinguishing an abuse click from an appreciative click. Now imagine trying to propose to a rugged haired, bare breasted Hottentotty:

"Click click click click click?"
"Click?"
"CLiiicK"
"cLIcK!!! CLick, ClicKKK!"

Shit. At least we have managed to evolve out of that and now can utilize our tongues in more ways than offering cunnilingus. We can finally SPEAK! Huyay! We can also write and type! Thanks to Western "civilisation" campaigns, nearly the entire globe is trapped in the phonetic dungeons of English, French and Spanish. We don't have to be born in the same kraal to understand each other, aint that swell?

Another fact is that we all don't grow old at the same time. There will always be an older generation keen to pass down their (sometimes archaic) morals and mannerisn to the younglings who will obviously set up resistance on various fronts. We sneak out of the house via the fence to sample date rape drugs in the club. Girls make out with girls and well, boys give each other anal exams.

On the communication front, the resistance is in the form of subjecting the wazee to lingual alienation via the use of slang. Speaking in code so that the peeps who have not "chanukad" to cower in shame for trying to invade the privacy of the conversation. According to the auhoritative Sheng Website , Sheng was born out of the need to go into "stealth mode" by kids of early Nairobi immigrants of the 60s whose house were usually one or two roomed houses thus what you said everyone heard. A very noble cause, dont you think? Look, we have even imagined to convince these aged adults that cheating in KCSE takes place between 2pm and 5pm thus no more afternoon exams! Duh, cheating takes place all the time!!

A different form of slang, however, has began to develop with the advent of technology. Now that the average young person communicates via mobile phone or social networkin sites, the central aim of communication has become INSTANT MESSAGING. Delivering the message as fast as possible, and somehow thinking that you can squeeze your life's thoughts in 160 characters. Speaking and writing in Acronym. The trend often tends to bite us in the ass when we end up not communicating at all! I have now gotten used to messages, wallposts and text messages like this:

OMG WP dd u c dat BFF o myn? She GBROTFLOL, SMH!

Its very confusing if you dont ake a spirited effort to catch up. LOL is the current favourite. Laughing out loud. I know some people who cant write three words without inserting LOL. Kwani, have you been taking an overdose of nitrogen oxide?

"I HATE YOU. . .lol!" Really?
"Am pregnant with your twins lol!" Seriously?

Why not just stick to the more humane Hahahaha or more bestial Bwehehehe. At least those have some life in them. LOL sounds like something R2-D2 of Star Wars would say if tickled.

And they vary with taste and purpose. OMG has a sort of blonde connotation to it, I have been made to understand. WTF/WTH have replaced all the exclamation statements ever thought of. Whatever happened to Holy Cow? It took me forever to understand SMH, kumbe its something to do with shaking the head. GBR/GNR - Got a bitch/nigga rollin - very queer too. I've never seen boys in an Always ad. . .never!

They are even coming in tribal slips now! Ati LOL is the same as GOR - Gutheka out Roud, and in Naija its translated to UGKMO - U Go Kill Me Oh, and if youre from the lakeside its NMA - Nyiero Matek Ahinya.

Lets not forget NKT!! and MSCHEEW!!! often used by mamsilas in their udaku sessions. How do you even pronounce those???

Its an unstoppable wave. In three years, I'm predicting the pressing need for an Acronym Dictionary or else we will never manage to understand ourselves. The greater concern however is how these short codes compartmentalize and curtail our thought processing and eventually limiting creativity. So "Oh my goodness fuck me sideways, you have done something very stupid!" is relegated to a simple WTF!! Don't be surprised if kids in 2030 will be LOLing instead of a e i o u-ing.

In the meantime, I'm being updated by Anyiko and Fena on the latest new Acros. . . So, TBNOBIGHAD. Don't ask me what that means!!

Nakufeel vs. Nimechill

2009-08-21T16:50:00.016+03:00

Everytime am back from the long May - August holidays, something very interesting changes in the university's demographic. A good number of girls (increasing every year) show up glowing, noticably plumper with their bellies distending - very, very pregnant! We have accepted and come to terms with the rampancy of it. It is now almost a fashion statement around here (we call it "going to the beauty spa"). Maybe we can also attribute this to the past few extremely cold months, ama?

This semester, of those who have gotten the spa treatment, I kinda know two of them on a personal level. The first chica, let's call her X, she's a piece of work. She has an innocent baby face and a petite 5ft 4' body that reeks of sex appeal which she's not afraid to flaunt in tiny skirts and low cut tops. In the second week of her freshman year, she was warming the bed of a student leader and moved on to her next "victim" the following week. And she has had many victims. No matter how many guys you hear she been with, her baby face makes her appealing still. In the early days, I'd taken her to the club after some heavy drinking - I never saw her again until early the next day - yeah, somebody else had chips fungad her. I'm geniunely shocked seeing her now plump and glowing like that. I was thinking since she was used to these things, she had the know how on contraceptives and the like.

The other mamsila, Y, is an Alliance Girls alumni and made it directly to law school with straight As. She's very uptight. Me and my boys tried throwing vybe her direction but her defence mechanism shot them all down. For three years, she was in the league of untounchable women. Fancy that now somebody took her to the spa.

So its clear and evident. There is a worrying and indiscriminate upsurge in unwanted pregnancies. Even the seemingly "good ones" are caught in the trap. And all this is happening smack in the face of spirited and determined campaign for abstinence or at least condom use. Question is what is wrong?

Its actually funny how the Condom and Abstinence ads fight for prime time spots. At a certain point in time, the Nimechill, Nakufeel, Trust and Femiplan ads were running almost back to back! Mixed messages or what? Do you want us to chill or do it?Apparently the people controlling these campaigns seem to be losing the war on delaying the sexual debut. The casting for the Nimechill serves as sufficient evidence. What are 14 and 15 year olds doing on TV saying they have decided to chill??? Forget kalongo and cha mama, that shouldn't be an age anyone should be having proper sex at!!

As regards the Nakufeel advert, I'm sorry to poop on it but normally what happens when relationships are as deep and commited as depicted in the ad, people tend to become overtrusting, if not careless. Since we are faithful to each other, we've taken an AIDS test and we negative why not hit it skin to skin on her safe days and take P2s just in case?

Yes, the EC pill. Very little is said about the use of this form of contraception notwithstanding the fact that its widely used. Just ask your local chemist how much P2s he pushes across the counter in a day alone. Many people are using these pills improperly thus unwanted pregnancies. There should be a more agressive campaign on EC pills than even CDs so that people can get a wider appreciation and its effect. . . I believe this can move more and more EC pill poppers to start serious use of condoms.

Reproductive health advertising is becoming a sort of sexual Tower of Babel leaving some young adults quite confused.Anyways, I'm sure X and Y are watching the KTN feature on midwifery very keenly. Good luck to them. Can't wait to be a brand new uncle again.

What's In A Name?

2009-08-19T19:04:00.016+03:00

Inspired by a conversation with Pope Boy.

For a long time, I have been baffled by some phenomena in movies and series about Africa. First, the kind of names they come up with for fictional African countries and kingdoms.There is just something about the syllablles they pack into it that reeks of a sort of "Primitive" innuendo. We can excuse the "Phantom" comic strip for their reference to Bangalla - sounds like something a witchdoctor would say to rid you of a grandmother's curse. That was set a long time ago. But what do we say about the more recent names? Take for example West Wing's reference to a West African state known as Equitorial KUNDU. Kundu??? Lol whoever came up with that name? The closest African word to that known to me is KUNDE and you will be hard pressed to find a people who will name their nation after a variety of bitter herbs.

In Casino Royale Daniel Craig has a run-in with some guys from Nambutu ... hehe probably a mix of Namibia and Mobutu Sessesseko.

And I have just started watching 24 season 7 where the US is held ransom by a rebel leader from Sangala .

Another thing. The characters in these Western productions tend to have a stereotypical form and attributes. They are usually either savage looking or savage sounding, and the language they speak is either French or Kiswahili even if the particular story is based in Egypt. It is these quick copy paste stereotypes that Western producers need to get rid of. In as much a I respect artistic freedom, is it so hard to do some research or consult some people adept in linguistics or some other relevant field? We all remember the gaffe by the Russians when they decided to name their joint energy firm in Nigeria NIGAZ!! Am sure that did nothing to soften Russia's image as a place rampant with Racism.Or is it up to to us to change these stereotypes?

Season 7 of 24, however, surprised me by placing the character of an African leader as actually having the financial capability to bully America (something the likes of Museveni have only dreamt of no doubt).

An interesting depiction of Africa from the blaxploitation era is 1973's Shaft in Africa. I first saw the flick a few months ago on TCM, its kinda hilarious, there's a scene where Shaft fights some peeps naked and its depiction of modern slavery is also interesting. The plot is triggered by the murder of the son of an EMIR in a fictional kingdom in East Africa. You will spot some of the stereotypes I have mentioned in its trailer below:

To Kill A Mock Exam

2009-07-15T11:15:00.010+03:00

I hear that the lil kids be starting they mock exams around this week. Just like every candidate in their time, the stress is sinking in deep, given all the support groups that I am seeing cropping up on Facebook at the moment. Its a period for lots of rehearsals for every player in the sector. The kids will be hoping to secure at least a good index number because apparently, examiners look at that sort of thing when marking. A student with index 001 may for example be able to use the word "goin" and the examiner will be thinking "Ah, reported speech of sombody speaking slang, bright student trying to spice up his piece", but index 300 will most certainly be panalised for wrong spelling. Yeah its a bitch of world... Another objective for the kids is to perfect their copying skills in readiness for te main event, the KCSE exams coming later in the year. Besides didn't Steadman and Co. prove that the 8-4-4 system is rotten and has ruined many a potential genius? Well, last year a few pals of mine did a quick harambee over the holidays and bought a couple of Blackberrys for the purpose of copying and consulting during KCSE. Its amazing the lengths that Kenyans would go to pass their exams, its no wonder somebody said kenyans are the most overqualified persons on the globe!

Things are a bit more serious at the Ministry of Education. They will most certainly liase with the cops or bring an easier paper this time around to avert the possibility of a repeat of last year's Pre-Mock Violence, perhaps an almost futile task since it has become almost part of some schools' culture to go on riot before every Mock exam.

What I am wondering however is whether people will still be sending each other success cards with as much vigour as them olden times when if you didnt get something like this one below, you would doubt your existence in the social stratum of the time:

I particularly would like to wish these summer bunnies the best of luck: Ying, Gladwell, Kid Cudette [Joy Mwaniki], Cynthia W and basically everybody from Kianda Massive.

Staying on matters education, I really find this programme on KTN called The Class (airing Tuesdays 9.45pm) extremely funny. It really centres on the DALC education programme. What I find funny is the guy they always interview on each of their episodes. Dr. Humphrey Oborah, Chief of Mission at DALC. Hahahahahaha! First how he sounds, the pseudo-Luo accent just kills me rotfol...then what he says lmfao!!! Very interesting chap. He was talking about the missed opportunities experienced with the normal 8-4-4 system:

Here's a chap...He could have been a dokta , he could have been a medick but he's now kat off because of the system and we are seying this is not rait!!

