Leso: Haiku

Leso frames clime-change.
Sno crest mountain no more so.
Not a scent, Toulouse!

Copenhagen: Haiku

What my blog worthy,
My Tweeple do in Rift V?
What my weather likes.

The Seven Rings of Planet Pacquiao: Haiku

Awe+ tag et smile.
Bayless orbiter, swelt'ring.
Typhoon & lightsail!

One Hundred Open Access Journals for Facilitators and Learners

A good number of online journals are available for facilitators and learners of different kinds.

One useful list of such journals is provided in the link below.

Click here to get >>> The Journal Links

Kenya: The Shamba System and Deforestation

In a column published in Kenya's Daily Nation of September 18th, 2009, Dagi Kimani staunchly defends the shamba system, long practised in Kenya, against the call for its abolition by the likes of Wangari Mathai and Kenya's PM, Raila Odinga. He rejects the notion that it is a factor in the country's loss of forest cover. However, his minority view does not stop the truth (the weight of evidence) from being true (that is, from pointing to its incontrovertibility and many-sidedness).

Kimani acknowledges that his stand on the shamba system is not based on "any particularly wide experience in conservation or education in environmental matters, but on the fact that [he] was born and brought up in Lari constituency, a third of which is under forests where the "shamba system" was successfully practised until the mid-1990s."

In his view, the shamba system is simply "an arrangement where farmers are allowed to farm on government forest-land for a period of up to three years after commercial timber plantations have been harvested."

He elaborates:

"THE HARVESTING IS DONE AFTER THE trees have matured and can produce good timber and other products. This phase, in which all trees are cut down leaving bare ground, is called "clear-felling". Clear-felling only applies to plantations of exotic tree species, such as cypress and pine. In Lari, which, on the Nairobi-Naivasha Highway, stretches from the Uplands junction to a kilometre short of Fly-over, travellers can see examples of these plantations, with rows and rows of trees planted just like any other crop.

The shamba system was designed to allow farmers to benefit from the fertile soils just harvested of trees. But this was not exactly charitable. About two years after the farmers were allowed into the forest-land, government workers would replant the land with rows and rows of pine or cypress.

It was a neat trick. As the farmers weeded their crops growing alongside the young tree seedlings, they would, in effect, ensure that the latter were not choked by vines and fast-growing weeds. This, in effect, saved the forest department from the need to hire thousands of workers to tend to the young trees. In the third year after the young trees had become sturdy, the forester would relocate the farmers to a new clear-felled ground, and the cycle would go on.

Contrary to Prof Maathai's assertion, the shamba system was never designed for areas that carry indigenous plantations...In Lari, when the law worked in the 1970s and 1980s, the only indigenous trees that one was allowed to harvest from time to time were fallen bamboo, and this very sparingly under the watchful eye of the forester..."

[Read more]

Like Kimani, Peter Oduol sees considerable merit in the shamba system, arguing that:

The Shamba system, a form of Taungya where agricultural crops are grown together with forest tree species, has been quite widespread in the high-potential areas of Kenya since the early 1900s, and still is very popular. When properly practiced, the system allows sustained, optimum production of food crops along with forestry species from the same land and thus meets most of the social and economic needs of the shamba farmer.

The weight of available evidence suggests that this spirited defence of the shamba system is too narrowly cast -- Kimani on his neighbourhood in Lari (which allegedly never had a natural forest cover) and Oduol on the economic benefits of the commons to those who "plunder" it for their particular gain. In effect, both are in denial vis-a-vis the accelerating, across-the-country depletion of natural forest cover that is evident all around for any unbiased eye, and mind, to see.

A report of the African Conservation Foundation, though mild in its own assessment of the deleterious effects of the shamba system on natural forest cover, nonetheless captures, non-commitally, the essential and powerful evidence against the shamba system:

"The shamba system failed in some places because the Forestry Department had no staff to supervise the protection of the young plantations after retrenching most of the forest guards and phasing out the cadre of staff referred to during the colonial era as patrol men...

By the late 1980s, conservationists had started raising the red flag on the system's failure as signs that the scheme was being mismanaged and abused begun to emerge...

Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) was the first government organisation to criticise the system following its restoration by Presidential Decree in 1993 with claims that 19 per cent of natural forests had been encroached upon by the shamba system.

For instance, KWS argued that the shamba owners had secretly extended their boundaries to the Naro Moru Gate of Mt Kenya National Park, and that the remaining forests were being subjected to extreme pressure from squatters, who were felling more trees, and burning indigenous forest areas for cultivation.

Later, KWS was to expose an even more flagrant abuse of the system when its surveys indicated that 143 plantations, of approximately 200 hectares along Ruguti and Thuchi rivers, had been planted with the lucrative, but illegal marijuana instead of trees...

In 2004, the Government decided to stop the system and gave all the cultivators notice to vacate the forests by March the same year."

[Read more]

It Was Morning Again: Haiku

I walked in shallow
Thought. ’Twas morning in Chin Ya –
Rain and fire crack.













[Nairobi: Jan 16 & Jan 22, 2005]

October Rain in Gaia

["My mother is a fish" ~ J. Steinbeck]

Cold wind plows the ether, and plows there, gathering clouds in uneven, woebegone thotes.

Still, a felt frontal temp 'trop'.

Imagine, then, in that troopin townward, a bloody nuclear 'winder' and else that, let us further imagine, goes with it. How cataclysmic it would have been back in the day; how, lest we forget what ain't there (really) to remember, it would in its fullness, in a refreshed nightmare scenario, p.

And still, an October rain.
A passionate embrace of liquid presence like no other we want to remember just now.

And then.

This passion which is like no other.
This presence which is like no other.

We don't want to remember any another just now.

To c any another.

And we don't want to remember the 'trout' except by a flick --
of the imagination.

Flickerer's closer to his mother than she, she, thinks.









Redone (some): October 25-26, 2018

Monday Morning Questions of the Quarterback

What did they know that I, Quarterback, didn't?
What did I know, so that they didn't:
-- Didn't know, nor know that they didn't,
-- Didn't know that I knew,
-- Didn't have to know, nor have to have,
-- Didn't have to tell me save that they knew not (save that I knew) what I did know?
What difference will all that make now, in that in which it makes no difference,
And in that in which it makes?
What questions will they not ask that I myself have?
And that I myself dare not ask?
And not not ask?
And that I myself will not answer?
And not not answer?

Wildebeest's Theorem

1. "If you don't follow the crowd, you will not survive, as you will perish," says the wildebeest, who invests in The Crowd, the one and only.
2. "To succeed, don't follow the crowd," proclaims the Investment Guru, whose wisdom lumpsum, high-net-worth, individuals swear by [Read more].
3. "When we, all, stop following the crowd, we still will," muses the wilderbeest.
4. Fair point, though, is that, typically, not all will not follow. Wildebeest will acknowledge that, for sure.
5. Moral of the story, then? Never follow and never not follow the crowd on an impulse -- injudiciously; which is something else that's more important than Bill Bartman's trying to say here with his four rules, and in particular with his notion of the "instrument rated" pilot.

CSO 302: Qualitative Research Methods -- CAT

UNIVERSITY OF NAIROBI, DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY

COURSE: CSO 302: QUALITATIVE RESEARCH METHODS


SEMESTER: September-December 2009 [Module II]

CAT QUESTIONS [Released: 3.00 pm, 5th October 2009]

ANSWER ANY TWO QUESTIONS
1. Critically discuss the nine rules of Sociological method suggested by Giddens, highlighting what you consider to be the value that they add to the practice of qualitative sociological research in Africa to-day.

2. What is experimental research? Briefly discuss what you consider to be three of the most promising experimental designs for qualitative research in Sociology, and explain why you think so.

3. Briefly discuss the following pairs of terms, showing the main features of each term and how the terms in a pair resemble or differ from each other:
a) Hermeneutic Circle and Hermeneutic Interpretation
b) Content Analysis and Literature Review
c) Naturalistic Observation and Surveillance.


DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION: Saturday 24th October 2009, strictly from 11.00–12.00noon only.

NOTE:1. I prefer typed answers. Expected length of each CAT submission: 6 to 10 typed, double-spaced pages only
2. Additional marks will be awarded for answers which display originality of thought, as well as critical thinking. Marks will be deducted for Xeroxing published or other works, and for lack of seriousness (i.e. for sketchy, “bulletized” and/ regurgitated answers)
3. Your answer should clearly demonstrate, through citations, that you have engaged in noteworthy library reading for this CAT.

Deforestation Threatens the Family Tree

What Deforestation is and What it Does

1. What is deforestation? Read Here
2. Deforestation compromises livelihoods: Read More
3. Deforestation drains water resources: Read More
4. Deforestation is a threat to human life: Click to read ~ (a) and (b)

Surrealist Mindgames & Else: This U Gotta C

This surrealist Phenomenology of Mind isn't what GWF Hegel had in mind, is it? No, it's not. This sort of mindgame is another kettle of fish altogether; or shall I say, fis?

Click here to see what I mean. What the mind, a charged mind, and a camera can do. What can such a player play?

Isn't that a feast. A fistful of something or other, which (let's look at it one more time with our bearings just right, & eyes & minds wide open) let's see & locate!

Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber: Links To Online Resources

[This 'SOCIAL THEORY' Blog Post will be updated periodically]

KARL MARX
1. Brittanica's Brief Discussion of His Life and Works
2. Quotes From Karl Marx
3. Marx: Key Concepts, Ideas and Elements of Theory
4. Important Links to Texts by Marx and Engels
5. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: The Communist Manifesto
6. The MarX-Files (a Virtual Library)

EMILE DURKHEIM:
1. Emile Durkheim, a Biographic Note (From G. Marshall's Dictionary of Sociology)

MAX WEBER
1. Moriyuki Abukuma's Weber Texts
2. Weber's Fundamental Concepts of Sociology (From University of Chicago)

Place of Distance: Haiku

Abode of farthings.
Place/play of distant places.
Dismassiveterrit.

