June 2006

Nakeel decided to hit me with this. Tradition dictates I respond

Rules:

1. Post six weird facts/habits about yourself. These cannot be used against you later on.
2. At the bottom name the six people you will tag next.
3. Leave them a comment to let them know they’ve been tagged and to read your blog.

All righty then, here we go:

I can spell “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” without having to look it up. However, I sometimes have a hard time with general spelling.

I have worn glasses since I was 6. And when I say glasses I mean proper frigging thick glasses not the muppet “fashion” things most of you wear! The first frames I had must have been made from the same stuff they use to make the black box on aeroplanes. They were unbreakable. And yes I did try to break them many many times. But I failed. I still have them somewhere. The day I got my first pair of contact lenses was very exciting. It was like my world had changed.

The first proper original (i.e. not bootleg/copied/pirated) cassette tape I ever owned was Run DMC’s – King of Rock album. It was given to me by the older brother of a friend. I still remember the excitement of having a cassette where the names of the songs were actually printed straight onto the cassette itself (unlike the bootleg versions going around Kenya where the songs were printed on a piece of paper and glued onto the cassette.
The first proper original (i.e. not bootleg/copied/pirated) cassette tape I actually bought myself was the soundtrack to Bodyguard. (Yes I was young and “in love”)! That album always puts a smile on my face. I am sad for what Whitney Houston is going through. She was meant to go on to become our Aretha Franklin. I hope she finds peace again.

The only club football team I would support in a match against Liverpool FC (WWI5T) would be the mighty AFC Leopards.

I used to collect stamps. For some reason I had a large number of Iraqi stamps. I wonder if a stamp with Saddam Hussein’s headshot is worth anything on eBay. In a brilliant piece of foresight I kept a large number of the small purple 1 Kenyan Shilling stamps that used to be everywhere but are impossible to get now. Surely they must be worth something on eBay! I misplaced the stamp collection anyway. I now collect key chains and maps.

In an ideal world I would be either a stand up comedian or a chef.

Who’s next: Kipepeo, Birth of a Notion, Uaridi, Kabinti, Spicebear, JKE

Thank you Ghana!

technorati tags: World Cup
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A couple days ago I asked where this picture was taken:

Kabinti was closest. It is a sugar plantation but not at Sony.

This picture is part of the sugarcane that forms the Nucleus Estate (NE) acreage for the Mumias Sugar Company. Mumias is in Western Kenya between the town of Kakamega and the Ugandan border (roughly). In the sugar industry, Nucleus Estate refers to the sugarcane that is owned by the production company, in this case Mumias Sugar. The NE at Mumias is approximately 4,000 ha (approx 10,000 acres).

The vast majority of sugarcane processed at Mumias comes from independent contracted farmers who are referred to as Out Growers (OG). Out Growers, such as yours truly, farm another 42,000 ha (approx 104,000 acres) of sugarcane which is processed at Mumias. These 42,000 ha, however, are owned by approximately 42,000 individual farmers so the vast majority are small scale farmers. It would be interesting to see if there is any other large scale industry in Kenya/Africa in which the local community have such wide scale individual stakes. 42,000 ha, 42,000 individual farmers.

You can see all the pictures from Mumias and other parts of Kenya on the Mentalacrobatics flickr page under the tag “Beautiful Kenya”.

Thanks for all the comments and guesses!

Click the image for a bigger picture.

Inspired by Afromusing, JKE and Steve

Come on Kibaki kua serious. Why do you suspend a police corporal and a police sergeant who were stationed at JKIA when even your own Commissioner of Police does not trust his senior officers?

What are junior police officers meant to do when the main perpetrators had papers giving them the rank of Deputy Commissioner of Police? You even suspended a security warden? A warden? What was a warden to do against two men who publicly refused to record statements with the Commissioner of Police? The buck stops with you and by extension your cabinet. Cabinet Ministers including John Michuki, the Internal Security Minister, publicly defended the “Armenians” in parliament. How about you start sacking some of them? The only person of note in the 10 suspensions announced by statehouse was CID boss Joseph Kamau who was responsible for the illegal raid on the East African Standard and should have been sacked many months ago.

