I cannot get this song off repeat..*groan* I have failed mankind.

I am also requesting for it at all gigs and clubs and insisting for dances and chanting along to "oooh oooh".
The beat tight, the words so right....resistance is futile. I'll just live it out.




Love Like This -Natasha Bedingfield

With Samuel Kivuitu's tenure coming to an end 25 days before this year's general elections slated for December 27, the political stakes are threatening to hit the roof. Raila and Kalonzo may have shown their unity in desperation but Kibaki has already shown who is in charge by sending home Kivuitu's deputy Mukele and five others this week.

Among all the present ECK commissioners, only Kuvuitu, Kihara Muttu and Jack Tuma have handled elections before. Well the President has done nothing unlawful and all his apologists will shout 'it is his prerogative'. But come to think of it. Political maturity, sanity and tranquility is nurtured more on perception of fairness than on mere lawful deeds.

Every constitutional office comes with commensurate responsibilities most of which are extra-legal. Loss of trust is the price you pay for sacrificing goodwill at the alter of playing plastic fidelity with the law.

Law or the box?
But just a minute. The Kenyan law stipulates 5 years for tenure of ECK commissioners. So reappointing Kivuitu would takes him to the next election year 2012 when political tension will be predictably back with us. Speak of being trapped in a perfect vicious cycle.

True, Kivuitu's present position makes him vulnerable to forces he is meant to serve independently. And yes he is an epitome of a rich institutional memory on elections. Removing him at this hour would definitely undermine public confidence in the ECK as the ultimate arbiter in the forth coming polls especially if Kibaki predictably elevates his lawyer Mutttu to ECK chair. What to do?

We cannot afford any productive lives with the present Kenyan constitution which is not only expensive but a fossilized Lancaster document. Any useful change in governance must start with a new constitution. To be honest the root of all tribal and political tension can be raced to selective application of our laws.

We are collectively victims of political expediency when leaders violate the law or apply it selectively. A new constitution will guarantee prosperity to all Kenyans regardless of who is the occupant of State House.

Israel, Italy and Japan change governments virtually every year but remain very stable thanks to established institutions. We need a new constitution now and not tomorrow. But who will deliver us to Canaan? Or put differently who will BELL these cats (scoundrels)? Any takers out there? God have mercy on us, God save bless Kenya.

At the tiny Gaithuri river, Mama Wambui stands. She is down in her arrowroot farm but has to answer a call from another woman across the ridge. She is 34 and a mother of six. Am sure you know at what age she started giving birth and her challenges in the village, so i will not dwell on that.

One thing is that Mama Wambui did not go beyond class five, she dropped out and was married off, after all, she was an asset.

However, Mama Wambui has found herself a new territory, where she teaches other women how to operate their mobile phones. Checking credit and loading credit, Mama Wambui helps them all. She is a hero in Giathi village.

But on this day, there was a major challenge, one woman had received an SMS indicating that she has been entered into a draw and she could win shs 6,000. But the sight of the figures spured new excitement as they thought they had hit a minor jackpot.

There was excitement in the village as they summoned the most educated (mainly standard 8 drop outs) to interpret the message. They all focussed on the money, everyone thinking they had won.

It took time before they could get the right message. they had to wait until evening for one of the girls in a local day school to come and help out.

The excitement died down but one thing was clear, they say people are illiterate but when it comes to money, everyone notices the zeros.

For this village, it is certain that the little education comes along way, and that those who went to school feel very good. The mobile phone has given new relevance to the rural folks.

When my friend Joy told me that my blog was featured in the November issue of adam magazine, i wondered what it was all about.

I had not read the new magazine and was curious to get hold of it. From the adverts, i thought the magazine would be the answer to the feminist magazines. I was wrong!

I found out that it was a balanced magazine with a "BlogIT" column that features good blogs, the bearable and the ugly.

This blog was found to be "bearable" coming second to www. mzalendo.com which obviously is good.

I think its awesome that the magazine has such a column, i think it will raise the bar and improve how people run and maintain the various blogs.

I must admit its a challenge publishing posts and hoping that people read and leave comments but then they do not. But with these kind of comments, you know that people are reading even though they do not comment.

