Kuweni Serious!

“Kenyans Crave Normality”

The Team — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 03:54:05 +0000

In Part Two of our interview with John Githongo (See Part One here), John describes how “Kenyans crave normality”, yet “very few of us can afford that normality. The vast majority of Kenyans are living a much more complicated and difficult life.”

Get the transcript here. [Adobe PDF]

Your Country Is NOT Going To The Dogs!

The Team — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 08:05:24 +0000

Editor’s Note: We stole this second piece from Njoki Ngumi, who’s now out in the countryside doing her medical internship for the Government of Kenya. Do spare a moment to think about all the young people who’ve dedicated their energy to joining the medical profession in Kenya – it’s a tough job, and we’re very lucky that people still opt to do it despite all the crap they have to put up with.

Your Country Is NOT Going To The Dogs!
by Dr. Njoki Ngumi

“I pledge my loyalty to the President and Nation of Kenya,
My readiness and duty to defend the flag of our Republic,
My life, strength and service in the task of nation building,
In the living spirit embodied in our National motto ‘Harambee’,
and perpetuated in the Nyayo philosophy of Peace, Love and Unity.”

- Kenyan Loyalty Pledge, apparently still recited in primary schools countrywide to this day

I’ll be honest. I recently Googled “how to become a Swiss citizen”. I did. I won’t lie, I’m shallow. I can speak basic French, and I want to be a milkmaid in some tiny farm on the Alps and learn how to yodel. I feel that the Swiss must be so neutral about everything that even racism is too much effort for them.

Why did I do that, you might ask? Why Switzerland? Why abscond from “Magical Kenya” (who else hates that ad and thinks we’d be better represented by a remix of “Niko na Safaricom” and “Tusker Milele”?)?

Why? I hate the news. In newspapers, on TV. I want to kick the TV’s or tune them permanently to Afro-Sinema so I can laugh at something that’s actually funny. I hate the blind, naïve hope that things have to get better. I hate the wish that everything would just burn, that every member of a certain generation would die and then we could start again from a clean slate.

I hate that random moment, because it reminds me that even if I won yodeling competitions on the Alpine farm and somehow convinced cows to yield 20 liters daily, there’s probably no other place my soul will ever feel completely at home. I would actually be restless for this crap-mountain that has the nerve to call itself a country; something like – forgive the politically incorrect analogy – those battered wives going back to the drunken husband with their black eye still smarting, and cleaning up his vomit and his soiled pants and cooking his favorite dinner afterward.

Yuck.

I hate that my feelings for this country might qualify me to be schizophrenic.

And then I met you.

I met a guy who finished school 3 years before I did, and is now a medical superintendent at a tiny place called Endebes. I didn’t even know where that was (it’s near Kitale, apparently). I was talking to him about it, and he said something poignant. “People need us. They do.” This guy could have a brilliant, money-paved, somewhere-over-the-rainbow future ahead of him if he’d go back to school – yet there he is, in god-forsaken tiny town.

I was taught a class by a nutritionist recently – a brilliant guy, who’d do excellently in private practice because he has amazing people skills and expresses himself VERY well, and KNOWS what he’s talking about (doctors are usually difficult people to impress with knowledge, yet this guy managed to have a room of almost 40 hanging on his every word for more than an hour). He chooses to work with the government, counseling people with HIV/AIDS on good food choices. In Molo.

I have a friend who got a posting that was difficult for all of us to accept. But she went anyway, and will hold her head up high living alone for a year in a town that smells of sulphure, eight hours away from everything she has ever called home. She’ll become more effing brilliant than she ever was, and people will have to wear shades while looking at her.

I know another woman fighting tooth and nail as we speak to keep Kenya’s only repertory theatre open, despite having to fight bloody civil wars with always-busy, ass-wipe people. She gives herself daily to developing it even though she could be easily earning way more as the brilliant lawyer she is. It exhausts her, but she still gets up and polishes her sword.

I could go on.

But all of you have taught me something deep and lasting. I can see – even if it’s by a dim flame – that Kenya is not just disgusting roads, bad mobile service providers that won’t let us send texts for free, prosperity-gospel preachers, ‘internationally-certified’ pseudo-universities giving poor quality education, HATEFUL POLITICIANS WHO FIGHT FOR THE NEWS CAMERAS AND PLAY GOLF TOGETHER ON WEEKENDS, narrow-minded mothers-in-law who frown upon marrying someone from another tribe, hospitals where they steal government supplies and sell them back to patients, KPLC publishing a power-rationing schedule then not sticking to it and the epidemic of married men and women with ‘mpango wa kando’.

Kenya is people. Individuals with a voice that can become a collective cry for change. Kenya is you. Kenya is me. Kenya is hating it, but getting up and saying you’ll try, grabbing your shovel to start the clean-up of the Crap Mountain, like all the inspiring people above have done and continue to do.

