Location: Java House, Adams Arcade, Nairobi
The cast: Pancakes (with strawberries), masala tea, free fast wireless access.
There is no better way to blog, is there? Show me!
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13 comments Tuesday, September 26th, 2006 at 6:30 PM
Earlier this year the “Artur brothers”, foreign mercenaries brought into Kenya to create chaos, allegedly pulled out guns at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport and threatened members of the public and members of the security services before speeding of in their cars. When witness at the commission set up to investigate the event differed on whether or not guns were pulled, the commission asked for tapes from the CCTV cameras, which were perfectly positioned to record the events. The commission was informed that apparently the cameras were not working that day.
Second example, John Githongo, the former Permanent Secretary in charge of Governance and Ethics who was forced to flee Kenya due to his investigations into corruption, meets with officials from the Kenya Anti Corruption Commission at the Kenyan embassy in London to present a dossier containing evidence of corruption by senior members of Kibaki’s government. To avoid confusion in the future about what was said and what wasn’t said during the meeting it is agreed that the anti corruption officials will take an audio recording of the proceedings and to that effect the anti corruption officials brought the necessary equipment to the meeting. Months later after Martha Karua, Minister for Justice, accused Githongo of, “not co-operating with the investigators” Githongo asked for the audio recordings to be made public only to be told by Aaron Ringera, the head of the Kenyan Anti Corruption Commission, that the recording equipment had failed.
Thirdly, on Sunday we learnt that somehow thugs managed to break into the heavily guarded Times Tower in Nairobi, managed to get to the 14th floor which is occupied by the section of the Kenya Revenue Authority which holds sensitive tax records and managed to steal a large number of computers with vital data, all this without any struggle and police even believe the perpetrators may have had keys to the building. The icing on the cake comes when the KRA informs us that most probably the stolen data was not backed up.
From these three examples we learn that the authorities can not record video, fail to record audio and do not back up vital computer records. Either that or someone somewhere is taking us for fools.
JKIA has applied for “Category One” status. This would enable airlines to fly direct to the United States from Kenya. The key component to getting Category One status is security. Now the Kenyan airport authorities want us to believe that during the biggest security breech EVER at a Kenyan airport the CCTV cameras were not working. Yeah right.
The Kenyan Anti Corruption Commission and the parliamentary Public Accounts Committee travel all the way to London with the sole purpose of interviewing Githongo to hear his evidence against the perpetrators of corruption in Kenya, someone of them senior political figures. Are we seriously meant to believe that on that day of all days, in that meeting of all meetings, that the audio equipment failed? And no one noticed it had failed on the day so they could record another session? They only “discovered” it had failed when they got back to Kenya? The equipment used by the KACC was same as used by the parliamentary Public Accounts Committee where it worked flawlessly. Did they not test the equipment? Did they not check to see if it had recorded on the day? It just failed? Yeah right.
And how can an organisation as through and determined as the KRA have the audacity to tell us that vital tax records that were held on computers which just happened to be stolen (from the 14th floor - no hit, grab and run mission this) just happened not to be backed up? The KRA wants us to believe that they have worse data management skills than any high school student in the world who all know you must keep at least two copies of vital documents? Yeah right!
Whatever you do, do not hire this government to record your wedding. You’d be lucky if they managed to capture anything at all.
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6 comments Tuesday, September 26th, 2006 at 1:48 PM
Will someone please get all the breakfast radio presenters and producers in the country and shake some sense into them to inject a doze of reality. Breakfast radio is meant to be safe. Radio you can listen to with children, radio you can listen to with parents, radio you can listen to without having to look over your shoulder in case anyone else heard what you just heard. But breakfast radio in Kenya is crazy. In fact it is pornographic.
Take this example from last week. A lady wrote into a station asking for advice as a foreign man she had met on the internet had just sent her a plane ticket to go visit him. For the next half hour we were subjected to a discussion on penis size and which countries you should travel to for some good loving.
A few days later another show was discussing a couple who had not had sex for 6 months and what sex advice we could collectively give to get them at it like rabbits again. Now these are all valid topics for discussion I agree, just not why the nation is having its morning uji.
And it is not just a Kenyan thing, in South Africa I woke up to a radio discussion of whether M,M,F threesomes were better than M,F,F threesomes. And in Uganda listeners to the station which was being blasted in our Akamba bus were asked to call in with their GRANDPARENT’S sex secrets (because our grandparents had such healthy children you see). All this before 9am. What is going on here? Did one station go raunchy and the rest follow, or did they just all go mad at some FM radio convention and decide to shock the continent?