At this year's Highway Africa conference, other more prolific and notable bloggers like Vincent Maher, Ndesanjo Macha and Daudi Were spoke about challenges of attracting traffic. I knew i was not alone.

So, even if you do not leave a comment, your visit is appreciated.

The KCSE (Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education) exams started last week on Monday and have therefore entered their second week as from yesterday.

I have just received information that several schools in a certain region of the country had in their possession one of the Mathematics examination papers that was done recently. One school even “revised” the paper in detail very early in the morning on the very day that students were to sit for the exam. They revised the paper with their Maths teacher!! Can you imagine that? And sure enough, to nobody’s surprise the exact paper they were revising is what came as the exam.

This has led me to make a few more enquiries and I have discovered that these “leakages” are now very “normal” in the country with many students purchasing papers for about Kshs 3,000. In fact many schools last year were not ranked because of massive leakages, however the results of individual students in those school were allowed to stand.

Even spirited efforts by the Kenya national Examination Council this year to clamp down on cheating do not seem to have yielded much because the “cancer” has spread too far and wide to be stemmed easily.

I find this very difficult to absorb because when I went to school, things were not like this and in fact we used to frown on examination cheats. Now it seems that the practice of cheating has become as acceptable as corruption has become in the country.

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The 5 most popular stories in Kumekucha today

Let me admit my friends that I was really put off balance when it became clear that because he fears for his life, it was not possible for my preferred Presidential candidate John Githongo to show up for these general elections. I sincerely believed that he was the best chance for change in Kenya, and even if he had ended up not winning the presidential race, he would have helped the entry of a new generation of politicians into the political scene in Kenya.

Alas that cannot be now, and so I have been forced back to the drawing boards and the game plan is finally becoming clearer to me.

Kumekucha will now support principled individuals who represent true change, irrespective of which political parties they belong to. The idea will be to get as many new progressive faces into the 10th parliament as possible and also as many women candidates as possible because they seem to be more mindful of the downtrodden voiceless people of Kenya and less likely to forget the reasons why they are in parliament.

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Clear evidence is now emerging that there are senior bishops within the Catholic church who do not agree with Cardinal John Njue on the issue of a devolved government usambazaji wa mamlaka and that the statement he read may not in fact be the view of the Catholic church in Kenya after all.

Archbishop Zacchaeus Okoth of Kisumu said on Sunday that as far as he is concerned the views stated by Njue are personal views. And he even gave a very good reason for his position. He said that there was no pastoral letter (the usual instrument used to state the church’s official position on any important matter.)

In fact the cardinal has put “jimbos” of the Catholic Church into some serious problems with his careless remarks and many of his colleagues are hard pressed on what to tell faithfuls, especially in regions that strongly support Majimbosim.

Cardinal-designate John Njue’s position calls for lots of wisdom and many times it is not wise to declare a personal stand on sensitive national issues when you know very well that they will affect some of your members and divide the faithfuls. Yet Njue went ahead and did just that, for reasons better known to him.

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Those who know me well know that I usually have no qualms admitting my mistakes as and when I make them. In this regard I was wrong about Majimbo and devolution in the Kenyan context as per the draft Bomas constitution being the same thing. They ARE NOT.

You were right PHIL. And I was wrong.

I have been convinced about this by an authority on the matter, Law scholar Dr Patrick Lumumba or PLO as he is known to many, who was amongst the architects of the Bomas draft and an aspirant for the Kamukunji parliamentary seat.

Lumumba says that there is a huge distinction between the Majimbo (federalism) system of government in the Kenyan context. This is because in Kenya it means balkanization of the country into ethnic and tribal enclaves.

However true devolution and with the variants applied to the draft Kenyan constitution it means a trickle down of political and economic power to the grassroots. The right Kiswahili translation for devolution here is usambazaji or ugatuzi wa mamlaka

Phil who also supports devolution in Kenya or Usambazaji wa mamlaka was of course spot on all along.

I apologize to all you Kumekucha readers out there for misleading you on this very important national issue. Kindly accept my apologies.

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Address to Kenyan professionals.
By NJONJO MUE


Garden Court Southern Sun Hotel, Milpark, Johannesburg, South Africa
Thursday, 25th October 2007

Ladies and gentlemen; fellow countrymen and women, good evening.

