This is one of the pages on the Waki Report that will jolt any hardened soul...
Are we still talking about amnesty?
MY NEIGHBOURS - THEY RAPED ME...
On the first of January 2008 we were still fearful. On that day, we were not open for business.
I worked at the Eldama Ravine shopping centre at Mama Faith's Shop. We owned the shop. It was just next to my house - they are joined together. But I stayed home that day because I was scared. We left the shop locked up.
At about 3pm that day, people came to my home. At the time there was only my husband and I at home. My children had gone to visit their grandparents in Nyandarua. There were more than ten people who came. They were all men. They were dressed in coats and they had smeared mud on their faces so you could not recognize them. The mud was different colors on their faces - white back and red in spots - patches all over their faces. They were armed. They had arrows, pangas and rungus.
The first I knew they were there was when I heard talking and noises outside. They were speaking in Kalenjin.
They said "we have come to finish you." The door was not locked so they just came inside. My husband and I were in the sitting room. We were sitting down but stood up as soon as the men walked in. When they came in I began to plead with them because of what I had heard them say. I asked them why they were doing this when we had lived with them. They ordered me to shut up and said that the Kikuyu had migrated to the area and taken up their (the Kalenjin's) property. They asked me to be quiet or they were going to kill me. So I just kept quiet then.
That is when they started attacking my husband. They began cutting him with pangas and pierced him with arrows. My husband he did not go without a fight, the men, they struggled to keep him to the ground. They crowded him - ten of them against him... they attacked him. I was scared.
With a panga they sliced his neck, and he fell to the ground. It was a serious blow. As if that was not enough, that he was lying on the ground, they cut up his body into little pieces.
After they cut up my husband, but before he died, one of the men came towards me and asked me what I wanted to be done to me. I asked them not to kill me.
One said "we need to know what she is like, now that she never talks to us". There was another group of men who were looting my shop. I could see them from the door - it was still open. They were going past carrying property from my shop: sugar, cooking fat and other goods.
I was wearing trousers with buttons at the waist. The men tore at my trousers trying to get them open and the buttons came off. There were about four of them there doing this to me at that time.
They lifted me up and put me on the ground. They were arguing amongst themselves who was going to be the first.
Then one said that if I escaped from the knife and arrows, I would die of AIDS. Some of them held my legs and some held my hands while they raped me. When this was happening my husband and I were both still in the sitting room, but by now I was not watching my husband but pleading my own case.
The last time I had looked at him, it was like he was dead. He wasn't moving.
One man raped me and then the second one and the third. They put their penises in my vagina. It was either the second or the third man who said they were not able to get inside me: so they cut me.
I think it was the panga they were carrying that they used. They cut my vagina. As they raped me I thought about my children. I remember that when I had my children, my doctor had told me that I had a narrow opening. So both my children were born by cesarean.
They continued raping me. It was when the fourth man was raping me that I went unconscious.I next remember - and it is vague - that a Kalenjin friend of ours called Joseph was there and he was pleading with the men. He was asking them for him to be allowed to take the body of my husband and take me to hospital. The men started quarreling with him and told him that he was in partnership with us. They threatened to kill him.
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23:53
A Page From The Waki Report: Should These People Be Given Amnesty?
» You Missed This -
Tanzania should be “Sent Packing”
» You Missed This It is disheartening that Tanzania does not share in the other EAC countries’ desire to fast-track East Africa’s regional integration. This has come out very clearly in their unwillingness to act on decisions that have already been agreed on.
This dilly-dallying and “wariness” exhibited by Tanzania leaves more questions than answers. Will the East Africa Federation ever see the light of day with Tanzania in the picture? Is there the political will, on the Tanzania side, to see this dream (dream really! Whose dream?) come to fruition?
I read a certain article by Tom Mshindi sometime this week that says something to the effect that Tanzania’s self-interest must not derail integration.
I reproduce some sections of the said article to help us reflect even better on this issue.
1. “IT IS A GOOD THING THAT in Zanzibar last week, Tanzania finally came clean on its opposition to the desire to fast-track East Africa’s regional integration. Its position liberates the other four states from the burden of collegiality and allows them to pursue faster integration without the distraction of a partner that is clearly unwilling to commit to either a plan of action or key principles.”
2. “…Tanzania has decided to backtrack on decisions agreed by the Council of Ministers and now wants to renegotiate them.”
3. “This is what the Zanzibar meeting was intended to do, only for the Tanzania delegation to demur and submit instead that the pace should be slower.”
4. “On the contrary, there are numerous tales of frustration and distress that Kenyan companies in particular have to put up with when seeking work permits for staff who work in Tanzania.”
This brings to mind the issue of the Nation Media Company employees who were denied work permits but instead were ordered out of Tanzania some three years ago. They were declared prohibited immigrants. Prohibited immigrants?! Surely!
I honestly think that we should forget about Tanzania and go on with the fast tracking of the East Africa Federation without them. I believe this will be for the good of our people. The remaining four East African countries – Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi – will make East Africa an economic power house.
