Posts filed under 'Africa'
A while ago the East African blogosphere was rocked with controversy that began when a Kenyan blogger called the Tanzania president, Jakaya Kikwete, a “dumb-ass bitch”. Some Tanzanian bloggers took exception to this insult and stated so in their blogs. In return some Kenyan bloggers took exception to the Tanzanian bloggers taking exception and the KenyaUnlimited aggregator was full of posts quoting Voltaire (which was bizarre in itself as surely someone who complains about your insult has as much right to be heard as you do with your original insult).
Throughout the year as I continued to interact with Tanzanian bloggers I came to learn that a significant number of them (Tanzanian bloggers) do not have much confidence in Kikwete and many of them view his presidency, to put it politely, as a disaster, especially when they reflected on his economic policies.
This raised a number of questions in my mind.
Firstly, if these Tanzanian bloggers are not at all impressed with Kikwete’s presidency why did they take such strong exception to an insult lobbed his way by an insignificant and inarticulate Kenyan blogger?
Secondly, why did the Kenyan blogosphere find it so hard to understand why the Tanzanian bloggers were outraged by an insult to their president?
Is it because Kenyans have thicker skin, are mentally stronger and are used to verbal sparing and thus can roll with the punches?
Perhaps.
Is it because Tanzanians are more eloquent, more mature and civilised and thus will not stand for insults?
Perhaps.
My understanding of why these two siblings, Kenyans and Tanzanians, could disagree so fundamentally on this issue can be summed up in one word.
Statesmanship.
In a sentence: the history and tradition of statesmanship within the Tanzanian ruling elite, and the complete lack of statesmanship within the Kenyan ruling elite.
At the risk of launching a Platonic argument of gigantic dimensions let me define it thus (quoting Wikipedia);
To rule or have political power called for a specialized knowledge. The statesman was one who possesses this special knowledge of how to rule justly and well and to have the best interests of the citizens at heart.
As Kenyans I believe we find it hard to understand the notion of statesmanship, as it implies that those in the political elite in Kenya should be driven to implement policies that have the best interests of the citizens of Kenya at heart.
How can we understand this when the Kibaki government claimed it did not have enough money to build the 500,000 homes it promised in its election manifesto of 2002 yet somehow managed to find USD 12m to spend on new cars (enough to send 25,000 children to school for eight years)?
How can we understand this when the Moi regime fleeced the country of at least US $600 million in less than three years in what we now call the Goldenberg Scandal?
How can we understand this when the extended Kenyatta family alone owns an estimated 500,000 acres — approximately the size of Nyanza Province — according to estimates by independent surveyors and Ministry of Lands officials, making them the senior members of what Michael Mundia Kamau, inspirationally, calls the KenMoiKib Farm?
Our three presidents to date have failed the statesmanship test and failed it badly. Even Jomo Kenyatta, whom increasingly seems to be loved more by non-Kenyans than Kenyans in much the same way that love for THE Emperor seems to grow the further you get away from Ethiopia, is no longer spared. I can even go as far as stating that if you stand on any street corner in central Nairobi and shouted in a loud voice, “Kibaki/Moi/Kenyatta is a dumb-ass bitch” you would be ignored at the worst but probably be applauded by one or two people. Now imagine standing at the corner of a street in Dar-es-salaam and shouting “Nyerere is a dumb-ass bitch”. If you managed to get out alive and made it to Nairobi I would probably finish you off myself and I am Kenyan. Why?
Nyerere was a Statesman.
True his economic policies may not have been the best but here was a man who was big enough to know that the presidency in itself did not make him who he was. Here was a man big enough to walk away into retirement to sit under his tree in his shamba and enjoy his family. Here was a man who understood that the most powerful thing he could do was to give up power.
The greatest disservice Kenyatta did to Kenya was dying in office, during the election of 1975 when it was clear he was no longer the force he used to be he could have choose to step aside and step into greatness. He did not, 3 years later he was dead, and this in turn gave birth to the president-for-life syndrome which manifests itself today in Moi still aching for power after 25 years in StateHouse and which made Kibaki think he would be failure if he had lost his presidency in the general election 3 months ago despite a career in politics of over 40 years.
How can you be a megalomaniac in Tanzania when Nyerere was not? How can you claim the presidency as your birth right in Tanzania when the father of the nation walked away for it to give room to others?
This is what the Kenyan blogosphere failed to understand at the time. That while Tanzanians may not be too impressed with their current president, they are VERY proud of their institution of Presidency.
Of course statesmanship is not restricted to men. One of the most enduring images of the Kenyan post-election crisis was of Grace Machel during a tour of Internal Displaced People camps hugging a woman closely, whispering words of comfort as the woman wept and wept. Here was Grace Machel, the freedom fighter, former minister, and campaigner for children and for human rights, reaching out and bringing some humanity to IDP camps. Where was Kenya’s grossly overpaid First Lady at the time? Busy slapping Members of Parliament who had the audacity to suggest that her husband should get serious about sharing power. There are many things you can call Lucy Kibaki but not even the most rabid Kibaki supporter would call her a statesman. On the other side of the coin, you just try calling Graca Machel a dumb-ass bitch and see where that leaves you.
