MetaFilter posts tagged with kenya

jittery UK government reveals itself before potential claims of former v

infini — Mon, 06 May 2013 10:42:33 -0800

Mau Mau to Midnapore: Confronting the brutality of empire There are certainly some Britons, including academics, journalists and human rights lawyers, who are aware of the realities of colonialism. However, in the society as a whole and in the media in the UK there are still far too many who seem strangely reluctant, even after so many decades after the end of the British empire, to come to terms with the true nature of colonialism or learn from the perspective of former subjects who had rebelled against it.

Nairobi's mod scene radically corrects Rock Star's lack of creativity

barnacles — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 05:48:43 -0800

A contributor to the Gameological Society visits his local video game store in Nairobi to demonstrate the sort of games he found there, finding gems like "Guitar Hero: Beatles and Friends" (actually, mostly Bahasa pop music), "Robocop" (with extra rainbow), and what might just be the ne plus ultra of video game mods: Grand Theft Auto San Andreas: Kirk Douglas.

Unga Rev

allkindsoftime — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 04:41:17 -0800

Kenya has another election coming next year, the first under their new constitution, and since the last one in 2007 was followed by violence that left hundreds dead, and hundreds of thousands displaced (many of whom remain so today). In a country where massacres are still a somewhat regular occurrence over issues like grazing vs. farming lands, the majority of people still live on less than a dollar a day. Not so with the political elite, who pay themselves better than any other country's politicians (by a factor of 6, as a ratio of their country's GDP). The Ministers of Parliament recently voted themselves a hefty bonus on top of their tax-free salary, and people are not happy. Kenya's government is already propped up by hundreds of millions of USD in foreign aid, in a country where corruption is rampant. Activists are finding creative new ways to voice their opinion as the next election looms, but many are expecting a return to the violence of 2007-8.

Kenyan record-winning distance runners trained by Irish missionary

filthy light thief — Sat, 11 Aug 2012 06:57:44 -0800

Team Ireland is celebrating its first gold medal at London 2012, thanks to boxer Katie Taylor, but the Irish also had an unlikely part to play in another, very special Olympic victory on Thursday. Kenyan middle-distance runner David Rudisha joins notable alumni from Saint Patrick's High School, a 500-student boy's school started by Irish missionaries in 1963, in Iten, a town in Kenya. Brother Colm O'Connell, though no longer teaching at the school, is still a highly regarded coach in one of the world’s great running capitals. The school plants a tree in honor of record-making alumni, though some of the more recent alumni are getting shrubs, to save space. Brother O'Connell joined the school on a three-year contract, but ended up teaching for over 30 years. When he started at the school, he knew nothing of running, but he took over the young athletics program from Peter Foster, brother of British athlete turned BBC commentator, Brendan Foster. O'Connell studied under Foster for a year, and took over without much formal trainings.

“Most of my coaching I learned from the athletes – watching them training, talking to them, seeing what worked – very basic training methods. I also read a few books about coaching and talked to a few fellow coaches who I met at competitions. That was my only experience. It wasn’t until about five years later and I began to learn more technically about the sport.”

From O'Connell's years of leadership, numerous high-altitude training centers have opened up in the area, including a center for women runners, started by Kenyan-born Dutch runner, Lornah Kiplagat. These high-altitude centers are not only pulling together Kenyans, but runners from around the world. Kiplagat also represented Kalenjin people, the called by some "the running tribe" as the majority of 800 meters to marathon-distance runners from Kenya have been Kalenjin. While Rudisha represented Kenya, he also represented the second Olympian from the Maasai people, following his father, Daniel Rudisha.

Its downhill all the way

infini — Sat, 09 Jun 2012 05:35:24 -0800

The need for speed This article contrasts two very different timeframes in the 'social life' of the plant stimulant miraa--known elsewhere as khat--in Kenya and beyond. One, the heritage and cultural associations around the age of the trees themselves and the other, the impact of the perishability of the product even as demand for it grows on continents halfway around the world, thus the "need for speed". (Previously) (Previously)

"My aim is to capture the beauty of the moment of any situation."

ChuraChura — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 06:48:25 -0800

Kindly enjoy these and look at your world differently. We live in a beautiful country people. Enjoy that.

