Kenya Imagine

  • Can peace be instilled?

    Posted: April 4, 2008, 9:21 pm
    an one shape norms and institutions to build peace and development? I take a skeptical view of training programs that purport to reduce violence and 'peacebuild'. After a visit to a rural training center in Liberia, however, I may stand corrected.

    Liberia's national demobilization and reintegration program came with a 'weapons test'--if you had a weapon, you got demobilized, including a package of household items, cash, and a voucher for a vocational training program.

    Read more from Chris Blattman here.

  • Rage and Reconciliation

    Posted: April 4, 2008, 9:20 pm
    Is Njoroge a fool or a hero? I was reading a Kumekucha thread the other day, as you do, and he chipped in with a story about the murder of his father and brother.

    Why do people share these sorts of stories? One reason, it occurred to me, was that by telling them, one brings home to one's opponents the consequences of their position. One might also hope for sympathy, charity or understanding from them. But all these require that one's opponents share the thought that one is equal to them: the lives of Njoroge's relatives matter just as much as those of the guys wielding the panga (or those supporting the guy wielding the panga). If sympathy is feeling with Njoroge, then it demands seeing that the lives of his loved ones are just as valuable as mine; charity and understanding likewise; and it is impossible to understand the magnitude of his tragedy without seeing it as something that could happen to one.

    Discuss here.

  • Standing on the tracks

    Posted: April 4, 2008, 7:25 am
    The announcement has gone out by now, the President and ODM head Raila Odinga have agreed on something at last. Forty ministers for all your troubles. Still, there is the little matter of who those will be. Around the country, the public are in the dark, holding on and hoping that whatever decision is made, the country can move on from the crisis and begin to rebuild itself, maybe even to address the stark issues that confront our present and paint a sorry tomorrow. A sigh of relief on the last day of February, but still immobilised, we are waiting to exhale.

    Patrick Gathara's cartoon here.

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Fish cakes

Alas a fish cake.

Yet more fish cakes

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

The end of the fish cakes

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