While the eyes of the nation were focused to Kofi Annan who lead the team of Eminent Person conducting the mediation in Kenya following the post election violence, the rest of team of eminent persons was often over looked, Graca Machel and Benjamin Mkapa. Mkapa is a Tanzanian diplomat and like Nyerere a former Tanzanian president. You see people; there IS life after Statehouse. Here is man who was President for 10 years, handed over at the end of his term and is now a Statesman who helped us resolve our election disputes, happy to sit in the background and immerse himself in the nitty gritty while the world’s media focused on Annan. That is an example that our political elite should be following. How many countries do you think would welcome Kibaki or Moi to help mediate their election disputes? Not many, unless they were planning on, “doing a Kibaki”.
On Sunday before Kibaki read out the list of his new bloated and grossly immoral cabinet he had the audacity, the AUDACITY, to stand there and brag to Kenyans about the “statesmanship and sacrifice” the political elite had displayed. Kibaki seriously needs to be reconnected with reality. Shuttling between Statehouse and State Lodges, hiding behind his security detail, and pushing Kenya to the edge is NOT statesmanship leave alone sacrifice. He also said the new cabinet, “underscores our nation’s leadership to put the collective needs of the country above everything else.” Is there anyone who thinks a bloated government and expensive cabinet is what our country needs? Mwalimu Mati writes on exactly why this is a disaster.
As Kenyans we have to address this issues quickly. Statesmanship is not an option. Statesmanship is vital for a healthy African society. Statesmanship is African to its very core. Without Statesmen we will not progress.
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Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 at 4:02 PM
Colonialists would often turn up at an African community and ask, “Who does that land belong to?” pointing to the vast fields around the village. Many times the reply from the villagers would be, “It does not belong to anyone.” The colonialists would then promptly set about fencing and craving up the land amongst themselves, which would enrage the Africans, which, in turn, would confuse the colonialists as, after all, they had been told that this land did not belong to anyone.
These exchanges highlight the differences in the cultures involved and the different understandings of what initially looks like a very simple situation. When the Africans tell the colonialists that this land does not belong to anybody, the colonialists would take that to mean that the land is unoccupied. “It does not belong to anyone” is taken to mean it is ownerless. That was a misunderstanding of what they had been told. For when the African said, “This land does not belong to anyone”, what they mean is this land does not belong to any single person or family. This land is the property of the community under the stewardship of those who currently occupy it. The Elesi of Odogbolu, a Nigerian chief, told the West African land commission in 1912, that he “conceived that land belongs to a vast family of which many are dead, few are living and countless yet unborn”. In other words, “this land does not belong to anyone” meant this land belongs to everyone. It is occupied by us, but we do not own it, we are merely the current stewards holding it for future generations.
In my talk during the Digital Citizen Indaba I touched upon the issue of the African blogosphere and ownership asking, “Who owns the African blogosphere”? I used the above example of our ancestors’ attitude to land as the basis of my understanding. In my opinion the internet is a space through which discussion takes place and blogs are the tool through which we utilise that space for discussion. In other words this space we have carved on the internet is our land and bloggers are the occupiers of that land. Like our ancestors I believe that this land does not belong to any of us, it belongs to all of us.
Why is this important? First of all this space belonging to all of us means that there is room for all of us and for all our opinions in that space and we all have an equal right to it. For example those who feel unrepresented in the main stream media can use this space to get their message across. Those who feel left out of the national conversation can use this space to get their message across. Ndesanjo in his keynote address emphasised this highlighting that several Africans who happen to be gay had used this space to express themselves through blogs, several Africans who happen to be white or of Asian origin had used this space to express themselves through their blogs.
Another example, last year during the time of the first DCI there was a passionate, and at times, heated debate about whether a blogging conference organised largely by South Africans, who happened to be white, and held at a university named after Rhodes, had the right to call itself African. I felt then as I do now that, yes, they had the right to call it a conference of African bloggers. I feel no one has the right to stop other bloggers from organising themselves in a way they feel fit. Once you start putting restrictions on how bloggers organise themselves then you are on the slippery slope that ends up with putting restrictions on what bloggers can write about. For if you think that these guys do not have the right to organise a conference for African bloggers do they have the right to write about African bloggers or as African bloggers?
I should clarify the difference between those who objected to the content of the conference and those who object to the very notion of the conference. The DCI crew never claimed to be organising a perfect conference and gave us the opportunity to give our feedback on what they did right and what they could do better. This year you can see they took the suggestions on board. A big issue last year was the DCI venue did not have wireless internet access, this year we had wireless internet access. Last year we raised the issue of representation amongst the speakers in terms of geographical location and content. This year we have spent a lot of time examining the role of language which was led by Tanzanian bloggers with their central role in the Kiswahili blogosphere. We also looked at cyber activism is Ethiopia and Zimbabwe as well v-blogging, photo-blogging and open source. Space to give feedback and raise issues about the content of a conference should always be available. Feedback I have no problem with. What I object to is those who feel that the conference itself had no right to exist in any form.
