Kenya Imagine

• Fatherhood Blues

  Posted: February 29, 2008, 7:04 pm

  27 years ago I promised myself that I would write a book when I turned 50. I am 4 years late and not quite ready to write an entire book. Here I am though, sitting down with a pen and paper because my son-in-law asked me a question the day before he lawfully wedded my daughter. "What was it like, raising her?" I am tempted to laugh at him. Things had changed, and now it was up to him, and not me to deal with her. And he had asked for it. I pause however, to remember what it has been like, raising a girl child without her mother around to help.
  
  Read more from Warorua Gichanga here.

  

  

• Their Pants on Fire

  Posted: February 29, 2008, 7:01 pm

  I must, we must all, be optimistic about this new agreement. It is a chance for transparency in the short term but unless we put in place stringent accountability measures, the evils brought on by mistrust, corruption and tribalism will return and rise to new heights.

  This coalition agreement represents for me the culmination of a political journey. Initially I supported Kibaki's government. It is true that he has put in place a macroeconomic policy framework that has the potential to greatly improve Kenya's fortunes.
  

  Read more from Kipchirchir Boit here.
  

  

  

• Agreement now signed -full text

  Posted: February 29, 2008, 10:11 am

  Here.

  

  

• Sisters at Heart

  Posted: February 29, 2008, 10:08 am

  On Saturday the 24th of February, 2008, I went to a meeting of women in Kibera, Nairobi. It was in the open, in the field next to the Kibera D.O.'s office. Under a tree, next to a dusty soccer pitch on which a few energetic children were playing, sat some women listening to the meeting's moderator, Ms. Jane Anyango.
  
  Read more from Wambui Mwangi here.
  

  

  

• National Examinations 2007 Results

  Posted: February 29, 2008, 10:02 am

  Nairobi news services are reporting that the 2007 KCSE results are out. Mang'u High School top the rankings, ahead of the Starehe Boys Centre and Precious Girls High School, Riruta.

  Loreto Limuru and Limuru Jigh School rounded off the top five, followed in the remaining top ten positions by Nairobi School, Strathmore School, Alliance High School, Sunshine Academy and Light Academy.
  

  As always at this time of the year, the results throw up questions of fairness in the location of the top schools, whether or not the school's reputations are worth it given the results and also whether the tuition fees charged by the top schools to the parents are justified by the outcome of the exams.

  Discuss here.
  

  

  

• Kenya's Power Sharing Agreement

  Posted: February 28, 2008, 9:46 pm

  With this agreement, we are stepping forward together, as political leaders, to overcome the current crisis and to set the country on a new path. As partners in a coalition government, we commit ourselves to work together in good faith as true partners, through constant consultation and willingness to compromise.
  
  Read full text of agreement here.

  

  

• Kibaki must now answer back

  Posted: February 28, 2008, 6:55 am

  President Kibaki is a mysterious, inscrutable old man. That in a nutshell is why the opposition for all its boasts about its political prowess has found it impossible to beat him; resorting instead to smashing the chessboard and the pieces. It is difficult to beat an old man whose core strategy is to ignore you.
  
  For Kenya at large, much accustomed as it is to an over-bearing head of state and government, Mwai Kibaki's presidency -for all the calls for a reduction in presidential powers- has proved to be a most introverted one. Apart from a brief series of outings in the campaign period, gone was the constancy of the powerful, omniscient, hectoring, itinerant patriarch. Instead, all that filtered down from the presidency are genially broadcasted progress reports on the growth of the economy, achievements in healthcare and in governance -much of them relayed by the Government Spokesman or the Presidential Press Service.
  
  Read more from Wanjiru Kamau here.

  

  

• Africa, and Leadership

  Posted: February 28, 2008, 6:52 am

  Is the failure in Kenya- now that we have been proved not so special- and in Africa, really a failure of leadership or this there other, perhaps justified, extenuation?

  Musing through recent events, the apparent suspension of the ongoing mediation most of all, some questions are impelled on one's consciousness. Is there something (beer voucher to Ken Opalo for setting off this train of thought) to Chinua Achebe's thesis that the poverty of our leadership is the main obstacle to African progress?
  

  Participate in this open thread here.
  

  

  

• The Magenta Gown

  Posted: February 28, 2008, 6:51 am

  My two best friends have not yet seen photographs of this. I have been religiously hunting for all copies of the incriminating evidence with the intention of destroying them, lest the horrendous images be broadcast to the whole world.
  

