I. TRAINING IN KENYA: AN OVERVIEW I.1. Current Policy At the national level, policy is generically to be understood as a statement of basic principles, broadly-defined goals and/or overall strategies formulated by the state to govern an important segment of national life. A given set of policy statements may change or be modified, abruptly or gradually over time, ahead of the actions to which they call attention or, often enough, after the fact. Sometimes only aspects of a policy change. Sometimes there is no written policy as such -- merely the leanings and gesticulations, so to speak, of the key actors. Kenya's training policy has so far not been consolidated into any single document. Consequently, some sort of gleaning must be undertaken if a synthesis is to be attempted. Moreover, though MTTAT is "the" training Ministry, not all published policy statements are issued by it. Indeed, many predate its creation in March 1988. According to the Kamunge report (1988: 35), Kenya's training policy emphasizes the following objectives:
Shumaya ranks 40th in Africa's Top 40 ~ Happiest Songs of The Year, 2015. That's no mean achievement. Availed below are two video versions. The first, shot on location, is the one that was considered in the above ranking. There is another, crispier version, too; which was shot indoors, in a studio or an 'audience-less' auditorium, as far as one can tell. It's the second video which appears below. I prefer the first, though it is the grainier of the two (in which case, shall we say shame on the cameraman, or just let it be?).
In the first video, location, embellished with shifting angles and micro-sets, frees everyone from this potential logjam; and allows the song to have its optimal effect. And the youthful 'actors' (dancers and singers both) obviously have so much more fun delivering what's at once the same song, with the same elementary lyrics, and a wholly different proposition. The viewer has fun, too, 'reading' that decidedly more vibrant and less confined South African narrative. It is a montage in synchrony with Time's perpetual
The second video is too sanitized, too plastic, for one's liking; certainly in relation to the first. Though there is much apparent motion on stage, there is no sense movement one can latch on to in the video, at all, and, consequently, none in the mind of the viewer. There simply is no storyline. One cannot go with a non-existent flow. Time seems to stand still, reluctantly, awaiting a much needed forward movement. The jarring illusion of stillness is made more nagging by the much-repeated and dominant chorus, and the song is itself rendered motionless, in toto, by a lack of consequential movement in the staged dance. Everything is all too one-dimensional, like a stuck record.
First Video (Published, May 24, 2015;YouTube views at posting time = 627,034):
Second Video (Published a little earlier, on May 14, 2015; YouTube views at posting time = 457,235):