Aside: It is interesting that all these statements are coming directly from Statehouse and not through the Office of Public Communications where such statements had come from in the past. Has Dr Mutua been left out of the loop or has he come to see just how impossible his situation is?

The chaos caused by the “Armenian” brothers over the last few days has distracted many Kenyans, including myself, from another important story.

Students and teachers of a Nairobi secondary school were in shock on Thursday as details emerged that a group of students had badly injured a Form Two student in a brutal sexual attack. The teenage boy, a student at Upper Hill Secondary School, was admitted to Nairobi Women’s Hospital after he was brutally sodomised by five fellow students on a Saturday two weeks ago. On Thursday, the 17-year-old student was in pain and trauma and could not eat or walk after the beastly ordeal. He talked with difficulty.

When I read a story like this my first thoughts go to the boy who was raped. Here is a young man who will carry emotional and mental scars long after his body heals. I hope he gets all the support he needs and he finds peace within himself at some point.

Each time I read this story I get angrier and angrier at the school for their gross incompetence

It emerged that the attack was not the first one on the student, who is new at the school and the bullies had instilled fear in him to the extent that he has been spending nights in a classroom.

I agree with Spicebear when she writes there is no way the authorities in the school could not have know what was going on? A student sleeping in the classrooms? Didn’t the housemaster/matrons realise that a student was missing from dorm rooms? Didnt the security staff notice a pupil sleeping in a classroom.

His mother said their son told them he had reported the matter to the dormitory master but no action was taken. His parents have been trying to see the head teacher in vain.

A head teacher refusing to see parents over such a serious matter?
A dorm master refusing to investigate a serious allegation such as this?

These people have no business running a school and should be answer for their incompetence. What world do they live on?

As for the perpetrators of this crime. Where do we even start with them? First of all we should establish that first and foremost rape is a crime of violence, aggression and domination. Whether a stranger or an acquaintance, a rapist uses a sexual act to establish power over someone else. Rapists are motivated by the desire to control and dominate, not by the need for sexual gratification. Some silly people are running around shouting the ludicrous claim that homosexuality is responsible for this crime. That opinion is foolish, bigoted and misguided at the best. Rape is a crime of VIOLENCE. A rapist is usually not a stranger in a dark alley. In the vast majority of rape or sexual assault cases, the rapist is someone the victim knows as was clearly the case in this scenario.

This crime sadly is just one of a growing list of the growing extreme violence in Kenyan schools.

Just over five years ago high school students who were angry at their teachers padlocked their dormitory building and set it on fire using jerry cans of petrol while their fellow pupils slept inside. They PADLOCKED the doors from outside so that their fellow students would not escape and would burn to death. Students have always been angry with teachers. But to kill your fellow students because you are angry with teachers?

Then earlier this year, on March 28, 5 teenage boys, all high school students, raped girls from a neighbouring school who were on a protest match. Sadly this has happened before. But the numbers seem to be on the increase.

Again and again, we see extreme violence from high school students directed at other high school students. This latest rape at Upper Hill School is just the latest example of this violence. There are measures that will be taken against the administration at Upper Hill but those actions will come to late to help one young student. We need, as a nation, to put in place, a system that will help us understand and come up with solutions to this rising violence in our schools. This violence is growing into an epidemic. If it has not all ready reached there.

“People do not understand that the Government can do anything with anyone and you do not have to understand.”

Kibaki’s long time ally and a senior cabinet member as Minister of Defence, Njenga Karume, shows that he missed the lecture on Democracy and clearly thinks that he can run the like it is one of his private companies.

Whenever an administration comes to an end there is rush by political commentators to write what they hope becomes the authoritative account of that administration’s time in power. When the time comes to write about the end of the Kibaki administration, I have the perfect title for the book on his presidency. The book should be called, The Silent Statehouse.