Burying MJ: Recreational Grief?

2009-07-08T13:19:00.007+03:00

When he died on June 25th, the world was literally taken to a standstill. Every single social portal echoed his name.There were literally millions of Google searches about him per second that Larry Page and his crew had to block all "MJ" search queries for fear that the servers would start chewing themselves up. Bing could not have come at a better time either. Twitter, Facebook and the entire blogosphere was buzzing with an energy never seen before. The entire world declaring their undying love for a man many thought "would never die". Never had there been such a worldwide outpouring of grief since the passing of Princess Diana and perhaps the King of Rock and Roll, Elvis Presley. Yes, that is what WE did...Fast forward to yesterday's memorial service attended by thousands and watched live by millions all over the world (including my old man who I have never seen him interested in anything beyond News at 9 since the early 90s and my mom who almost threatened me if I didn't sing along to Heal The World!!!!) and chaperoned by a star studded line up who showered his mainly plastic corpse with praise, tears and lovely anecdotes. And I sat there, watching all this go down, i couldn't help but think what a bunch of professional/recreational mourners that we have become.

The reaction to MJ's death is not so abrupt per se..the fuss with celebrity deaths has developed from a very long time ago to what it is today and to me shows the underlying changes in the perception of the expression of grief closely linked to the shift in personalities who affect our lives. Back in the day the personalities who people felt they could at least grieve for were more of those who brought real developmental change to us as opposed to those who merely just entertained us. Quick example would be the death and sombre , dignified funeral of Winston Churchill, that was followed by millions around the world. Grief was very much connected to the ties that bound society together. Remember how the S.M. Otieno burial case quickly escalated to a deeply cultural and sociological issue?

Nowadays though, I think that grief has been trivialised to a great extent whereby anybody and everybody can claim entitlement to genuine grief, or just tag the phenomenon of grief on themselves by outward expressions through status updates, television interview and what not. This is just a sign of how loose the ties that bind society have become. I remember the MJ memorial how a kid came up to say that MJ was his hero yet he was probably two years old when MJ released his last album. Grief has become more of recreational than anything else especially as regards celebrities. We have seen it all through the current times from Marylin Monroe, Elvis Presley, James Brown, James Dean, Jimi Hendrix, Marvin Gaye, Tupac, B.I.G., all through to the Princess of Wales etc etc. Their deaths have become more of a "limited edition extra package" to what they have been giving us. Just like the sex tape leaks and charity events or the children they adopt. The fans are never satisfied. In fact, more and more of these celebrity memorials have the same atmosphere as a pop or rock concert - where people of like minds come together to express themselves and be part of the raw emotion.

Another worrying trend is that due to the liberalisation of the media, increased use of the internet and social networks by us and by these celebrities to connect with their MARKET ie. YOU (yes you're just a statistic), we begin to have a false sense of intimacy with these personalities. And thus develops what I would like to call virtual emotion and virtual connections with people we know that we will never met or interact face to face in a natural manner.More and more, we are looking into the eyes of people we have never met, as opposed to those sitting side by side with us and its a very sad state too.

We also know that MJ died a very lonely and lost man, struggling to redeem himself to the world which seemed to have completely written him off at that moment in time (I read about an article reviewing a concert he performed alongside Justin Timberlake in 2001 or thereabouts and the critics described him as a deer caught in headlights), the same world that was yesterday gathered by the millions before his casket to mourn. I wonder how he felt as the vibrations of the speakers jolted his box, as Usher was moved to tears, as American Congress was pondering making him a hero, as my mom sang along to Heal The World...He must have been wondering were the hell we had been hiding at, I guess...

Anyways, I must agree with @kenyanpundit, much kudos to Brooke Sheilds, her euology of the man really touched my single emotional nerve. She is about the only person there who humanized instead of idolized MJ, and, through her, for the first time since it all started in July 25th, I felt that we were burying a human being!

Back to realty now: Who thinks the ntv ad with the "Tombraider-Matrix" chick is sexy? I really need your opinions on this one lol!

Capitalist Consumerism: New Opium for the Masses?

2009-07-06T10:47:00.015+03:00

"Excess and deficiency are equally at fault" - Confucious

Three days ago am chilling with a cousin of mine in a sugarcane plantation his father owns. . .so he whips out a brand new iPhone and proceeds to IM one of his many Adhiambo Siandas. He goes like:

"Omera look at the speed of this thing! 3G teknology is da bomb!"

I hasten to add that 3G ain't available (yet) for Orange subscribers in this part of Kenya however cool his device is.

"Then why are the messages coming so fast?"

"Dunno, she could be the Usain Bolt of typing"

He refused to give in and we had a huge argument about his phone being as good as my mkebe . But he still insists that since he has owned more phones than me this year alone I must be the ignorant one. Besides, the TV doesn't lie. .when they say 3G, its 3G!

This sad scenario is replayed everyday in modern Kenya in a trend that is commonly known as consumerism. This is where you save your ka small allowance to buy the Gucci bandana you saw in the Soulja Boi video, or when your wife dumps the toaster (which was in perfect condition) for the new one that can be remotely controlled via bluetooth one etc. etc. In short, this baby of capitalism isolates the consumer to a certain pre-set lifestyle modelled by synthetic ideals of exclusivity, status, coolness and the like. Thus, a Londoner could be wearing the exact same type of shoes as say, a young girl in Londiani. . . Karl Marx aptly called this concept "Commodity Fetishism". What really started this madness?

Struggling to save face after losing long expensive wars, European countries in the 20th Century resorted to imperialism ie. Colonising new territory. Here, the discovery of vast resources and labour (in the form of topless slaves, with their quivering members peeping from their loincloths, a sight which may well have influenced the term fetishsm by Marx) rejuvenated industrial development. These gains trickled down to the individual and the new modus operandi of status was wealth acquisition.

Inversely, Western civilization also awed them "savages" and their reception of this new type of education cemented their resolve to get rid of their "primitivity" and be able to pull of a more refined lifestyle. The main beneficiaries of this were the same political leaders struggling to secure our independence. This is evident with the speed at which they acquired huge tracts of land and property once they got into government, forming the first indigenous elite class.

With equal speed, a middle class also sprung up in the 70s and 80s. They were young, educated, energetic and would stop at nothing to get to be part of the more privileged of society. They went to the same discos, bought the same bling and bellbottoms as their richer pals, who had begun to be influenced by growing communication and foreign education.

Today, the situation is more pronounced than ever, especially given that globalisation has become a fact of life. Our middle class and no doubt the lower class is so rampantly physically the psychological aspirations to join the burgeois prôpes. . .

The psychological rationale of this the same thing that motivated inter-racial sexual conquests in the apartheid era. . . By looking and behaving like the "others" (read obnoxiously rich motherchods who we see everyday on MTV and Reality TV who rake billions per month) we will get to acceptance of some sort. . .a "Dr Livingstone, I presume?" kind of moment.

Clearly, there's nothing wrong with staying on point with the trends, and having ambitions... But as we buy them Gucci bandanas, buy CDs we listen to once, or unnecessary gadgets, take out unrealistic mortgages, squeeze life savings to buy that flashy car while the true owners of production (multinationals like Nokia, Apple, Toyota etc.) rake silos of cash out of our insatiable desire, do we ever to stop to think of what we have transformed into? Do we ever ponder that this could amount to self-rape, indirect exploitation? Is unfettered exercise of capitalism and its nasty lil sister consumerism advisable for Kenya and indeed Africa? Who is the ultimate winner after Wahi Kuwahis, after the Kwachuas? Do you ever ask yourself what happened to bread at 5bob, Johnny Walker at 300bob? Is the ultimate satisfaction getting hold of the CREAM dollar bills?

Eat and drink but exceed not and become extravagant - Quran 7.31

In summary, due to advancement in communication, easy flow of information and other trappings of globalization, Africa and the 3rd World is now caught in a nervous race to catch up with the progress made by the West so that they too can also look, feel, sound and even smell "hip, modern and/or cool". Its quite a shock to most African economies, the fact that, in a few decades, we are on the brink of achieving a societal disposition that took Western countries hundreds of years to achieve.

However, when it comes to differentiating Westernization and Modernization the line becomes a bit blurry. We are stuck on activities that have ceased to become good or healthy practice in the West. Why? The main reason is that, even though information is much easier to access, the owners of production are keen to replicate their ancient commercial feats here. They buy as much airtime from our media as their budgets can allow. Buy this junk, get more junk free. Your Facebook sidebar and your prime time TV ads are full of them. They determine what is good and bad, and the consumer has virtually no control of this. With time, a keen individual will notice these pre-set trends in:

The public attitude towards food & food supplements
We have embraced fast/junk foods, a daily diet to many of the 9-to-5 hustle, quite oblivious of the fact that these foods are being frowned upon in the West for their negative impact on health. Thus, it is hard not to notice the preference of sugar-coated cereal to say, whole grain porridge as well as our version of KFC, kuku porno and fries from Kenchic, to something more healthier a few hours later. The result of this is quite evident as research shows that more and more people in Africa are dying from diseases relating to fast foods. The term Know Your Status in Africa has been used in reference to HIV/AIDS, but if we extend it to wanting to know our diabetes/coronary tract/obesity etc status, one would be surprised at the number of positive results.

Early child development is also taken a step back when many career or upper middle class moms abandon breastfeeding too early to take care of business or get that tender signed. Much kudos to Safaricom for trying to sort this out by providing space for their staff to breastfeed at work.

Over-commercialization
Do you realise how virtually every single thing/activity under the sun has been commercialized? From the second you wake up, somebody somewhere has decided through strategic marketing which alarm clock should wake you up, what weave that chips funga lying next to you should be wearing, the type of condoms that you encounter on the floor and what mobile network you should be on when texting your friend that there's a complete stranger in your bed. Those are just a mere two minutes of your life. Should I continue? OK, here's some more from the top of my head:

Sex has become a commodity and a marketing tool at once. Many of us now have jobs courtesy of contracting a Sexually Transmitted Degree. One can easily exchange it for progress up the social status. Sex is guaranteed to buy or sell anything, a new found revelation founded on Western culture. For the youth, its part of a "hip hype" activity, and just like dressing up, there has to be some swagger put to it. A recent survey (read it in last Thursday's Nation at pg14) shockingly revealed that many university students shunned the free government-supplied condoms due to their plain, uninnovative packaging yet they proceeded to have unprotected sex. I don't need to add more, do I?