Before You Know It, a Century's Gone By

Before you know it, a century's gone by. Then another. Then all you can talk of is a distant place (this here) and another Time altogether, with which you are only in the slightest connected. Of people who, though quite who we are, we're quite, quite unlike. And so Time flies. In the main, though the emotions of roots and certainties of history remain, we're soon not really connected to any person we truly and personally know there, in the bygone Time.

Six September Tweets

Here are six tweets that I posted on my Twitter page today. Thought I should share them (the latest appears as 6, and so on):

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

6. Show me again my house of cards of yesterday, now that I'm older & wiser & dream-strapped & else. Don it dull in de memories? #MicroFiction

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

5. If this be September, thusly, how was my August house, sans down feathers & fluffy memories, Tinende? #MicroFiction #Writing #Nairobi #Kenya

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

4. The #Toyota Model #NDAH has a letter missing E-NDAH. Enda! Naenda. [Or was that NOAH I misread, in the haze of midday traffic? (update Aug 4)]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

3. A conspiracy of winds & tremors & else, here 'n there, heralds jst what the weatherman's promised, seems 2 me. #MicroFiction #Weather #World

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

2. Choice unbrella's out, in Iborian, the day being what it chooses 2 B. Against my wish? Nope!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

1. A coooold #Nairobi! C &, to boot, W! Did we perhaps forget to turn the September page? #ElNino

Are You on Twitter? Then try Social Oomph
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Kenya: Raila's Stunning Victory in the Bomachoge and Shinyalu By-Elections

Congratulations to PM Raila Amolo Odinga are in order, after his stunning, almost single-handed, victory in the Bomachoge and Shinyalu Parliamentary by-elections.

I think the nation will allow him to crow and thump his chest for a while. I suspect that in Nyanza lots of tongues are wagging with, at their tips, the nickname Agwambo. I susect that at State House President Kibaki and his kitchen cabinet are, instead, tongue-tied; nay, dumbfounded. VP Kalonzo must be lost for words too. I myself am amazed at Raila's nine lives; at his escape-artistry.

While this victory doesn't change/amend Raila's flawed inner, "private" character (which is what I suspect riles Ruto & else and everyone that doesn't fit into Raila's idea of his own future), it is nevertheless integral to his enduring and deepening public persona. The man is in our face, whichever way we turn -- and very much a part of what Kenya really is today -- warts and all. Kenya and Raila are, in our time (which is the only time we have), inextricable. This is an effect you cannot, honestly, ascribe Kibaki, who increasingly belongs in the past, or Kalonzo. There's a qualitative difference here -- whatever your ethnic background. Right?

All this is said against the background (which, indeed, reinforces it) of the recently widespread, and even believable, predictions of the political doom and gloom that awaited Raila post the just concluded by-elections. He was in recent days constantly attacked and ganged-up on by all and sundry -- Ruto, Moi, Jirongo, Livondo & else (na wengineo). It did not seem that there was a way he could get out of all that quagmire unscathed. The man seemed cornered.

Political (and military) campaigns are all about victory. Victory has a great and convergent effect, all in all. It converts non-believers into believers, ardent or passive or reluctant; and the greater and more consequential the victory, the greater the effect.

Raila is the victor now, nationally; though no one really knows about tomorrow. His party, ODM, wasn't even the incumbent in Bomachoge, Kibaki's PNU was, via Nyachae's Ford-People! The man seems unstoppable right now. I think the better word is: He seems so inevitable. As the saying goes, however, a week in politics is an eternity.

As we look forward to the 2012 elections, is it safe to say the following (Ruto and The Hague always being the wild cards): that as things stand now Raila will still sweep Nyanza and Western Provinces (whichever ways they are split before 2012); that those two provinces will be massive anchors for his fight for the hearts and minds of Nairobi voters, who in any case have generally tended to lean his way; that he will get far better than 25% (and enough) of Rift Valley votes (remember that his camp also won the last two by-elections in the Rift Valley, despite Ruto's nonchalance); and that Coast and North Eastern votes are his for the taking? And Central Province? Isn't he day-dreaming if he continues to harbour thoughts of winning it -- or even faring decently there? I'll leave most of Eastern Province to "native son" Kalonzo.

Having said all that, who our next President will be in 2012 remains a twenty billion shilling question; for 2012 remains eternities away.

Kenya: Going Home Early Today To Be Counted

It's national census day in Kenya today. And I'm going home early to be counted. Me and my family. We will answer all the questions: including the vexed one of ethnic background -- still called tribe in official circles here.

We are all proud of our ethnic diversity, I believe -- even as we try to build a larger country, Kenya. We shouldn't be afraid of what the politicians might do with the numbers that come up. They cannot do any worse than they already have. And I suspect some are pertified of the figures that will come out -- as petrified as they were ten years ago (and, even more so, twenty years ago). Remember, the census figures of 1999 were never fully released. The 1989 figures were doctored, as many people in the know claimed to know. And whose respective dockets were those then, pray tell? Hypocrisy -- hypocrisy -- is the name of the game for the politicians. But it shouldn't appear to be sonfor ordinary citizens, or for the leaderships of our civil society. Hypocrisy and contradition. The 2009 figures might not be fully released either -- till after the 2012 elections.

I can think of several ways in which the new census numbers that will come will represent an opportunity we can creatively leverage for a stronger, more prosperous, more assertive, more changeful Kenya; a Kenya more attuned to and more ready for critical mass of all sorts. For one, the new numbers are certain to sharpen the equity debate across the country -- and that will be a good thing. Emergent changes in the social structure will be more sharply in focus. There will be new narratives about the nation's changing use of technology, about its innovativeness, about its world of work -- and, mor broadly, about changes in its culture. Much more will be known about the evolution of our physical, technical and intellectual assets at the household level, across different strata or segments of our changing social structure. A clearer picture should emerge about the distribution of absolute and relative poverty across the country. And likewise about the consumerist middle class.

In one of this morning's daily papers it was boldly estimated that we Kenyans now number 40 million. So be it! A watershed of sorts this. Worth taking a note of. And I can't deny I was abstractly sort of pleased by the numbers!

Heir to Dead Trees: Haiku

Give me green. Eri!
Didn't want it t'be fantasy.
I'm air! To dead trees!

Mirror: Haiku

In your eyes, Is less.
Sadly, ice only you man!
Keen, dry leaves. Air bound.










[For Kimani Maruge (global pupil), d. 14 Aug 09. Nairobi]

Bodiseye: Haiku

Eye. Very same storm.
Sea! How I enter myself.
How -- I undo tins.

Other Hand of the Father: Haiku

Distant gaze. Red timbre.
Ballots of revolution.
Weche Milosee.

Birth of Totality: Haiku

All the dead matter!
Reason we count as we do!
Shadows at noon tide!

Collage II: Haiku

Levi-dead-in heart.
He chumped indo de coal tay.
Taniel afta rim!

Collage I: Haiku

Oben! Sisemi.
Upon a cream, tenderness.
All that rouge, aha!

Kenya: The Tug of Cremation and Tradition

"Dust to dust, ash to ash"!

No burial tug-of-war ever gripped the attention and imagination of both men and women in Kenya than that of S.M. Otieno -- a prominent Luo lawyer long married to Wamboi, a Kikuyu -- some twenty three years ago (in December 1986). In some ways, it in fact drew worldwide attention, particularly among feminist and gender advocacy groups.

With the recent passing of Mr. Joshua Okuthe -- a well-known sports personality in Kenya, a former national athlete and a member of the same Umira-Kager clan of Ugenya and Alego that, after a long court battle successfully fought, buried S.M. Otieno according to its wishes and against those of his wife -- the far-less emotive, intra-ethnic controversy was now not about where to bury the dead one, but whether to cremate or bury his remains.

Okuthe's first wife insisted on cremation, arguing that that was his own wish. His second wife, and his clan, sought to bury him in Muhoroni, in the lake region. The first wife pulled a fast one on the rest and had him cremated in Nairobi under the clan's very nose and before a court injunction could have effect. This left the clan with no option but to ritually bury the idea of his body in an empty coffin. It proceeded to do just that, in a low-key and partially televised ceremony at Okuthe's modern-rural home in Muhoroni.

I suspect that an appropriate portion of Yago, the funerary tree of Luo tradition, took the place of the absent, nowhere-to-be-found, body in that bewildering coffin. This is a practice which Luo mourners have typically resorted to when the body is lost and is nowhere to be found despite a decent period of search and waiting and when all sorts of other protocols have been duly observed. So there are really never empty coffins there, and no hollow burials.

Philip Ochieng, the renowned columnist, whose writing I much admire, suggests (I think he thinks that he argues rather than suggests) that cremation was very much a Luo tradition, which they lost (and have forgotten all about) when their paths and those of the Baganda -- who (and whose 'country') bear the names that they gave them, and who have kings because they gave them a kingship though they themselves had nonesuch -- crossed and for a while merged, some centuries ago. For him, the evidence of a cremating past is in the persisting and highly charged practice of "Tero Buru" (Dispatching of the Ashes), which brings to an end, several days after the actual lowering of the departed's body into a defined grave, the series of burial rituals for the community's dead prominents. To Ochieng, "Buru" refers to real (but now only imagined) ashes of the departed. You get "Buru" only whey you burn and burn to the core, and in this case when you cremate. Read more.

I think that Ochieng's conjecture stands on very thin ground, though I have never really tried to unravel the symbolism of "Tero Buru" -- or the genesis of Oburu. In fact, I have never paid it much attention, beyond its momentary theatricality -- which is perhaps monumental on occasion, and which is infrequently shown on local television.

