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• August 06, 2008
• 21:11

  Supernal Retention

   » ‎ Words Much Like Poetry
  NOTE: This is a previously published work (Poetry.com - ©2008). I wrote it in the latter part of 2007 and is my second publication to date. This work is being presented in its originally published form.
  
  With thanks,
  Múhu
  
  
  a starburst does not forget,
  no matter how bright its flame;
  it does not burn away
  the thread of memory.
  it consciousness,
  of brilliant orange spectrum,
  can still envision,
  with fiery inner eye,
  scenes of wrenching pain;
  its feverish epidermis
  can still sustain hurts;
  its seething auricles
  can still drink in insults,
  murmured in the barest of whispers,
  insults which echo timelessly in loud orbits,
  artificial satellites that resist destruction,
  close as they are
  to the devouring element.

• 19:54

  Selling Kenya to Terrorists for Nine Silvers

   » ‎ You Missed This
  It is 10 years since that dark Friday when death and destruction landed on Kenya. Kenya was devastated by terrorists who brought their trail of destruction to our shores. Since then Kenya has never been the same again. But what have we learned as a country since that fateful Friday?
  What a paradox that while many maimed Kenyans are still trying to come to terms with their shuttered lives, the mastermind of that heinous act one Fazul Mohamed from Comoros is right within our borders possibly planning an anniversary to obliterate Kenya. Fazul is around shopping for a doctor at the right price to attend to his ailing kidneys. And for the fifth time in as many years he has escaped the police dragnet.
  
  Fazul’s operation since 1998 has proved that in Kenya everything has a price and nothing is sacrosanct. Forget about the hollow chorus of najivunia kuwa Mkenya which was a visionary slogan manufactured by sightless scoundrels principally for political expediency. Here we have one fugitive with the police force at his beck and call and at the right price he is tipped off of an impending raid leaving all his belongings but escaping with his most murderous soul.
  
  Deception and fraud is our forte both at individual and institution level. The corrupt policeman doesn’t a care in the wilderness what is actions in tipping Fazul portents for a whole country. By the way, why would he care when doing so would make him rich and respectable Kenyan? It has been said that eradicating corruption starts with taking personal responsibility towards the same. But where would one get the motivation in matters he has no control over and will the potential to decimate him and others around him?
  
  Damn the consequences
  Two wrong never made a right and past ruinous governments is no justification to outdo those grand frauds. While Kibaki regime is having auctioning Kenya though a myriad cleverly crafted avenues like government-to-government Grand Regency sale, individual Kenyans will do anything within their powers to pursue our national pastime of primitive wealth accumulation. The ingenious fraudsters seldom fail to craft high-sounding programs like v2030 which are designed to keep Kenyans busy mauling over abstracts as the looting spree acquires breakneck speed.
  
  Our is a culture singularly defined by the vices of deception and fraud only succeeds in mutating to a monster that ends up eating herself. By working hard, we are unwittingly nourishing terrorists who will help us achieve the ultimate objective of obliteration faster. Here have Fazul from Comoros possessing two Kenyan passports with the new one acquired in February 2008 at the height of near-meltdown in the post-election violence. No wonder we lost the UK visa privilege in 1997 when we chose to sell our birthright to Somalis at the right price. Well, we have been propping skunks under the guise of fraudulent industriousness and we have to live with the resulting stench. No amount of deodorizing will ameliorate sickening smell as we steadily and surely hurtle towards self-destruction on our own and aiding others to accelerate it.

• 12:04

  Ask Mwangi a Question and I Will Answer

   » ‎ The Displaced African

  Hey,

  

  For the next few days I thought I would try something a little different.

  What’s that Mwangi?

  You can ask me any questions whatsoever and I will attempt to answer. At the moment I won’t put any rules or restrictions on what you can ask and I’ll see how we go with that.

  This is a Multimedia Site

  When writing the question, make sure you specify whether you want your answer in:

  a) Writing

  b) Audio

  c) Video

  How to Ask the Question

  Leave a comment below or email me at masmilele(at)thedisplacedafrican(dot)com with your questions and I will answer them as best as I can.