Education & Health are closely intertwined because they involve giving of public service as the main basis of being a player in this sector. Yet look at the number of sub-standard schools, universities and health facilities springing up in the country. Education is geared towards passing exams and not imparting knowledge and life skills. Doctors nowadays think the important thing is not the Socrates oath, but how many people can pay consultancy fees per day because they want to upgrade to the 2009 Range. Traditional Herbalists are not left behind as they play on our false perceptions about education and make posters of themselves in graduation gowns. Which university offers a course in traditional medicine?

Fanaticism is yet another victim to commercialization. Pastimes such as sport have been completely commandeered and the principles of capitalism transfused into its core pillars. That is why the level of satisfaction would vary when watching a Gor Mahia match then watching Manchester United players at a traning session. Quality. . .

Quality?

Yes, quality. Quality is another grey zone as we realise that somebody somewhere has already pre-determined for us what quality is supposed to be. And quality many a time is coincidentally anything whose market value exceeds the a different item of its type. That is why nobody has qualms about paying top dollar for exotic Indonesian coffee whose flavour is derived from the digestive system of a certain species of civet rats!! Yes, regurgitated coffee beans (Oh, dear, I really hope you took your dinner). And with the tag line of quality also comes exclusivity. Consumerism conceptually represents a bold (economic mostly, and sociological) move to "join the club" as it were. A more layman term would be "kutoa ushamba" in short. We all want to be modern, hip, cool, with it and with acceptable swag despite the economic repercussions.

Thus the broad result of this is a H.U.G.E clamour for upward mobility across the strata of all natural phenomena. Plants and animals want rights that are accorded at least to the basest of human beings. The poor want to be at least middle class. The middle class are tip toeing, looking beyond the walls of the B-list society. The rich want to be super mega rich. The super mega rich well, they want to be demi-gods. The latent energy towards upward mobility can both be a blessing and a curse. There is no way to escape or be immune to this phenomenon since consumerism has deeply entrenched itself to the economics of the entire world. How we deal with it is the catch.
Governments should thus come up with economic policies that tend to positively utilise this Latent Energy of Upward Mobility (LEUM, Copyright 2009, WP) to boost development rather than being an impediment to it. Kenya has failed to do this, for example, in its current (and all other previous) Budget. It has tackled consumerism from the wrong end thus the slashing of tax on cosmetics and mobile handsets will result in more made up people with phones yet they cant afford airtime. Safaricom meanwhile will be sending them spam texts about 'Lipua Milioni' or 'Kwachua Hard body', making them even more anxious.

Indeed, ignoring to cater to LEUM is disastrous in the long run. People divert their desire to what I'd call negative responses to LEUM.Last year, kidnappings in Kenya was only seen in movies. Now, they are almost a weekly affair in Nairobi. I've also been made to understand that the porn industry here is budding what with the reduced tax on filming equipment. More and more jobless smart alecks come up with massive currency forgery extortion and pyramid schemes to "get there". White collar crime is also plummeting.
As I have always said, these are signs of an economy keen to be rejuvenated or else the aggregate feeling would rise from desperation to bitterness, paving way for Ultra negative responses to LEUM manifested by serial killings, terrorism and general anarchy among society's elements.

What should be done is not to fight consumerism but use it to spur growth by creating opportunities for those down to legitimately move up while curbing unfair practice among the upper classes so that they can do something more productive than Madoff -like waiting for Jesus to return or something lol!

"Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labour for that which does not satisfy? Listen and I'll tell you where to get good food that fattens up the soul." - Isaiah 55:3

Bi-sexual Child??? Citizen Get Serious!

2009-06-23T13:59:00.007+03:00

Everytime I tune into Citizen News or Citizen Habari, I get this eerie feeling that what I am digesting is not news but a well organised, deodorized form of rumours read to me by celebrity presenters. I don't know what it is but I just cant seem to fight off this feeling. I was in this cautious mode as I watched Citizen News yesterday and they happened to have this tear jerking feature on a 12 year old hermaphodite kid who was being shunned by his playmates at school and how a medical surgery to correct this has made life worse for him/her. All very well. However, Citizen News carried the feature under the header BISEXUAL BOY. In fact the news anchor, I belive Belindah Oburah is her name, continued to refer to this boy as bi-sexual oblivious of the fact that this is a complete misrepresentation of the kids sexual orientation. The web version however goes under the headline 'Plight of A Hermaphrodite' but still mentions the child as being bisexual.The report itself (watch it here) goes something like:

...Two years ago the child's father...went to hospital with the hope that his bi-sexual child would be treated...

Let me school whoever wrote that piece with the help of wikipedia:

Bisexuality refers to sexual behavior with or physical attraction to people of both genders (male and female), or a bisexual orientation. People who have a bisexual orientation "can experience sexual, emotional, and affectional attraction to both their own sex and the opposite sex"; "it also refers to an individual's sense of personal and social identity based on those attractions, behaviors expressing them, and membership in a community of others who share them."

and then

A hermaphrodite is an organism having both male and female reproductive organs

So I believe the right word that should have been used is "hermaphrodite" not "bisexual" as put by Citizen News. I was of the idea that news reporting is a delicate thing that requires the utmost care to be taken when published to the public. In fact that child should be able to successfully sue Royal Media Services for defamation on the grounds that they published material that would cause him/her to be percieved to have bi-sexual orientation and by extention, others would be led to believe that he is sexually active; all this in very very bad taste. This is the kind of thing that Maendeleo ya Wanaume in collaboration with FIDA of course, (since eh...he has both sexes) should be following up instead of whining about naked statues and sex boycotts. At least we know the damages claim will go towards the child's medical care. I know this is not the type of litigiousness that third world countries are used to but if it was anywhere else in the world, Royal Media Services would be facing a big big lawsuit.

Anyway, I ask again, who writes these things for presenters to read? Has Citizen has invested so much in top-notch news anchors in the never ending presenter "transfer window" that it cannot find/afford quality news writer and producers? AND if the presenters are so top-notch as we are led to believe, how could they not detect this phraseology problem?

Obama: Swatter-in-Chief

2009-06-22T11:33:00.008+03:00

I have nothing against animal rights activists. In fact I believe that they have brought to the fore some very outrageous cases of man turning more beastly than the beast itself, and the donkey, Equus asinus, as my friends in the lab would choose to call them, has gained a bit of dignity despite its day job and I dare add its very pronounced anatomical features during the mating season. However, some of these animal lovers take their passion to the extreme until the question begs if animal rights have been elevated beyond the human(e) right to peace of mind.

Obama must now be aware of this fact after he clinically and with a lot of skill swatted a persistent fly during an interview with CNBC. Watch as he patiently waits for the fly to settle on his left hand before executing a coupe de grace of sorts, killing the goddamn fly instantly.

Lmfao! Doesn't the son of K'ogelo have jet speed reflexes?... Have you ever tried to swat a fly? Their vision is in slow-mo! You cant swat it like a mosquito even if u tried...unless you're very, very, very fast! I was very impressed the way he killed it in one swift move. Its almost a silent requirement for the US president to have killer reflexes, ain't it [remember, George Bush versus Shoe Hurling Journalist] ? I wonder what kind of agony John Mc Cain would have gone through if he was the one being interviewed, for a man who takes 5 minutes to raise his hands!

Anyway some animal right activists calling themselves People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) ain't the least bit happy. They are calling it "an execution" that shouldn't have happened on national TV. So whats the beef here? Is it that he swatted the bug or is it that he did it on a PG Rated programme which didn't include violence as a feature?

They never get enough, do they? PETA should be protecting sharks from the merciless hands of them Asians who just need their fins for soup instead of defending a measly fly. To the best of my knowledge, the house fly, Musca domestica, is not on the list of World's endangered species. . .in fact they mate shamelessly, they need to learn a lesson from the Chinese on population control for Pete's sake!

A pal of mine be saying that maybe the fly was one of those tu-spy gadgets from North Korea. Well, it will sure takes more than that to hound Obama.

Here's a more entertaining version:

Yet Another Oil Tanker Tragedy

2009-06-17T10:36:00.002+03:00

Tell me where you get your bread, Mr. Sluggard - Joseph 'Culture' Hill

There were two oil tanker accidents yesterday, one around Kericho and another a few kilometres from Kisumu. In both incidents, hundreds of passers-by showed up with jerricans, bottles and jualas to tap some of the spilling fuel. As usual, Kenyans are a perfect case study in selective amnesia. Few could hardly remember the Sachngwan tragedy where a good number of people were reduced to ashes and others sustaining servere burns while attempting to "salvage" fuel in a similar scenario.

The tanker at the Kericho incident burst into flames, seriously burning around 45 people, some of whom may not see the end of today. Things were hunky dory in Kisumu though. After having their fill of the fuel, the Kisumu group proceeded to hold a press conference of sorts.

"Hii ni haki yetu. . .na tunaomba polisi watuache tuchukue hii mafuta angalau tupate kitu ya kula leo. Si unajua mahindi ya Ruto ile ya 54 siku hizi ni 85. ." their spokesman said.

And I ask myself what an oil tanker losing control had to do with maize flour prices. By the time i was passing the accident scene on my way home the same group had burst into chants of "MIGINGO IS OURS! MIGINGO IS MARWA!"

This is a clear sign that a section of Kenyans, particularly the jobless and those below the poverty line, are suffering from a hangover from the post-election period. A period when they were free to loot and apply their sub-jungle law after political and administrative systems failed to contain the situation. Our brains are still wired to causing chaos at the slightest sign of political disagreements. How is it that looting is quickly clothed with a political agenda? At this rate, someone can as well justify breaking into a house as his way of protesting against how the Migingo issue is being handled.

On a different tangent, have we been reduced to waiting for the misfortune of others to get food on the table? I must admit to have sat among a group of idlers busy fantasizing about the kind of accident that would give them the most joy:

"Manze, lorry ya Tusker ingeweza gongana na lorry ya mkate, kizee, si inaweza tusort mbaiya?"

Its just a sad sad situation. I could bet my most valuable wahi-kuwahi crown that, despite the recession, despite plummeting fuel prices, if such an accident went down in the US of A, people would probably be calling the police or going on with their own hustle instead of risking their lives or enduring the pain of third degree burns and an ugly face all for a few litres of diesel.

Even if the mythical 500,000 jobs suddenly created themselves, many of us would still be going to work with a jerrican and working with one eye surveying the roads. . .waiting. . .waiting for something to happen.

VACANCY: 30 million 'Tankmen' urgently needed.

2009-06-04T12:04:00.007+03:00

Yesterday, China commemorated the 20th Anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square Protests which led to what is now called the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Students and other members of the working class defied orders by the Communist regime to stop protests and calls for increased democratic space that had been going on for some weeks. The regime declared martial law to prevail and the Army moved into Tiananmen Square where the protestors had been holed up. The confrontation that followed left hundreds dead and thousands injured (although the exact figures remain controversially blurry to date). Of course a lot of noise was made about this, resulting in the isolation of China and Peking's increased authoritarian approach to governance and massive censorship of information ("guidance of the people", it is called) . This doesnt prevent this incident from being a malignant sore in the Communist Party's rule.

