Arjen Westra’s African Weblog

Today I spent some time on a press conference. Human Rights Watchwatch was presenting a report on Northern Uganda. Sorry: embargo on the news until midday tomorrow East African Time. The forgotten in Northern Uganda where the LRA abducts young boys and girls to work for them as sex slaves and soldiers, is still being forgotten.

Did you notice, there is an interesting on poverty discussion going on in this Blog? Join here!

Walking through the streets of Nairobi these days, you can be surprised by small groups of people sitting together, listening to somebody. If you get near, you will sometimes find that there is a street preacher trying to win some souls. But these days you will find more and more people involved in other type of discussion during rush hours and luch braaks. Kenyans are getting their civic education. On 21 November this year, they are going to vote for a new constitution (downloadable as PDF-file).

Kenya dropped 10 places in the United Nations Development Report, published this week. Bad news. Had an interesting conversation with a researcher about this. He said he never saw such a change in Kenya since the last president came into power. ‘Kenya suffers from a lot of bad publicity’, he said. ‘But watch this country. For next year, there is a forecast in economic growth of more than 5 percent. ‘I have done research to the underlying currents of the change in Kenya. This gives hope. Institutions like Worldbank, IMF only look at the elite of the country. But if you look at the agricultural sector, on grassroot level, you will find a major changes. The income from small diary farmers almost doubled over the last two and a half year, thanks to major efforts of the Kenyan government. You can say the same about other sectors: vegetables, sugars, coffee and tea. Tourism boosted last year: 56 percent growth! This country is going through big transition. This is not because of Blair or an G8 or any donor, but because of the new spirit of change in this country, on this continent.’

… Kenyan coffee is considered to be tamong the best coffes in the world. The strange thing is that most Kenyans don’t drink it and they even don’t make the money with their coffee like they could. Kenyan highest quality raw coffee beans are exported to the Western world where coffee companies ‘add value’ by burning it. Europeans will sometimes spend 1,50 euro on a cup of coffee in a bar. That is 216,00 euro per kilo of coffee. Kenyans are left with lower quality instant coffee and lower quality beans. The best Kenya AA grade coffee is sold for around 3 euro a kilogram. But a change is on the way: Kenya is gonna brand her own cofffee, burning her own coffee beans and market it in Europe and the rest of the world, creating a lot of income and jobs for Kenyans. Good news for people who love good coffee and hopefully for Kenyans themselves.

On the 19th of August 2005, 21 years old June Wangu was shot dead in Jericho estate, her only known safety heaven (home). A group of armed gangsters approached June at about 7 pm in the company of her little brother, relieved her off her mobile phone, then shot her dead at close range. June was a social actress from Eastlands, Nairobi, innocent of the lethal accessory that spilt her blood. The incident surrounding Mrs. Wangu’s Death and the deaths of many more innocent Kenyans thus prompts the initiative to a National Campaign against Guns, Drugs and Crime.

Source: Kikwetu Festival (info@kikwetu-festival.org)

Kenyan poet Jacob Oketch Tambo wrote this poem inspired by the event above…

DISTRESS CALL

The wretched of the earth
Without a right to life
Death hangs on our shoulders
Because the vile-hearted
Have been let loose

You spilt her blood
Without her permission
How can we permit?
Such ruthlessness and cruelty
In our midst

Bitterness
Engulfs our souls
For the loss of loved ones
The society is sick
Therapy is housed
In repentance and forgiveness

You murderers
Unsheathe your hands
Off this madness
History will judge you harshly
For every life you take away
Records a bounty on your head
The cries of the innocent
Will haunt you to oblivion
It is not late yet
To change your ways

Peace and tranquility
Is a recipe for abundance?
We must collectively fight
To achieve this noble dream
We must rid ourselves
Of those who rob and kill us
For they have stunted our growth

May the souls
Of those who perished
In the hands of others
Solemnize us
We cannot justify
This rot anymore
The time to do something
Is NOW

…that is what I want to show in this Blog. Recently I had a discussion with friends on this Blog: they thought I was to cynical. My response is always that cynical is a matter of style. Writing down things that happen to you or others in daily life has not to do do with being cynical. It is honest observation, that might be coloured because of personal circumstances and background. I observe the place I live,with other eyes than the native people who live here and who are used to all the insecurity, the corruption, the fact that they have to spend a month working on medicine (if you are a diabetes for example)…, the fact that they don’t have clean water, the fact that police is not your best friend, the fact that young girls have to skip school because they don’t have the money for hygienic measures during their period, the fact that you dont no how your future is gonna be when you are sixty (and old, for here). It has nothing to do with cynical but maybe, and that might be moralistic, it has to do with the fact that I would like other (“Western”) to see that this is the world these people on this continent live in and make them realise what it means, although none of ‘us Westerners’ will never ever experience this…

Earlier you could download a fragment of an interview I had with a teacher who found four 15 year old guys in Turbi. In this fragment i visited Marsabit Hospital and had a short talk with nurse Amina. We are standing next to a 2 year old girl. Her legs were speared in the massacre.

While the United States have their problems that, according to their president will ‘scar them for years’, Africa gets the usual stuff (see below, did you notice the news by the way?). Sorry for this cynisism…

KATRINA WILL SCAR US ‘FOR YEARS’
The US states stricken by Hurricane Katrina will take years to recover, President George W Bush has said, after an aerial tour of the disaster zone. He promised his cabinet will take over the aid operation for “one of the worst natural disasters” the US had seen. An extra 10,000 troops are being sent to the worst-hit areas in the coastal states of Louisiana and Mississippi. (Source: BBC World Service)

THOUSANDS STILL TRAPPED IN FLOOD HIT SIERRA LEONE
FREETOWN, Aug 31 (Reuters) – Aid workers in Sierra Leone have managed to distribute aid to about 7,000 people stranded or made homeless by torrential rains in the south of the country, but another 10,000 remain out of reach, the Red Cross said.”We have been able to access eight towns and bring food and non-food items which including blankets, and to supply them with jerry cans to fetch clean drinking water,” said the local Red Cross disaster management coordinator, Vandy Sonnah.(Source: Reuters Alertnet)

Interesting literature about this subject has been writen by Jaap van Ginneken. I recommend the book: Understanding Global News. (Find it under Bibliography)