  It is bad enough that my entire clan has seen them. Beg as they may, my two friends will never get to see the evidence of such a completely and incredibly comical wardrobe malfunction of all time.
  
  Read more from Juliet Maruru here.
  

  

  

• Recipe for a Constitutional Compromise

  Posted: February 26, 2008, 5:17 pm

  Although the government has come in for the most severe vilification for its insistence that any resolution to the current crisis be concluded within the framework of the Constitution of Kenya, all indications are that the government is justified in its reluctance.
  
  The government's position is informed by the current Constitution, the rule of law, and by the conventions and political culture in America.
  
  Read more from Muciimi Mbatia here.

  

  

• Elections for Local Government Heads

  Posted: February 26, 2008, 5:15 pm

  On the 22nd of February, the Minister for Local Government, Uhuru Kenyatta, declined to gazette Ms. Esther Passaris as a duly nominated Councillor for the ODM. The decision has led to a furore, and worse.
  
  The crisis in Nairobi, which along with Nakuru have failed to agree on a head of their local government authorities pits the Local Government Minister against the interests of sections of the councillors and the national political parties.
  
  Discussion in an open thread here.

  

  

• State of Kenya: Talks in trouble

  Posted: February 26, 2008, 5:11 pm

  Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has announced his increasing frustration at the inability of the two sides in Kenya's crisis talks to come to a mutually agreeable compromise. The New York Times reports Annan saying,
  
  "After four hours of intense negotiations this morning, the negotiating team made almost no progress toward reaching an agreement on governance, despite the fact that they were given the entire weekend to consult on their positions.......I had to conclude that they were not capable of resolving the outstanding issues."
  
  Aides close to Annan said he was running out of patience and that he was unlikely to stay long in Kenya.
  
  Read more here.

  

  

• I am not my hair

  Posted: February 26, 2008, 5:09 pm

  A few years ago my favourite song sported the refrain "I am not my hair...". This song I loved not because it made profound musical sense to me or added any excitement to a night of vigorous dancing, but because it said, in words simpler that I could ever have thought sufficient, what I had been trying to say my whole life: "I am not my hair, I am not this skin, I am not your expectations (oh!)..."
  
  Read more from L. Akitelek Papakemus here.

  

  

• Spare the rod...

  Posted: February 25, 2008, 3:08 pm

  After an active youth filled with ambitions of professional sport and a fast paced career as a medical practitioner my dear mother finally fell prey to her maternal instinct, the downfall of many a woman, and had a beautiful baby girl.
  
  A more honest choice of words would probably be that she got knocked up and ended up with me, but that takes the romance out of a good story doesn't it?Well, what she did get for sure was a bright pink baby with blue lips and a lung or two full of fluid that came out far too early. Well, that and the bold accusation from my chronically misguided father that no gene of his could possibly have produced a child so 'fair-skinned'. An ugly specimen though I might have been, scrawny and bruised from lying too long in the incubator, my mother took me home and resolved to turn me into 'anything' but my fathers daughter. When she eventually returned to the maternity wards to have her second child, she had the whole parenting thing down.
  
  Read more from L. Akitelek Papakemus here.

  

  

• Partisan politics and ethnicity; the twin curse of Kenyan politics

  Posted: February 25, 2008, 3:07 pm

  The past two months have seen our country slide into the kind of anarchy we somewhat foolishly assumed was not ours, we were above it, and two months after it all begun, we seem as distant from a resolution as ever.
  
  The loss of life and property, the unbridled eagerness to stoke hatred between Kenyan ethnicities that have co-existed in harmony for more than 45 years, shameless political rhetoric of the kind that damages long into the future, the extensive damage to the country's opportunities for growing its economy and its dignity among the nations of the world, the list of shames goes on and its consequences threaten to last a long time into the future.
  
  Read more from Kihiu Thairu here.

  

  

• The new guy

  Posted: February 22, 2008, 6:33 pm

  Recently he haunts my nights, most nights just like he's been stalking the distant edge of my memory all of these years, since those days we told ourselves we would not talk about.
  I remember now; so clearly...I'm walking up the stairs, it's a sunny afternoon and it's got a Thursday feeling about it. Like it's lazy in an undecided kind of manner. I must be about five or six months into eleven and my skinny five nine is swelling into something more like woman and less like girl.
  
  Read more from L. Akitelek Papakemus here.