  What to Do with the Rest of the Day/Night

  Have a phenomenal day or night,

  Mwangi

• 11:45

  Hip Hop consumes me like Strawberry Blues

   » ‎ Kenyanpoet
  Hip hop consumes me like strawberry bluesLike the muse of Langston Hughes
  Like Maya Angelou’s bird
  Caging my mind into
  The fuse of words of different hues
  And sounds of decrypted melodic tunes
  of,
  the beat,
  of
  the rhythm,
  of Hip Hop.
  
  Hip hop consumes me like strawberry blues
  Leaving me clutching on to every straw of
  Flashes of its grand masters,
  to realize that the KRS is one, our cross is one.
  Unfortunately,it most Definetly is tad lib Common u Kweli
  That Nasty Gurus that got crunked into main streams
  Are removing all consciousness
  of
  the depth,
  of
  the power,
  of Hip Hop
  
  Hip hop consumes me like strawberry blues
  But like a drug addict in a rehab
  Yet with no power to kick the habit,
  I find you, hidden from airwaves
  Like Lupe’s Fiasco,
  Stashed into compact Disks
  For I must inhale you into my lungs,
  Let you into my brain,
  You,
  pure, strong, heavy
  like an aphrodisiac
  you get me all high and flowetic
  to
  the gospel,
  of Hip Hop.
  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
  N. Wkenyanpoet@gmail.comAug. 2008– All rights reserved©
  

• 7:59

  Spotlight on foreign investors

   » ‎ bankelele

  Tags:  tiomin  

  after Morgan Stanley & Safaricom
  
  Rift Valley Railways: This week as the patience of the governments of Kenya and Uganda reached new highs, local stakeholders finally got rid of the managing director. More stories are now coming out on the (lack of) financial strength of the backers of the railway. The East African newspaper has (consistently) had the best coverage of the railway management over the last two years.
  
  About a year ago, the former MD gave a talk on the difficulties he faced in reviving the railway and the way forward for the 25 year program.
  
  Tiomin is another ‘foreign investor’ who never had financing that was sufficient enough for them to launch their operations in Kwale, even after the government and the courts gave them go ahead
  
  Zain is the new brand of the former Celtel Group that is expanding all over Africa. But according to their group financial results for the half year, Kenya is the only African country where they did not gain subscribers over the last year. At June ’08, Kenya had 1.9 million subscribers compared to 2.4 million in June 2007. Compare that to Uganda 1.8m (up 100%) and Tanzania 2.8m (up 48%). Half year revenue and loss was $79.4 million and $26.4m compared to %100m and a loss of $4.2 million at the same point in 2007 Safaricom is blamed for defending their market turf
  
  Google have bought into Mobile Planet a leading local provider of value added mobile services (and also a Safaricom partner).

• 7:23

  Back from the Wild

   » ‎ Mount Kirima
  I have just recovered from a very enthralling safari to the Maasai Mara, it was my first time there and definately a wake up call tha I need to see more of this beautiful country of ours. Despite the fact that the journey was very very loooong we still managed to have loads of fun [...]

• 3:03

  Can We Detribalize Kenya?

   » ‎ You Missed This
  Hate rules the world.
  
  No, I'm not being cynical or feeling hopelessly discouraged, on the contrary I'm bringing up an issue that has the potential to one day destroy our country. In my travels, I've come to realize that wherever I go, hate is always a very powerful force or emotion. I've traveled to parts of the United States where I sat in a Holiday Inn lobby watching news and suddenly the TV was turned off. When I asked why it was being turned off, here is the reply I got. "I'm turning it off because nobody is watching it." You get the point? I am a nobody because of my skin color.
  
  Hate.
  
  Then I think about Rwanda. This is where more than one million Hutus killed the Tutsis because of simmering tribal animosity. If you've had a chance to watch Hotel Rwanda, Don Cheadle starring, what you've witnessed is how cruel and cannibalistic man can be. The hate that's projected in that movie is enough to make one wonder whether there is any redemptive quality in man. Yes, there's Mandela and Mahatma and Abraham Lincoln, men who fought hard to turn back the tide of hate in their communities, but for each of them, there were hundreds of others who fought hard to preserve the legacy of hate that they inherited from their forefathers.
  
  Hate.
  
