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• July 05, 2009
• 16:19

  Tamaku the biatch!

   » ‎ Diary of a gay Kenyan
  Thanks to Ty, Leonardo, Shiko-Msa, Anonymous, sid kachumbari and last but not least Mama for entering the caption contest. All six are joint worthy winners. I was well entertained reading all their comments. May I also add that they distinguished themselves as true friends whom I know I can count on, unlike some other people who sit on the fence and refuse to participate even after I went on my knees begging. So dear contestants best-friends you are all on my Christmas card list. Some people were nearly deleted…..
  
  Hey, just felt like bitching, lol! Hope no one takes my rant seriously though (big mistake!) and that we all kiss and make up (we can do tongue if you like and I promise not to bite). Anyway I love all you guys. I’ll get that photo of myself sorted out soon. Soon. I’m still looking for suitable props so if anyone can match Jim Carrey’s make-up in Mask please let me know.
  
  Have a lovely week ahead. Mwaah..mwaaah!

• 13:37

  5th July

   » ‎ the-undergraduate
  This having been the reunion weekend,I enjoyed hanging out with my primo schoolmates some who i hadnt seen since 2001.
  People hadly changed if you skip the fact that most are now quite social and progressed from juice and soda to alcohol.Atleast this year people openly mixed and interacted freely unlike last year when people hangout in cliques.
  With there having been so many couples,some real others formed in a union of Tusker,i must admit i did feel abit envious.Jealous of those who were trully in love,jealous of those who had someone who genuinely adored them,someone who believed they were the most special person in this world
  
  I hope next year will be bigger and better being the 3rd annual reunion.We stick to what they taught us, to 'better our best'

• 7:21

  Gatherer: Haiku

   » ‎ Mauri Yambo
  Is what keeps me going:
  To see all that yin-yang yields.
  Feets! Don't let me go [rpc.technorati.com]

  
  

• 6:13

  Just so…………

   » ‎ Black Looks
  Listen Via Poefrika
• 5:59

  the healing of silence

   » ‎ Black Looks
  we all live in hope – its called survival. some times we get lost at the crossroads and end up in a maze of sadness and confusion. until we find the way out, we need not resist the sound of silence!

• 2:44

  Why Was Mboya’s Assassination So Significant?

   » ‎ You Missed This
  Tom Mboya: The man the rich political class in Kenya want to forget
  
  Shocking New Revelations In Cold Case That Kumekucha Won’t Let Go
  
  The date today is July 5th (at least in Kenya as I write this). Ever since I started this blog, I have always remembered this date and more specifically what happened on a day like this in 1969. It is the day Tom Mboya was shot dead.
  
  Mostly my annual memorials have been a lonely crusade. But not this year. Yesterday and today Kenya’s leading daily, The Nation has carried extensive coverage on the assassination of the man I consider to be the greatest politician to ever come out of a Kenyan woman’s womb.
  
  I interpret that to mean that finally more and more Kenyans have come to the realization that this assassination was significant and that if the country is to move forward and truly have a new beginning then we must face the ghosts of Tom Mboya and settle this thing once and for all. More so because the chief planner and executor at the centre of that assassination still lives.
  
  Why was Mboya’s assassination so significant? Simply because the two bullets that were fired that Saturday lunch time July 5th 1969 changed the course of Kenya forever. Today we are suffering the consequences of that new course that was clearly charted out that day. Impunity won that day. Years later the rhetorical questions were to be asked over and over again; Mboya was killed and nothing happened, who is so and so? We survived the Mboya assassination what crisis can we not survive?
  
  Tribal politics won that day. In killing Mboya the assassins killed nationalism. To date we are yet to see another Kenyan attracting national popularity in their own right enough to win a presidential poll with votes from every corner of the republic. Every single prominent politician now has their political base in their ancestral village and those who don’t have imported their fellow tribesmates in large numbers into the constituency they represent away form their village. Tom Mboya was a Luo who was time and again voted in by mostly Kikuyus even when other prominent Kikuyus from very prominent families stood against him. To a young Kenyan who understands Kenyan politics today, this statement seems like pure fiction.
  
  I want to say today that most analysts agree that Tom Mboya was on course to end up as the first president of Kenya. A man called Jaramogi Oginga Odinga noted this fact early and decided that he would do everything in his power to make sure that this did not happen. And so he started a crusade insisting that Kenyans did NOT want Uhuru unless Kenyatta was released. In fact Odinga said that Kenyatta was “like a god to Kenyans. This clever ploy put Mboya in a tight corner. Knowing his constituents he knew that if he failed to support this belated call his support would evaporate. And so the old man who had been so out of touch with what was happening was released from Kapenguria and Oginga Odinga won the day while Kenya and nationalism lost badly. The Brits also won big time (more on that later).
  