For more madness check out KenyaMusings’ on another crazy discussion yesterday and sylkwan’s post from the beginning of the year shows its been going on for a while.
I have to admit I am a big fan of Valentine Njoroge and Shawn Bartlett (??? I can never catch the co-hosts name) drive time show on Classic FM (Classic FM in Kenya unlike Classic FM’s anywhere else in the world has absolutely nothing to do with classic music. It plays classic old school tracks though, which is where I guess it gets its name.) Valentine and Yvonne (??? Still have no idea on that name) work well together on air and at least they talk about other stuff other than relationships relationships relationships.
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5 comments Tuesday, September 26th, 2006 at 1:16 PM
Wow, a lot of stuff happens on September 26th.
Thank you for all your kind words (well apart from the one who called me an “old billy goat” – you know yourself 
), for your kind messages and emails.
Any KBW member who catches me today will have one on me!
Oh and by the way, my niece is prettier than your niece! Seriously, she is!
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10 comments Tuesday, September 26th, 2006 at 12:22 PM
So the Digital Citizens Indaba came and the Digital Citizens Indaba went and just like in Asterix*, despite the wishes of the death mongers, the sky did not fall on our collective African blogging heads. If anything it has been the most entertaining week in the African blogosphere for a while. Albeit over what i feel is a big non issue, but that’s just me. There are some things i do wonder about, maybe someone can shed some light on these.
Why are people always surprised and shocked when certain bloggers defend themselves after they are attacked? I had someone musing loudly in my comments about whether our blogs had become bigger than us. For crying out loud if you attack people they will defend themselves.
Secondly, why are some people always surprised that the verbal knife can cut both ways. If you complain, rightly or wrongly, about non Africans organising, speaking and attending a blogging conference in Africa why would you be surprised when Africans tell you that a non Africa who lives, works, blogs in Africa has more right to write about Africa than an African in the diaspora. I would think that that would be the first counter point you would prepare yourself for.
Thirdly, why are we as a people constantly arguing and debating the same issues over and over again. I challenge anyone of you to point out a new idea, a new controversy that emerged in the verbal sparring of the past two weeks.
Fourthly, if you have been running to your computer or checking out the aggregator every day to find out, “the latest” i suggest you move to Nairobi. The hectic panic that is living in this city will wipe your brain of any energy you may have spare.
Fifthly, blogging is all about thinking for yourself. It is about sharing what you think. Your blog is your opinion. So why is that some bloggers take unreliable second hand information and preach it as gospel? I mean if you write a post claiming that there are “no natives” at the DCI then you really are guilty of “surf and click” laziness of the highest kind. Next time do not stop so soon, you are one click away from the truth.
But you know only a fool thinks he has all the answers and only a fool thinks there is nothing to be learnt from debate with those who disagree with you. A wise person once told me, the biggest honour anyone can give your argument/your position is to to criticise it intellectually because that means that they feel that your position is worth spending time upon. So we can and we should disagree. We just need to learn how to disagree constructively.
So this is what i suggest. Clearly we have many African bloggers who have an opinion on what an African blogging conference should or should not have, should or should not do. We have many African bloggers who have an opinion on how an African blogging conference should be run. Well then, let us hear it.
I have set up a google email discussion group called “African Bloggers”. This email group has a simple task but it is a massive one. This group is created with the intention of working towards organizing a conference for African bloggers in 2007. Our discussions within this group will centre around (but may not limited to) sponsorship, dates, venues, facilities, speakers, agenda. This group is open to ANYONE who has a blog.
Let us take all this passion and try to create something positive out of it. Let’s quit complaining, defending, attacking and start debating, thinking and creating.
I’m in, are you?
(*Ka boom chi! I managed to use Asterix in a serious blog post!)
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22 comments Friday, September 22nd, 2006 at 1:06 AM
Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa has a beautiful campus with excellent facilities. The newest building on this campus is the Africa Media Matrix which hold the School of Journalism.
The AMM is the base for the Digital Citizens Indaba. This journalism school features brand new TV studios with professional studio equipment. Brand new radio studios. In their finally year students form media companies and these companies have offices in the building. They have massive computer labs and the whole building has wireless broadband. The walls are decorated with historical pictures, original art work, autographed books by Rhodes Alumni,and pieces of media art. In short it is a very impressive building.