  

  

• What Truly Ails Kenya

  Posted: February 22, 2008, 6:31 pm

  Are we experiencing post colonial blues or are we suffering from something more sinister: learned helplessness? I've been following with some interest the ongoing discussions by the National Dialogue Team and juxtaposing those with the general mood in the country.
  What strikes you almost immediately is the collective sentiment among the public that if the Annan team fails to strike a deal and then all is lost. Kenya as we used to know it ceases to exist.
  In my musings I've been trying to understand when we fell into this abyss that we are finding rather difficult to climb out of, where it's become a do or die with the negotiation teams and failure has been declared a non-option (and perhaps rightly so).
  
  Read more from Sophie Mukwana here.

  

  

• Digital Citizen

  Posted: February 22, 2008, 6:30 pm

  With a click of the mouse, I am in out and into the world. I can watch videos, read blogs, read international newspapers, and even get direct advice on the world's latest. That is who I am; a global citizen.
  
  I read online literature, I get the latest music, I can download the latest movies, I interact with the people of faraway lands. I can book a holiday, pay for it and even book transportation; all at the click of a mouse. I know of the latest innovations, the latest advances in research, business mergers and acquisitions, business models at the turn of my Google Reader.
  
  Read more from Wanjiru Kamau here.

  

  

• The lie of the land

  Posted: February 22, 2008, 9:59 am

  The Africa Policy Institute, a Kenya based independent think tank has released a report titled The Lie of the land: Evictions and Kenya's crisis.
  
  It argues that while Kenya, like other former British white settler colonies such as South Africa and Zimbabwe have yet to decisively deal with the legacy of colonial and post-colonial injustices relating to land ownership, the link between the on-going systematic evictions in the Rift Valley and Western Kenya and “post-colonial injustices” relating to land is very tenuous. A much more plausible explanation is that Kenya is reeling under a deadly intra-elite power game that has come to characterise multi-party politics here.
  
  Read more from Patrick Mutahi here.

  

  

• Resurrection

  Posted: February 21, 2008, 4:44 pm

  Smutty talk, plantains, Jamaicans, and a Buddhist monk: Bee, like M. Defarge, recalls us to life..
  
  Unsure where to start. Except that I have been far. Never thought I would end up here.
  
  Highlight: Sitting in a Jamaican restaurant listening to the Jamaican chef, a large, beautiful, freckled woman, asking the Buddhist monk about sex.
  
  Read more from Bee Dablewkay here.

  

  

• Government agrees to premiership for ODM

  Posted: February 21, 2008, 4:41 pm

  Published here are the latest news updates from Nairobi. The government agrees to a Premiership for the ODM, Najib Balala threatens Lesotho for the Kikuyu and rent riots reported in Nairobi.

  

  

• News Roundup, Feb 19th, 2008

  Posted: February 19, 2008, 5:12 pm

  A summary of today's news. kenyaImagine offers a platform to discuss these.
  
  More here.

  

  

• What is America's stake in this?

  Posted: February 19, 2008, 2:17 pm

  America's involvement in Kenya's post-elections political crises must be seen against the background of its "war on terror"- and the unilateralism that propelled it.
  
  The State Department at first congratulated President Mwai Kibaki on his re-election but later rescinded as European Union and other observers reported irregularities in the vote-count. Since then, the Bush administration has been trying not to take sides in the election dispute and his Ambassador taken unofficial role as the Spokesperson for the entire International community pressuring Kenya's political elite to come to a compromise. To America, it is unfathomable that one of its most reliable and crucial partners in the "war against terror" was going to crumble in its lap.
  
  Read more from Patrick Mutahi here.

  

  

• Two glasses, same volume

  Posted: February 19, 2008, 2:02 am

  I listened with dismay as my boyfriend complained about his employer's recent ethnocentric favouritism. I felt bad for him and was deeply saddened by what he was going through, by what we were going through. My sympathy soon turned into growing irritation as the man I was planning to spend the rest of my life with, launched into his own oration of the reasons the other ethnicity was lesser than his own. I would like to tell myself that this is just an effect of the recent events in our country, but I know better.
  
  Read more from Juliet Maruru here.

  

  

• Devolve or break-up

  Posted: February 19, 2008, 2:01 am

  Today, Kosovo has declared its independence. The declaration was met with much jubilation by the majority ethnic Albanians but with consternation among the minority Serbians in the province and those in the the Serbian republic for whom Kosovo was a cultural and spiritual homeland.
  