  It has now been revealed that a few weeks before the assassination of one Pio Gama Pinto, Tom Mboya warned the politician that he was going to be killed by Kenyatta’s inner circle (the same people who murdered Mboya). This is instructive and demonstrates the fact that Mboya’s intelligence sources were impeccable. We also know that Mboya knew his life was in danger. Indeed his biographer tells us that his American friends warned him and discussed the possibility of getting more body guards (which Mboya turned down). In fact on the day Mboya was killed, he had just released his driver and bodyguard. Why? Was he not concerned about his own life? He had warned Pinto that the Kenyatta inner circle was capable of murder and Pinto had doubted saying that his killing would cause serious problems for the Kenyatta administration. In other words “they wouldn’t dare.” Is this what Mboya thought about his own possible assassination? We can only speculate but the truth is that this is a question that badly begs for an answer.
  
  It is also instructive to note that warnings of assassination came to Mboya from the Americans. This adds an International angle to the plot. Which major world power had a motive for Mboya’s death? Which country benefited most with Mboya out of the way? Britain of course. I have come across many interesting facts that point to MI5 links in the assassination of Tom Mboya. Indeed it would seem that Kenyatta’s inner circle got encouragement to proceed with their heinous plan from the Brits (unofficially of course).
  
  In planning Tom Mboya’s assassination the plotters were keenly aware that this was one hit that could NOT go wrong. The Kenyatta administration and everything they were fighting for (in terms of personal gain) could not afford any slip ups. It would have been a disaster for them if Tom Mboya survived. The plotters already had the experience of carrying out the Pio Gama assassination over 4 years earlier and knew that many things can and do go wrong in the best planned assassinations. So they had to choose the gunman very carefully. There was no way they could afford him getting cold feet or worse still, missing his target.
  
  I can authoritatively report today that there is increasing evidence that I am coming across that suggests the unbelievable. That apart from being the chief planner and operations man in the killing of Mboya, a certain man well known in the security forces at the time may have been the man who coolly pulled the trigger and fired those two shots that change Kenya forever. This man had a striking resemblance to Nahashon Njenga (the man who was convicted of Mboya’s assassination). That man remained an “untouchable” throughout the reign of Kenyatta. That man’s name is Ben Gethi (now deceased). I have talked to several people who confirm that in his last days Gethi's consceince seemed to have been disturbing him greatly. He drunk way too much and seemed to be haunted by the things he had done in his savage and eventful life (including overseeing the cutting off of certain sensitive parts of JM Kariuki's body).
  
  In Pio Gama Pinto’s assassination word got out about the taxi driver who had been hired to carry out the hit. Nothing of the sort happened in the Mboya assassination and it is no accident. Little wonder that the Nation told us yesterday that then Vice President Daniel arap Moi described the Mboya assassination as “brilliantly planned and executed.”
  
  Eye witnesses say that there was a bald-headed man with a brief case who looked like he was window shopping moments before Mboya was shot. Naturally the brief case concealed the murder weapon. Now just think about it for a moment. It is possible but unlikely that that man was a Kanu youth winger with little or no previous training in firearms. It is hard for me to believe that that youth winger coolly pulled out his revolver at just the right time and with precise timing shot the Minister just as he walked out of Chaani’s chemist. In fact the door was not fully open when the shots rang out because Mboya fell back inside the chemist’s shop. Now the fascinating thing here is that both Nahashon Njenga and Ben Gethi were approximately the same height. The resemblance of the two was uncanny.
  
  The truth is that there were two very well planned phases of the Mboya assassination. That is the actual hit and the cover up that was to follow. Both were carried out clinically. With the clinical precision of a doctor... a surgeon perhaps?
  
  ...To Be Continued
  Kumekucha

  
  

  

• 1:56

  Traffic Updates by SMS in Nigeria

   » ‎ White African

  Tags:  Africa  

  eNowNow is a service in Nigeria where anyone with a mobile phone can sign up to receive updates on traffic conditions in different areas around Lagos.

  How it Works

  Armed with a mobile phone, a team of 4-6 motorcyclists ride to different, pre-designate parts of the city. They take pictures of the current traffic conditions and MMS that image to the central office. That image is then geolocated and given a score of “slow”, “moving” or “free”. Anyone who has signed up for SMS or email alerts is then sent a message with the traffic update.

  Challenges

  I asked Simon, one of the people putting the service into action, what some of their challenges are. His reply:

  “Collecting information in this way, although not that technical (lots of people have said why not use stationary webcams it would be technically superior), is turning out to be more difficult than we expected. Finding people who can grasp the concept behind the service, ride well through the crazy Lagos traffic, and are reliable has been tricky, added to that we’ve had lots of issues around harassment and even arrests from the police (many police officers apparently believe you need special police permission to take photos of traffic) and just recently the weather has been in our way as the rainy season has just started in Lagos making operations more difficult and a few phones have been dropped in puddles! “

  The business side

  eNowNow doesn’t see much value in charging premium SMS rates for their services. They believe margins are low, and they don’t think the uptake would be high enough amongst their target market to make it work. Instead, they have plans to subsidize the service with revenues from licensing traffic information to Sat Nav providers and logistics companies.