There is just so much historical narrative and folklore -- compounded by a long-running, deeply ingrained and 'living' system of norms and values -- that leaves one with the suspicion and even conviction that the actual burial of ringre (Flesh of the Departed, who is Elsewhere) was the common mode of practice long ago in Sudan*, and long before contact with the Baganda was made -- a practice which only continued, unabated, after that greatly consequential symbiosis was overshadowed by the further, single-minded, movement into present-day Kenya. This view seems to be reinforced by, as I am able to tell, the persisting burial practices of other Luo groups -- who remained and remain in the Sudan, Ethiopia and the DRC, and who did not experience that passionate politico-cultural embrace between the Jok'Owiny and the Baganda.




______________________________________________
*Sudan: That land of countless pyramids, more numerous than in all of Egypt. Pyramids, which symbolize not the practice of cremation but the very idea of creation, and of the everlastingness of the body (and hence of the life hereafter).

A Mid-Season's Day: Haiku

A cold, austere morn.
Petal, spent, on polished floor.
Birds. Of a sometime.

Ati What You Don't Know About M-PESA!

An article published at the CGAP website (click here to read) appears to want to credit the success of Safaricom's M-Pesa entirely to the ingenuity of a consulting group based in the UK, and almost none to the role that Safaricom played, and clearly none to the communicative habits and inclinations of millions ordinary Kenyans who have made M-Pesa a household label worldwide, and potentially a global brand.

I have posted a comment at the CGAP website which reads as follows:

Your saying that "Safaricom was not heavily involved in the [M-pesa]pilot" -- when, clearly, the pilot would never have been possible without Safaricom's network [of technology and people (ordinary Kenyans)] -- reminds me of a Tweet some 2-3 months ago which claimed that M-pesa's success was (solely?) thanks to a grant of some 2 million British Pounds from DFID. How many DFID grants have gone down the drain?

That particular grant would have had no effect were Safaricom not already succeeding on the ground with its mobile phone service. And Safaricom would not have been succeeding already were it not for millions of Kenyans who took to it as the answer to the technical and bureaucratic tyranny of the then fixed-line, monopoly operator.

To me, the most important passage in the above narrative is this:"Furthermore, the design of the application interface and entire system underwent several iterations. It began as a tool for the repayment of MFI loans. It was launched as a P2P transfer service. Such changes were made because the pilot team did their research, and closely monitored usage patterns. Their findings in the field were then fed back into the design of the application." That passage underscores the rather obvious fact that the M-pesa service as rolled out reflects ordinary ("unbanked") Kenyans' expressed preferences in the use of mobile telephony -- not to pay debts but to meet social capital obligations and other reciprocal duties and responsibilities.

Ordinary Kenyans were an integral partner in the initial success of M-pesa, and cotinue to power its growth. Some credit to them, please.

I invite any and all comments from you

Fossil Tower: Haiku

A jostling for Mau.
Pipes punched dry! Failed rains ragga.
Faint water war-drums.






_______________________________________________
Note: First and last lines swapped July 16, 2009.

Soulmate: Haiku

I will share with you
Sorrows you have borne alone,
For they are mine now.

Grading Obama's Speech in Accra, Ghana, July 11, 2009

The AidWatch outfit at New York University has graded the speech Obama made in Ghana's Parliament last Saturday. Click here to see the grading.

I posted the following response to the grading exercise:

I was expecting to see a grade for this passage, which was part of Obama's speech: "Africa doesn't need strongmen, it needs strong institutions."

I would have given that passage an A for proper proritizing and focus, but with a cautionary note: The first thing strongmen do when they come to power(and too often even prior to formally assuming office)is to infest and take control of key institutions -- Judiciary, The Treasury and Central Bank, Armed Forces, Police, Education Media (TV, Radio, key newspaper houses) and even the "Church" -- with their cronies (usually co-ethnics, if not relatives)and like-minded self-aggrandizers and looters. Thus, there is dim hope for sustainable equity, justice and transparent governance in our institutions before the strongmen are themselves put out of action.

That is why, in the Kenyan case, the Waki Envelope, now in the hands of Luis Moreno-Ocampo at the Hague, has such great potential as a game-changer and catalyst for strong institutions.

As I see it, from Gandhi Wing, that was perhaps the most important passage for those genuinely concerned about establishing broad-based and lasting democratic space in Africa.

Let me add this now: The passage in Obama's speech not consistently (and perhaps least) borne out by either historical or contemporary evidence -- though it might ring true to the immediate ear and in theory should be true -- was: "Governments that respect the will of their own people are more prosperous, more stable, and more successful than governments that do not." Saudi Arabia isn't a democracy, but is more prosperous and appears more stable than most countries today, thanks to the "Oil Weapon". So are the Emirates. So is Libya. South Africa was very prosperous (though one-sidedly so) during the apartheid era. And Russia and China are getting quite there.

And lest we forget, we're not interested in governments getting prosperous -- an aberration which led M. Djilas decades ago to talk of a "New Class" in Soviet Russia. It's the people's prosperity we're interested in.

PS: For the full text of Obama's speech click here

The Waki (CIPEV) Report and After

The Waki Report is headline news again, after news broke yesterday that Kofi Annan had released the accompanying "Waki's Envelope" to the International Criminal Court at the Hague. The envelope is widely believed to hold the list of 10 leading perpetrators -- the "10 Most Wanted", as it were -- of the post-election violence that erupted across Kenya following the disputed election results of December 2007. Kenyans are excited at the sudden turn of events. Yesterday, in my own first tweet reaction to what Kofi Annan had done, I remarked: "Great day 4 Kenya, now that K. Annan has sent the Waki List to THE HAGUE. Let the nightmare begin 4 the champions of impunity & doublespeak".

The 518-page Waki Report itself does not have the 10 names of The Most Wanted. For those names, we will have to wait a while for ICC's Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo's next few moves. In the meantime, click here to read the complete Waki Report, sans the cover page.

Waki's Envelope has been, to me, key to resolving the issues surrounding Kenya's post-election violence and bringing to an end the completely self-serving and hypocritical to-and-fros that we have witnessed since 2008, as desperate politicians have crudely sought to give cover to impunity and threatened ambitions. Now we'll just have to see how everything turns out. I do think that Kofi Annan's move, yesterday, will be a game-changer of profound proportions for Kenya -- and for Africa.

Vosty (@Vosty) "updated" this tweet yesterday: "Just a thought: Waki List suspects required 2step aside 4investigation! Kibaki/Raila suspects! Then what?" He seemed to worry that the departure to the Hague of a few leaders, including the top two, would rob Kenya of all its leaders -- an obviously untenable prospect. My answer to him, though, is this: We will always find a leader, even leaders, amongst us -- even if there's only one last man or woman standing. And there will be plenty of potentials before that unlikely scenario of The Last Man or Woman. But Vosty clarifies his position in a tweet today as follows: "findin leaders is not ma worry, the mess that r our institutions! Nuthin is clear cut!" Good point!

So, not to worry. I think, though, that we can trace that worry to the media-hogging passions, even pathologies, of our current crop of leaders -- whose effects have been to leave us in "no doubt" that there is no one else out there whom we can choose in their place. But Vosty clarifies his position in a tweet today as follows: "fidin leaders is not ma worry, the mess that r our institutions! Nuthin is clear cut!" Good point! Perhaps, after the Hague, we'll begin to build our institutions in earnest, fully knowing (based on clear evidence before our own eyes) that no one's indispensable.

Freshbump's A-Z of Typographers

Modern typography builds upon a long tradition. Today's typographers are far from being out of fresh ideas. That realization, alone, is a delight.

Click here for an A-Z of what all this means, by way of truly refreshing images and conversation pieces.

Alien Brother We Didn't Ask M/Any Questions: Haiku

A roomful of tears.
Pictures, days, we remember.
Rainbow in the... Time!

A Chorus Michael Jackson Never Danced To

[Here's a chorus MJ never danced to, a rendition of a popular Swahili ballad from Kenya]

Wani ua ua ki (ki) pezi
Wani ua ua,
Mwendo wako wa ma (ma) ringo
Wani ua ua!

Kiuno chako che (che) mba mba
Wani ua ua,
Wani ua ua ki (ki) penzi
Wani ua ua!

Nomad II: Haiku

Nor kindred spirit
Stays the nomad's course. Nor king.
It's the vast harshness.

Gatherer: Haiku

Is what keeps me going:
To see all that yin-yang yields.
Feets! Don't let me go.

First Case of Swine Flu Confirmed in Kenya

[Read updates at bottom of the page]

Nairobi was abuzz last Saturday with rumours that the first case of swine flu (H1N1) had been detected or confirmed at the AAR clinic, based at Sarit Centre, which is one of the country's leadng shopping malls. The event behind the buzz was quickly dismissed by the authorities as either a "hoax", or a premature newsbreak concerning a case that in the end tested negative at the CDC-Kemri Labs, located in Nairobi's western suburbs.

Keyans seem generally to have accepted the government's explanation late last Saturday. Little did they know that that was the lull before the storm; that the government would get back to them in about 48 hours with a confirmed case -- not in Nairobi but in Kisumu City, far to the west of the country.

A 20-year old British student from the University of Nottingham College of Medicine, who, it turned out, was already in the country when the "hoax" broke -- having arrived in Nairobi on Sunday, June 21st, and having then travelled some 350 kilometers by bus to Kisumu -- ended up testing positive for swine flu last Sunday, June 28th. The government did not go public with the confirmed case until yesterday, Monday. The story hit the newspaper headlines today. Read more from:

(1) The Standard and,

(2) Daily Nation.

I do not detect any palpable panic in the general public: I was at the sarit Centre this morning. I walked some of the streets, downtown, this afternoon.

I think the Mexican experience in this matter strongly suggests that this absence of panic in Nairobi is not without reason -- or recent precedent. Perhaps, too, in a quaint sort of way, the Saturday "scare" numbed some of what might have been nerves today.