The best thing however, yes even better than the wireless broadband internet which by the way is powered by some serious looking equipment, comme ca:
Yes even better than that wireless system and the historical pictures. The best thing about this building is the place where many of us do our best work, the toilets.
The tiles in the toilets are decorated with quotes on the media from various sources. It makes for very interesting reading. Here are a small selection.
From the famous historical:
Three estates in parliament; but in the Reporters’ gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth estate more important far than they all.
Edmund Burke
To the calls to action
Make it your pledge to keep Africa on the front pages of the world’s newspapers and television screens. And not just the bad news, because great and good things which take place on this continent often go unreported.
Mohammed Amin
To the beautifully surreal
Radio lets people see things with their own ears.
New York Times editorial
To the uncompromisingly honest
Only cowards and panic-mongers will think of surrendering to this threat (of apartheid).
Inkululeko
The African proverb
The cock that crows in the morning belongs to one household but his voice is the property of the neighbourhood.
Chinua Achebe
Some give advice
Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.
Bill Clinton
To the funny
You cannot hope to bribe or twist (thank God!) the British journalist. But, seeing what the man will do unbribed, there’s no occasion to.
Humbert Wolfe
An editor is one who separates the wheat from the chaff and prints the chaff.
Adlai E. Stevenson
Yeah my camera goes everywhere with me because you never know!
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19 comments Friday, September 15th, 2006 at 10:31 AM
The serious part of day one of the Digital Citizens Blogging Indaba is now over. A lot of information has thrown at us. Ethan, of Global Voices fame, kicked things off with a quick introduction to blogging and a quick look at the African blogosphere. KBW members Black Looks and Jikomboe were name checked complete with screen shots namely, he also highlighted KenyaUnlimited and mentioned briefly what KenyaUnlimited does which is good for me because when i had over my KenyaUnlimited business card now people saw, “ahhhhh” as opposed to “huh” which is what I have been getting all week.
In the Q&A session after Ethan’s address we discussed all forms of citizen media not just blogs. Ghanaian journalists mentioned that with the explosion of the talk radio in their country which in a very interactive medium, radios are blogs. A interesting challenge there, how do we combine these two powerful tools of citizen media, radio and blogs? It is not enough to have websites for radio stations. We need a truly interactive where listeners are contributors as well as content generators. That is one to think about.
We has a lively debate in the Q&A session following the Web 2.0 presentations. Our very own Kenyan Pundit and Emeka, the man behind Timbuktu Chronicles, pointed out that to start a conventional TV station such as Al Jazeera you would need approximately USD 20 million. But using various Web 2.0 applications you can post video, audio, text, interviews, exclusives etc. right on your website and blog. We have extremely powerful tools available to us today, largely for free, these tools can be harnessed by Africans to bridge the digital divide.
The best thing for me today however is the social interaction. It is good to me so many bloggers from across Africa, exchange details and discuss our various experiences. For example apart from Timbuktu Chronicles I also met Alaa who’s imprisonment earlier this year led to a google-bomb campaign which the Kenyan blogosphere responded to with enthusiasm. We talked blogs and politics for about 10 seconds and before you could say “integrated web solutions” we were discussing various Open Sources CMS and the pros and cons of each one. It is also good to meet Ethan as well as the DCI organisers. People who existed only on blogs and email up to today. There are a reasonable number of Kenyans here, mostly journalists who have all expressed interest in blogging and joining KBW like their colleague John Kamau who has been a member for a while. I’ve bonded with, Rebecca who has been blogging for a while.
For the official coverage, podcasts etc, check out the DCI blog.
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Add comment Thursday, September 14th, 2006 at 7:11 PM
One of the best things about being about being at Highway Africa and the Digital Citizen Indaba is that I am amongst other believers. Here i am surrounded by people who blog and more importantly people who understand the IMPORTANCE of blogs to Africa. When newspaper editors, university vice chancellors, conference conveners understand and appreciate the KBW project as soon as they hear about it I get a warm feeling. At yesterday award ceremony a collective of Zimbabwe bloggers won one of the top prizes (once I get the link to their blog I will post it.)