  And recently I was talking to a Mexican friend of mine. She has watched the immigration debate in America and Europe. What this good professor sees is hate, pure and simple. Why, for example, do the Australians find it necessary to put asylum seekers in detention centers...with their wives and children? Would they still detain them if the immigrants were predominantly from a Western nation with a Judeo-Christian background? And why does Europe continue to enact immigration laws that are clearly meant to keep black and brown people out? They say they want to control the flow of immigrants into their shores and plan their future effectively. I agree with that. But when you look at the punitive nature of these new laws and the fact that they are enforced by the great grandchildren of men and women who enslaved our great grandfathers and grandmothers, don't you begin to wonder about fairness? So when you see so many Africans turned back from Europe, you know what's at play here.
  
  Hate.
  
  And before I turn my attention to Kenya, I want to remind us of what happened in Israel. Over there, a number of people managed to get out of the boiling Darfur, tiptoed into and through Egypt, then crossed and landed in Israel. When word of their presence reached the Israeli authorities, they were promptly rounded up and sent back to Darfur. To the boiling pot. The minister responsible said beaten down Sudanese were economic refugees! Can you believe this? Had the Israelis never heard of Darfur?
  
  Hate.
  
  Closer home, I look at the ongoing tribal animosity with increasing fear. Since the sixties, we've practiced the politics of tribe. First it was the GEMA and the Luo community coming together. This was an alliance that sustained a Kenyatta presidency. The other thing it did was to keep smaller Kenyan tribes on the periphery of power. Then there was the KAMATUSA. This alliance sustained the Moi administration. The other thing it did was to turn Kenya into a Kalenjin Kingdom. Now there is the Kibaki administration. This is one of the most cynical administrations to ever rule Kenya. Before the coalition government was put in place, it had literally turned Kenya into a Kikuyu Kingdom. The downside to this kind of politics has been to tribalize Kenya in a way that if not checked, could lead us down a path to a revolution. Why? Because alliances inevitably create an US verses THEM complex. These alliances create hate. Is it any wonder that our brothers and sisters in Central Province felt left out in the Western Alliance of Raila, Ruto and Mudavadi? And is it any wonder that Kenyans have felt left out in the grab grab grab mentality that's characterized the Kibaki leadership? When will we start practicing the politics of ideas? When will we go with issue-driven campaigns? Policy-guided leadership?
  
  Hate.
  
  I fear hate.
  
  When the Hutus called the Tustsi cockroaches, they went all out to exterminate them. When the Nazis called the Jews rats, they went all out to destroy them. And now, I see a Kenya where Kikuyus are called thieves, the Luos are called dirty and AIDS carriers, the Luhyas are called watchmen and ugali-eaters and the Kalenjin are called dumb and militaristic. This is the language of hate. It must have no place in a modernizing Kenya. We must all work towards a Kenya where our children will embrace all of the nation's children as brothers and sisters. Where genuine admiration will exist for the Kikuyu for their liberation of our nation from colonial bondage, where accolades will be extended to the Kalenjin for turning over power peacefully when Moi's Kenyatta was beaten at the polls, where the Luo will be respected for producing some of the nation's best brains, where the varied tribes of our nation will be celebrated for their strengths...strengths that together form the beautiful stretch of land that we all adoringly call our motherland.
  
  Forgiveness.
  
  Fellow Kenyans, let hate give way to forgiveness. We've all done things that have oiled the path to hatred. The first step is to look deep inside and see where our actions may have abetted this vice. We don't have to announce to the world what a self-examination reveals about our hateful ways, but we can all begin by forgiving ourselves and making a promise, to ourselves...individually, that we'll work hard to advance harmony rather than project hate. I know that it's not easy to let our prejudices go, but I also know that we must start the process of letting Kenya emerge as a cohesive, loving nation.
  
  Folks, the world out here is full of hate. We must work hard to create a place where our children can grow up without experiencing the bitter hate that rules the world. It would be nice if one day all of the Kenyans of the Diaspora will come back to a nation unified in love and purpose, a place where they will come back to rest after battling the fears and indignities of living in a thoughtless, cold world.
  
  I know we can detribalize Kenya.
  
  Let's start now!
  
  For Love of Country,
  
  Guest post by Sam O. Okello
  
  Get 5000 people to see your product or service, you DON’T need a website and its’ ALL FREE
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