I like people of action (and vision) like Presidents Kagame (Rwanda) and Museveni (Uganda). Even before Rwanda was officially allowed into the East Africa Community, President Kagame made a very profound statement that astounded many. He said that professionals from Eastern African countries would not require work permits to take jobs in Rwanda.
As a bottom-line:
Genuine willingness to submit to the protocol is of the essence. Tanzania should not be arm twisted into committing to anything it is not ready to stand for.
* Tanzania’s self-interest must not derail integration
* Tanzania “importing” Albino body parts? – This is insane!
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1:29
Tujuane: Transforming from Employee to Employer
» bankelele Tujuane is a network with almost 3,000 worldwide members, it is an offshoot of Nairobist that was founded in 2006, by a group of ex-Boston graduates who chanced on a means to network and interact beyond Facebook-type connections, but with actual get-togethers and network forums. It has almost 3,000 members including 45 in Kampala, and Dar es Salaam each who communicate and share through newsletter, listing of theirs businesses, a book club soma, surveys and meet-ups.
On November 21 in Nairobi, they held a mixer – or a networking event dubbed The Road from Employee to Employer with an address by Dr. Mulengani Katwalo, the director of theInstitute for Strategy & Competitiveness (ISC) at the Strathmore Business School.
Dr. Katwalo - Photo courtesy of EGM
His talk centered on what local entrepreneurs/business owners can change to enable them to succeed in business. Success is not about starting a business – as anyone can find business plan on the Internet – with the unfortunate result that that 60 – 70% of entrepreneurs fail in the first year. This is because they behave like athletes who try to go from starting to running, but who don’t warm up first:
Entrepreneurs can make changes in six areas to ease the transformation
1. Training/skills development: Many entrepreneurs may have the drive, and the money but lack some skills, necessary to understand customers, and make a transition to understand their business/industry to take it to the next level. They should engage in short courses, but more important they should contribute to the agenda of education. E.g. by working with universities to set the learning curriculum for business such as the local tourism sector.
2. Innovation : Entrepreneurs do not engage in research & development (R&D)(by show of hands no one in the room was engaged in R&D departments/capacities) - and there are no budgets for new ideas and creations. Entrepreneurs need to embrace the process of buying and selling knowledge. If you have a good idea and cannot use, can you sell it?. The developed world is about exchange of ideas, not just goods & services. We need to convert ideas into cold hard cash.
- Entrepreneurs should know there is nothing wrong with copying, benchmarking, or reverse engineering. E.g. the Nyayo Car may have succeeded if it had been built in collaboration with a Japanese company and with just a Kenyan name. That’s how Tata rose to become a world leader in the sector. Presently there’s still a local mindset that doing imitation is inferior.
- In business, be brave enough to learn, pick an idea and use it. The patent for kyondo (baskets) is owned in Japan, and when you see Japanese tourists taking photos, a lot of them act as blueprints for products
- Innovation is crucial, but its not about going to the lab only – its about getting new ideas and converting them into products and services e.g. in Kenyan hospitals, while equipment is new, there has been no innovation in service
- Entrepreneurs should not stop innovating: Once you make enough money – the tendency is for many to move to big (Karen) houses, buy big cars, get new wives etc. They don’t create legacies that sustain wealth, so that every generation has to start over again.
3. Culture: There is a bad (local) attitude and perception that needs to change specially in regards of treatment of customers. This bad Matatu treatment towards customers, as though entrepreneurs are doing them a favour is bad for business. Entrepreneurs do not owe customers a favour - they are providing a service, which customers are paying for. Until our customer service changes to reflect this change in attitude, we will always be second best. In other countries, even if someone doesn’t like you, they will serve you and take your money – and ensure you (as a customer) keep coming back.
- Customer acquisition skills are poor – entrepreneurs do not keep up with innovation in the industry, they don’t read much. There's a lazy tendency to finish work, go to bar and then sleep. To be a world-class entrepreneur, you must make sacrifices, take make deliberate efforts such as take courses to develop management skills and read books otherwise they will always remain second best.
4 Neighborhoods If you don’t know your market, you will always be the village beauty Entrepreneurs need to know what opportunities exist beyond their neighborhoods or they will never take advantage of them. Do you look at your market as the Westlands area (a Nairobi suburb) or the 100 million + people in the greater East Africa – Congo, S. Sudan, Somalia? Only those that have eyes, can see the market, like the South Africans who have invested here in Kenya.
- It's also a perception issue, when you see people – do you see market or problems – what is your attitude towards expansion? Exporting to Europe? etc.
5 Cooperation or competition - This is an increasing trend in the business world to cooperate rather than compete – because not all your competitors are your enemies. This can also work in knowledge exchange (there’s appears to be a marketing understanding in Nakumatt and Tuskys, though both supermarkets, are not competitors as they target different clientele
6. Cooperation - working in networks (like Tujuane, clusters, create linkages, exchanges etc. as individual businesses do not exist in isolation – so entrepreneurs should network with related companies. We had a stimulating group discussions in which participants listed reasons for joining a network as among others - get contacts in the industry, socializing [with like minded people] as they are very busy, Learn new ideas[raises competition], Synergy, Pooling of resources/barter of services & goods, learn new opportunities and for moral support [e.g. for freelancers who work from home]
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