On Monday one of the presenters, Neil Jacobson from FutureWorld, when talking about the future of newspapers in particular and media in general told the media about the, “culture of the individual”. That is in today’s digital society people use various tools to generate news that is relevant to them. I do not think that any of you rely solely on one newspaper for news. Many do not even look at newspapers at all.
The digital revolution is here in Africa and newspapers as well as other sections of the MSM need to realise that it is about a lot more to a digital strategy than having a website and a bunch of RSS feeds. The way we assimilate news is changing, where we go for news is changing and through our blogs we are not just reporting the news, which in itself is revolutionary, but we are helping create it, helping construct it, deciding which issues linger and which ones do not. These guys here get it, and they are powerful African news people, that puts a smile on my face.
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Add comment Wednesday, September 13th, 2006 at 1:18 PM
You might have heard about the controversy that has been flying around about the Highway Africa and Digital Citizen Indaba conference being held at Rhodes University, Grahamstown as we speak.
Well things finally came to ahead yesterday. No one could hold it in any more. People would either have to come with some answers or the whole place would erupt. After all if a conference of journalists can not make our decision makers accountable who can?
The issue had been burning all week. Whispers here and there but all we got were polite smiles and polite dismissals. We wanted to be taken seriously dammit. These were serious questions we were raising.
Well finally last night at the annual Highway Africa awards, which were live on TV across the continent, things finally came to ahead. Tired of being pushed around we demanded answers to our burning questions. Detailed and full answers. We would not cooperate until we were answered. We demanded to know, and to know immediately on behalf of the people of Africa, we wanted an end to all this conspiracy to all this controversy. So we asked,nay, we demanded to be told. Was it really true that The Princess of Africa also know as Yvonne Chaka Chaka was going to perform live in front of us? And if she was, would she perform her famous hit single “Umqombothi” which for years I thought was “eh mandanzi”?!
Well, mabibi na mabwana, i can reassure that we demanded, on your behalf, and got, on your behalf, an answer! Yes Yvonne, because i’m on first name basis with her cause she knows me like that, was performing. And boy did she perform! Yani she even had me singing ati, “I’m in love with a DJ.”
So there you go controversy sorted.
(You may have read elsewhere about another so called controversy, believe me that is nothing compared to this YCC drama. All i have to say to that is this:
Look at the big picture, at the bigger picture. Where were all these self appointed champions of African blogs when we sent out repeated calls for help? Where were these self appointed defenders of the African blogosphere when we were building. They were online, they knew what we were doing but obviously did not feel it was important enough to engage with us then, so why now? What has changed since?
Remember the old proverb, beware strangers carrying gifts. Just as we who are here in Grahamstown will be watching those around us for anything suspicious, you too watch those around you and their motives.
In KBW we welcome interaction, we welcome those who want to build a community with us. Of course you can refuse to interact with the community except when it is in your own interest. Of course you can ignore us. That is the beautiful thing about our community, even after you join you do not have to participate. You bring to the table what you want to bring. BUT, and oh boy it is a big BUT, BUT if you refuse to interact, if you abdicate your responsibility to engage with your fellow bloggers, if you abdicate in your responsibility to the community then you must allow to me to laugh from the end of my toes when you turn around and come out in full amour as the “defender of the African blogosphere” hehe. We are not good enough for you to engage with, yet we are good enough for you to enlighten about the evil mzungu. Give me a break.
Sisters and brothers, Kenyan Pundit co founded Mzalendo, Mr Mental founded KenyaUnlimited, Bankelele runs probably the most read finanical writing coming out of kenya and Marazzmatazz is no push over as well. Some may try to imply that we came all the way to South Africa to be seduced by 30 pieces of silver. Or they may suggest that if we are not sell outs we are to seduced by the whole proceedings to remain objective. Many of you know us through our blogs. I think it would be fair to say that naivety on world issues is not an accusation you can seriously throw at us.
Beware those who decide they can think for you. One minute were being told how no blogging conference should try to control bloggers, the next minute we are being told about who is or is not worthy to engage. So you want me to be free to blog about what you want me to blog about? Wow. One minute we are told the problem is the conference was not widely publicised, and being asked why they were not invited, the next minute we are being told the conference is bogus anyway. So the rest of the African blogosphere should apply for scholarships but you should be invited? Why? Why you? Why shouldn’t you have to apply with the rest of us? What makes you so damn special?