That is not to say that all bloggers must agree with all other bloggers all the time or even most of the time. In fact we do not have to agree at all! I hope that having disagreements and differences of opinion does not mean we can not sit down together at the end of the debate and appreciate each other. But if that is not the case, the good thing about this space we are carving on the internet is that it is basically limitless. If you do not like the way people are doing things you can start your own thing. Just do not try to stop people from doing what they are doing by placing artificial restrictions based on your opinion of what is and isn’t for they have as much right to this space as you do.
digital citizen indaba | 
highway africa
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Tuesday, September 11th, 2007 at 11:52 AM
The second Digital Citizen Indaba is in full swing at Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa. The conference was opened by Professor Banda who welcomed us to the DCI. Then Global Voices sub Saharan editor, Swahili blogosphere pioneer, Tanzanian blogosphere pioneer, and KBW member Ndesanjo Macha got things moving with his Keynote Address.
I spoke with on the Democratization of the Digital Citizen in the morning session on Fractured Identities. I shared the floor with my Tanzanian brother Ansbert Ngurumo. Our panel was chaired by Professor Guy Berger.
Check out the DCI wiki which is updated regularly throughout the day for a summary of all the talks, the DCI flickr stream for evidence that bloggers are the best looking people around!
digital citizen indaba
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Sunday, September 9th, 2007 at 1:54 PM
I love African outfits. I love the bright colours, the fabric, and the unapologetic joy that our clothes scream. It is impossible to wear a fantastic African outfit and feel depressed or low for very long. One look in a mirror and culture picks you right up.
All this makes me excited about the launch of dorothyduncan a business that sells a dare to live attitude and lifestyle though unique and exclusive pieces by independent fashion designers from various parts of the world. Co-founded by Kenyan Dorothy Ghettuba and Mandy Duncan from Guyana, dorthyduncan’s clothes are fantastic.
Equally important is that dorothyduncan seems focused and committed to the simultaneous pursuit of return on investment in three areas - financial, social and environmental, the triple bottom line. It is no longer acceptable to make money at the expense of the community and the planet.
dorothyduncan are currently featuring the Kenyan based design house Kimila Afrika who specialize in making outstandingly beautiful and comfortable Afro-Urban pieces with bold prints and bright colors from the leso/kanga fabric. The challenge for many African designers is the logistics that comes along with selling their clothes. There are limitations like shipping, payments methods etc but dorothyduncan is bridging that gap by being a one-stop shop of African designers.
They are out to build a company and build their community through that company. Social entrepreneurship at dorothyduncan through fashion! (They are also bloggers and members of KBW which makes them amongst my most favourite people!)
Have a look at dorothyduncan and let them know what you think.
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Wednesday, August 29th, 2007 at 12:50 PM
One busy Saturday when I was around 10 years old I was standing in a shop on Biashara Street in central Nairobi that sold food in bulk. Wholesale. I watched as man walked in and proceed to buy 14 (I counted them) cartons of Weetabix each carton holding around 24 boxes of the stuff.
I have never been so jealous or impressed in my life.
All those bars of Weetabix for one guy? What a hero; what a show-off. My mother reassured me that he probably was not going to eat it all himself but was most likely buying stock for his shop but I preferred my vision of him surrounded by boxes of the stuff and having it for every meal.
Back then the most popular kid amongst us was a guy who not only OWNED a proper football but used to dish out free Weetabix if his team won. Unsurprisingly my brothers and I (although on the opposing team) regularly ensured that his team always won in the end. Hey, you gotta do what you gotta do! I loved the stuff.
A few years later when I got home and proudly announced to my older brothers that they were looking at the new captain of the school under-13s rugby team I was promptly informed that I can not call myself a rugby captain unless I could eat 8 bars of Weetabix in one sitting using only one packet of milk (around 0.4 litres).
I made it. Just.
I am not sure why I was so obsessed with those brown bars of cereal. I have my theories but that is for another post another day. The strange this a few years I thought back one day and realised that I had not eaten any Weetabix in over 5 years.
I am not sure when I stopped, I just did. Basically I had grown up and, in a way, out grown the obsession. It used to be important, it no longer was.
The point behind my Weetabix story is that as a 10 year I never fathomed that a time would come when my thoughts wouldn’t be dominated by Weetabix. In fact the sole motivation for becoming an adult was so I could eat Weetabix when I wanted without having to ask anyone. At the time it never occurred to me that that would be unreasonable.
That contrasts sharply with my flirtation with “Gangsta Rap”. From the very first time I heard a Gangsta Rap song (probably around 13 when NWA were busy telling us to “Fuck the Police”) I knew in my heart that although I loved this new, brash, in-your-face type of music at the time, a day would surely come when I would look at it with disgust. In fact I used to excuse it to myself as one of the excesses of immature youth. I was young, I was growing up, I was immature and thus, I was allowed to like it. But even then I knew that one day I would just have to recognise it for the nonsense it is. Till then I could go around singing along to Snoop’s DoggyStyle from start to finish and feel only slightly guilty.
And it wasn’t just me. At times it looked like the whole of Kenya had this fever. Every estate had a guy who would could describe the geography of Los Angeles like he was born and breed there, “you drive though Compton, pass Inglewood, and get to South Central” and of course us muppets who had never been to the USA would nod our heads wisely like we were talking about Ngummo, Ngong Road and Kenyatta Market.
