Fuse ODG's Jinja

In a number of respects, 2016 will be remembered as the year of the crowd-dance. There was even a dance fever of sorts among African artistes and their fandoms, each crowd seemingly bent on outdoing the others and wowing the rest of the world. Not a bad thing either.  

Fuse ODG has deliberately chosen for his song, published in late October 2016, a title with two fertile and tantalizing connotations, as one can see at the beginning of the video. First, certainly for his team and for East Africans in general, Jinja readily brings to mind a town by that name in Uganda. It is located at that 'magical' point where the great River Nile pours out of Lake Victoria, headed north through the two Sudans, and then all of Egypt, and into the Mediterranean. This river's epic and never-finished journey is part of Fuse ODG's roots. It is at the core of his conception of T.I.N.A. (This Is New Africa) -- which is also the title of his album -- regardless of where ever he may physically be at any moment.

Secondly, the word is used in the video itself to mean: (a) "to give excessive energy to a person or situation, especially through dance", or (b) to "make someone or something more lively." The song, as you will see, clearly lives up to this promise; and, I think, only this. But this use of 'jinja' is not as idiosyncratic as it might seem. It is indeed a pun on a fairly common 'slang'. To "ginger up", Merriam-Webster tells us, means exactly what it's said to mean in (b) above; that is, "to make (someone or something) more exciting or lively" -- or, indeed, excited.  A perfect concept for a crowd-dance.

It turns out that Fuse ODG's Jinja, which is produced by KillBeatz and runs for 3:51 minutes, is one of the most outstanding dance-oriented songs to dominate the African music space this year. It goes without saying, of course, that song and dance are twins, more (much more) often than not -- certainly in Africa. But some songs, like this one, are more dance-denominated than usual. Still, one must see and hear the singer(s) for the dancing to be well-anchored. That's a crucial distinguishing criterion -- certainly for me. 

Here's the thing: we shouldn't include in our ratings of music videos any production in which the lead singer(s) remain(s) unseen throughout the song and dance, or in which the dance scenes are shot years after the song which inspires them is done. Dancing to music so 'canned' is not, shouldn't be, anyone's idea of pop music video -- no matter how good the dancing turns out to be. Art is not well-served by fracturing time -- that is, distanciating song and dance -- in that way.

So Jinja is a great piece of visually-populated music. We see and hear the singer. And the singer is there with the dancers, and the dancers with him. It's all intended to get millennials, and p'raps boomers still young at heart, up and dancing in no time. It is overflowing with the energy and creative body-and-soul moves, plus one or two nextgen dabs, of a self-assured cast. The irrepressible ODG's rapid-fire rap has catchy phrases and a relentless wordplay. "Jinja, maninja, majinja" -- is a refrain we keep hearing, as the Afrobeat goes on and on. And so it goes. Even the girls' 'cat'-walking becomes dance -- and inseparable from the groovy beat. So does a sweet half-baked dab by a little girl under, it seems, seven still to finish, uh, coordination. Everything, well- choreographed, moves as one; and it gets hotter and hotter on that charmed rooftop with all that constant and even acrobatic motion, but ends too soon. "Someone call police O!" Get that ODG!


Watch the Jinja video here

Yambo

The name Yambo intrigues me -- I, who bears it. It was my father's name: Yambo son of Onyalo; or, as became the habit among men of his age, Yambo sio Onyalo. In Kiswahili, that could be construed to mean: Yambo's not Onyalo, one inference being that Yambo was precisely Yambo, and not his father. Fair enough. My father named me after his own father, Onyalo, as was typically the case. The son, then, is father to the man.

But then colonialism anglicized certain namings, and, no longer grandfather, son became his own father. I acquired my father's first name as my own surname and was thus Yambo. Which is how I am known in the places, the little patches of the planet, that I am mostly known today -- and as I, myself, primarily know and label myself. Yet there are still people I meet, out of the blue, from high school days who will on seeing me "instinctively" call out, just as dramatically out of the blue: "Onyalo." Onyalo is, of course, always happy to see them and to ask how they have been, knowing that many we remember have died over the years. My more numerous acquaintances of more recent decades will, however, experience both a puzzlement and a bemusement -- seeing, all of a sudden, that the brand they had all figured out kumbe has another label. It's like discovering that Coke goes by another, unexpected, call-to-order, smell-just-as-sweet name elsewhere.