Still, it is reasonable to say that the Kenyan government has handled the case quite clumsily, since the student was a member of a visiting party from a part of the UK [East Midlands]well known to be a sort of swine flu "hot zone" right now, with at least 63 confirmed cases. The visiting party of medical students should have been quarantined (and should have themselves asked to be quarantined, on ethical grounds)as soon as they arrived at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) more than a week ago.

There is another culprit here, let it be said. The British government was derelict here; it SHOULD HAVE ALERTED Kenya. Better still, it should have quarantined its own citizens before allowing them to travel to an obviously more vulnerable country -- both economically and in matters of preventive, and curative, medicine.

The British government will owe Kenyans one big one, should things get out of hand; and even now is obliged to join Kenya in a substantial way in preventing things from getting out of hand.

UPDATE:
1. July 1, 2009 story in The Standard: Click here
2. July 3, 2009: It is reported that confirmed cases of H1N1 in Kenya has risen to nine. Read: The Standard

Michael J'Angelo: Haiku

I can C U dance,
In th'in between. Hear U sing.
It's my soul danceth.

A Ghost Harmattan in Nairobi City

Yesterday afternoon I "updated" this piece on my Twitter page.

Just thought I should post it here in order to share it with my blog visitors. So, here:

A palpable temp drop, dwntwn, this mid-aft. A ghost harmattan, sort-of, grips da city. A romp of dry leaves, which -- let them romp

Incidentally, one of this morning's papers reports that a strong wind blew a small plane off the runway and into the trees yesterday afternoon [killing a 70-year-old lady, seriously injuring the pilot, and attracting a band of looters], as it tried to land at Malindi, Kenya. I don't know if there was a connection with the winds experienced in Nairobi.

What connection there was was in what we noted and what surprised us when we got home last night. There had been rain in our part of town (while there had been not a drop in downtown Nairobi). Yet what was remarkable about the afternoon wasn't the rain there but the strong winds that had accompanied it.

So, it seems, the ghost harmattan was more widespread that I'd originally thought.

Michael Jackson, via Abydos: Haiku

Th'King of Pop's no more.
O Faeries, be with him still --
For a million years!









_____________________________________
About Abydos: Click here to read more

Pictures of Young Barack Obama

Click here for a see-for-yourself: a Picture Gallery

Ninja Obama Wastes a Marauding Fly With One Lightning Strike

Here, have a look at the big swat

For our very own Macharia Gaitho's tongue-in-cheek, "iko kitu", word-picture of the whole "Sagana": Click here

Need I say more? Go bro!

Neda, Dying

Here's the distressing You-Tube video of Neda dying, to see for yourself: Click here






P.S: How to treat a gunshot wound

Vuvuzela For the Beautiful Game, in 2010!

I love Vuvuzela. The name itself has built-in poesy, which we want the world to get comfortable with. It's a new comfort zone we're offering, and we're willing to compromise.

I've recently (4 to 6 weeks ago) heard the Vuvuzela on the streets of Nairobi -- "my city, my life" -- and was pleased that it was at last here. The Vuvuzela-laden commercial I've seen on TV is heart-warming, and calls to mind the Africanness in all of us Africans. And I have seen and heard, on TV, the Vuvuzela "at full play", most currently at the FIFA Confederations Cup tournament in South Africa.

I haven't been to a live soccer match for decades, though, so I don't know if a multitude of Vuvuzelas in full blast (there is no other kind of blast here) exceeds the tolerable decibel level -- for the scientist and for reasonable men and women (young and old) -- when you are actually in there for over ninety loud and clear minutes. And I don't know what the ardent and not so ardent fan really, really thinks about the incessant bleat that's the hallmark of a jam-packed South African or other stadium. But, clearly, there are concerns being raised in important stake-holder quarters, which call for give-and-take.

Vuvuzela's haunting, primeval, elephantile bleat has something aroused and arousing about it. Something trenchant, even, when you flip the coin. It gets the soul going, but not, I suppose, that of the opponent -- or that of someone more used to a sedate (sedated?) kind of mass gathering and participation.

The question to be answered by FIFA in the not too distant future, well before 2010, is: Is too much of a/an (always good) Vuvuzela -- is making too concentrated a bleat of it -- too much to be any longer good at any one place of fun and merriment? Alternatively, is Vuvuzela a great African contribution to soccer fandom, or a fun but noise polluting and irritating instrument which Sepp Blatter, FIFA's boss, only pretends to love, for now; that is, till he is rid of his current hosts?

I think we can eat our cake and have it, Vuvuzela addicts. Outright ban would be too cruel and unbecoming, appearing as it would to be culturally particularistic. I think the use of Vuvuzela can be allowed on strictly enforced terms. Thus (a) you can choose to allow only a limited number of designated groups of entertainers (or bands)to enter the stadium with an ensemble of Vuvuzelas and other instruments (remember, not every Brazilian soccer fan enters the stadium with a Samba instrument); or, (b) you can permit only a specified percentage of paying fans, say 5-10% -- issued ahead of time with special tickets or tags -- to enter the stadium with Vuvuzelas.

Bottom line: We're going to have Vuvuzela, and we're going to have fun in 2010! And the Great She Elephant, wherever she'll be watching from, will, I believe, approve!

Neda's Pass: Haiku

Unwanted airs.
Cold calc plodes 'er b'lievin heart.
Mama baby's gone!






Note: Link to: Tributes to Neda

None, Too Distant: Haiku

I've gone to great lengths.
And covered no distance, none.


Ends. My chourney ends!

Rain

Somebody wondered out "loud" on Twitter the other day why there are so many (African?) tweets about rain. Why shouldn't there be? It's the most natural thing, for all humanity and through all time.

When it rains it rains not only outside and not only over there and not only on but also inside our bodies -- which are at one with the rain, even though the body be cold and weary. We rain in spiritual and material communion with the rain, when it rains -- even though the spirit be wary. When it rains we rain in synchrony with it, and it rains with us.

Which is not to say that there are no horrors!

Rain is, and always has been, nature's most visible promise of continuity -- promise that another time will come, and that it will find you here, and that there will be more of you (and you will be the witness) when that time arrives -- blessing of all blessings.

It is life's most inclusive, and its most generous, insurance scheme: the one which, in the broad scheme of things, always pays and always delivers witnesses -- witnesses to the Light, which there (and thereby) shall continue to be.

So when Ayi Kweyi Armah asked, "Why are we so blest?", the answer he so desperately sought, and which eluded Modin and Solo and even him -- the answer of all answers and all of Two Thousand Seasons -- was: Rain.

Ma'nade! : Haiku

Dead hooves et crossings:
This is how the story ends?
O my snow-cap't mound!

No One, Going Home, Should Cry: Haiku

No one...has to cry.
Etched brow mimics a stun'd vale.
Such bitter tears.

Mihaela Lica on Twitter, Haiku and Maria Puente

Mihaela Lica has written a commentary on Maria Puente's piece on the quality of Facebook and Twitter writing, which I commented on yesterday. Lica's commentary is titled, "Twitter is Haiku, if you Didn't Know it by Now". You can read it here.

I have written a comment on Lica's own comment on Puente's comment, and posted it on Lica's blog. I am reproducing my comment here below, just to give additional access to it, access under my control, which some readers might more easily gain:

"Greetings from Nairobi, Kenya.

I do appreciated your contribution to the on-going conversation regarding the quality of writing on Facebook and Twitter. I did mention in my own blog-post yesterday that Maria Puente's piece is a valuable piece of advice to all who would like to add value to their Facebook or Twitter contributions. Content is the real "King of Kongo", but it has to be one's own and it has to seek elevation beyond the mundane. ReTweets are other people's content, which we pass along. Pepy's diary entry on a bad ("down") day should not be today's standard "update" -- particularly when we are "up" and/or "about".

Still, the average social-networker (or social capitalist) does need a measure of orientation -- indeed, in view of all the water that has flowed under the bridge, re-orientation -- but is currently left, in this particular jungle, to his/her own Twittering devices. That is not the way the Great Conversation that's social networking is going to truly benefit from the angularity of our individual "takes" on the wonderful diversity that's the human condition.

I did also quote the Debby Weil "pearl" in my blog post yesterday, but her own contributions which you cite certainly do not measure up to her own stated standards or ideals, or to those that Maria Puente was clearly rooting for. We do need standards of quality, to shovel a large section of today's "diarists" out of the rut of mediocre articulation/cnversation.

Incidentally, let me say this and then I'm out of here, the Kobayashi Issa haiku that you quote does not -- certainly not in the English translation that I see -- meet the 5-7-5 standard which many of us are attempting to preserve today in Twitter. What do you say?"

Maria Puente's Art of Writing on Facebook or Twitter

Maria Puente bemoans the all-too-common habit of writing on Facebook and Twitter as though art, the art of writing, does not matter in those fora. She complains, "the modern status update is not always compelling reading." I cannot but agree with her entirely. In a recent twitter update I remarked that "content is the real King of Kongo." She puts it much more elegantly. Clearly, "Feeding the cat" or "Watching TV" is no one's king -- though, Puente concedes:

"To be fair, even great diarists of the past had bad days: Samuel Pepys, the Englishman whose journals clarified a big chunk of the 17th century for historians, sometimes had nothing more imaginative to say than: And so to bed."

Yet she wants something more: "Surely we could do better 350 years later?", she remarks.

Approvingly, she quotes Debbie Weil, author of The Corporate Blogging Book, who notes:

"Great blogging is great writing, and it turns out great Twittering is great writing — it's the haiku form of blogging."

And she, Puente, insists: "Funny, clever and sassy updates and tweets stand out because they are the exception. Boring, vapid or just TMI — too much information — updates often dominate in cyberspace."
Click here to read more

Further Reading:
1. Click on link to read: Ten Ways to Put Your Content in Front of More People.