I must admit that falling out of love with Gangsta Rap took a lot longer than I anticipated when I was 13. In fact although Gangsta Rap songs were quickly out numbered in my collection by the time I started university it wasn’t until much later the ridiculousness of the whole situation slapped in me in the face.
Live8! Concerts around the world to fight for Africa, MAKE POVERTY HISTORY, wear a white band. Woo Hoo! Simultaneous concerts around the world with the blue ribbon event in London. Now there were many ridiculous things about Live8 and especially the London concert. One was that the organisers constantly turned away African artists who wanted to perform. Instead they were, belatedly, give their own little concert miles away in the Eden Project, as my pal T said, they threw us in the only jungle left in England. OK it is their country. But when even brilliant black British artist such as Lemar were turned away things were thick. So a look at the line up to check out the black artists and who do you come across.
Our good friend Snoop Dogg.
Now as Lola rightly says it is obvious to any rational person that Gangsta Rappers do not speak for African American community, leave alone Africans and all black people on the planet. But when Snoop got on stage at Live8 he had an opportunity to do something, to be somebody. Of course he didn’t. All he did was show case just how stupid this whole Gangsta Rap thing is.
For one he was the ONLY artist as far as I can remember who did not mention Africa at all when he was on stage. Not a word on AID or Trade on injustice, nothing. Perhaps he needs to attend TED Global Secondly he was the only artist (apart from Madonna I think) who could not refrain from swearing on stage. Fuck this, fuck that, motherfucking this.
What makes it even more disheartening is that some of these guys have brilliant minds. You do not pull yourself up from the floor of society to make millions without engaging your brain cells. I just wish they would engage them productively. I was listening to Chuck D talking on the BBC a while ago and he was talking about how he happened to be on the same plane to Australia as 50 Cent and spent a while talking to him. According to Chuck D, 50 Cent is one of the most intelligent people in the rap game today. Yet a few hours later 50 Cent was in front of a large crowd of 50,000 plus people and urging them to all shout, “KILL THAT NIGGA” as he (50 Cent) asked what he should about some of his rivals in the rap game. Now having a stadium full of kids shouting KILL THAT NIGGA is, as Chuck D pointed out, not healthy.
However Gangsta Rap especially in an African context is full of illogic. For one Gangsta Rappers want us to believe that they live the hardest lives ever. Now I am not one belittle another man’s experiences (and having seen inner city Manchester close up for many years I know that “developed country” means a different thing for a crown prince who flies in a private jet to Argentina to play polo than it does to the young kids of Moss Side who do not even have a playing field in their school) but KM has a great quote from a K’naan the rapper born in Mogadishu, Somalia,
If i rhyme about home, and got descriptive/
I’d make 50 cent look like limp bizkit.
Mogadishu –v- Compton = no contest.
Secondly, Gangsta Rap sells itself as ghetto/street music but Gangsta Rap as far as Kenya and the parts of Africa I have been to is not the music of the street. That is reserved for reggae a.k.a freedom music a.k.a revolution music a.k.a Roots a.k.a Dub. Call it what you want, that is the sound of the street.
Thirdly, and in many ways the most serious, the disrespecting our sisters. That this has somehow come to be labelled a black thing is the biggest disservice that Gangsta Rap has served on us. In fact the disrespecting of women by Gangsta Rap is one of the biggest signs of male disempowerment in society this world has to offer. Again on the BBC a few weeks ago when this topic was being debated I heard another Gangsta Rapper who apparently is meant to be quite articulate, Xzibit, give the most nonsensical and ridiculous justification for using NIGGA and BITCH/BYATCH etc in rap music. Luckily for the sane amongst us the BBC also had the great Fats Domino in the studio to talk about proper music as well as share some thoughts on just how misguided the youth of today are!
Luckily we have gurus of very good music amongst our midst and even more so good music is everywhere around us in every genre including rap. Personally I have had it with “Gangsta Rap”. I should have stuck with the Weetabix.
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Thursday, August 16th, 2007 at 1:51 PM
My Scandinavian connection, Serina, tagged me and precedent dictates I respond! Besides she is a Rising Voices buddy so how could I not eh? There can not be much left unknown about me that is of interest to the wider world so let me hit you with 8 random things loosely related to Kenyan blogs. Now this started out as a simple list and has instead grown into a long post. Let this serve as a lesson for those who dare tag me! Hehe.
But first I have to post The rules:
- We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
- Players start with 8 random facts/habits about themselves.
- People who are tagged need to write their own blog and their 8 things and post these.
- At the end of your blog post, you need to choose 8 people to get tagged and list their names (scared yet…..you better be!)
Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they are tagged, and to read your blog.
And my list of 8 things:
1.) KenyaUnlimited is rocking a brand new spanking aggregator. Have a look and let me know what you think, how fast it loads where you are, and any problems you may encounter. I am especially interested on those who’s posts should up on the old aggregator but do not show up on this one.
2.) Related to number 1 above, KenyaUnlimited has a new aggregator help page. If you have any questions about the aggregator and aggregator policy, please read the help page. We have answered the most frequent questions we receive about the aggregator on this page. If you still have any questions drop the Admin Team an email.