There's a place, as you drive from Kisumu City on the Kisian-Bondo, just before Holo market centre, that's called Yambo. The people of Kisumo, where my mother was born, have been known occasionally to shout "Seme Yambo!" as their eyes, tracking the sunset over Lake Victoria in the distance, sort of fly over that very same "place Yambo", which is indeed where the Seme territory begins. You drive through Seme all the way from 'place Yambo' (and Holo) till just before Akala market centre, which is in Gem.  

What does that name, Yambo, mean? I have always wondered about its origins. When we were growing up, there was no other Yambo that we knew of. Later, the first surprise was to read about Yambo Ouologuem, writer and citizen of distant Mali. Then I think I heard, perhaps via the TV, of a Yambo somewhere in Namibia. For a long time, the port of Yenbo in Saudi Arabia was simply Yenbo, nobody used the Yambo variation in its spelling, such as we see nowadays. And all of this was in the age before the Internet and search engines, and, in particular, before the Wide World Web and Google.

In 1992, when a group of us visited Denmark, I saw a shop with the name Yambo Coffee one evening as we drove by. By then, I was of course already aware that there was a place at the south-western tip of the Sudan called Yambo, at the border with Cameroun and DRC. A few years ago, I came across a question on the Internet asking someone, anyone, to please explain what the name Yambo meant. I couldn't help, but I was among the puzzled. On April 24, 2013, I posted this tweet:

The #Yambo #Meme: In Copenhagen once, we drove by a Yambo Coffee shop. What, America has mo of (the) me me! http://www.census-gov.us/list/YAMBO/           9:16 PM - 24 Apr 2013

Here's one plausible explanation for the meaning of Yambo: click here. Yambo is shown as one of several alternative names for a language spoken in both the Sudanese and the riverain Gambela Region of southwestern Ethiopia, and better known (as I have myself always "abstractly" known it) as Anuak, the language of Anuak people. As of 1998,

A decade or so ago, the Anuak, Yambo language was spoken by a total of only 97,646 people on this planet. A smaller number (some 52,000 people) were to be found in the Sudan. The other names by which Anuak is known in the Sudan are: Anyuak, Anywa, Anywak, Dho Anywaa, Jambo and Nuro. Its alternative names in Ethiopia are, besides Yambo: Anyuak, Anywa, Anywak, Bar, Burjin, Jambo, Miroy, Moojanga, Nuro and Yembo. Ethiopian dialects associated with Anuak are Adoyo, Coro, Lul and Opëno.

READ: Leoma G. Gilley (2004) "The Lwoian Family" (pp. 165-174) in Occasional Papers in the Study of Sudanese Languages. No. 9, 2004

The Anuak,Yambo people are cascadingly classified as Nilo-Saharan, Eastern, Sudanic, Nilotic, Western, Luo, Northern, Anuak. They are said to be closer to the Acholi and Luo (to the south) than the Shilluk (to the north). For a further sketch of the taxonomy of the Luo cluster of languages, click here.

Note: This is work in progress. You and I should like to know where in Africa our various ethnicities were 1000 years ago. Then 1,500. Then 2,000. Then 3,000, 4,000. 10,000 and then"beyond" as far as the discerning eye can see. We know too little about our heritage. We cannot know too much.

Further Updates:
1. August 27, 2015

Omar al-Bashir, Surrender Thyself to the ICC!