Of Kenya's 1 Million Child Workers

A story in today's East African Standard reports that Kenya has one million child workers -- children who are out of school and working under hazardous conditions -- despite the national policy of free primary education for all. More

University of Nairobi Students Reject Sub-Standard HIV/Aids Exam

Last Monday, University of Nairobi students walked out of an examination hall in protest against a compulsory, end-of-semester HIV/Aids examination paper which, they argued, was not only sub-standard but also contained the answers that they were supposed to struggle to give.

That was truly a strange incident. Equally bizarre was the revelation that the paper had a multiple-choice format, which is supposed to be contrary to University policy -- though some of us have been rooting, unsuccessfully, for the sanctioning of that format as an option in specific undergraduate settings (particularly courses with very large student numbers). More

Maseno University Students: Sexually Active, Averse to Condom Use

A study by Kenya's Maseno University's School of Public Health reports that while nearly 70% of a sample of 500 Maseno University students were sexually active, only 15% consistently used condoms during their (practical/empirical?) 'tests' of "sexual compatibility". More

Ninth Life: Haiku

What else shall I tell:
What I didn't do in nine lives?
Grass grows 'neath my car!

My City: Haiku

Aint my Iborian
Too big a place for thirty?
Telltale winds blow by.

Happy Ness: Haiku

What d'I say to dis?
De answer's pretty much known:
Fu-furahi day!

Obama's Speech in Cairo: June 4, 2009

Obama's speech, it seems, was well received, both by the live audience and the global TV audience.

1. To view the speech: Click here

2. To read the full text of President Obama's speech in Cairo, click here

Witness to Manda: Haiku

Coup da bin so. Brave!
Khou la seyy'd: dis de de ma!
Mon, soon, he'd bin -- fien'!

Obama the Nilote, in the Land of the Pharaohs

Obama the Nilote, whose own roots are the Nile's very own, today comes upon the Nile's journey's endless end, there in Egypt -- the glorious land of the Pharaohs. That same Nile, which is timeless: nourisher of Time itself, which is likewise timeless; and nourisher of the earth's very soul.

How so very apt the moment & how so very nice & else!

May his speech there be great and may it gladden Imhotep's heart, who is for all Time!


____________________________________
Note: Obama at the Sphinx and the Pyramids:
Click 1
Click 2
Click 3 (For info on the Sphinx)
Click 4

____________________________________
References:
1. Ali Mazrui, "Nilotes I have Known, From Obote to Obama"
2. Philip Ochieng, "The Pride of a People: Barack Obama, the Luo"

Structural-Functionalism

Structural-functionalism is a compound of two broad social theories, or theory sets -- "structural" and "functional" theories -- which attempt to show how society is structured (or organized) and how its identified parts relate to one another in actual (real-life) social interactions and processes. Structural-functionalism are two sides of the same coin. You cannot have structures without functions, and no functions without the structures whose consequences and reciprocal rationalizations they happen to be and in fact are.

Structure refers to the inter-related, and inter-relatedness of, parts constitutive of a given type of social organization, which are required for its effective and sustained operation. Indeed, a discrete social organization (or system), which we may give a more specific label (such as society, or family or community), is the "social fact" that embodies the more abstract idea of structure, and structure is what enables us to see, by way of metaphors and similes, the shape and form of a generalized or particular kind of social organization. Social structure and social organization are thus, in effect, also one and the same idea. But that is still only one half of the story; for it is important to add that, in this sameness, structure represents what, and only what, we may call the statics of social organization.

Social organization has another side -- the functional side. Since it is to be understood that social organization is the product and reflection of social inter-action, its components must, ipso facto, be understood to relate to each other in motion -- some kind of motion, even if not necessarily perpetual motion. Hence the idea that the flip side -- a necessary side -- of social statics is social dynamics.

The functional side is the dynamic side of the social organization. However, it is functional not simply by virtue of the motion we observe in the moving parts, but of something more fundamental to sociologists. It is functional in the sense of the consequences of the motion(s) that may at first attract attention. Both Durkheim and Merton saw "function" in those terms; the consequences being the "solidarity" which the parts generate for and among themselves, and the adaptive capacity which the parts, in their motion and solidarity, confer upon the whole.



[More to follow]

Herdsboy: ILRI's June 2009 Calendar

The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), www.ilri.org, has a knack for producing remarkable calendars. I was just looking closely at the June 2009 calendar this morning, which affirms that view, and which prompts a nagging thought.

There is a warm and eye-catching picture of a boy taking a dozen or so cattle to pasture, such as there may be, and which stirs up a wave of nostalgia. He has just left the village, though the sun is already quite up. Both the sun and the village are caught up in a haze of dust whipped up by the cattle's, walking. But I can spy a thatched roof, which is what I was saying -- and which whips up emotions wherever you are if you remember these icons of the village, as we all do, don't we?

This is the Savannah, for sure. But it might be the wetter side of the Sahel, too. The animals look well fed, no matter where this is and no matter what all that dust suggests and no matter that the grass looks sparse.

The boy wears "gum" boots! But boys at that tense border between rapidly eroding innocence and days of raging hormones will wear anything that suits no one else's fancy but theirs. Or perhaps there is a patch of wetland, or a river to contemplate, somewhere ahead, and the boy knows more than you do. Perhaps there are snakes there, and horror stories. Perhaps where he walks there will one day a tarmac road, as there was, out of the blue, for me (who herded barefoot, but not for long).

And he, the herdsboy, wears a cap which is more hip than functional. He has a plastic "gourd" with him. Enough drinking water for the day, which mama made sure he had. Perhaps he already has had a meal, such as there was, and goes forth without any worries about logistics and without his mama fretting either about a son who gets the animals to feed and will not himself be gotten a meal so that he may grow properly into as much a man as his father and more.

The boy looks purposeful, and without regrets; but this is what I really wanted to talk about, very quickly. The ILRI slogan at the bottom of the picture reads: "More livestock means more young people educated." The picture and the slogan are a contradiction, for this is a boy of school-going age, who is not at school. Unless it is the picture of a boy on school holiday, it is, besides being a contradiction, obscene in its implications. And if he is not on school holiday, what one would like to know is: is he waiting for the fees to add up or is he a dropout or a hired hand or an orphan or an eldest son or else?

Directors' Shareholding at Cooperative Bank of Kenya: A Stink to High Heaven

Like other Kenyans, I am proud of our country's cooperative movement, which is a shining example around the world. And I am proud of the Cooperative Bank of Kenya (CBK), a state institution which had its IPO only last December. Before the IPO, only cooperative societies had a real chance of buying CBK shares in bulk. For retail investors, there was one over-the-counter route to obtaining CBK shares, for a good number of years. This was what is now Suntra Investment Bank, which is presently weakened by scandal of huge proportions.

I have just had a look at CBK's Annual Report and Accounts for 2008, which has just been released. I am talking in particular of pages 144 to 146, which, thanks to an aspect of Kenya's corporate law, obliges the bank and other publicly quoted companies to show the distribution of shares among the bank's top 10 shareholders, the bank's own Directors, and different categories of the bank's shareholders. If you peruse those pages too, you will, as I do, smell a rat that stinks to high heaven.

CBK has a total of 3,492,369,900 issued shares, and a total of 116,068 shareholders. That averages at 30,088 shares per shareholder, regardless of category. More importantly, Kenyan individual shareholders own 939,112,300 shares, and there are 112,774 of them. This averages at only 8,327 shares per Kenyan individual shareholder. Alas, among CBK'S seventeen Directors (who own a total of 138,995,700 shares), the average is a staggering 8,176,217 shares (that's more than 981 times the number owned by the average Kenyan investor).

In fact, if you compute the average for Kenyan individual investors without including the shares held by the Directors: the total number of shares held by Kenyan individuals (non-directors) drops to 800,116,600 shares, and the average among the 112,757 of them drops to 7,095 shares per individual (which is 1,152 times less than the average for the Directors).

We can look at the directors' allocations to themselves in even starker light, as follows:
1. The Managing Director owned, as at the end of December 2008, a total of 68,121,000 shares.
2. The Chairman of the Board owned 8,000,000 shares
3.The Vice Chairman owned 7,700,000 shares
4. The Company Secretary owned 5,090,000 shares
5. The Commissioner of Cooperatives owned 2,750,000 shares
6. Five other Directors also owned just over 5 million shares each
7. Three other Directors owned exactly 5,000,000 shares each
8. One Director owned 2,750,000 shares
9. One Director owned 2,310,000 shares, and another owned 2,300,000 shares
10. The "poorest Director", representing the Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Finance, owned what you may call a "token" of 1,000,000 shares! [Currently each share sells at around KES 6.50, or US$0.083]

The circumstances under which these stupendous amounts were allocated and paid for require a forensic investigation. The Directors should step aside while this happens, for, clearly, there has been no transparency here. Previous annual reports of the company may suggest where these shares came from over the years. For at least a couple of years after the bomb blast, annual reports showed significant amounts of issued shares, without explanation as to who was receiving them. The public has reason to need to know now. At the SACCOs, and at the bank's registry, officials did not seem to ever know that additional shares were being made available each year for purchase by members. What Suntra did over the counter, as far as one knew, was to match retail buyers and retail sellers who had owned their shares for some time, perhaps even since before the bomb blast, which nearly reduced the bank to a rubble, in August 1998.

The shares previously held by individual cooperative societies, amounting to 64.56% of the total, were (wisely in my view) grouped together, just before the IPO, under a corporate entity called Co-opholdings Co-operative Society Ltd. This ensured, and still does, control of the bank by the country's cooperative movement. However, the then acting Minister for Finance, John Michuki, issued a strange edict prior to the IPO which keeps secret for some five years or so the identities of the societies (and perhaps other "entities") brought together under that corporate entity. Let us hope that there are not even more rats under cover there. Five years may be too long to find out the truth!