Time and time again when leadership has been necessary, Kibaki has been silent. But now it is not leadership we want from Kibaki. We want answers. Answers over the government’s actions and role in the on going saga of the “Aremenian” bothers, Artur Margaryan and Artur Sargysan, The Kenyan wanainchi need some answers immediately. I drew up a list of 10 questions which quickly become 20 and has threatened to grow to well over 30. Here are a sample:

• Why was it necessary to have the two bothers chauffeured to JKIA in two Government vehicles disguised to appear as if they had just landed at the airport before addressing journalists in a stage-managed press conference?
• Who was the “senior official” who tried to obstruct the police from doing their job when the police went to arrest the bothers?
• Who was the “senior official” who intervened two months ago when the police when to arrest the brothers?
• On whose orders did the Kenyan Airports Authority issues Access All Areas passes to the Armenians?
• Why did the two brothers have government vehicles available for their use and in their compound?
• Who issue the brothers with a letter from the police giving them the powers of policemen with the rank of Deputy Commissioner of Police?
• To which country or organisation were vehicles with diplomatic plates licensed too?
• Who authorised the issue of Kenyan passports to the two brothers?

And on and on and on. With all these questions and the hundreds more, all roads lead to Statehouse.

Of course Kibaki has been silent on this matter. His only words so far on this issue have been to threaten the press with legal action for linking his family to the brothers. That he cares more about protecting his neck than maintaining respect of his office is his problem. That he cares more about protecting his neck than the security of the nation, is our problem.

President Kibaki owes us all an explanation. I don’t know whether he had any direct dealings with the Armenian brothers. I don’t know whether he had ever met them. But I do know that he is my President, and that a lot of evil things are being done in his name. The buck must stop with him.

Macharia Gaitho writing in the Daily Nation

It is refreshing to see Commissioner of Police, Maj Gen Hussein Ali, finding his teeth and acting against the brothers. I also understand why he, Ali, felt the need to deport the brothers immediately. There is no point fooling ourselves. If those brothers were still in Kenya a “senior official” would have secured their release from jail by now and with an Attorney General who hates taking anyone to court, they probably would have never answered for their crimes. Instead they would be back in Runda behind their walled garden free to cause all the chaos they wanted. We have a situation where the Commissioner of Police does not trust the Justice department to do its job and where the Commissioner of Police does not know whom amongst his senior staff he can trust.

We should also remember that Dogs of War, like these brothers are, have no loyalties except to themselves and are available to the highest bidder, usually for political assassination. I do not even want to start to imagine what would happen to Kenya if a political leader was assassinated and these two men were involved. Even more so when you take into account their considerable links to Statehouse.

With the Moi presidency, and an evil one it was too, you never felt that Moi did not know what was going on. That he had lost control of the situation. When Moi engaged in criminal activity while his cronies looted the country you always had the feeling that Moi knew where every cent was going and with whom. Which is why his pleas that he knew about Goldenberg were comical to say the least. With Kibaki you do not getting the same feeling. The man either has no idea what is going on in the country or if he does he is powerless to stop it.

Here are my predictions. My reasons, logical and emotional, are below.
I assume a basic understanding of the way the World Cup groups are set up.

(Team in bold wins).

Second round

Game One:
Germany v Paraguay

Game Two:
Argentina v Angola

Game Three:
England v Ecuador

Game Four:
Mexico v Cote d’Ivoire

Game Five:
Czech Republic v Australia

Game Six:
France v Spain

Game Seven:
Brazil v Ghana

Game Eight:
Ukraine v Switzerland

Quarter-Final One:
Germany v Argentina

Quarter-Final Two:
Czech Republic v France

Quarter-Final Three:
England v Cote d’Ivoire

Quarter-Final Four:
Brazil v Ukraine

Semi-Final One:
Argentina v Czech Republic

Semi-Final Two:
England v Ukraine

Third/Fourth place play-off:
Argentina v Ukraine

Final:
Czech Republic v England

Thus the final standings:

1. England
2. Czech Republic
3. Argentina

The Logical Reasons

The four strongest teams at this World Cup are in Brazil, Argentina, Czech Republic and England.