3.) Facebook rocks! There is a group for Kenyan Bloggers on facebook. Other notable Facebook groups include the Afrigadget group and the Free Oiwan Lam group amongst others.
4.) The Digital Citizen Indaba blogging conference is on again at the Highway Africa Conference this year. Registration is open and it is free. You can also apply for a scholarship to attend. (Warning: this conference may actually require you to think and participate.)
Coming soon to a town near you an African Bloggers’ Conference and a Kenyan Bloggers’ Conference. Watch this space and get involved! Ask not what bloggers can do for you but what you … etc etc
6.) I feel like registering a group called the “Do More Collective” (DMC). Increasingly I hear Africans telling other Africans, to get up and, “do something”. I admit even I have been guilty of that. I feel that is wrong and here is why.
In the online world in general and the blogosphere in particular, just as in the real world, there are people who get up and decide to contribute and get on with it without a fuss. Because of their nature they end up taking more and more on and usually excel. This is not new, if I think back to my school days, my sports captains were usually amongst the brightest students, and were usually also prefects and probably sang in the choir and headed the school community projects as well. The Americans have a term to describe these characters: All Stars.
I find that instead of asking people to, “Do something”, to be fair I should recognise that they are already doing a lot and instead should be asking them to, “Do more.” Take the example of my brother Ndesanjo. This guy is the force behind the Kiswahili blogosphere starting it AND putting it on the map in a big way, he is also is pushing the Kiswahili Wikipedia, is Sub-Saharan editor of Global Voices, was one of the wise heads that formulated the Tanzanian Bloggers Association, is passionate about citizen media and developing tools to allow people to share their stories and still finds time to run his own collection of blogs (and I haven’t even mentioned his “real” 9-5 job).
It is ridiculous to walk up to someone like that and to tell him to “do something” what you really should be saying is, “we need your help to do more!” I am sure this is true of many of us online and I have many more examples I can throw at you.
We need to recognise that even though someone way not be working on our pet project or on what we may personally feel is THE most important thing around, they are probably already contributing in a big way to the empowerment of The Continent and Her People. Forget asking people to, “Do something” instead ask them to “Do more”.
7.) Since I moved back to Kenya a year ago the number of people reading my blog has gone up, but the number of comments has gone down. That in itself is not news. What is interesting is that some people who used to write comments before now send me SMS instead. They SMS within minutes of a post going up on the blog. I would say around 80% of the comments on my blog posts come via SMS. The Skunkworks team at the University of Nairobi Tech Day reported that a programmer was developing software to blog (and I guess comment) through SMS. Now that’s what I need! I tried the Email2SMS service by Safaricom but that died after a few days.
8.) The number one question I get asked by new bloggers is: How do I get more comments?
The easy answer:
- Write original, good, content
- Visit other bloggers and leave original and intelligent comments
- Link to other blog posts in your posts
- Use tags to get picked up by blog engines such as Technorati.
- Be patient, it takes time to build up an audience
The less obvious answer:
Do your thing. Write your posts. Make your blog a reflection of you. Forget chasing comments. They are not a true indication of how popular, how widely read or how influential your blog really is. For example, if the first five comments on your blog are
- I got here first
- Damn I got here second
- Boy oh boy number 1 and number 2 are fast, how did they get here first
- hehe fast rhymes with first - written by number 3 above
- I swear I was first but blogger ate my comment
And no one has commented on what you actually wrote or what issues you raised in the post, how do those comments add value to the price of oranges really? OK sure some people love getting those comments and it can be said they add to the sense of community, sure. But really, you should be chasing after those. However, this after all is my opinion.
At the other end of the scale check out Ethan’s excellent guides/blog posts/transcripts of the TED Global conference. Every blogger, journalist, columnist, researcher who writes about TED Global consult Ethan’s posts. They are an authoritative, well written, accessible online resource. Because so many bloggers link back to his blog, these posts are essentially the blogger equivalent of a peer reviewed professional article in a professional journal. Yet the posts do not carry a ridiculous amount of comments. The posts do carry a lot of influence though.
Forget chasing comments. Do your thing. Free your mind!
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Friday, July 27th, 2007 at 12:20 PM
Shashank Bengali the African correspondent for McClatchy Newspapers has written an article on the African blogosphere for his newspaper group. An edited version of the story was carried by the Miami Herald today. Shashank also runs a blog called “Somewhere in Africa” which is full of interesting read such as this post on the blogger/skunker/techie/TEDster/nyama choma lovers/penguins* meet up on Madaraka Day3 weeks ago.
(*Ask Riyaz about the penguins)
Aside: It is hard not to laugh nervously when a professional photographer is taking your mugshot in one of your regular cyber cafes! That may (or may not) explain why I look strange in the photo!
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Sunday, June 24th, 2007 at 9:50 PM
Yesterday I had one of those moments that you can only really experience in a place like Nairobi. A single question that could fill an entire term’s worth of philosophy, religious education, political science lectures.
I was sitting in a cyber café when the lady on the computer next to me, a complete stranger, turned to face me and pointing to her screen asked, “Excuse me, what does this word mean?” One of her friends had forwarded her a joke which had the word “heterosexual” in it; this was the word she wanted me to explain to her.