Being Kenyan is – even if you look like a criminal on your ID photo, and you have every reason to want to be one (and would probably succeed doing it) – deciding every day not to be a criminal.

Kenya is not absolutes. We can’t trash all politicians. All NGO’s. All public institutions. But if can see a way in the dense forest of yuck, and the only way through it is with a slasher, and we know our hands will get blistered and will hurt, and we know it will take forever, we still say we’ll give it a try. At least.

Instead of sit back and complain.

The alternative is to become the first black Swiss milkmaid with a Bachelor’s degree which makes her worse than useless to cows. .

You guys, all you fracture-splinting, wonderful patriots…your Kenya is NOT going to the dogs. You will wrest it out of their iron-jaw clasps, even if you bleed doing it. Thank you for your panoramic vision.

Your Kenya is NOT going to the dogs.

And, by Providence…neither is mine.

“It’s Possible For People To Talk Themselves Into A War”

The Team — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 04:39:55 +0000

John Githongo has been an anti-corruption campaigner for many years. He recently founded Inuka Kenya – a trust that aims to recapture the powerful moment of hope felt by all Kenyans in 2003 and convert it into lasting change created by and for Kenyans.
In Part One of a 2-part interview, he shares his thoughts on – among other things – a thriving ‘gloom industry’, and how “It’s possible for people to talk themselves into a war.”

Get the transcript here. [Adobe PDF]

“We Need To Get People Who Are Not This Greedy”

The Team — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 02:15:29 +0000

Michael Soi is a visual artist based in Kenya. He graduated from art school in 1996, and has been making visual commentary on Kenyan social and political trends. We sat down with him one rainy afternoon and discussed what he thinks Kenyans need to do in 2012.

Get the transcript here. [Adobe PDF]

The Revised Harmonized Draft (presented to the Committee of Experts on 29th January, 2010) DID retain the ‘right of recall’ clause that Soi refers to. However, the clause was rewritten to allow Parliament itself to legislate the rules of the recall.

Download the Revised Harmonized Draft here, and read the report detailing all the changes made to the Committee of Experts Draft. Also, keep up with what the Committee of Experts are up to on their website and on (shock!) their Facebook group!

UPDATE [FEBRUARY 25, 2010]: The Committee of Experts re-inserted the ‘recall clause’, ignoring recommendations from the PSC noted above.

“Blood Is Not Going To Clean Bloodstains”

The Team — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 00:30:54 +0000

Njoki Ngumi – who wrote “Someone Lied to you, Mwananchi” – explains why she doesn’t like to read newspapers, and wonders what will happen to us all in 2012.

Get the transcript here. [Adobe PDF]

“You Can’t Go To College Without An ID”

The Team — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 06:59:35 +0000

Following reports of the illegal sale of Kenyan identification papers to foreigners, the government issued a directive to restrict issuance of identification papers to ethnically Somali individuals (whether from Somalia or Kenyan-born). We met Abdullahi Ahmed, a Kenyan journalist, who explained how directives such as these are affecting Kenyan citizens of Somali origin.

Abdullahi also discussed how rampant anti-Somali discrimination (such as that highlighted by the directive above) probably provides a basis for the youth from Kenya’s neglected northeastern region to fight in Somalia.

Get the transcript here. [Adobe PDF]

Read media references to these two stories here and here, and here.

“We Cannot Give Up On Our Country”

The Team — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 05:10:52 +0000

We met Emmanuel Dennis – the convener of the National Youth Convention – and asked him what he thinks will happen in 2012. He told us of Parliamentary cartels, and how difficult it must be to change someone like Michuki. You can find out more about the National Youth Convention on their Facebook Page.

Get the transcript here. [Adobe PDF]

“Kenya: A Nation of Bystanders”

The Team — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 05:30:36 +0000

Boniface Mwangi, whose work you’ve probably seen at the “Kenya Burning” photo exhibition and book about the post-election violence, is the director of Picha Mtaani, an award-winning photo-journalist, a husband and a father. He believes Kenya is ‘a nation of by-standers’. Find out why.

Get the transcript here. [Adobe PDF]

“We Desperately Need A New Generation”

The Team — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 17:08:04 +0000

Just A Band’s second album – 82 – features a song called “Usinibore”, written by Blinky Bill; a member of the band. “I think we’re all very tired of seeing politicians who’ve been there from the 60s still clinging to power and not doing anything to better our lives. That’s something that affects all of us. If the country starts to burn like it did in 2007, we all go down with it.”

He sat down with us to talk about his views on “whiny” Kenyans, and how desperately we need a new breed of politicians in this country.

Get the transcript here. [Adobe PDF]

“I’m Positive, We’re Going To Fight”

The Team — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:59:19 +0000

George Gachara is Co-founder and Project Coordinator of the Picha Mtaani initiative, and and advocate of youth leadership in Kenya. In this interview, he gives us his views about the role of the media in Kenya, and his prediction about what will happen in 2012.

Get the transcript here. [Adobe PDF]