Kenya: That Unobscure Object of Ridicule

Kenya's youth no longer have any political heroes, and they have no champions. Nor do the poor and the hungry and the marginalized and those ill of health. Their erstwhile heroes have committed the political equivalent of hara kiri before their own eyes -- theirs and theirs. Any name picked from a list overpopulated by the discredited lot is likely to be met with hoots of derision and dismissive laughter, whichever name is mentioned as a possible exception and a potential hero in the days ahead.

At the helm of the political class are, of course, President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga, the most ridiculed twosome in all of Kenya's post-independence era; a sort of two-headed gargoyle. In their official prominence, and enormous capacity for attention-grab, the pair has become that inobscure object of ridicule -- and loathing. This is a tragedy of monumental proportions, both for the duo and the nation, for all societies must have an acknowledged leadership -- which must be trusted to lead, and lead with vision and coherence to be trusted. But there is no trust here, for there is no coherence and no vision. The public interest does not matter. In its place there is brazen parochialism. And there is pathological greed, mean-spiritedness and myopic self-interest.

More and more Kenyans, it would seem, are cultivating the view that it will not matter who wins the next Presidential election in 2012. So, there may well be no "fire next time", contrary to widespread concerns here and abroad. There will be no one worth fighting for, or dying for. What is more likely to happen is that certain political fortunes will come to a dead stop at the hands of an electorate that at last rejects, with finality, their decades-old Presidential and related ambitions. Kibaki will, of course, be retiring. So the future is not as forbidding for him as for Raila, for whom time is clearly running out; and who does not seem to see that Kibaki is perhaps letting the time run out unhindered and even, by design, quirkily -- at whatever cost, that is.

The face which the twosome appears bent on presenting to the nation elicits only opprobrium, on a large scale, which is infecting the entire political class; which, incidentally, is not guilty merely by association, but by brazen deeds, acts of omission and, in effect, broad-daylight contempt for the peoples' sovereign aspirations. There is now mutual contempt, as Parliament degenerates and descends into a den that will defend its own at every turn and every opportunity, against a public opinion that has gone hoarse in its incessant call for accountability, simple justice, equity and the practice of basic principles of elective representation.

Crow Bar

Paka Chee, Rhapsode:
"Mi milele na yeah, yeah!
All her's, sugar dough."








[Haiku]

A Dog's Life

Froze by the headlights.
Something else will matter now.
Time! Nor will mine fly.






[Haiku]

The Egyptian Book of the Dead: A Re-Reading

A number of versions of this iconic text, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, are to be found floating in the Internet. I give below three links that I have found worth perusing. One of them, Link I, is, save for a few omissions (which I shall mention in a monent), a true replica of E.A. Wallis Budge's "Transliteration and Translation" first published in 1895 by the Trustees of the British Museum, and republished in an "unabridged form" by Dover Publications in 1967. The full title of Wallis Budge's publication is: The Egyptian Book of the Dead: (The Papyrus of Ani) Egyptian Text Transliteration and Translation.

The omissions in the online version at Link I which I hinted at a moment ago are, specifically, (a) the absence of the Egyptian text/hieroglyphs (this is the much more serions omission) ; and, (b) the exclusion of Wallis Budge's "Bibliography." Thankfully, the Dover hard-copy edition of 1967 contains both the full measure of the original Egyptian hieroglyphs -- and for that reason is of far greater epistemological, hermeneutic and historical value than the online edition -- and the "Bibliography" (or, more correctly, the References).

There may be other omissions, but I suspect that even on closer and more exteded scrutiny they will be minor. It is only today (May 20, 2009) that I even thought of searching, and indeed searched, the Internet, for the first time ever, for an online version of the book; and it is only on May 21st that I attempted a comparison of my hard copy with the online version. I did not have a lot of time in which to do this, too many things demanding attention, but the impressions I have made will have to do for now [Note: The first draft of this blog post was penned and saved, but not published, on May 20, 2009. An update was inserted and completed on May 21st, when the post was published for the first time. Blogger records the date of the first saving, though I read that this dating set-up will soon change. If it has, it is not an automatic switch, or I would not have had to edit this chapter as I have. More updates on this post will surely follow, and I will remember to indicate the dates].

I have had a copy of the Dover edition for just over thirty one years now, going on thirty two, having bought the book on August 26th, 1997 at the Illini Union Bookshop at the University of Illinois, at Urbana-Champaign. It has been a constant source of inspiration during all that time, even as my life itself has gone through significant changes and rites of passage. Its influence has insinuated itself into my poetry, even, and into examples I occasionally use in my graduate and undergraduate classes.

I consider The Egyptian Book of the Dead to be one of the greatest and most awe-ispiring books of all time, and not just because it is an African text that temporally precedes many, if not most, of the world's great writings -- including the Bible and the Quran. It already articulated certain ideas which subsequent cultures, civilizations, histories, narratives and even religions came to associate, with no apologies or accommodations at all, with elsewhere and with other origins. For example: the ideas of the life hereafter, and of the one God (He of many names); and the meme of the "Son of God", and of what morphed into the Ten Commandments.

The blurb itself describes the book as "unquestionably one of the most influential books in all history ...[a book which] served as the most important repository of religious authority for some three thousand years." So my superlatives have a precursor -- indeed, precursors.

Via the book I have been inspired by aspects of the captivating life-story of Pepi II, for example (of Pepi and the Pigmy). Besides the content, the form that characterizes the book's conversations and incantations has itself greatly inspired me by its grandeur and example.

From time to time I will make brief comments on sections and aspects of the book, and on any related matters, as the moments at which I have Time shall prompt me. For now, enough.

Here, then, are the three links:

1. Link I (the "complete" E.A. Wallis Budge transliteration and translation): Click here

2. Link II: Click here

3. Link III: Click here

[Updates on: May 21, 22 and 23, 2009]

Time Traveller

Achtung! The man said.
You weren't the only one there.
One froz'n tear drop.





[Haiku]

My Blog is My Avatar, It is My Ankh

My blog is, for me, two things in one. It is my one true avatar -- the one constant me at the one invariable place where I am and where you find me, as I am and as I might be(come). And it is my ankh.

Avatar = 1. Click here 2. Click here

Ankh = 1. Click here 2. Click here

Mauri Yambo's Blog Posts at RssSearch

Two of my blog posts currently feature at "RssSearsh: Rapidshare, Mega Upload & Torrent Search".

These are:

1. Messenger, at Two Bridges [Haiku]
2. Six Sigma Obama.

Click here to go to the RssSearch site.

Harvest

Dreams & Else Sunday:
Tomatoes und May-on-Nais.
A sudden rain dance!








[Haiku]

On Why Not to Award Honorary Doctorates to Those Whose Body of Work is Yet to Come

President Barack Obama was invited to deliver a commencement address at the Arizona State University (ASU) the other day. His hosts at ASU -- Smell a rat? Isn't that in John McCain's home-state!?! -- had seen it fit to warn him in advance that he would not be getting any honorary degree from them, much as they desired that he grace the occasion. Their reasoning: His "body of work is yet to come."

Obama went anyway: Click here

Moral of the story: Honorary degrees are not rewards for political success -- or office.

Obama of course joked that those who chose to not award him a degree would have their financial records subjected to IRS scrutiny. He joked, but University Vice-Chancellors in Africa would not find such a joke a joke, but rather something real -- a sort of life-changing rebuke and promise. So our VCs continue to dish out honorary degrees (DOCTORATES) to all and sundry -- even people who will never earn a doctorate. Before you know it, these people are Dr. This and That, all over the place. There is, in all this, palpable devaluation of a good and inspiring thing -- so that those who aspire to earn it wonder if the effort is worth the effort; as they note with growing alarm -- the obscenity of it all -- that there is no place in which those who have it on a silver platter allow their last names to be mentioned at all without the prefix Dr.

Yet what is a mere Vice-Chancellor to do when pressed by those -- either the Chancellor himself, who doubles up as head of state and for whom the Vice-Chancellor technically or in principle "deputizes" at univerity, or the Chancellor's cronies -- who hold his/her fate in their hands and, by virtue of that fact alone, subtly or crudely demand a name-changing ceremony? But even ordinary citizens, who can tell a real doctorate when they see one (that is, determine that it was earned, not "taken" = nyakuad) are getting worked up by this rule of the jungle -- with none of the comic relief in PhDComics -- as was recently witnessed in Kenya. And they don't know how to stop it, or get relief.

With the mushrooming of universities around the world, including Kenya, nearly everyone with consequential muscles to flex is assured of his or her honorary doctorate. But standards are important: And a recognizable body of (scholarly) work seems to me a good, solid metric. Thank you, ASU!

Ory Okolloh's Ingenuity

There is a write up on Ory Okolloh in Forbes.Com.

I posted this comment on May 13th:Proud of Ory's ingenuity -- her capacity to leverage her knowledge into a brand of expertise that makes a difference, in very practical ways, in ordinary people's lives. She's further proof that Kenya is becoming something of an idea factory -- in a growing number of ways: Harambee, M-Pesa, Land-Buying Companies, SACCOS, Chamas, Matatu, Michuki Rules, Equity Bank, Nyama Choma, Safari, Benga, Coalition Government (Kenya-style), Module II, and the like. Above all, she's proof that consequential ideas have never run out -- even for the so-called late-comer countries -- nor will they ever!Tags: Kenya, knowledge, Expertise, M-Pesa, Matatu, Harambee, Chamas, Michuki Rules, Module II

Remembering the Chinese Earthquake of May 2008

As we mark the first anniversary of the Great Sichuan Earthquake of May12, 2008, and as we remember rather more particularly what happened in and around the city of Chengdu (capital of Sichuan Province), there are images to look at (or look at again), and there are lessons to learn and re-learn:

1. Two Photo Specials:
a) Click Here for the first photo special
b) Click Here for the second photo special

2. A YouTube Footage, in which a most severe quake appears doubly so from its "shaking" effect on a CCTV (surveillance) camera whose routine and continuous gaze captures the quake's high moment -- as well as the real-time drama of (unscripted?) self-evacuation by apprehensive "office workers": Click Here

3. Click Here for lessons to learn and re-learn, and hazard/disaster classifications to ponder, as certain observers and I see them. Besides, of course, the great toll in human life and property, the phenomenon of quake lakes , and how it was responded to, as well as the ease with which apparently modern schoolhouses were, unlike older and more "traditional" ones, nearly everywhere flattened, were to me among the most attention-grabbing aspects of the Sichual Earthquake.

