Thursday, July 18, 2013
Friday, June 28, 2013
Thursday, June 27, 2013
WE ARE BACK!!
Friday, January 22, 2010
A RESILIENT PEOPLE: SHARING A FACEBOOK DISCUSSION WE ALL OUGHT TO BE HAVING
Ours is a rich nation.. O'wise we'd have been a failed economy/ nation long ago. The million dollar scandals, super salaried Mpigs and govt fat cats.. Drought, floods, never ending political crap, terrorist attacks.. Yet we still stand strong. Najivunia kuwa Mkenya.
He said it might be the case that there is corruption everywhere but there is only one reason why the country is still functioning: there are still good and descent people out there. He told me to go out there and apply for a passport and not to dare bribe anyone. I did and got it in 2 weeks.
His name was Prof. AKong'a. I hope to one day meet the guy and tell him how profoundly his lesson changed my outlook on life. Just because everybody is swimming in Nairobi River, it doesn't mean that you too must....
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Being African is a Misfortune
The global media has embraced and standardized Africa's image as the get-away safari destination on the one hand, and the starvation-poverty-disease
This 'dark continent' image has turned my continent into a pityful and sneer-worthy non-deserving continent. This continent where I have lived all my life, been happy in, and successful in, survived in.
Is Africa really that bad? Ought we be ashamed of being called Africans? Ought we be ahsamed of being black? What about the laughter and the education and the cultures? what about the joy of playing in the dust with friends whose names you will always remember even in your old age? What about the normal lives we lead? Are these successes not worthy of the media's precious spaces? What about the fact that Africa produces super-intelligent human beings? How else can you explain how Africans have excelled with minimum resources usually made available to students their ages in the West? What about the punishment of existing in a double life, that of the home and that of school, both heavily demanding and both equally important? The double burden of being the educated one, and the provider? and yet we survive in the same world as kids who have known nothing but over-protectiveness, whose every need has been tended to? If it is about survival for the fittest, who most deserves to survive? whose survival skills has been sharpened beyond question?
And so, while the only sport where Africans have outperformed the rest of the world is athletics (minimum resources required to achieve this goal), it is also the most inferior sport. After all, isn't it defined through funny looking, non-English speaking (hence lacking eloquence) black people from some god-forsakken land whose name periodically pops up to remind us that the world's first black leader hails from a father with humble beginnings.
It is easier for the West to typecast Africa using images of starving children. That is our public image. we are content with this image, because it prevents us from dealing with this complex continent. We marginalize and fragment its narratives, because we do not want to cause trouble, raise the expectations of the masses of Africa, give ideas of possibilities.
If the world is currently geared towards the superiority of capital, how can Africa be integrated into this dream? Easy! By making them give us whatever resources they have, so we can continue being the superpowers; by attracting the best brains using green cards, scholarships anything that will move the most diligent, strongest of us out of their holes, and making us grateful for the opportunity.
Now Asia rises and threatens to become the world's next superpower. Can the West let this happen? This would be extremely bad, because a breakdown of these societies would mean a change of power centres! Now we cannot have that. The under-dog race will edge its bony arse closer to the 'it' and soon we might just become powerless. This would be a big let-down. So we must fight on, we do not want to become the 'empy' continent.
So even now, while African crawls on its knees, hangs its head in shame as it begs for money from the Big Brother, accepts the disguised and sometimes open insults from the west, it continues to hope for release, relief. The West on its part continues to hold an image of eternal desperation and primitivity to measure how far its come and how far it can still go.
To succeed, it needs a failure.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Thursday, July 16, 2009
WHO'S AFRAID OF HAGUE?
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Monday, June 15, 2009
GEORGE OBAMA SIGNS A LUCRATIVE BOOK DEAL
By HILLEL ITALIE
NEW YORK (AP) — Another Obama relative has a book deal.
A memoir by George Obama, the president's half brother and a resident of Huruma, Kenya, will be published by Simon & Schuster in January 2010. George Obama, 27, shares the same father with his famous, older half sibling, although George and Barack Obama — 20 years apart in age — did not grow up together and did not meet as children.
George is the youngest of the senior Obama's seven children and was born six months before his father died.
Little is known about George Obama. The book, tentatively titled "Homeland" and to be written with author-journalist Damien Lewis, will tell of George Obama's fall into crime and poverty as a teenager and his eventual embrace of community organizing — a passion shared by the president — and of advocacy for the poor, an identification so strong that he chooses to live among them.
"Even had George Obama not been our President's half brother, his story is moving and inspirational," David Rosenthal, Simon & Schuster publisher and executive vice president, said in a statement Sunday. "It is an object lesson in survival, selflessness and courage."
Financial terms were not disclosed, but an official with knowledge of the negotiations said the deal was worth six figures. The official, who was not authorized to discuss the contract, spoke on condition of anonymity.
Other Obama relatives are working on books, including a half sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng; and the brother of first lady Michelle Obama, Craig Robinson. Duke University Press is releasing the doctoral dissertation of the president's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, who died in 1995.
Barack Obama has written a pair of million-selling books, "The Audacity of Hope" and "Dreams from My Father," in which he describes George Obama as "a handsome, roundheaded boy with a wary gaze."
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Read comments about this story on the Huffington Post including that of a reader who is surprised that George Obama can actually write!