Next the whole, “there are no natives” (whatever a native is) argument lacks so much logic someone is surely looking for a slapping from a certain Mr Spock. I am sitting in a hall full of 500+ journalists from 40+ African countries, no natives? I have previously blogged about the logical fallacy of an ad hominem argument. Those who have lost the argument tend to attack the man. “Yeah, well Hitler was a vegetarian that means all vegetarians are evil.” The so called handing of our souls to the devil in a code of conduct for bloggers. I mean for crying out loud have you looked at the programme? The “code of conduct” seminar is one of three simultaneous seminars being held on Friday afternoon, hardly the setting for the evil take over of the world is it?
OK enough of the jokes, there is a serious point to all this, believe. Some bloggers have raised concerns with me about the Indaba, which i will bring up when the opportunity arises. I do believe that things can improve, of course they can, the organisers feel that things can improve, this is only the first ever meeting for crying out loud. But i refuse to believe that those who shunned our community and only play lip service to it are now acting as such strong defenders of the African blogosphere for anything other than selfish means. You may chose to read it differently and if so, or even if you agree, blog about it. That is the beauty of blogging!)
Now to help us all smile let me post a picture of our co host last night:
Ahhhhhhhhh, calm all ready Anyone out there know her name?
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12 comments Wednesday, September 13th, 2006 at 12:16 PM
From next week I will be blogging from Grahamstown, South Africa. Monday to Wednesday I’ll be at the 10th Highway Africa Conference. Thursday and Friday I’ll be at the first ever Digital Citizens Indaba.
I’d like to thank the organizers of both events for granting me a scholarship to attend. I have never met any of the organizers, all I did was fill in the scholarship form and voila, I am on a plane later on today. Nothing nefarious there despite what you may have read elsewhere. Next year make sure you fill out the scholarship application form and you could be networking at the 2nd Digital Citizens Indaba!
You’ll be happy you hear that I am not the only Kenyan blogger flying to South Africa. There is a strong team of KBW members attending featuring (in dancehall style) none other than the one you know as Kenyan Pundit, man like Bankelele and the one and only Marazzmatazz. If there are any other Kenyan bloggers attending please email me and let me know.
It is hard to describe how excited I am about all this. Here we are taking our online world and creating opportunities where we can affect positive change in the “real” world. If nothing else ears and eyes will be open. Send me your thoughts on what I could do out there for the KBW family.
By the way if I bump into Desmond Tutu (yes I know he won’t be just walking around waiting to be bumped into by mentalacrobatics, work with me here) I would not know what to say. What do you say to a living legend?
My camera is loaded and the iRiver as well in case the podcast bug bites.
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8 comments Saturday, September 9th, 2006 at 4:48 AM
I was thinking about how KBW has grown to be a virtual family and how we should make that family official. So how about this, the first KBW member to give their baby names which leave the young one with the initials KBW get to either:
Now who can refuse an offer like that
Kelis Brenda Waweru
Kandy Bonita Were
Kevin Bodaboda Wekesa
Kilo Bora Weka
Kwenda Bravo Wellington.
Get creative!
(OK maybe it is way to late to blog!)
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6 comments Saturday, September 9th, 2006 at 4:22 AM
After my exploits with EaaaaaaasyCoach I decided to take this international. Let’s go to Kampala, where the players play!
Uganda and Kenya remind me of a typical African extended family. Visiting Kampala is like visiting an aunt’s house, some things are very familiar, and others seem very strange. Kenya and Uganda are like that. We are so different, yet almost completely alike. In fact the relationship between Kenya and Uganda is like that of two cousins. For one there is no other country that is closer to Kenya in any practical sense. Where else would you find one brother the vice president of one country, Kenya’s Moody Awori, and the other brother, Uganda’s Aggrey Awori, a Member of Parliament and former presidential candidate in another country? Enough of the geopolitics, let’s go to Kampala!
The first decision is easy. Nairobi to Entebbe is the most expensive air route per mile IN THE WORLD. I mean USD 400 to go next door? Not frigging likely. So like all sensible people I was on the bus, USD 50 return. And by bus I mean Akamba. Actually to be honest I was bling blinging. I was not on Akamba, I was on Akamba ROYAL.
