Tevis Howard, a 2007 Brown University graduate and recent recipient of the Draper Richards Fellowship and the Rainer Arnhold Fellowship, is the 2005 Founder and Executive Director of KOMAZA, a non-profit community-based organization in Kenya. KOMAZA's mission is to "end chronic poverty in Kenya by promoting health, economic growth, education, and infrastructure development" through a tree farming social enterprise. Partnering with the Tree Biotechnology Project, KOMAZA plants fast-growning, drought-tolerant Eucalyptus trees as a cash crop for rural, substinance farming communities.
posted on Apr 10, 2008 - View this thread

Six Masai warriors will face cultural challenges when they run in the Flora London Marathon to raise money for clean water for their village. Meet the runners (video clip) Think about making a small donation in their time of trouble because when we had problems here in the US, they were most generous to us.
posted on Apr 7, 2008 - View this thread

Very recently the Kalenjin and Kisii peoples of Kenya's Olmelil valley began skirmishing over land disputes. Over 20 people have died so far. This type of inter-tribal unrest is nothing new in Eastern Africa. What makes this particular conflict most jarring to western eyes is that it's being fought with bows and arrows (Time Magazine Slideshow, a forum post with many large images inline, [coral cache of same]). You get the feeling that somewhere in Fresno, California Gary Brechter might be pretty wound-up at the moment...
posted on Mar 18, 2008 - View this thread

Saved from a lynching: Enrico Dangino, friend of Vigilante Journalist photographs a man seized by a mob and about to be set ablaze, then, with the help of his compatriot, frees him. More photographs and blogging from the ground in Kenya's current political crisis from Vigilante Journalist. via.
posted on Feb 13, 2008 - View this thread

Reading the news, the violence in Kenya can feel distant. For Mission in Action/Nakuru Baby Orphanage, located in the heart of the Rift Valley, the violence is all to near, and extremely troubling. (the last link contains images that may be very disturbing)
posted on Jan 30, 2008 - View this thread

A recent article in the The New York Times depicts the violence in Iten, a village 18 miles outside of Elderot that has somehow managed to produce most of Kenya's best athletes. Famous for its high altitude, forgiving clay roads, and dirt track, elite runner Lorhah Kiplagat chose to base her charitable foundation for women and her training center here. The camp is now under siege. Fellow humanitarian and former world record holder in the marathon, Paul Tergat, is missing. Former Olympian Lucas Sang is dead, and countless others are injured or missing.
posted on Jan 7, 2008 - View this thread

In 2002 Daniel arap Moi, widely considered corrupt, was replaced as president by Mwai Kibaki, promising reform. Kibaki was up for re-election last Sunday. Alleged election counting fraud has lead to tribally based violence in Kenya - 300 people are dead in the last few days. Recent comments from the challenger seem to be threatening a deliberate increase in the level of violence.
posted on Jan 2, 2008 - View this thread

Joan Root, who spent most of her life in Kenya, was a noted naturalist and filmmaker (along with her (former) husband. She was murdered by gunmen at point-blank range in January, 2006 in her home on Lake Naivasha. Lake Naivasha is the only fresh water source in the Great Rift Valley, and has become increasingly endangered by pollution and overuse for irrigation, and Root spent considerable time fighting to protect it. Today, a Kenyan magistrate acquitted the four suspects in her murder, calling the testimony of 13 witnesses "defective".
posted on Aug 10, 2007 - View this thread

"I did not evolve from Turkana Boy or anything like it" says Bishop Boniface Adoyo of Nairobi Pentecostal Church, who is championing the 'hide-the-fossils' campaign to force the National Museums of Kenya to not discredit the Christian belief of a universe that is only a few thousand years old.
posted on Feb 8, 2007 - View this thread

Hooded police commandos [wearing] gas masks raided the ‘Standard’ and KTN-TV offices early Thursday morning, made a bonfire out of the day's stack of newspapers and shut down the television station. (1, 2 (bugmenot))
posted on Mar 2, 2006 - View this thread

From Baltimore to the Bush. Until 2003, the Baraka School in Kenya was home to 20-40 underachieving teenagers from inner-city Baltimore. As Time Magazine reported in 2000, the experiment was not without complications, ranging from curriculum deficiencies to disciplinary issues. PBS also did a short piece on Baraka the same year.

By 2002, though, things were shaping up. The Baltimore City Public School System found that students at Baraka improved markedly in their academics. One alumnus is an up-and-coming hip-hop star.