  Read more from Bernard Adede here.

  

  

• Economics and Ethnohatred: Kenya on Fire

  Posted: February 19, 2008, 2:00 am

  Many commentators on the post-election violence in Kenya have sought to label it as a battle of the haves and the have-nots, a struggle against perceived historical injustices and the effect of pressure on resources following decades of massive population growth.
  
  Read more from Stephen Wanyama here.

  

  

• The Growing Up Diary

  Posted: February 17, 2008, 6:34 pm

  I keep a little diary of the things that happen to me. Some are sad, some are quite funny, some just weird and others truly profound and life-changing. This has been my way of keeping record of the process of growing up. I usually sit down at the end of the year and read the journal I keep and choose the things that touched my life most, the things that stood out of all the others and the things that just make me laugh. As I read the old journal and pick up events for my Growing Up Diary, I learn and relearn lessons. I laugh at myself sometimes. I cry for what I hadn't allowed myself to grieve for. I see things in the light of retrospect. And I know that somethings I will never repeat and that I would do other things just the same if I was given a second chance. I know what I would do differently if I was given the chance.
  
  Read more from Juliet Maruru here.

  

  

• One Kenya indivisible, elections now

  Posted: February 16, 2008, 9:23 am

  A distraught friend of mine wrote to me recently, asking that the Kenyan middle class join up in arms, that we refuse completely to cosset any longer the spirit of separatism and hatred that has taken over our country.
  
  Yesterday, I read from Patrick Gathara here, an article asking why we are at all tolerating the idea that there are Kenyans who have ancestral rights to sections of this country. I hate to imagine where this notion would take Kenyans were oil to be found near my home in North Eastern Province, or should we finally decide to take on a grown up energy policy and flood Marsabit with alternative energy solutions.
  
  Read more from Amir Ibrahim here.

  

  

• Participate in crafting the budget 2008-2009

  Posted: February 15, 2008, 10:51 am

  The Treasury is inviting all Kenyans and stakeholders in the Kenyan economy to participate in putting together ideas and proposals for consideration as it crafts the next budget, 2008-2009.
  In the circular published on the internt, the Treasury Permanent Secretary Joseph Kinyua asks that such proposals take into consideration the aspirations of Vision 2030 and in particular such measures as would enable the government to achieve its objectives of rapid economic growth, wealth and employment creation and other such measures as would lead to greater economic development and a reduction in poverty.
  
  Follow this link to see how you can get involved, and to share your ideas with the kenyaImagine community.

  

  

• Why do we condone ethnic cleansing?

  Posted: February 15, 2008, 10:48 am

  Tomes have been written against the violence in Kenya, poems have been composed and most of us have lamented the fact that our countrymen are taking up arms against each other. What we have neglected to condemn, is the idea that specific parts of Kenya belong to specific tribes.
  
  Read more from Patrick Gathara here.

  

  

• On Metrosolipsism

  Posted: February 15, 2008, 10:46 am

  I am sitting calmly in a blessedly quiet part of Kenya, enjoying the fact that I'm back at work, surrounded by students who are back at school. Still, I try to remain reasonably aware - and it would seem to me that there are many who believe that the relatively quiet of the city of Nairobi means all is well, over and good and proper and cricket-like.
  
  Read more from Stephen Derwent Partington here.

  

  

• News Roundup, Feb 15th, 2007

  Posted: February 15, 2008, 10:43 am

  Business Daily Africa (BDA) reports on ethnic profiling in employment due to the post election ethnic-based violence. According to their research, firms across the country are wary of sending employees to regions where they would be considered to be from the "wrong tribe."
  
  Read more here.

  

  

• Bush on Africa

  Posted: February 15, 2008, 10:41 am

  US President George W. Bush departs for Africa in an effort to highlight his commitment to the benighted continent and burnish his foreign-policy legacy. In Benin, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ghana and Liberia, he'll tout initiatives to encourage democracy and combat poverty, disease and corruption. What follows here is his speech at the Smithsonian Insititute last evening.

  

  

• News Roundup, Feb 14th, 2007

  Posted: February 14, 2008, 8:55 am

  Kenyan electoral chief, Samuel Kivuitu, has said that the speed and manner of President Kibaki's swearing-in reminded him of the days of President Daniel Moi's government.
  