Easy peasy right?
Not quite, just try it now, how would you explain, in a couple of sentences what heterosexual means?
I fell into the trap of immediately going down the sexual route as I blurted out, “People who have sex with people of the opposite sex”.
“Ah you mean prostitutes?” she replied.
Ok clearly I wasn’t getting my point across. So I embarked on the opposites approach, employing the Law of Contradiction (or Noncontradiction if you prefer). I asked her if she knew what homosexual was. She wasn’t sure. Damn.
So now I am digging deeper, because she wants to know what homosexual is and I am not going to fall into the trap of defining everything by sexual intercourse again.
Forget sexual intercourse I had bigger problems as I now I found myself using words like “normal” as in, heterosexual are normal. Now do I really want to go there? Heterosexual as the definiendum and normal as the definiens for that definiendum? Or ‘normal’ as the prima inter pares in a series of definiens on heterosexuality? That implies, by extension, homosexuals are not normal. Isn’t that an abuse of the Law of Identity? Besides I feel that is not for me to decide for her, whatever my beliefs on homosexuality and heterosexuality are. One of my brothers told me, “The fact that you hesitated and resisted to using the word “normal” when describing heterosexual highlights that you have been living outside.” (Outside = outside the country and indeed the continent). Now that sparked of a whole new debate, but I digress. This lady and her question was threatening to take over my thought process for the rest of the month!
So try it now, explain heterosexuality without using the word ‘normal’ or referring to sexual intercourse.
Now you see what I mean about filling a term’s worth of lectures of philosophy, religious education, political science etc.
Later in the day as I shared this story with a friend she gave me her solution, I should have just told that lady to Google it. Now why didn’t I think of that!
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Friday, June 15th, 2007 at 1:14 PM
The presentations from the TED stage yesterday were fantastic. Thought provoking, opinion shaping, informing, and interesting. After day 1 it would take something special to blow us away again and to raise expectations again, they managed to do that.
The whole premise of TED is based around the principle of “Ideas Worth Spreading”. This sharing is an essential part of the TED experience. Our programme guide urges us to sit next to someone different at every session and at every meal. The same guide urges us to switch of our phones and leave our laptops behind in our hotel rooms. This is all in order to encourage us to build social networks, brain storm together, learn about each other, learn from each other. TED is to be a fluid and interactive process. What happens on stage is important yes, but what happens between us is even more important. Yesterday brought this home for me.
I was invited to the Google.org private lunch yesterday where the people at Google told us about the philanthropic side of the Google organisation. At the lunch we heard from Joe Tackie an entrepreneur from Ghana who was the first winner of Believe, Begin, Become Ghana’s national business plan competition sponsored by google.org. During the afternoon tea break a couple of us spent time talking with Joe about the programme and the challenges he faced, how he over came them, the business he started and how it is growing. A fantastic story.
During dinner I was lucky enough to share a table with Esther a Community Development Facilitator working for a NGO in Cameroon, Megan a director at Google, William a secondary school student from Malawi who built a windmill to provide power to his family home from old bicycle parts and the renowned primatologist Jane Goodall. The conversation around that table was full of world changing ideas and this was being replicated on different tables around the room. There are no seating plans here, you just go out there and network.
After dinner I ended up on table full of Kenyan entrepreneurs, the people changing the nature of their business sectors in our country. We covered everything, politics, economy, redistribution of wealth, the politicisation of the youth, the power of blogs and the internet, investments, humour. Network at it is most energetic within our own. We only stopped because the last buses to our various hotels were threatening to leave us.
Back at the hotel is when TED came home. I sat down to write my thoughts on the day when Harinjaka shared with us the crazy deforestation that is taking place in his country of Madagascar. That was the beginning of all night thinking, sharing, debating session. Two Kenyans, one Madagascan, one Nigerian, one Italian, one American. We had never met before TED, all but one of us are at our first TED conference and we had our own TED session then and there. We talked about HIV/AIDS, about social disempowerment, about colonial legacy, about Nollywood, Bollywood and the Chinese film industry, about music, about deforestation in Madagascar, about the creation of Israel, about sports, about whiskey, about family, about the world economic market, about our experience in the formal job market, about starting businesses and creating jobs, and on and on and on. That is TED, TED 2.0 maybe but that is what all this is about, people from all around the continent and the world sharing and debating, engaging each others brains from a position of mutual respect.
TEDGlobal2007 | 
TEDGlobal
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Wednesday, June 6th, 2007 at 11:44 AM
In a CNN interview last year Emeka Okator, the programme director of TedGlobal 2007, was asked, “How do you shed light on the brighter side of Africa?”
He answered, “It’s coming from the bottom or primarily from the citizen media type, the bloggers, who are covering Africa to an extent it has never been covered before. There’s strong belief that the rest of the world will catch up as this process accelerates.”
Emeka understands the vital role that authentic, uncompromising, voices from Africa that are expressed through blogs play. Probably because he is a energetic blogger himself. It is wonderful that there is a healthy mix of bloggers amongst the TED Fellows. I’ll highlight the KBW members who are here apart from myself; Afromusing, Bankelele, Kenyan Pundit and White African. Ndesanjo is here as well running things on his home ground. Outside KBW Jea Brea and Andrew Heavens are here too.