I was in the reception area of a downtown office in Nairobi yesterday afternoon when the International Criminal Court (ICC) based at the Hague made a live announced of its warrant of arrest against Omar al-Bashir, Sudan's current President. I watched it on CNN. The charges against him include being "personally responsible" for directing armed attacks that led to the death of over 300,000 civilians and the displacement of millions of people in Darfur Province, over a five-year period beginning in 2003. He was also accused of pillaging, but was spared, for now, an indictment for genocide, but that might still come. The five counts of crime against humanity for which he is charged include: murder, extermination, forcible transfer, torture and rape. [Click HERE for details of the indictment]

Al-Bashir thus becomes the first sitting head of state to be so indicted. In a world of globalized justice, others will follow. Talk of national sovereignty in these circumstances is nonsensical talk. So is the talk about Al-Bashir's indictment as picking on Africa. In today's world, bad leadership (the negation of the "Good Leadership" that Nyerere championed) will increasingly pick itself up -- helped along by the disenchantment of ordinary citizens. I can already see that disenchantment in Kenya, and it has nothing to do with Al-Bashir himself; rather, with petty Al-Bashir look-alikes. Life will continue without missing a drum-beat, when eventually they are out of the way.

On this issue of Al-Bashir's indictment, Russia and China -- and the African Union before them -- must quickly change their stands before they appear to the average African to be hopelessly self-serving, hopelessly out of touch with true African aspirations, and irredeemable accessories to one of the most heinous crimes of the new millennium.

In defining social action, sociologists have known, at least since Max Weber, that complicity and guilt include failure to act against crime or horror, and "passive acquiescence to the [criminal] actions of others". To this we may add: failure to raise consequential and sustained Voice. But the voices we are hearing from our leaders are voices which, incredulously, ask that Al-Bashir be left alone lest worse things happen to the Darfurians! That kind of voice is more than acquiescence -- it is active participation in the horror.

Any additional acts of horror that may befall Darfurians, as from yesterday, must perforce be laid squarely at Al-Bashir's door!

They say that you can run but you cannot hide. This seems to be particularly apt in the circumstances in which "Omer" (as I saw in some placards on CNN last night) finds himself "right now". Bluster just won't do. Al-Bashir's AU peers do not have any muscle to help him, but incriminating voices. One or two may even be headed in the same direction. So he will have company.

Here's what's likely to happen in the next six to twelve months:

1. Al-Bashir will (should) surrender to the ICC at the Hague on his own volition. This would be the most honourable thing to do.
2. Some entity in the Sudan, emboldened by the indictment, might just hand him over against predictable protestations.
3. His plane might just make an unscheduled landing at an airport in which his arrest warrant is executed.
4. We may wait for what seems to be a long time, but what goes around comes around.
5. Or the hand of God might show itself before our collective, humble hands get a hold of him.

Ruto Wants Waki's Envelope to Head to The Hague, Now!

William Ruto, energized by his emphatic victory against a vote of no confidence moved in Parliament last week, over the maize scandal, has now turned his attention to that other matter of post-election violence, in which nearly everyone believes he was so complicit that his name cannot but be in the list in Waki's envelope. In a surprising move, he declared over the weekend, as reported in the media, that Kofi Annan should take Waki's envelope straight to the Hague. To him, all this talk of a local tribunal and a two-month extension of Waki's deadline is merely a waste of time -- a beating about the bush -- which he will have none of.

In this, Ruto is openly disagreeing with Raila, the Prime Minister, who is mulling another initiative to establish a local tribunal as an alternative to the Hague, despite that idea's recent rejection by a Parliament in which Raila's coalition has a slim majority. And I agree with him. Raila even reported, astonishingly, that Annan had allowed Kenya a two month extension, at most; astonishing because nobody seemed to know that Annan had the mandate to extend/alter Waki's deadline, and nobody, except perhaps Raila, believes that he has. Let's let it go now!

The country's future political health clearly requires a visit to the Hague. The paradox is that a presumed culprit is all for it, while those who would presumably benefit from his fall -- and who would like to see him suffer and out of the way -- rather nervously want to keep him as far away from that same Hague as they possibly can! He wants to go, but they don't want him to -- a perfect sado-masochist bind.