Why won’t Brazil win it? South American teams do not win World Cups held in Europe. Brazil won in Sweden in 1958 but all the other eight World Cups in Europe have been won by European teams. Yes Brazil did reach the final against France last time the tournament was held in Europe, but in the group stage they played badly against Scotland eventually struggling to 2-1 victory they were then beaten by Norway in the same group stage. Against Denmark in the quarter final they struggled and only managed to scrape a 3-2 victory and they need penalties to beat Netherlands in the semi finals after being held to a 1-1. In the final they were beaten 3-0 by the hosts France. For whatever reason you want: biased refs, unsuitable tactics etc Brazil struggle against European teams in Europe. Ukraine is exactly the sort of team that will bother them, that is why Brazil will lose in the quarterfinals. As for Argentina the last time they did anything in Europe was when they lost to Italy in the final of Italia ‘90.

So I think that a team from UEFA will win this World Cup. Italy are rocked by scandal at home and have no pace in their forwards. Netherlands are one dimensional and have no pace in their forwards. Spain are Spain = choke. Germany, well the slow Italians spanked them 4-0 a month ago, their defence has got more holes than NARC-Kenya.

The two strongest European squads are England and the Czech Republic. Why everyone is sleeping on the Czechs I do not know. That squad is legit. France as well. The grand old men of France will make one last stand at this world cup I feel. But England has more quality through the backbone. They have a defence that is tight and who is better than Terry and Carragher in defence at the moment? Their midfield is sawa. When the Brazilian coach was asked which two players from any other country in the world he would like to have in his team he choose to English men, Gerrard and Lampard. If Beckham keeps doing what he does best, bending them in, and doesn’t become over ambitious and J. Cole listens to what he is told to do, then even I would score ten goals. So yeah, England will win it. They will play the Czech Republic in the final.

The Emotional Reasons

Come on we can not have the favourites winning everything this year, Barcelona were favourites and they won the Champions’ League, Seville were favourites and won the UEFA cup, Egypt were favourites (I don’t care North African teams playing at home are automatically favourites) and they won the African Nations Cup. Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Lyons, Chelsea were all tipped to win their leagues at the beginning of the season and they all won. We can not have Brazil winning the world cup. That will mean football has become too predictable! That’s why I have knocked out some UEFA teams early as well. LOL!

technorati tags: World Cup
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Apparently you can get bed sheets made out of leather. LEATHER?

I do not think they will replace 550 thread count finest quality Egyptian cotton as the height in bedding luxury in my books.

Come on now! Who wants to sleep in leather?!! (Well apart from my crazy pal who told me about the sheets!)

Whenever I hear of someone going home to Kenya for a visit I always ask them to bring me back the same thing (I do not wait for them to offer, I more or less demand it). All I want from home is Chevra.

There are two things which Kenyans make like no one else on the planet, Fanta Orange and Chevra. Both are beautiful! In Manchester Asian supermarkets have rows of different types of Chevra. But none of them hit the spot.

2006 has been a bad year for my Chevra exploits. It started with a valuable bag of stuff disappearing into the Sultanate that is Qatar. At least I got to go back home to restock so I recovered from that disaster. Those stocks were quickly depleted. Since then two people I know have headed home, each one promised to come back with my Chevra fix, but no! They did not even bother to offer excuses. I was given the “We couldn’t be bothered with a trip to the supermarket and what are you going to do about it” treatment.

All seemed lost until last week another so called friend txted me from Nairobi to ask if there was anything I wanted. Oh Yes! What a superstar! They landed in Manchester yesterday.

Me: Where is my chevra superstar?
SS: Kwani you didn’t hear Uchumi shut down?
Me: argggggggggggggggggh!!!!!

Oh well at least they thought of an excuse (a very crap one).

I have joined Afrigadget a team blog run by Erik a.k.a White African.

The purpose of Afrigadget is to showcase African ingenuity with technology. AfriGadget will cover categories such as but not restricted to; Gadgets, How-to’s, Books, Energy, Communication, Transportation, and Water, Wood and Metal projects that are different than the norm. Have a read, add it your RSS reader, or even join to write!

