Archive for January, 2006
Better late than never here is the way I thought the African Cup of Nations would work out. This is how I predicted a week before the tournament kicked off:
Group A
1.) Ivory Coast
2.) Egypt
Group B
1.) Cameroon
2.) Angola
Group C
1.) Tunisia
2.) South Africa
Group D
1.) Ghana
2.) Nigeria
Quarter finals
Ivory Coast v Angola = Ivory Coast
Tunisia v Nigeria = Nigeria (revenge for last times final)
Cameroon v Egypt = Egypt (N. African countries always do well at home and hey you need a upset somewhere)
Ghana v South Africa = Ghana (Ghana steps up to the challenge)
Semi Finals
Ivory Coast v Nigeria = Ivory Coast (World cup qualifiers have more unity in camp)
Egypt v Ghana = Ghana (home advantage only takes you so far)
Third Place
Nigeria v Egypt = Egypt (Egypt is at home and Nigeria isn’t interested in 3rd)
Final
Ivory Coast v Ghana = Ghana (like a Chelsea striker can win an international tournament!)
What I didn’t count on
Eto’o taking things personally.
South Africa being crap.
DRC playing the best football.
Guinea pulling rabbits out of hats.
I love this game!
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Friday, January 27th, 2006 at 2:45 PM
There is a school of thought that believes that all the books that can be written have been written. They argue that anything that comes out today is not new but simply recycled and re written in one way or another. After the emails sent to me and the comments left on my post in defence of John Githongo I begin to wonder if the same is true for online discussions amongst the Kenyan community. For there are two topics that I guarantee you as surely as night follows day, will be brought up, debated, flogged to death and then left to rest on an almost perfect annual cycle. Well I’ve been online now for over 10 years and my first attempt at a website went up in 1996 so that’s the time frame I can talk about with any authority.
The first frequently recycled topic is, “so and so is a spy / agent of the government / C.I.D / Special Branch etc sent to watch us and report back”. From the original old school forum such as the KenyaOnline discussion list and RCBowen, through to the new school Mashada, Mlevi, KNY etc every year someone would come and say, “I have information that there is a spy on this forum reporting back to Nyayo House on the discussions we are having.” We would then have a month or two of comedy as people decided they were Sherlock Holmes and would use their super-duper-ninja-sleuth-skills to catch the spy within. After about 8 weeks people would realise that if anyone in Nyayo House wanted to monitor an online forum they could just log on from their offices and have a look themselves without having to pay anyone to do so for them so the basis for the whole drama was a little bit shaky.
The second topic that would come up without fail is, “Kenyans abroad are traitors / chickens / cowards of one sort or the other who have abdicated their responsibility”. Although we have been having the same discussion every year for the last ten years it may be fun to revisit it one last time. Not in full of course, but briefly.
I won’t deal with the ridiculous idea that all Kenyans abroad live the good life. If you still believe that Fresh Prince of Bel Air represents life abroad I am surprised you can even log onto a computer. I won’t deal with the whole lumping a group of people in one simplistic category for there are millions of reasons why people leave and why people stay. To suggest otherwise is descending into tabloid tendencies and I trust your intelligence that I don’t have to go into that. Then we get people trying out Kenyan each other, “yeah you live in Kenya but I go to shags more times than you” or “you can not talk about Kenya unless you are here to climb mats daily” this is just a distraction. I will not go into the amount of money Kenyans abroad send home, the expertise they learn, the importance of exposure in the 21st century. You know all those arguments and many many more and frankly after 10 years it gets boring repeating them over and over again. Especially as I stated before, we have countrymen and countrywomen out there who put their necks on the line, who because of their integrity and honesty put their families at risk. Most of whom you and I have never heard about and I am not one to second guess them and their motives.
This is my opinion. It does not matter where you are, Kakamega, Nairobi, Kuala Lumpur, Johannesburg, Accra, Manchester, what matters is what you are doing. We need a country of socially aware, socially conscious and most importantly socially ACTIVE citizens. This is not an option but a responsibility.
I love the first two lines of the third verse of our national anthem; “Natujenge taifa letu, Ee, ndio WAJIBU wetu”. My duty, your duty, our duty. That is a duty that too many of us abdicate. What good is it if you work in Kakamega, Nairobi, Kuala Lumpur, New York, Johannesburg, Manchester and you never put your mind to use on the questions troubling your community? What good is it if you live in Mombasa, Butere, Nakuru and you do not even know who your MP is, or how he voted? What are you doing wherever you are to fulfil your duty? This whole idea that your efforts are more legitimate simply by being at home is nonsense. Instead of looking around for someone/something to blame DO SOMETHING. Look at KBW. Spread across the world we have people involved in their communities and even leading socially active projects in Kenya. To be honest even just by writing, bloggers are doing a lot more than many people, in my opinion, simply because they are getting involved. I challenge any of you to show me a blog post that would be more legitimate if the person was writing from within Kenya rather than abroad. And if I can go a little bit deeper, the KBW/KUL Admin team is spread over three continents, 10 time zones and most us haven’t even met each other in the flesh, yet we hold honest debate and discussions on various issues because you know you are dealing with a group of socially aware people.