Are there beans they fear he will spill, even as he falls? Might such spilling lead to their own irreparable fall -- their own inevitable path to that same place? I see that Sudan's Al Bashir is increasingly and publicly beside himself with trepidation arising from his own likely indictment by the mighty ICC, a date with which is not a picnic -- and from which, in the end, no one can hide. If Ruto was, he seems no longer to be; but someone else apparently is! What is it that someone knows that Ruto knows that shouldn't be known by Tom, Dick and Harry -- and Wanjiku?

If President Kibaki and Raila -- who on a previous occasion Ruto had said should be the ones going to the Hague (since, he had argued, all post-election violence was carried out in their name) -- want a local tribunal for the spanner-boys, the small men, of the violence, that's fine. However, the big boys should all be headed to the Hague, to meet their match. They can have all the time they want there, as we watch with waning interest from afar. All that may be far from good for many, but it will be good from far for just as many.

Language: Wiki Language

The Kikuyu of Kenya are a Bantu-speaking ethnic group. They speak Agikuyu. The Luo, on the other hand, are Nilotic (that is, of the Nile valley). They speak Dholuo (a word which, thanks to the insistence of certain scholars, has become part of the English lexicon now). These two are very dissimilar groups in important ways -- culturally, economically and (in particular?) politically.

Geographically, too, they have traditionally occupied quite different topographies of the land. The Kikuyu have concentrated in the central highlands, generally "around" Mt. Kenya, which is one of the two highest mountains in Africa. The Luo are predominant in the lowlands to the west -- in the basin of Lake Victoria (the largest in Africa); though, unlike the Kikuyu, have kin traditionally scattered "all over" eastern and central Africa. Central is Central and West is West -- but did the twain ever meet before, say, 1890?

There are a few puzzling similarities which make this question pertinent, certainly. For example:

1. In Agikuyu, as I have known for years, though the similarity struck me only a few months ago: When you want to say, "Let's go" you say, "Nitothii" (or simply, "Todhie", which is what I remember from all those years of living in Makongeni and going to school at "Sentii"). In Dholuo, you say, "Wadhi."

2. In Agikuyu, when you want to ask, "Where are you going?" you say, "Wathii ku?" (or "Wathie ku?"). In Dholuo, you say, "Idhi kanye?" (or even "Idhi kure?).

Sasa? Is this symptomatic of one origin deep in the African past (of course it is!), or merely chance similarity. You tell me.

But, if yes, how long ago? Under what circumstances? Where? In the Sudan? Cameroon? The Congo? Uganda? Ethiopia (Karumba's Ethiopia?)? Just here in Kenya?

They do have different physiques, generally, perhaps because of terrain and diet; and because of all the places they have separately been, kalausi-like, all these millennia. Yet there is an occasional hilarious comment in certain circles that the Nyeri Kikuyu are really not Kikuyu, but Luo (whom they are, many of them, as dark as) who now speak Agikuyu.

Of course all Africans, all humans, have one past -- here in Africa.

All humans! Is that why, as Philip Ochieng claims, "Hera" -- that four-letter word -- means the same thing in Greek and Luo? Is that not why we all have spoken language?

The Mau Water Tower

Much has been written in Kenya’s print media about the Mau Forest Complex in the last four weeks or so, and particularly the last seven days. However, the Mau Question has been part of the national discourse, on and off, since the second half of the 1980s, in the heyday of Moi’s presidency (and when UNEP was patently asleep on the job), when grabbers, “settlers” and squatters alike, who -- unlike the Ogiek, otherwise called the Dorobo -- did not have any traditional/historical claim to any part of that expansive, fertile, and amply rain-fed terrain, began to encroach into it, with state support. Gakuu Mathenge suggests, however, that this Mau Question became part of the national discourse only in 2004, when President Kibaki burnt his fingers attempting to intervene. He paid unforgettably more for the effort a year later, during a Referendum in which his “yes” (or Banana) camp decisively lost.