There are couple of other Kenyan bloggers who have promised to send me their URLs and I will share them as soon as I get them. We also have a number of bloggers from other countries and I will do the same with the links.
KBW members let me assure that your blogs have a wider readership then you may imagine. I have met some people here that have never been to Africa before but read the KenyaUnlimited aggregator regularly. Many of the other Africans here talk about the power of the Kenyan blogs on the internet and are inspired to go out and start their own blogs and aggregator. Perhaps we should look out for NigeriaUnlimited, MaliUnlimited, etc soon!
At some point in the next few days we will sit down and brainstorm about the African Bloggers’ Conference. Please feel free to share any thoughts you have on this with us.
TEDGlobal2007 | TEDGlobal
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Tuesday, June 5th, 2007 at 1:41 AM
TEDGlobal is in full swing here in Arusha and it is quickly turning out to be unlike any other conference I have been too, and believe me I’ve been to a few. First of all there is the calibre and variety of people here that is just amazing. Everybody here is doing something revolutionary in their ordinary lives and we are all here to share.
I won’t do a session by session blow of what is happening on stage. For that I suggest you read Ethan’s blog. Ethan must be running a dual core processor brain. The man sits in the hall and blogs in real time like an episode of 24 taking in the talk, digesting it and laying out coherent blog posts all at the same time. Go there for a blow by blow account of what is happening. White African also has good posts on the sessions, with photos. If only all my roommates in life were this helpful eh, doing all the work while I sit there engrossed on what is happening on the stage.
Instead I will attempt to share a variety of titbits from around the conference.
Rokia Traore kicked things off with a song of welcome from Mali. Rokia has a fantastic, powerful and moving voice and set the tone for a wonderful conference. African, confident, powerful, human.
Euvin Naidoo quotes the philosopher who said, “The only dark thing about Africa is our perception of Africa.” This is a theme that is to remain central throughout the day.
Carol Pineau of Africa Open for Business fame, continues this theme as she shares with the stories of entrepreneurs across the continent. One of those featured in Carol’s talk is Mohammed Olan the CEO of Somali airline Diallo Airlines. This guy is happy that Somali doesn’t have a government because he doesn’t have to deal with government corruption. What I found most interesting about Carol’s talk was two tag clouds she shared with us. One showed what people in the west thought Africans wanted, and the second one showed what people in Africa want for themselves. I’ll try to find them and post them later.
Zeray Alemseged a palaeontologist from Ethiopia responsible for finding Selam a 3.3 million year old 3 year old girl. (Yes that sentence makes sense). He shared that the key thing as far as he was concern was to, “promote a positive African attitude towards Africa”. It is just like your parents used to tell you, you have to love yourself before anyone else will love you.
I am not much of cinema and movie person but Newton Aduaka blew me away with the short clips he showed of his films. Maybe I am a movie person and I’ve just been watching the wrong films. He has film coming out called Ezra about child soldiers in Sierra Leone that looks brilliant. Andrew Dosunmu shared some interesting clips as well.
But a conference isn’t a conference without some controversy and on Day One of TEDGlobal it was Andrew Mwenda – v – Bono. Andrew is a Uganda journalist and free speech activist that has seen jail time in Uganda for his beliefs. Andrew is against foreign aid in a big way. He feels makes Africa governments lazy as they do not have to invest in their entrepreneurs. If there was no aid and governments had to pay their way they would show a lot more interest in the people in their countries trying to generate wealth. As a Kenya trying to set up a business I can relate to that oh to well.
Bono on the other hand spends a lot of time campaign for aid to Africa to be increased. He also campaigns for debt cancellation and fair trade. Bono likes to stress the links between Africa and Ireland. Well.
It made for a lively session to say the least.
Youssou N’dour didn’t make it unfortunately but we did not have a chance to miss him as Rokia came back with her band and blew us away. My goodness, that woman’s voice, style and substance is unbelievable.
TEDGlobal2007 | TEDGlobal
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Tuesday, June 5th, 2007 at 1:20 AM
10 days to go before TEDGlobal kicks off and the anticipation is building like crazy. I’ll say this about these TED guys, they look like they sure know how to organise a conference. Well that’s easy to say 10 days before everything begins but if their organisation on the day is as good as it has been thus far then things will be great.
This conference is unlike any I have ever been to before in that I have no idea, absolutely NO IDEA, what kind of conference to expect. There is a wealth of information on the conference but it just highlights that I should expect the unexpected.
One thing I do know for sure is that I will be rooming with one crazy dude called Hash a.k.a White African. Now really it does not get any crazier than that. I wonder what TEDGlobal Program Director Emeka Okafor will do once he realises that he has put two techie and blogging members of the Front Row Union in the same room. (Hash, I hope you play tight head because, bruv, I’m a loose head!) If we don’t blow up something while trying to plug in all our gear into the one wall socket in the room, we’ll probably be busy forcing encouraging all kind of interesting people to talk to us. I notice that Yvonne Chaka Chaka has stopped organising her calendar to take in my conference dates instead Youssou N’Dour will be doing his thing.
