Kenya Imagine

• Closure

  Posted: March 19, 2008, 6:54 pm

  It's funny how sometimes you think that you know the cause of a problem only to later realise that you really have had no clue all along and that you've been fighting the wrong demons. For the first time in a long while, I was overwhelmed by a deep feeling of despair, anger and as much as I hated to admit it to myself, an acute sense of desperation. After spending hours crying and beating myself up over the sorry state that is now my life, I finally figured out what the problem was. It was me.
  
  Read more from Monica Wangeci here.

  

  

• A More Perfect Union

  Posted: March 19, 2008, 6:52 pm

  American presidential candidate Senator Barrack Obama takes on the challenge of the Pastor Jeremiah Wright association to addresse race in America and its impact on his candidacy. Published here is his speech.

  

  

• So tonight when I sleep, I will sleep with one eye open

  Posted: March 19, 2008, 6:49 pm

  I refuse to accept that it is over. The hatred and the fighting is not over. No one can convince me that the less than 12 hour turn around on the choice between no negotiations and a coalition government came through the goodwill of our precious politicians at the helm. We should not be fooled into becoming clapping buffoons when the people responsible for bloodshed continue to leech us dry. We should not pat them on the back and say thank you for the resolution.
  
  Read more from Bee Dablewkay here.

  

  

• The Road To Eldoret

  Posted: March 19, 2008, 6:46 pm

  The scene from his hotel room screen in Nakuru still fills his mind. Let's call him M. He's from Muranga, he still drives the Datsun 120 Y that he bought in 1972 when he was a twenty two year old boy.
  
  He's got a family in the outskirts of Eldoret where his wife runs the family farm (cows and wheat) that he bought in 1982 from a white man fleeing the coup that "never happened," as he is fond of saying. "So I got the farm cheap."
  
  Read more from Tony Mochama here.

  

  

• Cat Lady

  Posted: March 19, 2008, 6:44 pm

  Roman showed up at my mum's front door three days ago. I had last seen him five before that day.
  
  Five years ago I was 21 years old, ambitious, adventurous, working as a store manager for an Italian Cookware Company in the central business district of Mombasa Island, volunteering at a children’s home every weekend, playing soccer and diving in the ocean every Sunday afternoon, and was the naughty young lady engaged to be married to the minister’s son. Roman was older, strangely settled at 29 and eager for me to stop being bad and wild so I could be his wife.
  
  Read more from Juliet Maruru here.

  

  

• Sovereign Wealth Funds: power vs principle

  Posted: March 19, 2008, 6:41 pm

  The world's financial press has a new obsession to succeed the "sub-prime mortgage" craze of autumn 2007: "sovereign wealth funds", those state-backed investment bodies whose accumulating assets (often fuelled by the high energy prices of the 2000s) are roaming the globe in search of businesses to invest in, partner - and perhaps devour. The enormous capital assets of these funds, and their potential influence on western markets and business, make the focus (and to a degree the fear) understandable; but some at least of the reporting and discussion about these new behemoths in the western media has a bias towards misunderstanding.
  
  Read more from Fred Halliday here.

  

  

• Africa and the Future

  Posted: March 19, 2008, 6:38 pm

  Published here is a speech given by the Commonwealth Secretary General Don McKinnon on February 22 to the Africa Investment and Finance Conference held at the London Stock Exchange.

  

  

• Your turn now, Zimbabwe

  Posted: March 19, 2008, 6:20 pm

  With even Kenyans starting to lose interest in the Kenyan saga, Zimbabwe looks set to become the next African media darling. This time around, though, coverage will be more spotty; president Robert Mugabe has banned reporters from ‘hostile' Western countries-meaning all Western countries-from entering the country in advance of the March 29th election.
  
  Read more from Arno Kopecky here.

  

  

• My Gikuyu Journal

  Posted: March 19, 2008, 6:17 pm

  "No other (ethnic)nation in Kenya is washing its dirty linen in public, why are all of you emerging young Kikuyu writers doing it?" the email correspondence began. I offered to respond in a well argued essay in public. My correspondent would have none of it. "...I hope you see why that would be similar to the whole 2005-2007 ‘outing of Kikuyu culture and issues'.
  
  Read more from Njoroge Matathia 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