Naturally, this week has not really been the best time to be in China. Most of the major websites like twitter and google have been blocked. Copies of The Economist arrived with certain pages missing and tight checks on what comes in and out of the country have been in place. A number of Kenyan dignitaries felt the full force this when they were subjected to a thorough body and cavity search at a Beijing airport. Pole waheshimiwas. Clearly this is an event that certain people want the world to forget.

What will never be forgotten however is a sideshow that took place during the protests on a day like today in 1989. One of the protestors firmly stood his ground to prevent the progress of a number of tanks into the square albeit for a few minutes. Even as the tanks tried to circle past him he resiliently stood on their path. This rare show of courage and defiance was immortalised by photojournalist Jeff Weidner who managed to sneak this image below to the Associated Press.

The courageous acts of this man, popularly called The Tankman, have inspired many and proved that "the power of the masses" is essentially manifested in the determination of each and every individual.

Here's the video of the same incident:

The whole Tiananmen protest saga causes me to wonder whether Kenyans can openly and with solidarity rise up and denounce the government for failing every test of accountability, transparency and democracy. Clearly we are a long way from such a point.

From the comfort of our living rooms, we wait for the 9 o'clock news to hurl every insult we know at the President as he watches our neighbour annex part of our land, at Finance Ministers who sign away billions to ghost companies, as we donate fare to the Attorney General to see how Geneva looks like and yet we know that he's not going to talk about all the civilians killed by police . . .ad infinitum, ad nauseum. We send big ups to our own Tankmen, the Mwalimu Matis and the Boniface Mwangis of our world for entertaining us s they are set upon by police and hired goons of the government. And when its all over life continues as normal as we wait for yet another venting session.

Well, guess what. Kibaki or Raila didnt hear you shouting from your living room. Uhuru Kenyatta did not hear you ask him to go back to primary and revise 1 + 1. Thats how sad things are. Even the Tankman of Tiananmen was part of a huge mass of dissatisfied citizens fed up with the raw deal they were getting from the government. Our own Tankmen seem to fighting a lonely battle here. But they say Kenyans are a peculiar lot.

Our preffered weapon of choice is the ballot. I hear 2012 will be time for the youth to take over and show these old men who have steered the country down the wrong path how its done. I laugh cynically from a good place at this pipe dream.

The level of apathy among the Kenyan youth, especially in matters political is just shoking. If you doubt me just check your pals' Faebook profiles. At the Political section, they will probably have written "Don't Care" or "Given Up" or "I like blue dresses. Does that tell anything?"

Further, their is a brigade of blue eyed boys claiming to be the next generation of leadership of this country, yet they are just ardent students of the same old rotten regimes of the past and present. Just because someone speaks ~~acceptable~~ some outdated Sheng' doesnt mean he or she can advocate your interests than others. I am among those who are not really enthusiastic about 2012 politics. We may see a more youthful, more effectively corrupt and unaccountable government which may more than post-election violence to keep in check. Maybe a war can wake up the dormant grey matter in our heads.Maybe then we will be able to awaken the Tankman in all of so that in our small spheres of influence, openly denounce what we think is wrong despite the consequences knowing that we have the backing of many other counterparts.

First African Playmate: Lets Pop Champagne?

2009-05-27T02:35:00.010+03:00

Am not really a fan of Playboy magazine. I mean, lets face it, any ambitious, fertile (prima facie) young man in his prime would get ticked off by the fact that an 80-something year old is frolicking with a good number of shapely blondes AND he sends you pictures of a NEW one every month. And he just didn't start a few days ago. . .he been doing it for 50 YEARS (curses upon whoever invented the little blue pill)! Besides, my fascination with the anatomy of the female human being fizzled out in my late teens. It all started when I was admitted at Aga Khan Hospital in Standard 6, this really friendly Peace Corps volunteer sneaked me a Cosmo to "deal with the boredom". Today, if I open my door to a completely nude woman on a cold Saturday night, I'd probably give her directions to the madhouse without as much as batting my eyelid - "Walk down to the end of the corridor to the door marked GENTS. . .yes, thats the place!"

But not to say its completely out of my league. I nab it once in a while at a visit to the dentist or if I want to get a glimpse of some of the quality interviews and articles they drop. I'm always for the dont judge a book by its cover theory too, but dang, some of those magazine covers. . .wacha tu! So as I was going through May's issue, I was pleasantly surprised that someone knocked some sense (or sex, whichever) into Playboy owner, Hugh Heffner's head and it has finally hit him - African women are the hottest items around!

Yes, earlier this month, Hugh picked an African-born lass as the 50th Playboy Playmate/Playmate of 2009. This is no mean feat. Millions of blondes, brunettes and redheads dream of being Playmate of the Month let alone Playmate of the Year. This also means the lucky girl bags $100,000, a new car and a HUGE bottle of Patròn, big enough to hush a table of Mama Pima type drunks. Despite the insane compe a black. .no, a black African girl has actually pulled it off and became this year's headgirl at the Mansion? Amazing to say the least.

Lets get up close and personal. Her name? Brace yourselves. . . Shes called Ida, Ida Ljungqvist. LMAO!! I know many are now asking themselves what kind of African names their kid Ljunq-whatever! Gosh, I can't even pronounce that name. Apparently, shes a pointy born in Tanzania to a TZ woman and Swedish man. I first saw her in the January issue when the nomination list came out. At least its hard to tell that she is not pure bred. This model right here is no stranger to Africa. Apart from TZ, she has been on Kenyan soil, Ethiopia and a brief stint at Mijinjo/Uganda. She can also speak Swahili quite well. Reppin' for the Motherland real nice, huh?

Perhaps this marks a turning point with the general international conscensus on what is beautiful and sexy. This was long overdue - didnt we have Naomi Campbell and Tyra on the mag sometime back? Yes, despite body specs are in model territory (32D cup, 21-35 at the waist and hip) Ida's skin colour and roots are a breath of fresh air into a field dominated by surf poster blondes, to an extent that it had become slightly clichéd. A welcome change that is only echoed Obama's political feat. A tiny step in the advancement of Africa and Africans, I dare say, no matter how twisted it may sound coming from that angle.

This could be one of the very few reasons we can afford a bit of merrymaking on Africa Day (passed a few hours ago) the rationale being, our politicians have failed us doubly so we have resorted to applauding the slightest form of vindication, including a Tanzanian lady posing nude for a magazine centerfold. Ah, I know you love that ish! If you don't, maybe you suck a thumb or something then!

Zain Wankers, Get Me Back Online. . .

2009-05-17T12:31:00.001+03:00

For exactly 36hours now (its 12.30pm where I am) my Zain modem has been recording 0.00kbps up and 0.00kbps down. In short, my chronic habit of stayin hooked to the net all day has been curtailed and am supposed to be on vacation in the bundus, plus my projects and blog postings are seriously behind schedule. What the heck is happening? I'm 10kilometres from a major urban centre, translating to a bumpy halfhour boda boda ride to the nearest jav to Kisumu City. . .

Zain shouldn't be suffering technical hitches for this long, especially at a time when the competition, Safcon and Ho-range are busy hawking their 3G package. If it was Yu, I would be more sympathetic (I mean, these guys are still promoting FREE texts) but this is totally unacceptable. Or is it our close proximity to Migingo Island?? Do your survey, am deep in Kenyan territory! In fact the rest of us who are still using your EDGE network that stil snails at 9.6kbps should be treated like royalty!

I have thus decided to quit my erstwhile unwavering loyalty to Zain and search for a way to circumvent the codes that keep this modem Zain-specific and enjoy some Safaricom 3G on the side. Its not exactly cheating when your wife is on an uncalled for sex boycott, is it?

Meanwhile am stuck to blogging and surfing from the phone which sucks like a Thai go go girl.

Take 2

2009-05-14T09:13:00.003+03:00

Four months is a long time to have writer's block (let me call it blogger's block for I have been active elswhere) by any reasonable creative standards. At least thats what I thought. My abscence here can mildly be attributed to that and also a semester of undescribable rage and depression and *sigh* woman problems.

I dont know about other countries but I think its outrageous for any Kenyan University to attempt to rush through a branch of law as important and controversial as Land Law and Conveyancing in 13 weeks. So, most of my nights were spent cuddling Conveyancing by Prof Tom Ojienda. 300 pages of unrelenting jargon and case law plus 100 more pages of appendicies which, more often than not, got me thinkin that I should have added this to my list of suicide methods .

Facebook Notes also took away some of the charm from blogging- the instant comments from pals and such is encouraging and a tad bit sweet. But then again, a feeling of non contentment comes with it when most of the comments are "Lol" , "Lmfao" and "rotflol".

No need for too much apologising. Am back in business, hopefully more consistent this time. . .

Maize Flour: Common Man, Get Serious!!!

2008-12-03T00:42:00.002+03:00

Kenyans can say the most mundane things especially in times of great need when patience and other good virtues have to be exercised.Yeah, yeah it’s the bare truth – Kenya is undergoing a staple food shortage i.e. . . . maize flour has become a luxury item yet some of us have had it for supper ever since the day they set foot on this earth ( ask the worlds oldest primarian)…So we, the mwananchi of common have gone on a rampage since Raila’s homecoming party that these prices should go down… and the government is REALLY feeling the heat of this people-led revolution, much to my surprise. I mean you don’t except a government that doesn’t give two hoots about due process, displaced people whether from their own political scheming or from floods, taxes and the sanctity of election as a means of expressing democracy to go all goo-goo-gaga-gaga over maize flour. Kenyans are hard skinned, we always enjoys being ravished where it hurts the most (the hole somewhere betwixt the two lobes of flesh just below your backbone is the spot marked X, boys and girls)...we can take another anal and cranial rape, cant we? So my first kudos to the government of this republic...we have established that you really give a damn, somewhere in that cold bleeding heart of yours… Yaaay!

So we have made a hellova a lot of noise till the erstwhile beefing factions of Raila and Ruto had to do a quick collabo to appease the masses. Yesterday, a breakthrough was finally reached. The government millers will get down to supplying government flour which will go for 52 bob per 2 kg packet and to be sold at special shops while the normal flour will go for 72 bob down from the crazy price of 120 bob. Hey, aint that a good thing? Progress, huh? Apparently not! And surprisingly the voices of disquiet are emanating from somewhere just above the poverty line.

Today in the jav, I had the privilege of listening in to a local radio show of a certain vernacular I shall not mention. The topic was, naturally, the “government flour”… A huge a mount of listeners called in to say that THEY DID NOT WANT THE SUBSIDISED FLOUR!!!! A polite query of why not brought this huge barrage of outrageous points of views that up to this moment leaves me baffled. One listener started this conspiracy theory that the flour is substandard and is only fit for animal consumption by “chicken and cows”… Hmm that’s just about the most twisted, if not ignorant, contribution one can make. That’s something I would expect a tourist from New York to say, not a mwananichi from Kogello or Kutus! Its common knowledge that maize flour comes from…. (5 seconds for the blondes)… MAIZE! And no additives whatsoever are required. That’s the bad thing bout too much TV… One minute you see the Chinese are putting things into their milk, now we want to extend it to a kind and very rare gesture from the government? Seriously! And, if I may dare to add, since when were beggars choosers, especially in this circumstance where the second option is an empty stomach or chapatis/rice (which translates to a tempted stomach to most)?