4. Click Here for a conversation about the environmental challenges that the Great Sichuan Earthquake wrought.

O New Age!

New types of people
Stream into these new places.
Their moults at the bay.






[Haiku. Poem]

Over 30

All the cats are in.
Students wait for the results.
Lecturers mark time.





[Haiku. Poetry]

A Longonot Stop [Haiku]

A chance reunion,
At the valley's edge. Kisses!
On a Ndon! A Ndon!







[Haiku. Poetry]

Cocacolonization, McDonaldization, Globalization

The purpose of this brief note is to identify certain useful links on the above theme(s), for my Tourism and Sociological Theory classes -- to the extent that this is still necessary, given the significantly narrowing digital divide for increasingly tech savvy and increasingly "wired" students in many parts of the Third World, including Kenya (where we await with somewhat bated breath the launch of fibre-optic Internet connection with the rest of the world later this year).

Regardless of how narrow the divide has become, however, the starting point in any class reading list is always what the professor identifies as the key texts. We all know that. QED.

Globalization has several important dimensions and drivers, among these being Cocacolonization and McDonaldization. Cocacolonization and McDonaldization, as processes (even processes of domination), have always been interrogated in the broader context of America's popular-cultural domination, benign or otherwise, of the world, particularly since WWII -- a domination which they do help to drive -- and of the consequences and future of that domination qua Americanization or globalization.

A great deal has been written about globalization, far less about Cocacolonization and McDonaldization. It is, furthermore, easier to access (online or in hard copy) texts on globalization, than it is to have a good read on Cocacolonization. Not only that, while the concept of McDonaldization is readily associated with American sociologist George Ritzer, the origins of Cocacolonization as a scholar's (or ideologue's) concept remain fuzzy; though it has been claimed that "Ugly" Americans themselves coined the term cocacolonization. If so, the coining represented a double-barreled assault on the sensibilities of the rest of the world -- certainly then.

I will periodically update this note/post as the need arises, and as time allows. In the meantime, here are online links to some interesting readings

Sources:

1. A link focusing on Cocacolonization rather than, as one might expect, globalization; but the two stand as one: http://www.angelfire.com/folk/globalization/

2. Richard F. Kuisel (1991) "Coca-Cola and the Cold War: The French Face Americanization, 1948-1953", pp. 76-106, in French Historical Studies, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Spring 1991) [Here Kuisel chronicles Coca-Cola's invasion of Europe, and what the French did or did not do about it]: http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/286280.pdf

3. Mark Pendergrast (1993), "A Brief History of Coca-Colonization" : http://www.nytimes.com/1993/08/15/business/viewpoints-a-brief-history-of-coca-colonization.html

4. Allan Brian Ssenyonga, "Americanization or Globalization?" : http://www.globalenvision.org/library/33/1273

5. Keith Porter, "Americanization vs. Globalization": http://www.globalenvision.org/library/8/691/

6. Joseph Nye (2004) "Globalization is not Americanization": http://usforeignpolicy.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ&sdn=globalization&zu=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.taipeitimes.com%2FNews%2Fedit%2Farchives%2F2004%2F10%2F22%2F2003207970

7. Commentary on George W. Bush's Notion of Globalization: http://www.globalenvision.org/library/8/617/

8. Wikipedia on Globalization [Though the link is already given in the text, it is given here too with the note that it provides many and very useful links and references on globalization and related concepts]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globalization

9. Luke Martell (2007), "The Third Wave in Globalization Theory",
pp. 173-196, in International Studies Review, 9, 2, (Summer 2007): http://www.sussex.ac.uk/Users/ssfa2/thirdwaveweb.htm

10: On George Ritzer's McDonaldization [this link already provided in the text]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonaldization

Messenger, at Two Bridges

Place cometh to me,
The gift-horse. Don't look! Don't shoot!
I'm the Time I fly.







[Haiku. Poetry. Poems. Art]

Broad Daylight

I'm not where I look,
And looks are not all of me.
I'm hid among Us!







[Haiku. Poetry]

Birds of a Feather

Birds of a feather, so the saying goes, flock together. Humans do flock together, but their feathers are merely a figure of speech.

Clothing, style and fashion are humankind's answer to the bling in birds; birds which, however colorful, have no change of clothing, or one at most in a whole year! And no chance in hell to compete.

And yet:
How many years of a Civilizational (not financial or economic) Meltdown, would it take humankind to return to the cowhide and sheepskin of yesteryear, with bemused birds watching all the while?
So, who's smarter now?

A decade and a half ago, Cecil Helman suggested, in his book titled Culture, Health and Illness, that humans have a set of "symbolic skins" which, enveloped within a series of concentric circles or "bubbles" of space and distance, help to construct, and reconstruct, the boundaries of the biological body of any one individual. There were five such skins, he indicated: Clothing, houses, cars, urban or suburban outer limits, and nation-state boundaries. And there were four circles of space and distance: Intimate, personal, social and public distance.

The main point I want to make here in regard to Helman's idea of clothing as skin, though, is that to equate clothing with skin is to mix oranges and apples, and to fumble the insight (which is both in our possession and stares us in the face) loaded in the age-old phrase: "birds of a feather".

Remember, birds have both skin and feather. Humans have skin and a relative paucity of hair, feather's cousin. Clothing, even in the form of cowhide and sheepskin, plus anything else besides, is more feather than skin -- indeed, simply feather rather than skin. So, arising from all the foregoing, the only other and final point I want to make, and which was obvious from the very start, is that clothing is humankind's pale imitation of, and answer to, birds' feathers. Our only advantage, while summer and tropical weather last and spinning wheels spin, we can all adorn our bodies with garb and pigment, as Africa for so long has, any which way we want -- as Fisher's pictures have demonstrated to such great effect (click here for more images).

Queen of All Egypt

Rook! My Pepi tance.
Rock of the boat, as ole asp.
Atossofalbsice!







[Haiku. Poetry]

Six Sigma Obama: Marking His First 100 Days as President

Barack Obama's two-year campaign for the White House displayed, in virtually all his speeches, policy statements and promises, a determination to deliver, not just change we could believe in, but six sigma leadership as well -- and not just for the United States. It was going to be change of Renaissance proportions, or so it often sounded (for more on the Renaissance, click here).


To mark the first 100 days of his Presidency, report cards are flying in from all over the planet. And they are all, it seems to me, quite good. All, that is, bar perfection -- and bar the likes of Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove. This morning, on CNN, some journalist types were asked how they rated him. I saw several 9/10s and one 7/10. That was getting close to accurate, but I sensed that they were suppressing some of their enthusiasm. There was no need to. It is early days yet, and if you feel that something's good, it's good. Go ahead, say it. I believe I heard one commentator say that Obama has been the most effective US president since FDR. He wasn't mincing words -- there were no words to mince.


So, how do I myself rate his Presidency over the 100 days, in terms of hard-nosed policy actions and nuance, in terms of substance and even form? I say, without equivocation, Six Sigma! Hard days will surely come in the days ahead, as the same rubber mets more of the road, and the ratings may/will slide. Comes with the territory. But things look pretty optimistic right now, around the world generally, despite the economic meltdown and the very recent outbreak of swine flu.

As a Kenyan, I have even more reason to be enthusiastic, given the kind of toxic, roller-coaster, self-serving leadership that our President, Mwai Kibaki, and Prime Minister, Raila Odinga, continue to display here at home. It is a shame tempered only by the knowledge that Obama, one of us, shines by example elsewhere; and that, precisely for that reason and that example, all is not lost.


Didn't Kenneth Marende, Speaker of Kenya's National Assembly, reinforce that essential optimism in the substance and nuance of his Solomonic ruling yesterday afternoon in Parliament, when he declared himself (to the collective relief of the nation) interim Leader of the House Business Committee for as long as Kibaki and Raila Odinga (the One Sigma duo) fail to agree on one, and publicly wrangle? Let Marende hold the seat till 2012, if you ask me! Who knows, perhaps we have just dicovered in him Kenya's Plan B!

July 18: Mandela Day

The Nelson Mandela Foundation and 46664, Mandela's Aids awareness trust, are launching a global campaign to officially declare July 18 Mandela Day, worldwide. July 18 happens to be Nelson Mandela's birthday.

I enthusisatically support this initiative.

As the campaigners frame it, Mandela Day will be an occasion to celebrate Mandela's life, and "will serve as a global call to action for people to recognise their individual power to make an imprint and help change the world around them for the better." We will all be called upon, on that day, to spend 67 minutes in the kind of civic action that can add significant value to the world around us. The suggested 67 minutes remind us of the fact that Mandela's own human rights campaign started 67 years ago, in 1942.

It goes without saying that actions within South Africa itself will be crucial to really kick-starting the campaign for a global Mandela Day. South Africa, as a country, should quickly declare an official Mandela Day within its borders, and preferably make it a public holiday, if this is not the case already. Then AU countries should follow. Then the UN. Individual countries will of course be at liberty to decide whether or not, and/or when, Mandela Day becomes a public holiday.

Tumult

Petro Doll. Displaced.
Laced passions crowd the badlands.
Let there be peaceable.

Poromoko [Swahili Haiku]

Niri Tereza.
Dunia kitongoji.
Siku ri-zi-ka!



[Haiku in Swahili
(with a Tanzanian accent)]


Below is my English translation of Poromoko,
touched up using my poetic licence:

Found me on the skids.
The world's a marginal place.
I was not ass-u-aged!