I respect people who come to you and say, “this is what I am doing, this is why it is necessary and this is how you can help me” those are my kind of people wherever they are even if they are at the North Pole. I can not stand people who shrug their shoulders say things will never change/it’s nothing to do with them/ and walk of to look for their next mwenjoyo completely abdicating their responsibilities. I can not stand them wherever they are.
There is something to be said about just being at home however. The last question in MamaJunkYard’s Kenyan blogs meme that went around last year was this: Complete this sentence: I am Kenyan because …
Bankelele’s answer is the one that sticks in my head.
Well there is my opionion, until next year when will go through this all over again. And no I am not Flying Squad, Special Branch, C.I.D, immigration a spy or anything (but then again I would say that wouldn’t I)!
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Friday, January 27th, 2006 at 1:20 PM
aww hell no!
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Friday, January 27th, 2006 at 1:03 AM
First an observation. Those of us who style ourselves as political analysts, commentators, satirists, scientists who operate mainly from the internet enjoy the best of both worlds. We sit and moan and type and rage and type and cry and type and insult all before us in the name of our art WITHOUT having to put our money where our mouths are. Who knows what positions we hold and what information we are privy too that we choose not to share? Who knows how much we have eaten in TKK in the last month? If we are part of the 10% brigade? If we are being paid by news outlets to highlight or ignore certain stories or issues? Most of us aren’t even brave or crazy enough to sign our names to what we write (me included) as we convince ourselves that forces out there may be out to get us. Yes journalists get paid and ours is more or less a hobby but the fact remains, we certainly talk the talk but do not even have to pretend to walk the walk.
This is why I found the criticism of Githongo when he resigned his position hard to take. In my opinion most of the criticism was spineless or at the best mental laziness of the highest order. Most of us are to shy/scared to sign our names to our positions and here is man who gave up a lucrative job for his country, swam constantly against the tide, stood up to the monsters we caricature daily, and when he gets to the bottom of the scandal after scandal and finds his life in danger some of us sit and mock. People die when the do half of what he does yet there is an email going around that actually has the audacity to label the man, “Disappointment of the year”. How do you want him to prove his conjones? By dying? Only then will he be worthy in your eyes? Please. How many of the so called NGO types would have done what he did. He could have sat in Transparency International releasing report after report (which was dangerous enough all ready) collected his pay check and his international speaking fees all without getting his feet wet. But he stood up, laid down his conditions and took a job that most of us would have ran away from like we were being chased by Conjestina Achieng and actually left with his integrity and his neck in check. We complain and complain about the political elite being one and the same. Orange, Banana, KANU, DP, LDP all the same. And here is a man who was invited into the top tier of that political elite and refused to be turned. In short the kind of man we have been calling for and instead of lauding him, we label him a coward. Would we have been shocked if he had pocketed the money, the acres of land, the multi million contracts and agreed not to rock the boat? Look at the precedent. How many human right activist, anti corruption activist who used to make noise for Moi daily some even refusing to shave their hair walk around with rose tinted glasses in the back of the ministerial limousines these days?
And while many of us were frothing away at our keyboards searching thesauri for yet another insult to throw at the man he put together his account of the corruption that breaks our country and has released it. No little fish here, we are talking about the head of state, his vice and senior ministers. Not a broke cop trying to hustle a loose 1000 bob at traffic check point, but corruption that can bring a country to its knees.
Disappointment/coward of the year? Give me break. I said a year ago he left with his integrity intact and I stand by that. Some of us wouldn’t recognise a patriot if he walked up to us and slapped us in the face. This might be the second year in a row where my person of the year is actually decided in January.
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Monday, January 23rd, 2006 at 3:52 PM
“TV ‘personality’ Ian Wright said last night that if Burton Albion beat the Rowdies (Man Utd a.k.a ManUre) it would be ‘the upset of the decade’. He then corrected himself and said it would be the ‘upset of the century’, then ‘the upset of the millennium’. Doesn’t he realise they all began on the same day?”
hehehe
From letters page of The Fiver, “The Guardian website’s daily take on the world of football”. Subscribe (it’s free) you will not regret it!
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Friday, January 20th, 2006 at 7:37 PM
If you are a fan of African football put your bets on for the World Cup in Germany now. As in today or at the very latest tomorrow. This is why: no one, least of all football pundits and “experts”, know what to expect from the African teams at the World Cup this time round. The four countries making their World Cup debuts Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo and Angola have everyone shaking their heads. Will they play like Cameroon in Italia ’90 or will they play like Cameroon in USA ’94? No one knows. But after the Africa Cup of Nations, which kicks of in under an hour, the pretenders and the contenders will be more clearly defined which means the odds will go down. Which means you will not make as much money if you place your bets after The Cup of Nations rather than before. Which is why you should run to the bookies and place your bet now. As for me, well I have at least two African teams in the quarter-finals of the World Cup. You’ll have to wait until I put my bet on before I reveal which two 
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Friday, January 20th, 2006 at 4:40 PM
Kenya must be the most anti-Microsoft country in the world. First of all it is impossible to get into a Hotmail email account in any cyber café in the country. Impossible. You sit and wait and wait. The people next to you note your frustration and snigger behind your back. Forget Marlboro, Kenya is Yahoo country (with a slight smattering of Gmail).