However, this incident reveals the underlying psyche of the average middle to low income earner in this country. They don’t want to be left out in the Kenyan dream of making quick millis and living the life in Muthaiga etc. That’s why they shun anything that would distinguish them from the upper class. Don’t you notice how politicians when they attempt those “am one with the people” stunts of going to the slum for a single lunch, people in the back of the crowd will be sniggering like “Why is he trying to cheat us that that is how he is used to living yet at night he will go back to Karen and have a good night sleep?”. Humility is like Karma …you don’t know exactly when it will f.ck you up!

My two cents to my fellow common man: GROW UP!!! The society has stratums and there are people who can afford certain things, some cannot. Its f.ckd up, but that’s the damn truth. Besides if they buy more expensive stuff that’s more tax to be used for the benefit of you and me… the fact that there are people who have quite a lot of money to burn means there’s more jobs for you and me to find out ways in which we can help these buggers get rid of that money… But that’s a story for another day. Eat that flour with a lot of gusto and do your thing to…emmm build the nation.

And to put all these conspiracies about a government plot to poison the masses, the entire Cabinet should head down to Kibera and have a hearty meal of government ugali, as we wait to see if it kills them. Reminds me of this scene in A Man of the People when Chief Nwege ( I hope that’s his name right?) on the first sip of OHMS coffee rather than his usual coffee, jumps up like “a scorpion just stung him” with screams of “They done kill me! They done kill me!” Much love to you Chinua Achebe.

Good Luck Obama (Good Luck K' Ogello) !

2008-11-04T16:13:00.007+03:00

Finally, the day the entire world has held their collective breaths for is finally here. Its Election Day in the USA an the battle is of enourmous historical relevance as we already know... Will the Free World have an African-American(-Kenyan) President for the first time in the name of Illinois Senator Barack Obama or will it emerge with the first woman Vice-president in its history, namely Sarah Palin? Those two are the main focus of the elctions...forget John Mc Cain. The Republican campaign didnt pick up steam until Dear John ( I love how the way he cant raise his hands higher then 90 degrees... the Viet Kong musta reallly pinched a brothers armpits!) until John fished out this lady from Alaska and dressed her up in $150,0000 worth of haute couture.

It has all been said and done. they have debated and campaigned, the Wolf Blitzers and Basset Buyukas of this world have analysed each and every angle for us.Now its our turn to watch as the Americans make the decision for the rest of the world in a poll that could radically shift the world stance to may things, given the cyrrent recession wave...

Here in Kenya, there is absolutely no question as to who we back.Obama is our son and as the tradition we back our blood irrrespective of policy, whether good or bad (thankfully he has good ones)... we even held a mock election in the satellite state of Kisumu with an overwhelming result of 99% to nought for Mc Cain.

The first wave of vote tallying will begin in the so-called battle-ground states which will give a quick picture of whether the 7 point lead that Obama currently has in polls is genuine or if we are going to another Bradley Nightmare...

My two cents? We will be literally shafted with a Mc Cain administation plus a looming threat of Sarah Palin at the head of one of the most powerful countries in the world...Better begin the next four years with a revolutionary mood than anything else. I am PROUD to be associated with Barack Obama and wish him the best of luck in OUR campaign to change the world as we know it, and prove that colour is irrelevant as regards leadership...N*ggers got brains too lol!!

Honorium Gonorrheam (Africanus?) - Past Motivation

2008-10-19T16:44:00.003+03:00

Friday was a bitchy day for those of us without pay TV or nagging wives to watch as their mouths move in yet another useless tirade about why you didnt climax last night ("Youre thinking about HER, arent you?") or about the curtains you promised to buy her if she lost 10 pounds off her corpus titanicus. . . The rest of us were stuck to the unfortunate throes of sitting outside in groups and watching our lady friends strut the imaginary catwalk in DoLLce and Cabanna, Kucci and the usual hâute couture bullsh.t that doesnt end up sizing up your left shoe in financial comparison. The chicas, well, I heard they missed Neighbours and the re-run of One Tree Hill thus leading to an empty emotional think tank that Kenyan men allegedly seldom fill. . .Enough said. The situation was grim. Why? Quite simple really. . .the people we entrusted with the sacred duty of entertaining us were airing quite a rare spectacle live - the honoring of three peculiar old men - President Mwai Kibaki, Prime Minister Raila Odinga and Former UN Sec. General Koffi Annan - for apparently securing the lead role in Big Brother Kenya: Post Election Edition which drove ratings through the roof given thousands of people were voted out to six feet under to wait for the rest of us to get bored with living atop terra firma. . . Honoring them for "drumming sense" into us. . .showing us the light, that the game should stop because they had already won the million dollar jackpot and they split it three ways.

Quite a long paragraph up there, merely to grasp the mood of yesterday. Congrats to Your Excellencies, but we forgot the sucker punch. What is the relevance of institutions of academic excellence dreaming up honorary awards then hunting around for 'qualified' persons to thrust it upon, especially as regards Africa? Is this just another Copy-Paste aping act of borrowing Western culture that our dear professors of lore discovered on their Yale, Havard and Oxford scholarships?

Lets go into a time capsule back to post-colonial Africa (yes, ladies lose the tops). .even though Hero Worship has been around since Noah made some big-ass ark, I think this is far back enough. What made the village elders sit down one random Sato and say , Yes. .Son of X has done a lot of good, lets elevate him a few floors up the social stratum. Basically for most cultures, one had to show a PRACTICAL HANDS ON achievement to be transformed to Hero (the only heroines I know being Wangu wa Makeri and the Zulu goddess who was imported to a Paris Zoo for Europeans to stare in awe at the astrnomically large labia majora the 'savages' possed in the 18th century).

Yes, you had to bring a few bodiless heads home or quite a number of cattle and foreign mamasitas to be pronounced Hero. Never mind the dude who brings back his injured friend from deep within enemy lines. Whoever thought of such "Nobody is left behind" bull drummed so hard in movies Private Ryan, Wind talkers etc.? The wags also grabbed a few summa cum laudes. After Lunda Magere returned from a victorious raid, someone had to re-enact it in a sexy way. Warriors seldom have silvery tongues. If Luanda himself was to give an account, he'd just be like "Ah, twas nothing much. . .we just chopped off the Cheifs balls and raped a few women." Whether you were honored for your Achilles tendon, your amazing hips that locked several jaws or your ability to freestyle sonnets, the usual criteria never went beyond the person and personal abilities of the person. My hzpothesis is that it hardly ever extended to politics. The Cheif was just. . .the Cheif. . .

Back out of the time capsule. Now, why cant we honour people who have entertained us with stories that have brought out Africa in the proper context like Thiongo, p' Bitek, Achebe, Honwona, Kimenye et al? Better yet why not honour our broda in Kibera who, in the heat of the post election violence, managed to escape a hail of live GSU bullets with the famous Usain Boltic run? Doesnt that deserve a doctorate of Laws, given the award has nothing to do with academic excellence?

Cont. . .

Random Question: If Psquare is peter and paul then paul goes on a solo career, what would he call himself?. . . P Root? Hehehehehe. . . .

Zain Modem Getting On My Nerves

2008-08-24T10:53:00.001+03:00

its all good that Celtel has been swallowed by the parent company, Zain,and now we gots all sorts of assurances that the world will be much better than the 2.4 million subscribers that Celtel could garner in the same period that Safaricom scooped 11 million Kenyans into their net...

So yeah, after lots of persuations and arguments about how a less crowded house gives you the upper hand, i finally got myself hooked up with a Zain 3G modem... Yeah the deal sounded very very good. 3k per month for unlimited internet access with potential speeds of 96kbps..Damn wasnt a nigga excited..

Now am looking at this Huawei modem with a look of disdainful disgust...Most of my internet time is spent on downloads and unfortunately Zain wasnt thinking of people like me... This thing cannot achieve more than 10kbps even with a download accelerator.Where the hell is all that bandwidth going??? I thought we was a small house... Can somebody make me understand? Can dial up connections pass the 20kbps point, if so why are they being wachoyo with bandwidth???? Any body from Zain?

A King Has Been Born. . .

2008-08-06T11:51:00.003+03:00

Excerpts from a sermon held at a certain Anglican Church, a member of the Archdiocese of Kisumu on 25th December, 2007, at 9.30am:

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ
PROVOSTEST - presiding clergy
BISHOP RITEST - delivers the sermon
FILOMENA - Choir-mistress
YO-YO - Youth Fellowship leader
HON. BENY O. O. -prominent church "investor"
CONGREGATION

PROVOSTEST

We are gathered here this Sunday ermm, I mean this wonderful Xmas morning. This is a very expectant day for all of us (casts a sly glance at FILOMENA, at least 3 months heavy).
Let me remind us that amongst us are those who don't share the Xmas spirit and wish to prey into our pockets for our small cash and cheap phones.
I see its a full house today. Turn to your neighbour and ask where he/she was last Sunday. Oh yes, any visitor amongst us? And by visitors I also mean those members who have been away since last Christmas.

(uncomfortable squirming in the pews)

Am tempted to call the clergy to say hallo to their secret wives!

(Appreciative laughter that jolts the marathon dozers to full concentration)

I will now welcome YO-YO for a few announcements.

(YO-YO walks up to the podium and unhooks the mic)

YO-YO

Eh semeni ma-youth. Praiseee Lord! Leo 4.30 kuna tea party ya kudeliberate njaro ya kugutuka bila kushtuka hii Boxin Day bana. . . Munajua sisi ndio 63% ya ma boxer so lazima tujiami jo! Msisahau orange eating party kesho. Msidanganywe ovyo vile Eve alithoriwa na Nyoka akazane na Ndizi na Sagodi aliwashow wamange Machungwa solo. Kumbe Sagodi amewascan, anawacheki na angle théta! Si munaona vile walipaishwa? (huge howl of laughter from the wings) Otherwise, contribution from last youth service was ksh. 645. Be blessed in the Lord!

(Applause)

PROVOSTEST

Let us now have intercessional prayers for our families and our country. Ummm (looks at the front row reserved for church"investors") Can Hon. Beny O. O. lead us in this?

(A murmer permeates the entire church. Clearly Prov. hasn't heard of the recent scandal where a certain " trifling gold digger" called up the Hon.'s wife, announcing she was pregnant with his child and its is rumoured she also described poor Beny's undergarments and the contents therein to 100% detail. At that instant, Prov's Motorola C113 beeps loudly, indicating a new text message which he scrolls through, red with embarrassment)

Well it seems Hon. Beny O. O. could not join us today but our prayers are his! (leads the intercession prayer session)
And now let us welcome our award-winning Choir Mistress, Filomena!