Baraka was closed indefinitely in 2003 due to terrorism-related security threats. But a new documentary, The Boys of Baraka, recaptures the essence of the place, its successes and its failures alike.
posted on Oct 5, 2005 - View this thread

Mountain Voices. 'This website presents interviews with over 300 people who live in mountain and highland regions round the world. Their testimonies offer a personal perspective on change and development.'
posted on Apr 10, 2005 - View this thread

only in Kenya [via memepool]
posted on Mar 4, 2005 - View this thread

Kenyan ecologist Wangari Maathai, founder of the Green Belt Movement in Africa, has won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize. [Via WorldChanging.]
posted on Oct 8, 2004 - View this thread

kenya (note: flash)
posted on Jan 30, 2004 - View this thread

The Cricket World Cup is turning into a political mess as England boycott Zimbabwe and New Zealand's players refuse to play in Kenya. Meanwhile, Cricket legend, and Pakistani politician, Imran Khan wonders if UK involvement in a war on Iraq should lead to a sporting boycott of England. We've had sporting sanctions on South Africa, Olympic boycotts in 1980 and 1984 - should we ever mix politics and sport?
posted on Feb 10, 2003 - View this thread

The Lost Boys of the Sudan are a group of nearly 17,000 orphans whose parents were murdered and whose homes were destroyed by a government miltary turned against them. They marched on foot, without food or water, under attack from hungry predators & occasional strafing miltary fire for several years until settling in a squalid refugee camp in Kenya; nearly a decade later, the U.S. began a humanitarian policy of importing them, a few at a time, and resettling the lucky few in cities such as Chicago, Atlanta, and even Fargo, N.D. (NYTimes, reg req'd)
posted on Jan 3, 2003 - View this thread

Kenya switches off Internet access Don't let Rumsfeld know about this. Might give him some ideas. If there is a lesson in this it is that putting all your eggs in one basket (GE, Home Depot , energy and phone companies etc) is at best a questionable practise if a government can get a grip on the basket's handle. No fear that it will happen in America? Then notice how the threat of not handing out federal monies gets compliance with what the government wants,ie, education, etc.
posted on Dec 25, 2002 - View this thread

Israelis targeted in Kenya attacks
On the day of important primary elections in Israel as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon faces a party leadership challenge from Foreign Minister Binyamin Netanyahu ahead of January's general election, suicide car bombers have killed at least eight people at an Israeli-owned hotel in Mombasa, Kenya, just as two missiles were fired (but did not hit) at an Israeli jet that had taken off from the city's airport. The Kenyan ambassador to Israel suspects these attacks were carried out by al-Qaeda, and this theory is being checked on as I write.
posted on Nov 28, 2002 - View this thread

One Good Turn Deserves Another Mantaine Minis, 6, was living in a hut in a remote village in Kenya, in need of lifesaving heart surgery, when the improbable happened one day in June. A group of students and parents from the Langley School in McLean (Virginia) as on safari at the Masai Mara National Reserve, where Mantaine's father is a game warden. That's when someone from the village told a Langley teacher about Mantaine's heart problem. From there, things seemed to unfold quickly.
posted on Sep 20, 2002 - View this thread

Maasai Present Cattle to US Ambassador
To mark September 11, people of Enoosean, a Maasai (Rift Valley Province, Kenya) village, have presented 15 heads of cattle to a visiting US ambassador, William Brencick. The presentation was organized by a Maasai medical student who was visiting New York on September 11.
    Brencick said the embassy would find it difficult to ship the cattle to the United States and had decided to sell the animals to raise funds to buy beadwork made in the village for display at a September 11 memorial in New York. (1)
posted on Jun 3, 2002 - View this thread

Tanzania 9th most corrupt country , of course the word here is that they bribed transparency international to place them above kenya....... according to the director "HIV AIDS is killing millions of Africans, and in many of the countries where AIDS is at its deadliest the problem is compounded by the fact that corruption levels are seen to be very high. While it is imperative that richer countries provide the fruits of medical research at an affordable price to address this human tragedy, it is also essential that corrupt governments do not steal from their own people. This is now an urgent priority if lives are to be saved." local traditions don't help either. what this story does not say is that 4,000 girls will be circumsised at this ceremony and the govt/police won't interfere.
posted on Jul 16, 2001 - View this thread

No soup sex for you!. President Daniel arap Moi has urged Kenyans to abstain from sex for at least two years to try to curb the spread of HIV. The government announced plans on Wednesday to import 300 million condoms to fight AIDS.
posted on Jul 12, 2001 - View this thread