  Soon after the results of the 2007 elections were made, Kivuitu came under fire for saying that although he had announced Mwai Kibaki the winner of the election, he remained unsure as to who actually won it. Speaking in an interview with Nation TV Kivuitu said that he was too sick at the time of the elections to directly supervise the election process. "There are many ways of rigging. There are allegations. We don't know if they are true."
  
  Read more here.

  

  

• Neighbours Kiss and Make Up In Australia (and Kenya?)

  Posted: February 13, 2008, 8:18 pm

  The Federal Government of Australia, led by new Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, has made history by apologising on behalf of Australia for years of ‘mistreatment' which, he said, had inflicted ‘profound grief, suffering and loss' on its Indigenous people.
  
  Read more from Peter Ndiangui here.

  

  

• The Kenyan Odyssey, 2002 Redux

  Posted: February 13, 2008, 8:15 pm

  In mid-2002, Kenyans were treated to a great surprise when following years of division, a selection of their ethnic potentates met together and formed a grand coalition named NARC, the National Alliance Rainbow Coalition.
  
  Note the emphasis on words denoting unity and togetherness, and the triumph of the whole over the fraction. Four words in a name, all affirming the same idea. It did not work out, it really did not. Like a bad movie, it was panned by the critics and the protagonists showed little on-screen chemistry or potential. And now, the re-run.
  
  Cartoon from Patrick Gathara here.

  

  

• Preliminary Thoughts On Imposed Power Sharing

  Posted: February 13, 2008, 8:13 pm

  It appears quite in order to ask one simple question: why is power sharing being forced down Kenya's throat? It is clear that neither ODM nor PNU wanted power sharing. They all wanted everything.
  
  Read more from Muciimi Mbatia here.

  

  

• Obama wins three more state primaries

  Posted: February 13, 2008, 8:11 pm

  "We have now won East and West, North and South, and across the heartland of the US, " Illinois Senator Obama said in a speech Tuesday evening following big wins in Washington DC, Maryland and Virginia.
  
  Read more here.

  

  

• State of Kenya: Karua criticises Annan

  Posted: February 13, 2008, 4:11 am

  Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan on Monday suggested that Kenyan political leaders should work together to create a "grand coalition" government to end the current political crisis that has paralysed the country.
  
  Updates here.

  

  

• Ignes fatui: but we are Kenyan

  Posted: February 12, 2008, 10:46 am

  One interesting trait prevalent among Kenyans is their passion for conjuring tales of vivid imagination and then insisting on them so ardently that they end up being turned into truisms, never mind their lack of basis in fact.
  
  The traditional method, is to take on a sprinkling of facts, throw them into a massive sufuria boiling with sliced and diced-facts, spiced up with fantasies for good measure, with a large pinch of salt for flavour and an unhindered splash of such outrageous fictions as would embarrass most, except we are Kenyan.
  
  Read more from Kamale T here.

  

  

• Kenya's path to peace

  Posted: February 12, 2008, 9:12 am

  Many people and forces are feeding Kenya’s current crisis: politicians and their informal militias, intellectuals disseminating hate on the internet, police shooting at innocents, young men at roadblocks killing people with machetes. Who will move the country back towards the rule of reason, institutions and a civil national society?
  
  Read more from Jacqueline M Klopp here.

  

  

• Faith's trap; waliomo na wasiokuemo

  Posted: February 12, 2008, 9:10 am

  There is a fault I have been battling against for a while now, I cannot abide religious folk. Worse, every time I seem to triumph over this steady dislike of mine, the religious supply extenuation for my continued impassioned dislike of them. Thus it was that I cringed when I heard that the venerated Archbishop of Canterbury, the Rt. Rev. Dr Rowan Williams had offered, in the spirit of good neighbourliness and in the promotion of tolerance, that elements of Sharia Law be incorporated into the workings of the British legal system.
  
  Read more from Amir Ibrahim here.

  

  

• The Insane Ones

  Posted: February 12, 2008, 9:08 am

  I am accused of unconsidered optimism from time to time. Today, I am relieved about the possibility of peace across the country. With a huge side order of disgust, I allow myself some relief in this handshake that two old friends could have made weeks ago and saved a thousand lives; but which they found inconvenient; until now.
  
  Read more from JC Mureithi here.