(Filomena approaches the mic)

FILOMENA

I presented this solo piece at the national Churches competition and it was declared the most uplifting solo piece. Enjoy!

(Clears her throat and delves into an 8-octave soprano performance in a language closer to opera and rises to an ear-splitting crescendo followed by awed silence.)

PROVOSTEST
(elated)

Didnt I tell you we had Pavarottis in our ministry? Now you have heard. . . May God bless dear Filomena and (coughs judiciously) her family. Now for the sermon, lets rise and sing Hymn Number That One to welcome the Ritest Reverend the Bishop for today's word.

(Congregation sings in a sort of semblance of unity as BISHOP RITEST takes his place at the podium, tapping the mic-head and occasionaly interjecting the singing with "Mic Check, 1 2, Mic Check. . .")

(The hymn fades out)

BISHOP

Let us open our Bibles at Matthew Chapter 2 (Reads aloud and briskly till verse 12) Yes. . .the Lord is showing a lot to us through this story of the 3 wise men or in Kiswahili, wale warefu watatu! As it had been prophesied, a king had ALREADY been born and they were just messengers of this inevitability to poor King Herod! Praise the Lord!

CONGREGATION

Amen!

BISHOP

I put it to you brethren, that we are in a similar situation as those 3 warefus. It is election season yet again but I am telling you our President has already been chosen. As far as I am the Bishop, the job has already been done and there is NOBODY who can change that destiny. . .with or without our votes. A king has been born to us!

(Appreciative murmurs all round. Bishop removes a white kerchief and wipes beads of sweat off his forehead)

Let us spring back to the Biblical text. Now, what would be the purpose of this new king? Herod thought he was doing fine by any standards. To him the best thing for the kingdom would be a sort of 'Herod Aendelee' approach to the politics of the day. But this new king was meant to bring change. . .a change that they really needed. Most of us first borns would not have survived the Herod Aendelee Campaign you know! But God had refused, HALLELUJAH!

(wild gesticulation from a certain quarter of the congregation, noticably all dressed in orange from head to toe)

Herods place had already been replaced! His seat was already sat on, Praise the Lord!

(Loud Amen from the same quarter)

Its time for our own change as well. . .as you know already, the market is overflowing with oranges, bananas, wipers and torches but GOD knows what you will take home so just OBEY OBEY OBEY if you want to be part of that change! If you don't then you will still be part of that change. . . . On the loosing side. Choose where you stand. . . God does not tolerate lukewarm uji. . .Are you with Herod's team or are you with the PEOPLE's team? And that is the word straight from the bowels of Heaven this Xmas Day. Halelujah!

(Standing ovation. .and from somewhere a scream of "Kazi ya Herod isiendelee!" met by cheers)

Let us now pray. . .

(A solemn reflective visage ensues)

Lord, as we come before you, we are in deep thought. Why is it that in all the election campaigns our city has been left out? Politicians have traversed every corner of this country - Eldoret, Naivasha, Nairobi, Kericho, Mombasa, El-Wak, Turkana, North Horr. . .but why do they shun Kisumu?! Oh Kisumu, Kisumu, Kisumu. Home of Tom Mboya, the first constitutional affairs Minister. . .KISUMU, oh Kisumu. Home of Ramogi Oginga Odinga, friend of Jomo Kenyatta. KISUMU! Home to Achieng' Oneko, great freedom fighter. Kisumu. Great land of old . . . Kisumu. . . The centre of the Railway. KISUMU! Home of the first teachers, doctors, and learned friends! Kisumu. Where planes from Cairo en route to Cape Town stopped over in the olden days. Kisumu, oh, Kisumu! The only city in the equator. . .oh Kisumu!

(Shouts of YES LORD on every mention of Kisumu)

Then what has happened Lord? Look at us now. . . Kisumu. Land of the poorest of the poor. Kisumu. Backyard of hyacinth. Kisumu! Small city without smoke. Kisumu. Surely. . . HAVE WE BEEN FORGOTTEN?
I know you have not abandoned us Lord. A time has come for this poor neglected city like it came for that folktown of Bethlehem. A time has come for us to RULE! Halellujah! A king has been born to us! Thank you, Lord! Thank you Jesus! Thank you Lord!

(The entire church rises to its feet as if manipulated by a superhuman force. Everyone is shouting, leaping up and down and speaking in tongues for the rest of the sermon, the only exception being flabbergasted kids and a group later identified as Election Observers. "Joy To The World" belts out from the church organ. .)

. . .END. . .

Pre-MOCK Violence

2008-07-23T11:08:00.002+03:00

The past few weeks have not been the best period to become a High School principal in Kenya. The entire secondary school administration system in the country is practically under siege as students all over the country are on a rampage. The casualties so far: close to 200 schools closing indefinitely and a student from Upper Hill High School dead after a dormitory fire. The government, as usual has been caught flat-footed. In fact, it took the Upper Hill incident to startle Sam Ongeri, Minister for Education, out of his swivel chair to gather his boys in a rush to "assess the gravity of the situation". And indeed, it is grave.

These chilling (exciting to some) events have sparked a wave of paranoia among school heads. St. Georges has appently been closed indefinitely following what some students call "a practical joke" on their teachers.

More baffling is the fact that a random Commission of Inquiry will be set up to look into the student unrest. We all know Commisions of Inquiry are a way for corrupt vile people to gain publicity (ask Pattni or the Arturs) to the level of even being a political launch pad and also a waste of taxpayer's mulas since the resolutions passed never go past the ink and paper. Meanwhile, the striking students, unchanged and perhaps having regained more arsonist vigour, will be back when the schools re-open. Even if the the ring leaders are expelled, like suicide bombers, they will have left behind a legacy and disciples who will only be too willing to join the pipeline of infamy. Matyrdom is that sexy, i tell you. There has been no outright attempt as to establishing the cause of this pandemonium from the students themselves. What we have now is a throng of "education experts" (who were only last week wearing the tag "political analyst"), school heads and under-motivated DEOs flapping they gum endlessly on KTN and NTV.

The governments response tempts me release a string of laughter challenging the recent longest laugh record on Ripley's. A report released yesterday by KBC, reeking of Government boot-lick Alfred Mutua's input, is quick to attribute the riots to the fiasco of the 2007 KCSE exam results where KNEC was pissing in its pants when "computer errors" awarded D+s to born geniuses and such like HUMAN errors.

Hon. Sam Ongeri's take is different. These kids are just being spoilt brats, he says. In yesterday's ministerial statement, he ordered that students be banned from handling cellphones in school, and banned the purchase of buses with DVDs and TV screens. Clearly these statements presents the current paradox. . .people who have not been in school uniform in the past ten years purpoting to run Education in this country. Am yet to hear a statement from the Youth Ministry. . . Oh well, guess they are asleep until reminded that its the youth who occupy these schools.

I believe the issues lie deeper than jus the fear of MOCK exams or last year's results.

This is an outward manifestation of a paradigm shift in society. The first question should be what has changed in schools from the primbottom discipline of the colonial days through to the 70s to the chaos it is today? Are High Schools stuck in a time capsule while outside its walls society keeps changing? Are we approaching education all wrong in this day and age?
Let me continue to ponder.

In a related story, I couldnt hide my joy on learning that my former school, Maseno was the first school to riot in 1908. But then the joy died down as it hit me that that was also the last time we had ever gone on strike. Gosh, what a shame! Pioneers but not lifetime achievers! By now we should have come up with an entire book on the methods and strategies of going on strike. . .that must have been one hellova beating they got in 1908 to elicit 100 years of. . .umm. . .discipline. So much for a bad record!

ARE HUMAN BEINGS THE ULTIMATE RACE?

2008-06-07T15:54:00.003+03:00

It has been told in many stories both religious and folklore of how the human race, in its elevated status of being a photocopy of God's(or gods) image and likeness ,is perceived by all as the ultimate race of the world. The most sophisticated of all living organisms. Amid this trumpet blowing and chest thumping that has gone on for thousands of years a time has come to ask ourselves if we really are the ultimate race beyond reasonable doubt. This article will attempt to explore four different concepts that shed light on the proposition that this could actually be to the contrary. As poetic as it may sound, proper understanding of this piece may arise from only an objective pondering of the same.

Son is Greater than the Father Theory?
Many philosophers an futurists seem to prescribe to this theory that lays down a sort of probability scale on future human extinction. We know that even with the current accords and treaties to shun the production of nuclear weapons, it is an open secret that there has been an increase in nuclear activity than ever before from India ( in the guise of seeking alternative energy sources) to Iraq (tired of being bullied the prefects of the world, USA and UK).
Now ,supposing a full-scale war arose compelling the use of nuclear weapons en masse thus reducing every square inch of land to a modern day Hiroshima? A world-wide nuclear could result in a major climate shift that could wipe out any chance of sunshine for thousands of years and as a result wipe out most human organisms including the human race. This is not far from, reality though this may sound like a memo from the House of Yahweh. There will be more radical Osama’s and less reasonable Bushes in days to come.
The question then to be asked is if most life forms, humans included are quashed by a nuclear winter or any such like natural calamities, would the world as we know it come to an end? NO! This would merely lead to the emergence of an artificial Big Bang. Cockroaches and such organisms known to be resistant to nuclear explosives and radioactivity of immense levels will revise the evolution process and maybe lead to the emergence of more intelligent life forms than what can be safely be known as human beings .This theory ,however dismissed as belonging to philosophers' lunch breaks, shouldn’t be taken so lightly in my view.
AI and the Intelligence Explosion
This is yet another shocking revelation from futurists who fondly call this concept "technological singularity”. In what people like to call the information technology era, a lot of progress is being made to create tools and machines to aid in raising the standards of human living. But to what extent will this progress concur with its aim?
Futurists project that this progress will soon turn into an 'intelligence explosion' that is , the creation via artificial intelligence (AI) or computer interfaces

smarter than human entities who rapidly accelerate technological progress beyond human capabilities. Statistician J.B. Good says "These machines could augment their own mental capabilities until they exceed that of their creators..the intelligence of man could be left far behind. Thus, the first ultra intelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make."
Victor Vinge adds a more apocalyptic twist in his 1993 essay, The Coming of Technological Singularity: "Within 30 years we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence...shortly thereafter the human era will be ended." This could result from these superhuman intelligences ending up with goals inconsistent with human survival. Yes, all those cartoons you see about a mad scientist with a robot programmed to exterminate the human race could actually come true!
Nick Bostrom in his 2002 essay on human extinction scenarios puts it into perspective: "We could mistakenly elevate [for these superhuman intelligences] a sub-goal to the status of a super goal and tell it to solve a problem...in the process killing the person who asked the question."Leaving the bulk of technological progress to such ultra-human robots could lead to a conflict between the human creator and the robots themselves as aptly illustrated by the film I,Robot .