Royal is a meant to be a different experience from your usual bus trip. There is a DVD player but only two screens in the bus and all the speakers are at the front. They showed Fantastic Four though which you do not really need sound to enjoy although they could have turned on subtitles. You also get a refreshment at the start of journey. In Kenya you get a tired looking bottle of battered water. In Uganda you get a samosa, a cup of juice AND a tired looking bottle of battered water, comme ca:
However the best thing about Royal is that there are fewer seats = more legroom = better journey. In reality it is still all about the seat lottery. You want to grab a seat towards the front of the coach but not right at the front, otherwise you feel every bump as we did on our way back to Nairobi.
I was not allowed to take pictures at the border but I wish I was. For starters all this talk about East African Community cross border cooperation has translated to nothing on the ground. Officially Kenyans need a passport to travel to Uganda and vice versa. Passport control on the Kenyan side is a joke. Imagine a kiosk window with a cranky owner. That’s passport control Kenyan style. Now imagine a small airport waiting room with a air conditioning. That’s passport control Uganda style. Although I did not need a visa the immigration officer informed me that I had three weeks in Uganda and then I’d have to bounce. What they are afraid I’d want to stay? Muppet!
Kampala has 24 hour traffic jam, like Nairobi. Dangerous, rude drivers, who seem to have a death wish, like Nairobi. Unlike Nairobi however in Kampala seems to be packing heat. (No that does not mean they are working in a factory filling boxes for a heater manufacture or a boiler maker. It means that they are Packing Heat! That is carrying guns.)
It is slighty amusing and a little bit scary when you walk into a hotel and they ask you if you have any weapons you’d like them to hold for safe keeping. In Kenya when you walk into a government building you hand over your National ID and collect when you leave. In Uganda you hand over your Uzi, AK, Glock etc. Everyone knew I was a tourist when I took a picture of this sign:
My Ugandan pal assures me that they are all and I quote “one pea shooters” that is although everyone has guns, no one has bullets. But hey are you willing to risk finding out? The number of guns in that country is crazy. I have never seen a female night time security guard in Kenya. In Kampala there are common. I guess they were right when they said a gun is the ultimate equalizer.
Well that’s part 1. Part 2 in the near future, if I feel like it that is.
As for now I am off to Grahamstown, South Africa where the players play.
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5 comments Saturday, September 9th, 2006 at 4:03 AM
Earlier this week I registered to vote in Kenya for the first time, 10 years since I became eligible to vote.
First the good:
If you have the necessary documentation, that is a Kenyan Identification Card or a Kenyan Passport the process is relatively simple.
You find a registration point, show your documents, sign a form, mark the voters card with your thumb print and voila you can make you voice heard through the ballot.
Registration points vary in size and stature from government offices to simple roadside tables like the one I went to:
These roadside registration points are vital to the process as they take the registration to the people. Most of the people registering where we were simply walked over when they noticed the table. Although some people, such us ourselves, had actively gone out seeking the registration centre. The lady sitting down is the registration official and she had moved to this location, near a busy road, from where she had been originally located, in the grounds of a school, in a bid to register more people.
Next the bad:
The Electoral Commission of Kenya have opened voter registration for only one month. Registration closes on the 14th of September. If you were out of the country in that one month, too bad. If you were in hospital, too bad. If you working 12 hour shifts during the day during that month, too bad. This is why I have never been able to register to vote before. Every time registration was open I was abroad. There may be another registration window next year, there may not be. Which means that this may be the last chance you can register to vote before the general election expected in December 2007.
Contrary to popular belief you can only register to vote in the constituency where you register. I registered in Nairobi. I want to vote in Western Kenya. I would understand this policy if registration was continous, open for half the year or at least 3 months. But if you are only allowing people to register for one month you have to allow them to choose where they want to vote. For example most people can not afford or simply will not be given time off work to travel upcountry to register to vote.
In some instances it can take up to three days to reach ancestral homes from Nairobi (mainly in parts of the country which have been neglected since independence such as North Eastern Kenya). If we want people to take part in a vital civic process we have to make sure that they can vote where they want to vote. There is no point various political and civic leaders making a lot of noise about bringing North Eastern Kenya and other remote communities into the national fold if it punishes them like this.
This current registration process favours communities whose ancestral homes are close to Nairobi and other big towns. If you can travel, register and be back in Nairobi in a couple of hours or half a day you have an advantage over those communities where it takes at least one day travel in each direction, not to mention the three days in one direction I mentioned earlier.
Lastly the ugly:
Many people who want to vote can not register because they have not been issued with National ID cards or passports. Despite applying with all the necessary paperwork and investing a lot of time and effort. Some people have been waiting for ID cards for five years. This can be interpreted as a deliberate attempt to leave some people disenfranchised.