  

  

• The other, less spoken of, more vicious violence

  Posted: February 10, 2008, 8:40 pm

  "Something has happened to me over the last month. I have lost everything I know. And one evening when I thought I had not anything more to lose, I lost even more. We were huddled into a bus, the kind that looks like a lorry. Women and men, both young and old, and children, we all looked at each other glad that we were not among the collective of dead bodies strewn all over the dusty plains. There were many of us, packed like sardines, hanging on, as we creaked along, escaping the violence that had broken our homes, the homes that glowed red and ashy. I was terrified, and it was all real."
  
  Read more from Nekessa Opoti here.

  

  

• The Insane Ones

  Posted: February 10, 2008, 8:38 pm

  I am accused of unconsidered optimism from time to time. Today, I am relieved about the possibility of peace across the country. With a huge side order of disgust, I allow myself some relief in this handshake that two old friends could have made weeks ago and saved a thousand lives; but which they found inconvenient; until now.
  
  Who are You? Who am I?
  This threadbare security blanket has been exposed.
  We live on the knife-edge of denial.
  
  Read more from JC Mureithi here.

  

  

• Open Thread!

  Posted: February 9, 2008, 6:26 pm

  What are our betters negotiating about this weekend? Probably the colour of their ministerial Mercedes. What, though, do you think are the priorities? What would you like to see done in the immediate/medium/long term?
  
  I'll start with a random selection of my own..... .
  
  Read more from Daniel Waweru here.

  

  

• Flags of our Fathers

  Posted: February 9, 2008, 9:25 am

  How much differencethe small matter ‘ a few years this little land,ours just yesterdayfloating on the runway of promisereadying herself for flightinto the stars
  
  A poem from Dorothy Adhiambo here.

  

  

• Dust, Heat and Smoke

  Posted: February 9, 2008, 4:09 am

  Now I miss the dust; not the clouds trailing the heels of fleeing crowds -I miss the friendly brown sheets of earth - dancing with the wind during merrier times.Though the dirt reddened my eyes, all that cried was my eyes.Now my heart is crying out, for my old, peaceful dusty street.
  
  Read more from Wilson Wahome here.

  

  

• PNU and ODM agree to form joint government

  Posted: February 8, 2008, 5:56 pm

  The Kenyan government and key opposition leaders, ODM, have reached a breakthrough.
  According to news reports, former UN Secretray General Kofi Annan will be holding a press conference shortly to highlight the specifics of the "breakthrough" in peace talks between the government and ODM.
  
  Check here for updates as they come in from Nairobi.

  

  

• What happened to the exit polls?

  Posted: February 8, 2008, 5:20 pm

  Speaking yesterday before a Congressional Hearing in the US, the head of Kenya's statutory human rights body asked the US congress to exhort the International Republican Institute to release the results of an exit poll taken after Kenya's December 27th General Election. Exit polls are by practice one of the fall-back options when an election is found to be difficult to call on account of the irregularities in its process. This is especially so where the pollster is an independent organisation whose credibility will stand up to scrutiny, and whose findings will be respected by both sides. So it is that Maina Kiai's statement bears looking into, even as he joins the great list of Kenyans discredited in the public eye this last month. He, for sure, is not one of the independent institutions.
  
  Read more from Stephen Wanyama here.

  

  

• Maina Kiai Testifies to the US House of Representatives

  Posted: February 7, 2008, 1:56 am

  The chairman of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNHCR), Maina Kiai, yesterday (Wednesday) addressed the US House subcommittee on Africa and Global Health. Published here is a transcript of his speech.

  

  

• Protecting the Public

  Posted: February 7, 2008, 9:01 am

  I was never good with the machine gun. With a cyclic rate of fire of 1150 rounds per minute (give or take 150, depending upon the age of your recoil spring), my bursts from the bipod would never be as short as the sergeant would have liked them, and they would invariably spread up and down over the target rows, instead of keeping the impacts nicely clustered in each mini-silhouette.
  
  Read more from Vitalis Oyudo here.

  

  

• Central Bank of Kenya Statement on the economy

  Posted: February 7, 2008, 7:03 am

  The Central Bank of Kenya governor has put out the following press release on the recent unrest and its effect on the economy and our prospects for resuscitation.
  
  Read more here.

  

  

• State of Kenya: The economic impact

  Posted: February 6, 2008, 5:43 am

  Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan met with chief executive officers of the of Kenya's largest corporations and other members of the Kenyan business community in Nairobi Tuesday.
  
  The CEOs forum was organized by the Kenya Private Sector Alliance and is expected to draft a presentation on a working solution to end the political and economic crisis in Kenya.
  
  Read more here.