Mutua Matheka is a Kenyan photographer out to change perceptions of Nairobi and Kenya, for Kenyans and foreigners alike. (via)

Colonial sunset

infini — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 08:39:35 -0800

The Foreign Office’s “guilty secret” revealed Thousands of documents detailing some of the most shameful acts and crimes committed during the final years of the British empire were systematically destroyed to prevent them falling into the hands of post-independence governments. Those papers that survived were flown back to Britain and hidden for 50 years in a secret Foreign Office archive in breach of legal obligations for them to be transferred into the public domain. The Guardian details some of those papers released earlier this week. The name of Barack Obama, the father of the American president, is on the top of a list of names revealed in a hitherto secret British colonial file of Kenyans studying in the US. In June 1957, Eric Griffiths-Jones, the attorney general of the British administration in Kenya, wrote to the governor, Sir Evelyn Baring, detailing the way the regime of abuse at the colony's detention camps was being subtly altered. The "elimination of ranking terrorists" was a repeated theme in secret monthly reports on casualty figures circulated by the director of intelligence in British-controlled Malaya during the 1950s. The extent to which successive British governments set out to hoodwink parliament and the public over the decision to give the US a military base in Diego Garcia and force out the islanders is now laid bare. Britain planned to test a very virulent type of poison gas in what is now Botswana, the colonial archives reveal.

#Help, #sheep #missing.

infini — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 12:07:58 -0800

Twitter is being used as a crime-fighting tool by a tech-savvy village chief in Kenya. Francis Kariuki, the administrative chief of Lanet Umoja, has used the micro-blogging site for everything from tracking down missing sheep to stopping home invasions.

Go face to face with your ancestors.

ChuraChura — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 06:43:52 -0800

The Turkana Basin Institute and the Kenya National Museums are digitizing their fossil collections. Look around their virtual laboratory and collections and get up close and personal with some of paleoanthropology's most important fossils. There are over 20,000 specimens that are housed in the National Museum of Kenya in Nairobi as well as in the laboratories of the Turkana Basin Institute to the east and west of Lake Turkana. These range in age from 28 million years to several thousand years in age and have been recovered over the past six decades of exploration of the fossil rich deposits around Lake Turkana in northern Kenya.

Fishing Without Nets

filthy light thief — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 10:49:23 -0800

"There are two ways to fish, with nets or without. But if I fish with violence, will my nets be full of blood?" Fishing Without Nets is a short film about Somali pirates from their point of view, which won the recent Sundance Jury Prize in short filmmaking. The film will tour film festivals, and may be worked into a feature-length film. Writer/ producer/ editor Cutter Hodierne told his story of filming in Kenya to Vice. Funded by his filming of U2 on tour in 2009, Cutter Hodierne went to Kenya to research a feature-length film about Somali pirates from their point of view. Hodeirne went with his friends and film collaborators John Hibey and Raphael Swann, where the three men were robbed on Swann's first night in Kenya. That experience, and the three and a half months spent filming Fishing Without Nets changed Hodierne's view of Somali pirates from his early romanticized view to a more nuanced understanding.

"When I arrived there, and I started living among these guys — and getting robbed and stolen from myself — I started to realize it wasn't this simple. There's a sliding scale of morality that exists in a place where people are very desperate, and I started to change my perspective on how I viewed the pirates."

You can see 27 other videos from Cutter Hodierne on his Vimeo account, including a rough video called Abdi Buys Gun, subtitled Somalialand, which might be the lead actor in Fishing Without Nets, a 17-year-old named Abdi.

You can hear the whistle blow, across the Nile

infini — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 06:07:29 -0800

When it comes to railways, the British are famous for their colonial legacy of one of the world's most extensive railway networks built across then British India but their lesser known and far grander vision was the Cape to Cairo railway network intended to stretch across the sea of colonial pink on the African continent. Left incomplete due to politics and geography, most of it is still almost as it was built in its day. Egypt, historically and internationally, was the second country after the UK to have a working railway, from Alexandra to Cairo built by Robert Stephenson himself. This was the first railway on the African continent, and the first section begun in 1852, was opened to Kafr-el-Zayat in 1854 ; a further section throughout to Cairo was opened two years latter. From Cairo the railway was carried on to Suez, thus completing the overland route by rail. Until the opening of the Suez canal in 1869 it was a source of considerable revenue to the Egyptian State Exchequer. Yet its continued development eventually put the country into debt and the history of the railroad in Egypt is inextricably bound to that of the country's economic development. With more than 5,000 kilometres (3,100 miles) of track, Sudan has one of the longest railways in Africa, extending from Port Sudan on the Red Sea to Nyala in the war-torn west, and from Wadi Halfa on the Egyptian border to Wau in the far south. But it now carries less than six percent of Sudanese traffic, and the last passenger train to depart from north Khartoum station left in 2010, according to a policeman guarding the empty building. Ironically, it was conflict that initially prompted the development of Sudan's railway. The first section of the present-day network was built by the British in the late nineteenth century to support their military operations against Sudanese leader Muhammad Ahmad al-Mahdi, who had defeated the colonial forces some ten years earlier. It was later expanded, and used profitably to export animals, sugar and cotton primarily from Gezira state, Sudan's agricultural heartland south of Khartoum, between the Blue and White Nile. The best known section in its time (traveled on by the likes of Teddy Roosevelt while on safari) laid tracks through what is now Kenya and Uganda initially as a means to attract British settlers to the colonies of British East Africa as well provide freight transport links from the interior of the Uganda Protectorate out to the coastal city of Mombasa's port and harbour. Established as the Uganda railway and then the East Africa Railway Corporation as sections extended further into the region, it came to be popularly known as the Lunatic Express. The story of why it was built, how and by whom is a fascinating glimpse of history, geography and Hollywood style adventure. South Africa's railway network has given it its own place in history, including the story of Jack the Signalman - a baboon who helped his crippled master retain his railway job. Not only did he get his monthly rations from the government but he also received an employment number. Cape Town was where Cecil Rhodes dreamed of linking the African continent from top to bottom - a lost dream of an era of colonial and military history closely intertwined with massive engineering works and the evolution of modern transportation. Some of it carefully preserved even today as this newly BRICS nation pours investment into high speed transportation linking its capital city and the surrounding economic region.