Back to the good (well goodish)
As I mentioned above part of the process for registering requires you to leave a thumb print on your voter’s card. This means that for the next few days you walk around with a purple thumb comme ca:
This allows you to hold your head up high in civic superiority as you are now a voter. (Yes my shirt is pink, iko swali??)
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12 comments Friday, September 1st, 2006 at 1:06 PM
I do not like those, “I am going away now” and the “I am back now” posts. To me they sound a little too self important. Like those people with 3 mobile phones and a pager. I mean honestly. As Frasier at Blogjam puts it:
I never like to apologise for any absences between posting, as doing so would be an assumption that a) anyone cares and that b) those who do are feverishly awaiting whatever it is I have to say. This is a touch arrogant for my liking, so I don’t bother.
I have to acknowledge though that, for various reasons, since the big move blogging has been at the best sporadic and at worst non existent. Some of these reasons are brilliant. For example for a couple of weeks I was busy having way too much fun watching my brother getting married to blog. Other reasons were not as happy. Overtaken by life’s twists and turns etc.
However the main reason for my absence from my blog was I did not know how to blog. I had no idea how to blog. Blank. This, after years of running a blog, came as a bit of a shock to me. I finally figured it out today while sitting in my barber’s chair. It all has to do with my blogging nature. I am an impulse blogger. I see something bloggable, I find a computer I blog it. I read something bloggable I find a computer I blog it. I hear something interesting in the middle of the night on radio I get up and blog it. When you have 15MB broadband internet at your finger tips impulse blogging is easy. But as I swapped broadband in Manchester for my sanity in Nairobi something had to change. I knew it and I was prepared for it.
I had a three 512MB USB sticks. One holds Portable Firefox so I could take my browser + bookmarks + plugins with me to any internet café in Kenya or the world (my browser and its settings are fine tuned to blogging). The second USB stick had Portable Thunderbird, so I could take my email accounts with me to any internet café in Kenya or the world. The third USB stick had GreatNews, the best RSS reader out there, so I could take all of you (bloggers) with me to any internet café in Kenya or the world.
Technologically I was ready, mentally I was ready, however, my blogging mojo was completely out of sync. My mojo would whisper to me, “Typing something in MS Word to insert links later, that’s not blogging, man that’s called writing an assessed essay for class. Not being able to blog something cool immediately but waiting till morning, that’s not blogging man, that’s just writing.” Waiting, having to wait, that sucks. Well it did. But I’m over it and on top of that I’m enjoying it. I have this mental blog in my head that is far far ruder than Mentalacrobatics and it is fun filling it with entries. Maybe one day I’ll let them out, hehe.
But this blog right here this Mentalacrobatics, well it’s grown and changed a little bit but it will continue to do what it does best (if anyone knows what that is please let me know). You would think that having to type something in MS Word first and having to re read before posting would increase the quality of blogging, well pole. It’s still going to be THE Deepest Pothole on the Information Superhighway, beware.
For all of you who having been blogging all this time from places where the internet access is slower than an episode of a Latin America soap opera, you have my respect.
To all the new KBW members, Karibu, it is brilliant that ya’ll have joined us.
To all old KBW members, ati Best Blog Community nominee? Man I told ya’ll that we were special, now you know! I hope ya’ll voted! (Where are those muppets who always accuse us of rigging every election and nomination process we are involved in like we’re that nutcase in Uzbekistan?) Anyway to all KBW members, thank you for building the community. Not all who joined us had the spirit to stay with us. Thank you current members for sticking around and making KBW what it is.
To my blogging friends friends who happen to blog, KBW and Non KBW, new and old … here we go again.
To their Supreme Majesties Members and Supporters known as Koppites – You never walk alone. First game of the season, one trophy. Forward to Premiership and Athens (let’s hope we meet Chelski in the knockout stages).
To the Chelski fans – hehehe. Ati Middlesboro? You know Charity Shield Winners do not go around losing like muppets, no actually you don’t know.
To Arsenal fans – hehehe. Man City? This sucks I am actually starting to feel sorry for these gooners.
To Man U fans – do not get too excited. I don’t know how you managed to rig the fixture list so that you started with three London teams. Come back to the North West and you’ll see what football is all about.
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13 comments Friday, September 1st, 2006 at 2:24 AM