The Evolution Race
The Times of April 17, 2007 reported the results of a University of Michigan study on comparative evolutionary progress of human and primate genes. Mark Henderson reports, "Chimps are ahead humans in the great evolutionary race.... they have evolved more extensively than the human race since they split from their common ancestor, challenging the conventional wisdom that Homo sapiens has been favored by natural selection."
This should be a wake up call to us that since we have already been overtaken in the evolution process, let us not rule out the possibility of Planet of the Apes being acted out not in the imaginary confines of Hollywood directors' heads, but right here on Earth.

Fallacy in the Intelligent Design Theory Proponents of this theory purport that everything in the world is mad especially that we can manage to live in it. Certain constants that make matter and life possible cannot be solely be attributed to chance, they claim. Analyzing one of their heavily touted examples, those keen enough may sense the whiff of fallacy in this reasoning.
Rabbits, they argue, have white tails so that they can supposedly be easy to shoot. I am really interested to know how the rabbits would view such a claim. The real state of affairs is that nature provides some sort of balance and quid pro quo in that the environment wasn't suited for us but it is we who adapt to it instead. Anything to the contrary would most certainly amount to taking the Creation story a bit too far.

The Underlying Psychology?
But what is the underlying psychology that makes us want to validate this strong feeling of being the world's ultimate race?It is the perpetual fear of death. It is this fear that fuels our passion to play God and somehow extend the inevitability of death. Nation columnist Sammy Wambua comments that the future presents a very complicated time for human beings. With everyone going herbal in everything from tea to toothpaste, major research in stem cells and cloning, increased enthusiasm in 'extreme makeovers' and less and less people dying from nothing but the most complicated of diseases what more is there to expect?
Bertand Russell in Why I am not a Christian says of the tragedy of human efforts in search of the famous Fountain of Youth, "Given omnipotence, omniscience an millions of years to perfect our world, we would come up with nothing better than the Ku Klux Klan [or something like Zimbabwe for that matter].To accept the laws of science, we will have to assume that human beings and other life forms on earth will die."
In short, the world is not ending any time soon and maybe it will not be the human race that will witness its end. That may sound depressing but let us try and have Achilles' mentality in The Iliad:"The gods envy us because for our mortality" Knowing that life can end at any moment everything is more beautiful, more poetic. So let us live every second as if it our last. But let us not forget that their is something or someone greater than all of us out there that has a hand in shaping our destiny.

Season 2

2008-06-03T22:14:00.001+03:00

It has been a while, hasnt it? Unfortunately, most of the Directors of this course, Kenyanese, were either internally displaced or seriously disturbed by the Post Election Violence fiasco. . .a huge amount of funding has gone into maintainance of our Directors in shady, backstreet rehab centres where they ask you obviously baseless question ("How do you feel about feeling the way you are feeling?") and they'd waste no opportunity to take advantage of you. . .

All is not lost. In fact, a whole lot more is being found. We are back in business, people. Apologies, the premiere season did not achieve the standard 22-episode target, but am sure the rest of the country was glued to the electoral soap opera that boiled over.

Objectives for this season? None whatsoever. . .jus a bit of touch and go, lets enjoy Kenya at 45 hoping we manage to get to the party joints . . . Well, like everybody else, we will piss and moan about FUEL because Kibaki apparently is playin with the possibility of selling off our crude depos to the Chinese, or is it the Japanese? We will still rant and rave about receiving a measly 21% of the Safaricom shares we applied for. .no, not even free night calls will deter us. Yes, we will shout from the roof tops so that our boys who raped, looted and plundered to be given amnesty so that they can return home for a heroes' welcome. Mob justice, anyone?

Lovely!

Games... Games...Games..

2008-04-08T12:09:00.003+03:00

A good politician should know how to play games, is it not?Standard qualifications should include passing the IT WASNT ME and the ARE YOU THREATENING THIS COMMISION stages of the popular Lying to the Public game.Shifting focus to the US Democratic Party primaries, there has been a lot of laughs as regards the games the two candidates, Obama and Clinton, are playing.Not so far back Obama was out bowling and lets jus say his performance was nothing like his recent political form.Dear Barrack struggled to stay on target let alone hit a single pin.That prompted lots of pro-Clinton ads going something like "Obama bowls like a woman. . .How can a person who bowls like this, lead this country.Even this 3yr old can do better (footage of a small kid stricking all the pins).That embarassing episode somehow prompted Clinton to challenge Obama to what she termed as a "bowl off".Well karma tended to be the standard bitch when she appeared at the Ellen Degeneres show when she put up an equally pathetic show of bowling.The media is all over this.I cant wait to hear what John Stewart (Daily show) has to say about it.Check out this hilarious preview of the bowl off, if it ever takes place.
Meanwhile the Olympic Games in China is already on fire before it starts and I dont mean that in a good way.It seems the monks down at Tibet for this perfect moment when all focus is on China to raise hell and riot in the most un-Buddhist manner.Beijing is playing this down quite proffesionally.If youre jetting into China right now, dont excpect to watch CNN or any other international news channel.The Olympic torch is really having its worst world tour ever.Half of its France tour went to the dogs after protestors to Chinas tight democratic space tried to get at the torch (one actually did and almost put it out). . .even French MPs showed their displeasure...Quick tip to the IOC: change the circiut to include Kenya.It will prove to be the best run because nobody would dare clash with the GSU to interfere with something as trivial as a torch.
Lastly, heres Raila's take on all you players out there: "You can't teach a old something new tricks!" Hehehehe.

HUMANITY

2008-02-24T15:16:00.010+03:00

Today i've achieved my light bulb moment at 4.02 AM which is what the rest of the world would consider as un-human time (pray, its not inhuman).Time for the gods to come out to play roulette with our destinies and toss a few joker cards in our dreams and nightmares.The silence is so loud you cant fail to hear it.The kind of introspection received or fought for here is of superhuman quality.Your mind explores itself in a sort of mental and intellectual masturbation.Its like in those super hero comics where the main character discovers his abilities for the first time.The only difference being its but a H on your chest.You begin to wonder what it feels like to be human.You think:

"What would I do if I could suddenly feel and to know once again what I feel is real?"-Nipsey Russel

Homo sapiens.The only members of the exclusive club of those who have proven the spirit of Darwin wrong and right simultaeneously.Masters of survival of the fittest.Took the animal kingdom by storm and before they could have a chance to organize a rebellion, we were the ones to decide who will sit on our right side as pets as the rest were isolatd to the parks and zoos as indolent untrainable beings.As the dogs watch over us in the dead of the night, we stuff the cows with synthetic genes for them to get them ready for assisted suicide.I mean:

"Divide and rule is as old as Adam's underwear"-Anon.

Maybe having seen how well our pilot project turned out to be the cream of the universe.We decided to go full force and extend the Animal Farm to those we considered as "animals among men".Those pseudo-humans who had escaped such an ambitious plan of Human Domination of the world as set down by the gods we created.
True, theres helova lot of difference between us and the animals.The most fundamental being we dont have to wait for some countdown timer to go mating about.Well, mating is a bit harsh so lets call it making love.Forget the dolphins, we can do it on or off land!Yup, and our 3 year old can beat the oldest, wisest chimpanzee in a game of chess.Clearly,

"All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others"-Orwell

Wait!In our true fashion of doing some extrat thinking just to rub it in to the Unequal Ones, we sprung up with another one of those eternal one liners that tend to bite us in the ass."Surely, some Humans are more equal than others."Savvy?Hehehe, even Socrates would have a hard time taking that airtight allusion apart.But somewhere in the background there's the irritating grumbling of the likes of Rosseau, Madison and Mandela. . .
Yes, we appreciate the sort of crooked thinking of our philosophers who serve to entertain more than inform (that being the only reason we havent sent them to Mathare).But listen you nutters, just shut your foamy mouths for a minute.Thank your stars Hitler took a time-out.Its time to use your brains, not your over-stocked balls and alleged Cuando Seas Whoever sentiments.Listen. . .

"You do too much, youre not superman, you know!"- Crank Dat Spiderman

I mean, what kind of Human has black, brown or yellow skin?Even if they fell into a puddle of mud, what sort of curse makes them unable to wash it off?Which Human would, at his own free will, walk around dressed only beads and crude tattos?Surely,a whole 1500cc capacity brain should alert him of his exposed privates?What kind of Human would refuse to get rid of his foreskin?Where has such sub-human determination to cling on to ones childhood come from?Which Human adult would look so damn tall and graceful and call himself such a weird name as Hutu?Which Human would still would subscribe to primitive customs and gods yet we all know Jeso Cristos came to get rid of such stupidity?Which Human being was not in the woods during the state of Emergency?What kind of Human being lives in cardboard houses next to the gutters?Which Human lives on barely a dollar a day?
We have millions of such questions and it seems the only logical answer to each and every one of them is that we have some Unequals among us. . .Animals in Human form.And it is up to us to call them by their real names (we are the descendants of Abraham, arent we?) and put them in their place.
So we are absolutely right to call them Niggers, cockroaches, Kikuyus, savages, slaves, Luos, monkeys, infidels, non-Americans and such like worthy titles, right?
So we are absolutely right to exercise our divine right to subdue them in such useful exercises that the myopic fools among us tend to refer to as genocide, segregation, ethnic cleansing, racism, bureaucracy, unequal distribution of resources and dirty politics, right?

"We are not the same, I am a Martian"-Lil Wayne

Right?. . .Right?. . .Why the silence?

"Michael Joseph Halali!"

2008-02-20T19:56:00.008+03:00

On Monday morning, 9.13am I woke up with a massive hangover.No, I was not out for another one of those irregular church-n-rave days.I was one of the 60% or thereabouts of the 4.5 million Safaricom subscribers who stayed up to take advantage of a tip-off of free calls between 12 and 6am. . . Yes, in true fashion of Kenyans squeezing every ounce of juice out of a free thing, am not surprised that most of my pals and not-so-pals were up and chatting away.Even the type you dont excpect to be up by 9 pm.
On the flipside, a more inquisitive eye and ear would notice that these slips in the Safaricom servers have become a bit too frequent.Remember the free SMS carnival of changing the message centre to an MTN number?And the recent +257 number?Well, there could be something other than a honest flaw in the system.
I had a tête à tête with an expert of sorts in "these things", Caesar Were, MD of CWWA Creations, an up-coming firm of all-round software an technology matters."Michael Joseph is not asleep, you know.A good bet could be that its just another scheme by safaricom to survey their subscriber habits",he says.Notice the convenient off-peak hours chosen for the open talktime.Plus, we, the subscribers having no clue of being guinea pigs, produce very honest raw data thats perfect for statistics.
"Data obtained during that period could easily be used to determine parameters such as number of favourite contacts per number on average and the like," Caesar comments."We could easily be looking at a new tarriff plan that could compete with Celtel's new brainchild, Pamoja tarriff!"
Am not saying we stop hoping for more of these freebies, legal or illegal. . .but that they are never in vain.Besides, never despise the hand that alleges to feed you.