  “In Nigeria the networks will take anything between 40 and 75% of a premium SMS’s cost to a subscriber for themselves (pull or push) leaving you a tiny margin for profitability and driving the industry standard (and therefore what the networks will allow you) per SMS cost higher. Most people think that traffic only affects those in cars and they can therefore afford to pay for a service, but most of Lagos’ population aren’t in that bracket and those on public transport still have choices about which buses they take, which routes and what time they leave work.”

  Thoughts and ideas

  Maybe it’s because I’m a motorcycle fan, or maybe it’s because I have a deeply ingrained detestation for being stuck in traffic in Africa’s mega cities, but this application hits the sweet spot for me. I’ve been wanting just this type of thing in Nairobi for a long time…

  One additional idea, to make this even more dynamic, and spread it over the whole city is to create a way for ordinary drivers to text into the system when they come across a new or growing traffic problem. I imagine that Lagos has areas with traffic that is not on the pre-designated points that eNowNow operates in currently.

  This is a classic locally grown tech initiative, and I hope that they can pull it off. If so, it can definitely be replicated in other major metro markets across the continent.

  

• 1:39

  Voice of the Digital Class, Voice of the People

   » ‎ What An African Woman Thinks
  So, about the Iranian election aftermath and the role of social media:
  I (may) have said before in this space that one of the challenges of assembling a balanced view of any country, especially a developing one, based on non-traditional media such as blogs, twitter, youtube, etc, is that the more powerful/sophisticated tools for gathering and disseminating information are still largely concentrated in the hands of a particular class of people whose views are legitimate, certainly, but are not necessarily representative of all views, and may not even be the majority view.
  In Iran and in Kenya, an urban technosavvy middle class with reasonable access to diverse online tools makes full use of these tools. This is a good thing, a great thing even. Bully for us. I do not mean to suggest in any way shape or form that the views we express are not heartfelt or legitimate. I do however deign to suggest that they are oftentimes only a small part of the picture, like looking at a portrait and staring fixedly at the nose while determinedly (and a little curiously) ignoring the rest of the face.
  The fact that any one person is in possession of, or has access to a microphone or other amplifying device doesn’t make his or her view more legitimate than that of the next citizen. I say this as one who has the platform that is this blog and who has been known to differ significantly on matters political et al with her equally opinionated rural cousin of a proximate age. If he and I were to lock horns in this space it would make for a very lively exchange, trust me. You do not know him. He does not blog. He does not twitter. He is not on facebook. All these technological ‘shortcomings’ notwithstanding, his opinion is no less legitimate than mine.
  In this scenario, traditional media sources must continue to play a pivotal role in amplifying the voices of those who do not have their own platforms/microphones to reach the rest of the world. They must play a role in distilling fact from fantasy and rumour from reporting, and in making the best attempt they can to serve up a balanced news diet.
  Yes, they’re imperfect and our antennae should always be up, always alert to bias, but we must acknowledge that often times they have the resources, the contacts and the operational capacity to dig deeper and go further in sourcing and verifying the news and that they are bound to some extent by professional rules of practice and conduct and our high expectations. (Even though they constantly fall short, at least we hope they aim.)
  They cannot afford to sulk and walk away in the face of the emergence of new media sources. Never has it been more crucial for them to penetrate the places where ordinary folk do not yet have the resources at their disposal to make themselves heard and to enable those people have their say.
  
  It never ceases to amaze me how easy it is to slip into an ‘either or’ view of things on a wide range of subjects when a ‘both and’ perspective makes so much more sense.
  In the case of the Iran election, it was useful to hear from individual Iranians on the ground about what was going on inside the country and to watch them leverage social media so effectively to rally the world to their cause. At the same time, it took a great deal of time and effort to filter the signal from the sheer volume of noise. This is why I really appreciated the reporting on Iran of such Middle East veterans as Robert Fisk.
  
  Speaking of keeping our antennae up and being alert to bias, I really appreciate this post by Hamid Tehrani, journalist, blogger and Global Voices Iran Editor. While appreciating the pivotal role social media such as Facebook and twitter have played, he also points out that
  

  “Twitter is both a source of information and mis-information”

  and that
  

  “Most Iranians who tweet are activists supporting the protest movement and promoting a cause. Their information should be double-checked and not be accepted at face value, or as an eyewitness observation.”

  I wholeheartedly agree. I believe the onus is on the prolific user of social media to take personal responsibility for proactively assessing/evaluating what information comes her way before passing it on. In the absence of a paid/dedicated gatekeeper, Craig Kanalley over at Twitter Journalism is right in suggesting that we are all gatekeepers. We all must be the social media equivalent of ‘active listeners’, interacting rationally with what we’re receiving, triangulating the information with other sources and making the best judgment we can of the value of what we receive based on what we already know, who the information is from and whether is corroborating evidence.
  Likely, even with the best of intentions, we will get it wrong some of the time, but if we are alert, we are more likely to be right than wrong.It's my window, but I don't own the view.