"Our Shooter's A Military Man"
January 27, 2011 10:01 AM   Subscribe

Emergency is a webcomic about pre-independence Kenya. Start with the first issue.

"Kenya Emergency" is another name for the Mau Mau Uprising. Previously.
posted by squishles (7 comments total) 16 users marked this as a favorite
 
This looks interesting, bookmarking for later reading. Thanks!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:18 AM on January 27, 2011


Wow, love the art. Thanks.
posted by ghharr at 11:03 AM on January 27, 2011


Man this is great - a well drawn, well written comic about something interesting that I don't know a whole lot about. Sometimes the Internet really delivers.
posted by ChrisHartley at 11:25 AM on January 27, 2011


Already down. Bandwidth exceeded...
posted by Deathalicious at 11:33 AM on January 27, 2011


Whoops. Google Cache of Issue 1
posted by squishles at 11:38 AM on January 27, 2011


emergencywebcomic.com is hosted by someplace called Byethost.com [sic]. I took a look at their free hosting page... it offers 200 GB monthly transfer. I wonder if they got MB and GB mixed up or something.
posted by crapmatic at 12:26 PM on January 27, 2011


Very cool.

On #10 Chege talks about "Paying the Chief his tea."

Here in Kenya, tea is slang for bribe. Of course no one ever pays or takes bribes and culturally it would be a major faux pas to ever indicate that such a thing had been engaged in, so instead this convenient, universally-accepted moniker grew to become what is now a daily norm, and a part of almost any business transaction.

Kenya was colonized by the Brits, and with that came their tea, and the whole culture of tea time. So, when you're at an office, things aren't moving along so fast, and tea time is coming up, and you know you're going to be delayed longer, the suggestion would be that you pay for the "tea" thus alleviating the person who is supposed to be helping you of the need to take their break. Which, let's face it, they're still going to take. There's one in the morning, and one in the afternoon, conveniently.

So, that's what Chege is referring to when he talks about paying the chief his tea. In Kiswahili, an Arabic-influenced language, its "chai" - and very often you will get locals in various situations (say, manning a self-imposed road-block with thorny branches and rocks strewn across the road), who literally don't know another word for what they are asking for, so they will hold out their hand and insist "Chai! Chai!"
posted by allkindsoftime at 4:14 AM on January 28, 2011 [2 favorites]


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