  

  

• A History of Violence

  Posted: February 5, 2008, 11:39 pm

  In African folklore, there is a character that looms large for its polished deception, which guile often results in sizzling dramatic irony. The story usually culminates in a situation where the devious, meek-looking carnivore is entrusted with the care of the docile herbivores, often depicted as sheep.
  
  There is likelihood that lore might imitate life in the on-going dialogue over the Kenyan crisis, particularly given the appointment of people linked to tribal violence as negotiators and engineers of peace.
  
  Read more from Muciimi Mbatia here.

  

  

• Discovering Majimboism

  Posted: February 5, 2008, 10:20 pm

  In Banyala, a major dialect of Luhya, we have a saying ifula yabola ingeke which translates to "the tilapia warned the Nile perch". The general sentiment of this proverb is that even the little people can teach something to their elders. This little tilapia has been utterly confused by some of the terminology and violent opposition to seemingly harmless ideas expressed in articles here on kenyaImagine. So like any good little fish, I had to do some digging. I wanted to uncover the truth about Majimboism and why some Kenyans were for it while others were against it. Hopefully, by informing myself I can inform others in the same position who want to participate in the debates but find some of the history difficult to follow.
  
  Read more from Nanjala Nyabola here.

  

  

• A History of Violence

  Posted: February 5, 2008, 10:18 pm

  In African folklore, there is a character that looms large for its polished deception, which guile often results in sizzling dramatic irony. The story usually culminates in a situation where the devious, meek-looking carnivore is entrusted with the care of the docile herbivores, often depicted as sheep.
  
  There is likelihood that lore might imitate life in the on-going dialogue over the Kenyan crisis, particularly given the appointment of people linked to tribal violence as negotiators and engineers of peace.
  
  Read more from Muciimi Mbatia here.

  

  

• I said the pledge today

  Posted: February 5, 2008, 2:23 pm

  I said the pledge. Two days a week I said the pledge, and later, in a different time and place, I taught the pledge. Right hand on my breast, my heart, face lifted in a pose of perfect patriotism and inside, intensely glowing with the demonstration of national pride, I said the pledge.
  
  Read more from L. Akitelek Papakemus here.

  

  

• Opening doors

  Posted: February 4, 2008, 6:29 am

  It is clear that the time has come for us to stop taking Kenya for granted, that instead we must make a passionate and compelling case for it.
  
  We now have to argue ourselves and our compatriots into the idea of Kenya; to persuade ourselves of, and to think about, more deeply and with more clarity than we have ever had to summon before, the merits of this nebulous entity that we call home.

  We now have to fight for it; the honeymoon, such as it was, is over. Before we do that, we had better know what we are talking about. It is important to remember that no identity is fixed, no way of being oneself immortalised in stone. Every morning, when we wake up, each one of us has to remember who we are, and act accordingly, gathering our recollection of self from memories, and dreams, from half-forgotten quarrels and recollections of things overheard, from our yearnings and loves and dislikes. We piece these little shards of reflected, refracted and remembered things together again every morning, to become ourselves.

  

  

• Obama woos 20,000 Minnesotans

  Posted: February 4, 2008, 5:53 am

  The race for the Democratic Party's ticket at the next American presidential elections is assured a place in history. In this normally conservative country, there will for a first time be either a woman or an African-American on the party ticket.
  
  Illinois Senator Barrack Obama is that African-American, and he has taken the country by storm, forming a coalition for change that cuts right across America's social fabric. This weekend, ahead of the Super Tuesday block of caucuses and primaries the Senator was campaigning in Minnesotta where a large community of Kenyans abroad live. He was received with rapturous applause (not in the least by the Kenyan contingent) and with such passionate adulation that it was not always clear who was the spectacle the tall thin man who could soon become the most powerful man in the world or his supporters, crying, cheering and worshipping in his presence.
  
  Read more here.

  

  

• Let us talk about what really ails our country

  Posted: February 1, 2008, 6:26 am

  Last week, I treaded where angels dread. I talked about what I believe has plunged our beloved country into chaos.
  
  I received overwhelming response. Readers concurred that we have swept the ugly truth under the carpet for too long. That is why we are consumed by passions we cannot control. I also stirred the hornet's nest, so the barbs came fast and furious.
  
  Read more from Nancy Mburu here.

  

  

Blah blah blah

Fish cakes

Alas a fish cake.

Yet more fish cakes

Guess what ... yeah ... fish cakes.

The end of the fish cakes