Other KBWers who are representing are:
Any others out there (I’m sure they’ll be a couple attending chini ya maji a.k.a undercover)
I’ll post some more details on the proposed Madaraka Day (June 1st) KBW, Tedsters, Skunkworkers, techies, wanainchi, anybody, everybody meet up over the weekend. Come one, come all.
(Isn’t it interesting how many of the people who branded us traitors/sell outs/neo-colonial appeasists for going to the Digital Indaba in South Africa in September last year because it was “white” are happily gobbling up all that TEDGlobal can throw at them with not even a little sense of irony? Hmm the contradictions, the contradictions 
)
Tags: TEDGlobal
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Friday, May 25th, 2007 at 4:05 PM
From 13.30 GMT today (16.30 Kenya time) Reuters will be holding a Newsmaker Debate centred on the crisis in Darfur. There is still time for you to submit your questions and comments for the panel. Have a look at Ndesanjo’s post on Global Voices for some background information. Bloggers have played a vital role in keeping the Dafur crisis at the top of the news agenda.
The panel (Ann Curry, NBC News, Mia Farrow, Actress & UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, Jean-Marie Guéhenno, Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, United Nations, Lauren Landis, Senior Representative to Sudan, U.S. Department of State, Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamad, Sudanese Ambassador to the United Nations and John Prendergast, Senior Adviser, International Crisis Group) does not have a large African presence to say the least. Let us be heard through our blogs.
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Thursday, May 24th, 2007 at 10:48 AM
I am a self confessed radio fan. Indeed the only thing I miss about the UK apart from the proper broadband bandwidth at affordable prices is BBC Radio 5 Live a talk radio station from the BBC that focused on news, politics and sport, yeah it’s like they built it for me. 5Live is not broadcast outside the UK unless you listen online so I’ve converted to the BBC World Service.
The BBC World Service is, in my opinion, Britain’s best export. It is certainly one of the widest exports, in every part of Kenya you can catch the BBC World Service on a local FM signal although some people seem to only tune in for the football updates! This is one of the reasons why the BBC World Service is not funded from the compulsory license fee that every British household pays but instead receives direct funding from the British government.
If you have ever lived in a war zone where news is restricted or indeed anywhere that has a less than independent media or a single media source you learn to appreciate it more. In Ethiopia in the 1980s everyone had one of those short wave radios where you can catch radio stations from around the world and everyone started their day with the BBC World Service. It was a routine, 6am switch on the World Service for the news. Then after that some would turn to hear what Voice of America, Deutsche Welle, Radio France Internationale or Portuguese news stations had to say, but you started with the BBC. You also hear of many resistance fighters/warlords/revolutionaries that refuse to speak to anyone apart from the BBC because they believe that only the BBC will report what they say accurately.
For a few years I used to call CNN’s Inside Africa programme “Inside South Africa”. It seemed like every other story was on South Africa. South Africa economy, South African art, South African music, it seemed like the rest of the continent got around 5 minutes. These days things are different although to be honest I have watched an episode of Inside Africa or indeed an hour of CNN since I moved back. When listening to the BBC World Service these days I am sometimes tempted to call it the BBC Nigeria and India and a little bit of the rest of the world Service. I have learnt more about Nigerian and India in the last 6 months than I have in the last 20 years. But since a lot of the comments and calls seem to come from those two countries I guess it is only fair. Which came first eh? The chicken or the egg?
Alan Graham Johnston is a BBC World Service journalist. He was born just down the road and across Mount Kilimanjaro in Lindi, Tanzania. He was kidnapped by an unknown group of gunmen in Gaza on March 12, 2007. Some feel that with all that is going on in Kenya and in Africa it can be hard to give a toss about some mzungu journalist that was captured gallivanting across the Middle East. I however appreciate the work these journalists do bring us stories from many different places. I also appreciate that this world is truly becoming a global village, and what would be the point of me having a blog if I did not engage with issues outside my daily routine and life? I also remember how bloggers and activists from all over the world rushed to help the Kenyan blogosphere publicize the attack on the Kenyan media by official thugs led by the so called Artur brothers. The Alan Johnson button will go up on my blog, I hope you put it up on yours too.
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Thursday, May 17th, 2007 at 10:50 AM
In memory of the Kenya Airways Flight KQ507 that crashed in Douala, Cameroon on Saturday, KenyaUnlimited has set up a KQ507 tribute site where you can leave your message of support for the families and friends of all those affected by this tragedy. These messages will be printed and delivered to Kenya Airways at an appropriate time.
The page can be found here.
Please visit the KQ507 tribute site to leave a message of support and sympathy.
Please link the KQ507 tribute site from your blogs and websites.
Please spread the word about the KQ507 tribute site.
It would be brilliant if we could deliver a big bundle of messages full of heartfelt tributes.
If anyone out there can create a button we can put on our blogs to show support that would be brilliant too.
Our brothers and sisters from outside Kenya and Africa please feel free to leave a message as well.
Let us stand together, united, to honour those on Kenya Airways KQ507. Pamoja.
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Monday, May 7th, 2007 at 4:09 PM
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