Then Internet Explorer just clogs up and dies on Kenya networks. You could be looking at a completely graphic less page and you will still get 15% loading, 20 % loading … what’s up with that? The clever cyber café people have hooked up with FireFox (although you knew you can run FireFox straight from your USB stick didn’t ya?) Ironically the only time you can get into a hotmail email account is if you are using a FireFox browser.
So in solidarity with the rest of my country men and women, I’m defecting from Hotmail to Yahoo. It wasn’t a spur of the moment thing. In fact it’s taken me over a year to decide to switch. I was even a Windows Live Mail Beta tester. (And yes I do have a Gmail account but isn’t there something slightly sinister about relying on an email service that has been in beta for what feels like a century now and besides the whole archive thing does my head in).
Next … why i will not be leaving Movabletype for WordPress just yet.
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Thursday, January 19th, 2006 at 1:49 AM
So Van Miss-telrooy and Ronaldo (cheap generic version) had a fight? What an intense and violent confrontation that must have been. Presumably Ronaldo (CGV) did about five stepovers, swung at Horse-Face, missed him completely following which the Dutchman went down as if he’d been shot in the head by a sniper?
[via email]
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Thursday, January 19th, 2006 at 1:03 AM
Reading Keguro’s post “On Silence” I was struck by something that has been bothering me for a while now.
As a man I feel disgrace that on what is essentially my watch, i.e. in my years of manhood, it has become more dangerous for women to be women in our cities, in our towns, in our villages, in our homes. Rape, beatings, domestic violence on the increase.
As a man I feel disgrace that on my watch, in my years on manhood, a woman can be stripped naked in our capital city simply because some other men do not like what she is wearing.
As a man I feel disgrace that on my watch, in my years of manhood, whenever we drive to shags you have to spilt the men equally between the cars and ensure that you do not drive overnight if you have any women or children in the cars because of the evil that is out there.
I can not stand it. It is a failure of our manhood that this can and is happening in our society. Heck it is a failure of my manhood. It is a simple as that. I do not care if society globally is getting more violent, that is not an excuse. If more men are beating women in our society then that is a failure of manhood in our society. When did we lower standards to this? I am a man because I tear of a woman’s clothes in public. When the hell did that happen?
It is high time we, the men, started dealing with the root causes of this. If you are frustrated, angry, annoyed, worried about your life/job/whatever and instead of pulling yourself up to have another go, you turn around and take that frustration out on the people closest to you and yet physically weaker than you in our society i.e. our women then you are disempowered a lot more than you know it, my brothers, a whole lot more.
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Wednesday, January 18th, 2006 at 9:34 PM
By far the best blonde joke in the world ever.
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Wednesday, January 18th, 2006 at 3:41 PM
top ten reasons why nobody reads your blog.
Now you know.
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Tuesday, January 17th, 2006 at 1:21 PM
The good:
The new president of Tanzania, Jakaya Kikwete, has appointed women to two of the country’s most powerful ministries. Zakia Meghji, the Minister of Finance, and Asha-Rose Migiro, the Minister for Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation.
The not so good:
Of the 29 ministers and 31 deputies in his new Government, only five women were appointed cabinet ministers while 10 others were made assistant ministers. That is better than Kenya. Kibaki’s government has 34 ministers and 49 assistants. Only two women are ministers, Martha Karua of Justice and Constitutional Affairs and Charity Ngilu of Health and five women are assistant ministers. This is a drop from pre-referendum levels.
Guess which country has the highest percent of women parliamentarians?
Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark? Nope!
The right answer is Rwanda.
According to the World Map of Women in Politics report, which was produced by Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) and the United Division for the Advancement of Women (UNDAW), last year, Rwanda was top in the ranking of 150 countries worldwide, followed the Scandinavian countries of Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark.
By having 63 women parliamentarians, Tanzania becomes the 39th country in the ranking.
Uganda is 30th, while Kenya only manages 113th. Other ranked African countries are Mozambique (9th), South Africa (13th), Malawi (72nd) and Zambia (78th).
Aside:
Some (mad) people in Kenya think that new Tanzanian president’s first name is Jah Kaya not Jakaya. The same people were happily celebrating the election of, “Africa’s first Rasta president” and were busy making plans to move to Tanzania because they are convinced ati marijuana will be legalised by Jah Kaya!
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Sunday, January 15th, 2006 at 10:50 PM
Nyama, nyama, nyama!
NYAMA!
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Sunday, January 15th, 2006 at 8:47 PM
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Saturday, January 14th, 2006 at 12:33 AM
Paraskavedekatriaphobia!
Ouuuuuuuuuw!!
technorati tags:
Paraskavedekatriaphobia
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Friday, January 13th, 2006 at 2:55 PM
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