Be that as it may, we can see that much of the recently publicized information, firmly anchored on texts and pictures provided mainly by UNEP, is the kind that politically aware citizens (or plainly well-read ones) must have, and constantly bear in mind, in order to form the sustained and hopefully vocal opinion that shapes policy. In this case, what is on the agenda is the crucial matter of securing the country’s water resources, which are increasingly in jeopardy, and working toward a sustainable environmental and socio-economic future for all.

So, exactly what concrete information would the informed reader have gleaned by now, from all the public narratives, about the essential features of the Mau Water Tower, and about its significance to the future of Kenya and the region as a whole? It would have been largely as follows:

The Physical Characteristics and Importance of the Complex: The Mau Forest Complex is a 400,000-hectacre area located toward the western wall of the Rift Valley. This forest cover, “is the largest closed canopy forest ecosystem in Kenya” (UNEP, Steiner, Mbaria), and Indeed East Africa, being equal in size to that of Mt Kenya and the Aberdares combined.

The Complex comprises: South Western Mau Forest, Eastern Mau Forest, Likia Forest, Tinet Forest, Sigotik Forest, Nesuit Forest and Marioshoni Forest (Odenda Lumumba). Transmara and Mau Narok Forests are in the same general area, though they are under the jurisdiction of local authorities, as are Kapsita Forest (Molo) and Londiani Forest. The Mau Complex “is the single most important water catchment for” Rift Valley and Western Provinces (W. Kabukuru). The Mau Complex comprises five main gazetted forest reserves: Eastern Mau (66,000 hectares), South-Western Mau (22,700 hectares), Trans-Mara (34,400 hectares), and Ol Pusimoru (17,200 hectares) (see Patrick Wachira). The Maasai Mau (46,000 hectares), which is not part of the gazetted complex, would have been the sixth component (P. Wachira).

It has been repeatedly stated that twelve rivers drain the Mau Complex, but the full list of this “Glorious Dozen” has not been widely publicized or known; and if incidentally known or had as part of lay knowledge, neither “organically” connected in the mind with the Mau Complex nor, which is the same thing, perceived as any kind of dozen. This is clearly a problem to the detail-conscious reader who must be enrolled in the war against environmental degradation and the related political backlash. The twelve rivers are:

Nzoia, Yala, Nyando, Sondu,

Njoro, Naishi, Makalia, Nderit,

Molo, Kerio, Mara, and Ewaso Nyiro


Rivers Nzoia, Yala, Nyando and Sondu, all entirely within Kenya, flow broadly westward into Lake Victoria; while Njoro, Naishi, Makalia and Nderit (Enderit?), also entirely Kenyan, flow eastward into Lake Nakuru, from the Eastern Mau. Ewaso Nyiro River, in its turn, flows southward, emptying its water into Lake Natron; unlike Mara River which first flows southward but eventually turns westward and then northward, inside Tanzania, toward Lake Victoria. Molo River drains into Lake Baringo, and Kerio River ends way way up north in Lake Turkana.

Mara River, it should be underscored, is a 13,750-kilometer “international river” shared by Kenya and Tanzania. Kenya owns the first 65% of its length, which traverses the world-famous Maasai Mara Game Reserve. Tanzania owns the other 35%, which crosses the equally or more famous (as some would argue) Serengeti National Park (Wanjohi Kabukuru).

Viewed another way, the Mau Water Tower represents the upper catchment “of all but one of the main rivers west of the Rift Valley, which are the source of over 60 per cent of the water flowing into Lake Victoria” (Steiner, Mbaria, Wachira).

The Lakes into Which the Rivers Drain are, as already pointed out: Lake Victoria (shared by Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania), Nakuru (entirely within Kenya), Baringo (also entirely within Kenya), Natron (shared by Kenya and Tanzania) and Turkana (shared by Kenya and Ethiopia).