Meanwhile, Around and About. . .

2008-02-12T11:39:00.001+03:00

With the prosecution of the cold-blooded police officer who shot two protestors at Kisumu, some sort of kangaroo justice seems to be in the works (kangaroo courts administer kangaroo justice). Question is, will the case achieve its end or will it fade away into obscurity? And what will be dome about the men who gave the orders? They should at least be made to resign that we dont keep seeing their faces on TV, ie. Erick Kiraithe.That could be another step towards the healing process.
Given that the government thinks the citizens should serve it for free and delays salaries hoping civil servants will forget they need cash, its payweek once again! Yay! No, wait a minute before you pop the bottles. . .take a peek at your payslip first. Yes, there is a salary cut threat looming with an additional rumour that even MPs will get a Ksh. 200,000 chopped of their salaries. The rise in the inflation rate by 6% to a solid 18% has brought in a "there is no money" mood despite Amos Kimunya's optimistic claim of a 5 month dollar reserve in the country. The way things are going it may soon be a crime to have a dollar bill in the pocket. Pensioners are also holding their breath to see if at all they will get their due. . .
Hood was also in a tense mood when we got news that about 10 village mates were arrested at Arusha Int'l Airport where they were en route to the USA. Their documents clearly stated they were leaving Kenya as "refugees", though the authorities claim they were travelling illegaly (which is true considering their homes are intact and safe). The idea was sparked by a fellow brother who was trying to get his people to safety in the wake of this politics. Apparently Kenya is not safe anymore even to those in apparent safe zones despite Martha Karua's claim that heaven is right here in Kenya.The full report is in the Sunday Nation of 10th Feb.
Yesterday, Kibaki opened his big mouth again: "We will rebuild the houses that have been destroyed and then now LETS SEE who will bring them down again!" Very careless statement from a "head of state" of a country with an insufficient police force that gets overwhelmed at the mere sight of 50 youths let alone the 1500-strong gangs who laid thousands of acres of property to waste in the Rift Valley. . .

DID YOU KNOW:
That Kenyan prison sentences have the day time and night time of a single day as two separate days? Commit a crime to confirm this. . .More on this in future posts.

Kings become prawns. . .

2008-02-12T10:44:00.001+03:00

Last week saw the ODM-PNU talks enter an apparent final lap in solving the short-term political angle of the crisis that has engulfed us.Kofi Annan has stepped up the process by requesting a media blackout and moving the talks to an undisclosed location.This, however, has led to increased tension in parts of the country.
Whatever conclusion they come to, there is no doubt that it will involve major constitutional overhauls and may see the introduction of a Prime Minister into the executive wing of government.PNU has indicated that they will back the plan only if the premier is CEREMONIAL. I've personally never heard of a ceremonial premier and it sounds more like a sugar-coated insult to the mediation process.In the circumstances, if any post should be ceremonial it should be the president's. Heck, he should even be given a 5 year holiday for all Kenyans care. . .
On the flipside, trouble is looming for ODM-K in general and "vice president" Kalonzo Musyoka in particular. With the current give and take in the mediation process, there may be an entire cabinet overhaul to reflect the agreements. The office of the Vice President could as well become non-existent.That is why Kalonzo has suddenly remembered Article 1 of the Constiution which provides that Kenya shall be a multi-party state and is insisting the agreements should be based on this.One will be tempted to ask if he had this in mind when joining ranks with PNU, effectively cutting down the opposition numbers.Besides ODM-K is bona fide opposition material since they lost the elections hands down.
Kalonzo is continuing to cut out the image of a fully fledged power hungry betrayor especially now that he dumped Julia Ojiambo from the nomination list.Our pretty boy is reeling into slow isolation with even most of his few good men in the form of Pogisho and Mutula Kilonzo becoming less vocal.He is slowly coming to terms that in the current political chess game he is but a prawn and soon, his voice will be less significant than that of the village madman. . .

State of Hood

2008-02-05T10:41:00.001+03:00

The tom tom drums of war that have been beating resonantly since the ECK's terrible experiment to test just how DemoCrazy Kenyans can be, are making the chances of me sleeping through another Family Law lecture dwindle by the second.
Instead, am stuck here in my anscestral (sic) home which I fondly refer to as hood.Life is still simply complex.Believe me, am still taking a course on whose daughter is the grandniece to my great step uncle's estranged wife and such like obscure connections before I go mingling with these almost-country-almost-town girls.
In the process, every door of thought seems to lead to nowhere else but Devil's Workshop.Whoever thought mass action would lead to such a mass tranquilization of brain cells and hormones?Ahem!
However, I do have a programme of sorts.Every sunset, I take a stroll to the local market centre whose main and fastest selling commodities remain rumours, gossip and alcohol-fuelled political analyses.
Its an effort to blend in but I still cant help feel like a refugee in his own anscestral land.A legal alien. I may speak the same language, even share the same bloodlines with most of these people but my thought processes somehow tend to be internally displaced.
I watched with more clinical detatchment than gung ho as we (communal spirit is the plot these sides), as we brought down the giant Coca-cola billboard that proudly proclaimed WELCOME TO KISUMU (the only solid evidence that indeed we was part of "town"). After it tumbled down into the billowing dust with a cheer of "Chungwa Moja!" there was an empty silence begging to be filled by some impression of What Next. . .We just stood there gazing at the felled billboard like a pack of wolves that had hunted down one of their own.The same went for the uprooted telephone poles, the bonefires and the brocken windows of the primary school.
They said December 30th gave birth to a nationwide madness that force-fed us memories of a time most of us were not even born in.Memories of tribal supremacy, savage freedoms and the State of Nature.We saw all that in our mind's eye and felt that it was GOOD.
Whats left for me at the moment is to roam around Hood, of course with occasional pop-ins to Kisum City to stay in touch with "civilization". At 32 degrees on average there is still a lot of hot air doing the rounds along with a mix of redemption and justification. . .

Searching Frequency. . .

2008-02-03T11:39:00.001+03:00

The Annan led talks between ODM and PNU top guns are underway to finaly obtain lasting solutions to the post-elections crisis.Achievement of peace has been given a deadline of between 7-15 days from now.In as much as they tend to give a picture of an amiable conversation at the tea time breaks, indeed the going is very tough behind closed doors. One would not be blamed for wondering how the heck Kofi Annan will break down the hardline stance adopted by both sides.
To test just how firmly rooted the opposing view points are, I attempted to mash up Raila's and Kibaki's speeches to a single, somewhat coherent document.Here's my best shot.Raila takes the bracketed quotes:

"Fellow Kenyans, today our nation is at a crossroads.We are in a defining moment. (The national fabric has been brocken). We must regain the dignity of our nation and restore stability we have enjoyed since independence (but never have we seen the kind of bitterness that has engulfed our nation since December 30, when the disputed election results were announced).
I recall the spirit of nationalism and unity that inspired the establishment of our nation hood . . .in 1963. I feel deeply saddened to see Kenyans confronting one another over issues (some of these issues have been with us since independence. . .disparity, corruption and negative ethnicity) that can be discussed and resolved peacefully through dialogue.
I therefore strongly condemn (the security forces) acts of violence that have been witnessed in parts of our country. We will now implement stern measures against those (security forces) who attempt to disrupt the peace or use violence against peace loving wananchi.
Today we are launching the process of national dialogue (mediation mission between PNU and ODM) aimed at addressing the political situation in our country. . . I wish to pledge . . .that (the very foundation of the state is crumbling).
I remain fully committed to national reconciliation. . . As leaders we have a responsibility to preach peace and (to achieve peace, ODM must be allowed to communicate to our supporters. The ban on live broadcasts must therefore be lifted and peaceful rallies permitted).
Fellow Kenyans, as we launch this process of national dialogue let us all remain open minded. (I seek to be President of all Kenyans). Let us remember that there was a reason why the Almighty God placed us all in this beautiful country (to be the President of all Kenyans. . .leave no stone unturned nor fail to travel that extra mile). . .
(But this mediation process) of national healing and reconciliation (must quicky show our people that peace justice and security are around the corner).
Thank you and God bless you and God bless Kenya."

PS: hmmm. . .seems Annan will have to effect finer tuning to achieve a coherent message of peace even at least in sotto voce.

The Tower

2008-01-31T21:00:00.001+03:00

If someone in a spaceship somewhere in outer space took a snapshot of Africa, there is a very high chance (am still calculating the probability) that he wouldnt fail to notice an eerie tower that is quickly gaining height and prominence.On further inspection,he will not fail to note that the tower's form resembles the outline of Kenya.That remains figurative though.
On the ground, Kenya is quickly becoming the next Tower of Babel.After a series of miraculous and traumatic events,what more do you excpect?Yes, miracles.Forget the Sauvignon Blanc Jesus whipped up at the hanye in Caanan.Forget Deya and his DNA-defying baby manufacturing antics.We all watched on TV and YouTube.com ; listened intently as Cheif Surgeon Samuel Kivuitu and his "sober" team of ECK doctors presented forth from Mother Kenya a bouncing baby Presidential mandate whose paternity immediately became a mystery.
In Africa a child is seen as a source of confirmation of the father's viability.Now if it emerges the child is not from "the man of the house" of course the rest of us tend to believe that he may have been shooting blanks prompting the wife to seek alternative procreative sources.Naturally the husband is excpected to grab his machete and go on a mad search for this house-breaker, even though this will do nothing to lessen the communal doubt as to his viability.
Thus naturally, we are in a mad phase of our own.None of us wants to believe that our votes were part of the blank shots(but there indeed popped up questions of several blank votes filled by a single person).Now, each and everyone is speaking his own dialect.Some can only communicate by hacking his neighbour to fine pieces.To others, the appropriate salaam aleikum is to torch buses, hard earned agricultural produce and property while the more eloquent individuals talk trash on international media houses.Some,well have just remembered the national Anthem from their standard Two music classes and are chanting the lyrics in an irritating loop.For others whats left to do is to run, run, run. . .
Kenya is suffering a huge communication by-pass.But somewhere in the midst of all this, there is a nagging curiousity to understand what the next idiot here is trying to say.It is this ideal of a solid unity, equality and coherence that we dream about somewhere in the background of our terrifying nightmares of death and destruction.
We realise that we have to learn this seemingly new language of learning to tolerate our differences, deal with our past and together work towards the future. . .we need to learn Kenyanese.A hard language to grasp.There is no official course outline.All the lesson we will have to learn from within ourselves and others.
Meanwhile, the Tower has gained a somewhat solid foundation of corruption, tribalism, sychophancy, useless bureaucracy and cynicsm of post independence Kenya and the Moi Regime.At the rate we are going now we will build walls so high not even a dozen September 11 carbon copies will save us. . .