[Alternatives to the last line: I was not satisfied /
I made no nothing / Day, be em-pow-ered]

I might as well have written the seven-syllable line as:
"The world's a seductive place". To me at least,
there's a thin line between Kitongoji (= marginal,
peripheral, peri-urban place) and the word that, I think,
intuitively and perhaps happily derives from it
(certainly in 'fertile minds'), Kitongozi (= Seducer), itself
treated, here, as a derivative of the more prosaic,
proletarian and Eastlander word: Kutongoza (= to seduce).

Phantom

All's gold that glitters,
On his phantom ring finger.
Charms the Old Town none.




[Haiku]

Suitor of Sachang'wan

Sightless tho I be,
I see what my heart shows me.
You're all, all I see!




[Haiku]

Twitter Milestones, So Far

The people at Forbes have come up with interesting milestones in Twitter's short life, so far. The chronology and narrative are worth a read. Find it all here> click here.

Twitter, as you know, is a social networking site. Others prefer to see it as a microblogging gateway. I've seen tweets in which people declare Twitter a haiku outlet practically "made in heaven." Certainly, the maximum of 140 digits, punctuation marks and tabs it allows per update does make it look that way. I myself saw the symbiosis early on, and have "updated" (as a blogger I would say "posted") a number of haikus of my own at my Twitter site, which find at: http://twitter.com/MauriYambo.

Tell me what you think: of the site, haikus (generically, mine, others'), Twitter, my (others') tweets, anything really.

Tuonane, eh?

Something About Haiku

I have posted a number of haikus on this blog. Many probably ask: What, really, is haiku? Well, here's a link to get you started: click here.

Another useful link, "Haiku of Kobayashi Issa", is here >> http://haikuguy.com/issa/index.html

Haiku has been described/labelled as a "one-breath poem". It is decidedly Japanese in origin, its rich history there going back several centuries, through which it has evolved appreciably. The essence of a haiku, written in Japanese, is that it is a seventeen-syllable poem in a 5-7-5 format. Many a Japanese haiku translated into English frame those 5-7-5 syllables in a three-line sequence. And that is the image that we have, those of us non-Japanese who write haiku. The Japanese haiku was traditionally a one-line affair, but times have changed (and places too).

It is difficult, though, for Japanese translations into English to maintain the 17-syllable mien, as you can discern in the translations that appear in the second link provided above. The English translations almost invariably have fewer syllables; since, experts note, the Japanese language tends toward the monosyllabic, and English toward the polysyllabic. Conversely, then, Japanese translations of English-language originals, and plenty of those are appearing every passing day in all sorts of places and sites (including Twitter), will usually appear to be on the higher side of -- that is, to violate -- the 5-7-5 rule. But as long as they are acknowledged as translations, this should not be a worry. Purists worry, though; and I detect that they would rather release those who dabble in Haiku-in-English from the "tyranny" of the rule, than see any haiku in the Japanese language, translated or "original", committing this hara... this error.

As I see it, however, the delightfulness, and the challenge, of the 5-7-5 format should not be missed or avoided just because a poet cannot communicate in Japanese -- or just because a poet cannot but communicates in English, or another language. There is enough poetic licence to get one through any jam. Let haiku be! Let it be 5-7-5 in any language!

I see that there is a tendency in many poets to write haikus without titles. That is something I personally avoid. Every child has a right to a name, we are told. Every haiku and every poem likewise.


P.S. (Monday, April 27, 2009):

Here is a Haiku in Swahili (with a Tanzanian accent) that I have written since this particular post was originally published last week.

Poromoko

Niri Tereza.
Dunia kitongoji.
Siku ri-zi-ka!

And here below is my English translation
of Poromoko, touched up using my poetic licence:

Found me on the skids.
The world's a marginal place.
I was not ass-u-aged!

[Alternatives to the last line: I was not satisfied
/I made no nothing / Day, be em-pow-ered]

The West's Initial Ambivalence Toward Somali Pirates

The West's ambivalence, till recent days perhaps, toward Somali pirates has been noted by all who take an interest in these things. Why the ambivalence? Three possible reasons:

ONE, a sense of guilt and embarrassment about its genesis: Let me share with you this particular conversation about why the West ("We" in what you are about to read) has not, even now, responded with "materiel" robustness to acts, increasing acts, of piracy off the Somali coast. The conversation represents Vers 01 of the explanation of the West's attitude towards the piracy. Click here to read

According to this version, the slide toward piracy all starts with the overthrow of Siad Barre bytwo Hawiye clan leaders, Ali Mahdi and General Mohamed Farah Aidid. The two Warlords had a falling out very soon after Barre's ouster, and this led to a prolonged civil war. To feed themselves, the Aidid troops resorted to "robbing aid trucks carrying food to the starving masses, and re-selling it to continue their war." Ali Mahdi's men, on the other hand, turned to the Indian Ocean, where Somali fishermen had already been complaining, to no avail, of "illegal vessels coming to Somali waters and stealing all the fish."

Coincidentally, as Ali Mahdi turned to the ocean, two European companies, one Swiss and one Italian, were just getting set to cut a sinister deal with any Somali Warlord who would, in the ensuing power vacuum, allow them to dump container-loads of Europe's toxic waste in Somali waters. Ali Mahdi was more than willing, for a miserly fee of $3 per ton (a gross saving to the Europeans of some $997 per ton). The deal went on for years, and complaints, even by UNEP, against the dumping fell on the world's deaf ears. According to a UNEP spokesman, the waste included "Uranium, radioactive waste, lead, Cadmium, Mecury and chemical waste."

It is the Indian-Ocean Rim tsunami of 2004 -- which brought on shore some leaking containers, with severe health repercussions on the Somali coast -- that triggered consequential Somali action against European ships plying the Eastern African coast, which brought rise to the wave of piracy that the world has to contend with nowadays.

"It was months after those initial reports that local fishermen mobilized themselves, along with street militias, to go into the waters and deter the Westerners from having a free pass at completely destroying Somalia’s aquatic life. Now years later, the deterring has become less noble, and the ex-fishermen with their militias have begun to develop a taste for ransom at sea. This form of piracy is now a major contributor to the Somali economy, especially in the very region that private toxic waste companies first began to burry [sic] our nation’s death trap."

Will an active effort to stop the pirates bring uncomfortably back to the surface, and perhaps headlines, the truth about Europe's toxic waste agenda, which even the Somali pirates have lost sight of?

TWO, a certain kind of romantic and folkloric attitude toward piracy: There is Vers 02, which is not totally unrelated to Vers 01: Click here to read. Titled, "Top-Earning Pirates", the business-minded article to which the link leads is written by Matt Woolsey, and published in the online version of Forbes, no less. Here, we read that high seas piracy, initiated by "government-hired pillagers like Hernando Cortes" in 1503, became:

"colonial [America's] version of investment banking. Through good positioning, aggressive go-getters could make millions from global trade and commerce in diverse sectors. They were frequently chased off shore to the Caribbean by angry governments. And in the end, they were sometimes sunk without a trace. "

But, history tells us, these government hirelings themselves becam targets of pirates from other lands, waiting for them in the high seas:

"Those riches couldn't be sent using wire transfers. So when Cortes wanted to send a bounty of Aztec gold to Charles V, he had to load it onto ships and sail it across the sea, where men like Jean Fleury were waiting. In 1523, the French privateer fell upon a Spanish treasure fleet--a score that helped him net $31.5 million in present-value dollars over his career, making him the sixth highest-earning pirate of all time."

If Jean Fleury was the sixth, whi was the "highest-earning pirate"? It was was Samuel "Black Sam" Bellamy, an Englishman. He made a total of some $120 million (present-value) in the 18th century. At $115 million in total "earnings", Sir Francis Drake, an English sailor-pirate, was second. He was knighted by none other than QEI.

"Sir Francis Drake, a 16th century British privateer who saved England from the Spanish Armada and went on to a profitable life of plunder at the behest of Her Majesty's Government. Fellow Englishman Thomas Tew places third with earnings of $102 million. His biggest score came in 1693, when he pilfered a ship full of gold en route to the Ottoman Empire from India."

Sir Francis Drake holds a place of high honour in British history. It has been suggested that his exploits, and Spain's "blind-rage" attempts to punish him and his kind at all cost, and to defeat an England that harboured them and benefited from their loot, led to Spain's own decline as an imperial power. I recently posed this questions in one of my tweets: Is there a 21st century Francis Drake out of Somalia waiting to be "discovered"? In another tweet, I speculated that, at present-prices, the list of Top-Earning pirates is likely to be topped by a Somali.

THREE, indecisiveness in the face of a creeping threat perpetrated by starving "minnows": There is considerable lack of clarity of thought in the world community about how best to respond to a piracy that is portrayed in the media as a major and growing threat to world commerce -- indeed, to globalization. A muted body of opinion suggests that the shipping companies should simply continue to pay the ransom demanded by the pirates. Moreover, since piracy is a criminal act, not a military or terrorist one, the world's leading navies have no reason to intervene. However, another body of opinion holds that NATO is the only force with the infrastructure to deal effectively with the piracy.

But there is also the unresolved issue of how to deal with captured pirates. Much of the West's opinion seems to be that captured pirates should simply be offloaded in Kenya, which should try them in its own courts and incarcerate the guilty; after all, Kenya has been the destination of the cargo in a good number of the captured ships. Kenya appears attractive because America continues to suffer from the "Black Hawk Down" syndrome of the Clinton years, and is hesitant to re-engage in Somalia; and Europe seems to want to remain at arms-length. In my view, trying and jailing captured pirates in Kenya would be just too toxic for our polity, and too destabilizing, overall. Kenya would be, pure and simple, the world's dumping ground. We would not accept that.

Links to a Selection of More Recent Sources:

1. Somali Pirates Hone Their Tactics: Click

2. Piracy Money Piles Up in Kenya: Click