The War on Twitter

Aizkolari — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 05:37:34 -0800

Did you know that Al-Shabaab, the Islamic militant group currently fighting for control of southern Somalia, has a Twitter account? As reported on recently in the New York Times and the Guardian, the militants use social media both to promote their propaganda and trade barbs with their enemies, including the Kenyan military's spokesman Major E. Chirchir.

Precious Loss

infini — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 05:35:10 -0800

The ruins of Gede are the remains of a mysterious lost city on the Swahili Coast of Kenya, located deep within the Arabuko Sokoke forest. The mystery of Gede (Gedi) is that it does not appear in any Swahili, Portuguese, or Arab written records and present day research has not yet been able to fully account for what actually happened to the city. The inhabitants were of the Swahili, an ancient trading civilization that emerged along the eastern coasts of Africa ranging from Somalia to Mozambique. Archaeological excavations carried out between 1948 and 1958 have uncovered porcelain from China, an Indian lamp, Venetian beads, Spanish scissors, and other artefacts from all over the world, demonstrating the occupants were engaged in extensive and sophisticated international trade. Questions still remain as to what caused the downfall of Gede, but by the 17th century, the city was completely abandoned to the forest and forgotten until the 1920s. Today, a National Museum, Gede's sister cities from the period are part of the ethnography based archeological work of Dr Chapurukha M. Kusimba of Chicago's Field Museum, whose lifework has thrown light on the precolonial heritage of the Swahili peoples.

Minority report

infini — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 01:29:43 -0800

Pain of being a Kenyan Somali Young medical student living in Nairobi talks about being from a minority under suspicion during a time of war. The Somali of Kenya The Somali tribe of Kenya The Somali have existed long before the creation of the Somali nation, and refers to a tribe not necessarily a nationality.

Famine in East Africa

bwg — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 18:12:11 -0800

With East Africa facing its worst drought in 60 years, affecting more than 11 million people, the United Nations has declared a famine in the region for the first time in a generation. Alan Taylor's In Focus quickly brings home the scale of the suffering, with a link to the CNN article listing several ways to donate.

Let Them Eat Sugar and drink ethanol.

adamvasco — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 14:49:58 -0800

Biofuels land grab in Kenya's Tana Delta fuels talk of war.
Among the culprits the Canadians Bedford Biofuels and the UK company G4 Industries Ltd
Tana River Delta is an area of Pastoralists and some hip hop musicians.
Some more from Nature Kenya.
Let Them Eat Sugar: Life and Livelihood in Kenya’s Tana Delta is a case study by the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Ecological Economics and Integrated Assessment Unit.
The Tana Delta and Forests Complex had been tentatively listed as a World Heritage site

DIY Internet

mkultra — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 17:04:34 -0800

"The technology used to create FabFi networks seems like it leaped out of an episode of MacGyver. Commercial wireless routers are mounted on homemade RF reflectors covered with a metallic mesh surface. Another router-on-a-reflector is set up at a distance; the two routers then create an ad-hoc network that provides Internet access to a whole network of reflectors. The number of reflectors which can be integrated into the network is theoretically endless; FabFi's network covers most of Jalalabad."
FabFi is an open-source initiative to bring low-cost, mesh-based networking to remote areas. Using little more than cheap, widely available routers and window screens, they piloted their idea in Kenya and launched JoinAfrica as a free, distributed ISP. In Afghanistan, they've brought the internet to Jalalabad, where One Laptop Per Child is also focusing their efforts.