It is always such a delight for me to be back among friends in Johannesburg and I am immensely grateful to be able to share this evening with you.

As some of you know, this is a homecoming of sorts for me. I lived here for almost five years between 1997 and 2001, when I worked as Head of the Africa Office of the freedom of expression watchdog, ARTICLE 19. It was during the same time that many of you relocated to Johannesburg from an increasingly troubled motherland.

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Chapter 27

It was finally 9:00 p.m., the time Nicholas Biwott had been waiting for. He went to the bathroom, away from his nosy Jewish wife, and flipped his cell phone. He dialed.

"Hello?" Bozo said.

"Bozo, it's Biwott."

"What do you want?"

"I need to know that everything is okay."

Bozo was in his maskan when this call came through. This squalid, right in the center of Korogocho, was the very definition of squalor. It was leaking .... it had roaches ..... and it smelt like last year's urine.

He had a bed in the same room as the living room. Right in the middle of the room, he used an off-white bed sheet to partition it. That partioning created an extra room. It was the kitchen.

"You want to know if things are okay?" he asked.

"Yes. Do you have everything you need?"

"I do."

"So how will you do it?"

Bozo walked out. He stood in front of the squalid where fresh sewage was flowing in from somewhere, "You want me to update you over the phone?"

"I am secure."

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Compared to the population of the world, only a few people are able to drive a Mercedes-Benz, Audi, BMW or Lexus - yet they are built with some sort of comfort and perfection in mind.

Everyone of these 6,6 billion people out there, however, needs to go to toilet. Every day.

I wonder why ppl spend so much money on good cars and other items but actually never really think about improving their sanitation needs. Same attitude applies to ppl using public toilets. How come many people often don’t care about clean sanitation facilities?

Gosh, swamped at work…been to Kenya and back again since the last post and haven’t even had a chance to write about that. Was attending the opening of our office in Nairobi (of course the Nation got it wrong, it’s not 1 billion kshs investment funds, but the total commitment including the [...]

One of the merits of blogging is that you get to interact with people who you would not ordinarily have interacted with. Call it the beauty of the internet, if you will. It kind of expands your horizon across borders, continents and even time zones.

The last thing that I had in mind when I started blogging was meeting other bloggers or even networking with people over web. That said blogging has opened for me a whole new frontier. From communicating with people through comments, others by email, a few by phone and even meeting face to face with some bloggers. I'll start by confessing that I have known a few Kenyan bloggers even before I started blogging. My next confession is that since I started blogging I have met a few bloggers though I have never introduced myself.

Recently I was honoured to meet the blogger commonly referred to as Maina. Surprisingly, I was able to identify him in a crowd of people at the said venue of our meeting. I took him totally by surprise as I showed up earlier than we had agreed though I knew he was going to turn up earlier than me. Not that I wanted to see him first before meeting him, it's just that my flight landed on time and I was spared the agony of going though the long immigration lines at the airport.

After which we linked up later at his home for lunch and some chit chat. Meeting him and his family was a blessing as we got to spend the afternoon chatting away after a sumptuous meal prepared by his lovely missus. The chapos I ate just made my day and if anything made the meet-up worthwhile. The funny thing is that we talked like long lost friends who had just been re-united. Turned out that we share a few things in common and in many ways we were able to connect on various aspects.

I was truly blessed for the few hours that I spent with him and his family. As such this post is to publicly embarrass thank him and his wife for their hospitality. The fact that they offered me a place to spend the night really touched me as it showed their generosity.

That said, I look forward to meeting one or two other bloggers should our geographical paths cross. Hopefully as the world gets much smaller and we continue to outgrow our physical boundaries, it will only be a matter of time before this happens.

Once again, thank you Maina & Co for your hospitality and generosity. I look forward to meeting you guys again and should your travels bring you to my neck of the woods, I will certainly marshal up my forces and revenge. God bless.

Sigalagala Festival; Poetry, Afro and Neo-Soul music @ the Godown Art Center

stumbled on this...

"A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials, heavy and sudden, fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends who rejoice with us in our sunshine, desert us when troubles thicken around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts." -Washington Irving