Sokari, who writes the fantastic blog Black Looks and has played a very important and extremely dedicated role in getting African bloggers on the map through Global Voices, has announced the launch the African Women Blogs website. The main part of the site at the moment is the AWB aggregator which displays the latest posts from African women’s blogs across the continent. It is very interesting reading the differences and similarities that are shared amongst a joint yet extremely diverse group of bloggers. Go there and have a look and a read. It is updated every hour on the hour. If you are an African woman with a blog and would like to be listed in this new aggregator please contact one of the administrators, Sokari or Mshairi.

Patriotism, a strange and emotional word. George Bernard Shaw dismissed patriotism as, “the conviction that your country is superior to all other countries simply because you were born in it.”

Despite that I never hesitate to call myself a Kenyan patriot. This feeling, this patriotism, has always been with me for as long as I can remember. I can show you pictures from my pre-teen years where you would see that I used to hang a Kenyan flag on my wall together with posters and pictures of various freedom fighters/statesmen (usually taken from the cover of Weekly Review or other such magazines). My very first post, written back in 1997, was about Kenya and the pride I felt in being Kenyan. I will try and dig it up and post it on Mentalacrobatics one of these fine days.

So why am I so proud of Kenya, of being Kenyan? A part of it has to be that we, Kenya and I, are both growing, both learning from experience and our growth is linked. As I grow, Kenya grows. As Kenya grows, I grow. After all Kenya as a nation is younger than many of our parents. Kenya was not a house we moved into, it was a house which they started building, which will complete and which our children will furnish. In that sense we mould it in our character. It is a reflection of us. The good and the bad. But it is us.

Many confuse pride for the country with love for the government and vice versa. We often get questions like, how can you be proud of Kenya when Kibaki does this, when Moi does that, when Kenyatta did this or that. No. regardless of what you think of our three presidents, the country is bigger than them, bigger than you, bigger than me. It is all of us together.

When I watch the Olympics and the flag goes up and the national anthem rings out across the stadium. To me that is Kenya. When we open our borders to our neighbours, give them a haven away from war and civil war. To me that is Kenya. When our Nobel Laureate arrives home to find her own government has ignored her but the wanainchi slow her car to a halt to congratulate her while singing songs in her honour. To me that is Kenya. The examples go on and on.

While clearing out I found a tape I bought over 15 years ago. It contains a collection of speeches by Mzee Jomo Kenyatta. Here are some clips. It is interesting to listen to them with the benefit of over 40 years hindsight. The first one is from the first Madaraka Day, 1st June 1963 (3 mins long). The second one is from Madaraka Day, 1965 (3 mins long). These are both in English. Mzee Kenyatta’s most powerful oratory, like many of our politicians, was in Kiswahili thus I have included a third clip this one taken at the first Kenyatta Day rally on October 20th 1963 at Kamukunji which is essential entertaining listening (6 mins long).

The first clip is loaded automatically. To play the next clip click on the “Play now” link next to the description.

 

 Jomo Kenyatta Speech Madaraka Day 1963 - Digitalized by Mentalacrobatics.com [2:43m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Jomo Kenyatta Speech Madaraka Day 1965 - Digitalized by Mentalacrobatics.com [2:56m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Jomo Kenyatta Speech Kenyatta Day 1963 - Digitalized by Mentalacrobatics.com [5:51m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

(The tape has no copyright information on it apart from the code C-K002 so I am unable to credit anyone with it (apart from Mzee Kenyatta of course). I suspect the copyright is held by the National Archive? Oh well they were public speeches anyway!)

Aside: I have developed my own tradition while I am outside Kenya. On every Kenyan National holiday I wear my Kenyan flag tie to work, comme ca:

Hehehe! Represent! I always look for an excuse to wear this tie and it is impossible to find one at home. At least here I can floss. Almost inevitably there will be someone on the street who notices it, smiles at me and walks over to say “Habari.” Kenyans, we are everywhere!

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