Raw Music International

Dim Siawns — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 10:45:34 -0800

Raw Music International is a prospective television series about music from around the world that would usually escape the attention of folk not living in the middle of it. The first episode has already been shot in Kenya, and the folk behind it are currently trying to get it funded. But until it gets broadcast, we can read their accounts of going out and recording the hip-hop, reggae and more trad-ish music of Kisumu. If you're interested in THE MUSIC AND NOTHING BUT THE MUSIC, head over to their Soundcloud page.

Its only words, and words are all I have

infini — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 12:50:02 -0800

Binyavanga Wainaina remembers one night in the Kenyan countryside as a young man, an excerpt from his soon to be published memoir One Day I Will Write About This Place. Then a song comes on that makes me insist that we are leaving. Sometime in the 1980s, a Kenyan university professor recorded a song that was an enormous hit. It could best be described as a multiplicity of yodels celebrating the Wedding Vow. Will you take me (spoken, not sung) To be your law- (yodel) -ful wedded wife To love, to cherish and to (yodel) (Then a gradually more hysterical yodel): Yieeeeei-yeeeeei -MEN! Then just Amens and more yodels. All these proud warriors, pillars of the community, are at this moment singing in unison with the music, hugging themselves (beer bottles under armpits) and looking sorrowful.

"Our Shooter's A Military Man"

squishles — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 10:01:25 -0800

Emergency is a webcomic about pre-independence Kenya. Start with the first issue. "Kenya Emergency" is another name for the Mau Mau Uprising. Previously.

Mapping Kibera

Dim Siawns — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 09:46:35 -0800

Kibera is a slum in the southwest of Nairobi, often called the biggest slum in the world; some estimates of the population put it as high as 1.5m, although the 2009 Kenyan census puts the population at a rather more sober 170k(ish). Now, Kiberans are carrying out two similarly named but unaffiliated projects, Map Kibera and Map Kibera Project, to create maps of their home. MKP has a pair of rather slick-looking PDF maps showing the terrain and structures in Kibera. MK uses OpenStreetMap, which means that their cartographers can be rapidly update it to more accurately reflect how quickly things change in Kibera. They also have, inevitably, a twitter account, flickr stream and a blog to keep the world up to date with their work, including their ambition to start mapping another Nairobi slum, Mathare. Via the Beeb, which also has a nice wee audio slideshow about MK.

Don't Be Vague!

kaibutsu — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 18:27:42 -0800

Election night, Kenya, 2007. The votes roll in, and at some time around 11pm, as victory seemed imminent for the opposition candidate, all televisions in the country went black. When broadcasts resumed in the morning, the incumbent had materialized enough votes to soundly win the election. In the aftermath, a wave of violence broke out in which some 1,300 people were killed. In opposition to a domestic investigation of the violence, Kenyan MP's chanted 'Don't be vague; go to the Hague!' Now, three years later, some officials are a bit less enthusiastic. A series of articles on the ICC investigation of political violence in Kenya: I II III IV Kenya stands at a crossroads. It boasts one of the most corrupt governments in the world, yet has been one of the more stable sub-Saharan states, with a strong independent press and reform movement, including a Nobel Peace Prize winner. A new constitution was recently adopted, full of measures to eliminate corruption, but has yet to be implemented as the current Parliament continue jockeying under the old rules. The ICC is a first attempt to bring justice against the most powerful members of the Kenyan elite, with the goal of increasing the country's political stability. The six indicted have already been asked to resign. Meanwhile, corrupt leaders named in cables published by Wikileaks have been loudly denouncing the American ambassador, to remove the focus from themselves. The events of the next few months will determine the direction of the nation for years to come.

If You Can't Buy 700 Bicycles, Don't Buy Any

Xurando — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 10:27:36 -0800

The Hughes family does a good deed and gets beaten up by some in the international development community, reigniting the debate on poverty tourism. (previously)

got mny in yr pkt? kthxbai

infini — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 01:34:08 -0800

M-Pesa, the mobile platform based money transfer system launched by Safaricom in Kenya, is changing the landscape of money in Africa, and around the world. Competition is heating up even while the service expands internationally allowing transactions to occur between Africa, UK and Asia. Bankers, regulators, startups and operators all want a piece of the pie as even the phone manufacturers themselves get into this potentially lucrative business.

Circle of death :(

allkindsoftime — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 10:11:24 -0800

In 20 years, according to one estimate, wild lions could be extinct in Kenya. There are some hopeful efforts to help protect the native lion population, including this initiative to employ Maasai warriors to help protect them, the Mara Predator Project (part of Living With Lions), and the African Lion Working Group, but it may be too little too late.