The degradation of Mau Forest affects, to varying degrees, a total of six countries, namely: Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Sudan, Ethiopia and Egypt. What is the nature and magnitude of the destruction, which is ongoing even as we speak? First, logging, which has been going on “for decades” (Steiner); and, one may add, charcoal burning and fuel-wood gathering. Second, illegal excision and settlement: some 25,000 people (or is it 15,000?) are currently settled there. Compare this, however, to the livelihoods, which are at risk, of some 600,000 people engaged in the tea sector alone; not to mention perhaps thousands in the region and elsewhere who depend on tourism for their daily bread, and the millions of small holders who eke out a living in the Lake Victoria basin (Steiner).

Third, due to deforestation, there is a reduction in rainfall levels in the catchment area. Fourth, (as P. Ngunjiri notes) reduced rainfall levels have a negative effect on water supply to urban and other areas such as: Bomet, Egerton University, Elburgon, Eldama Ravine, Kericho, Molo, Nakuru, Narok, Njoro and the Lake Victoria basin. In the past ten years, some 104,000 hectares (24% of the Mau Complex forest cover) have been destroyed. Moreover, the “estimated potential hydro-power generation in the Mau Complex catchments is about 535 MW, representing 57 per cent of the current total hydro-power generation capacity in Kenya” (Wachira). At present, Masinga Dam provides over 50% of Kenya’s electricity, according to KenGen, but it is silting fast (Kabukuru). Illegal logging is most extensive in the south western zone of the Mau Complex (Wachira).

All told, if the destruction of the Mau Complex is not stopped, Kenya stands to lose $300 million in GDP (Steiner). Perhaps seeing this amount as a gross under-estimate, certain commentators have preferred to present it as an annual rather than a “one-off” loss to the country. The difference is not the same.

So, what is one to do? Do we evict the squatters and illegal settlers from the full stretch of the Mau Complex, as a pre-requisite to regenerating Kenya’s and East Africa’s largest water tower, or must those presently in government cut unsustainable political deals with the well-connected owners/settlers, while resettling probably tens of thousands of squatters with a voting card? (go to page 23 of the UNEP et al link shown under Disaster Management elsewhere on this blog page for a picture of the 937.7-hectare Kiptagich Tea Estate, which will give some idea of what such a deal would cost in cash terms)

Despite the cost, we as a country have no choice but to evict and regenerate; but we must also resettle legitimate claimants to a compensation. We must find alternative land in which to resettle them, and pay for it. There will be certain political risks and costs in doing so, to be sure, but leaders offer to lead fully aware that leadership is not all about perks; and fully cognizant of the fact that “there comes a time” when leadership involves making tough, thankless, and even cheerless, decisions – often in the face of populist agitation, by the very same co-leaders who would supplant one at the first opportunity. But there is a place in heaven!

NOTE: This post is based on the following recent reports and commentaries. From the July 27, 2008 issue of Sunday Standard, articles by Gakuu Mathenge (titled “The complex: Peasants, propaganda and fraud”), Patrick Wachira (titled “The facts about Mau forest: East Africa’s largest block of indigenous forest is also home to 45 bird species”), and Vitalis Kimutai (titled “Political intrigues that plague the forest’s conservation efforts”).

From the July 27-August 3, 2008 issue of The East African (a weekly newspaper), John Mbaria’s interview with Achim Steiner (UNEP’s Executive Director), three articles by John Mbaria (titled, “Mau Forest Controversy”, “Why Moi govt is to blame for excisions” and “Destruction of Forest Killing Tea Industry”), Odenda Lumumba (titled “Land excisions were illegal, against the public interest”), Philip Ngunjiri (titled “Kenya may lose $300m revenue unless forest is restored”) and Wanjohi Kabukuru (titled “Why Dar and Cairo are asking tough questions”).

However, the anchor source for this post, and indeed for the said reports and commentaries, is Mara Complex Under Siege: Values and Threats (May 2008). That key source was collaboratively prepared by UNEP, Kenya Wildlife Service, Kenya Forests Working Group and Ewaso Nyiro South Development Authority.

For an updated version, click on a link with the same title as this post, which you will find to the right of this page.


References:
1. Links to Additional Readings: Click here