Second Stage of Revisioning Kenya launched

ENTREPRENEURS GATHER TO SUPPORT AND FORMULATE SECOND STAGE FOR REVISIONING KENYA
A selection of Kenya’s most successful financiers and businessmen will mingle with the country’s newest thinkers at Nairobi National Museum on Wednesday 19th November to gather information and pledge support for the radical new project Revisioning Kenya.

Conceived this year, an amount of Ksh 3 million - together with workspace, mentoring and development facilities - has already been promised by a number of prominent corporates in a bid to help bright new brains to develop their imaginative concepts into solid activities that are good for Kenya

“We don’t want to wait for handouts to crank into action - this is our way to take responsibility for building new hope and energy into our battered nation,” explained Patron Bethuel Kiplagat. “We will help those who can help others, and create a revolving centre of excellence and innovation in which Kenyans take the initiative in producing the sort of structures and integrity that will sustain us in the long term.”

The evening, which is part of the Asian African SAMOSA Festival 2008, will introduce new investors to the value of adopting and developing visionary thinking that would benefit the nation. Among speakers illustrating the ideas behind Revisioning Kenya are Patron Ambassador Bethuel Kiplagat; businesswoman Jyoti Mukherjee; Richard Muteti, head of the Jua Kali association and Professor Moses Musaazi, inventor.

A veteran of the first symposium. Professor Musaazi, who wowed the audience with his work? on low cost cement-less houses, portable incinerators, and DIY papyrus sanitary pads will present new information on rainwater harvesting and accessible lighting. Jyoti Mukjerjee, a newcomer to the concept will discuss business development particularly in relation to IT, while Richard Muteti will introduce the power and strength of harnessing the millions of jua kali artisans and workers who make crucial contributions to the Kenyan economy.

With the support of industrialist Ashok Chandaria, the fund created for Revisioning Kenya has raised enough support through the business community to support the development of 10 projects for a year.

“We aim to provide all the necessary skills, infrastructure and mentoring to make sure that in a year, these ideas are self sustaining,” explained Mr Chandaria. “Too often, visionary concepts never come to fruition because these crucial elements are missing. We can provide the incubator to develop them into real projects. The benefit of an organised and supportive business sector is that we can act quickly and efficiently in response to market forces and social changes without being hampered by waiting for government or donor funds. It is time we took greater responsibility for more than profit and encouraged other forms of improvement in our society.”

While job creation and development of sound business ideas are a focus of Revisoning Kenya, the topics of human rights, gender, social entrepreneurship, environment, citizens activity and good governance are criteria that are just as critical within submitted proposals.

“We will attempt to actively assess and create new strands for Kenyans to work with in revising and reworking those elements of society that clearly have failed,” said Revisioning Kenya director Shalini Gidoomal. “We are looking for people who want to see the sort of change that would take us away from nepotism, corruption and ineptitude and, in particular, allow young fresh voices to have a platform to air their views and ideas for change.”

The first Revisioning Kenya symposium took place in August this year and a carefully selected group of speakers began development of these concepts. Among them were Dekha Ibrahim Abdi, winner of the alternative Nobel Peace prize; Rafique Keshavjee, who is charged with creating an entrepreneurial an inventive spirit in the Aga Khan university; youth leader George Gachara, who set up an sms distress line during the post election violence, that helped thousands of people in need of supplies; comedian turned politician John Kiarie who’s Vijana Tugutuke or “Youth Arise” campaign was key to encouraging youth to vote, and Rob Burnet who discussed diffusion theory in relation to mass media and dissemination of ideas.

KLF Director at Ubud Writers And Readers Festival, Bali




Shalini Gidoomal - Ubud Writers And Readers Festival
Date:2008-10-22	Duration: 00:07:07 Size: 2.83 MB
Synopsis: Shalini Gidoomal is a freelance journalist, writer, businesswoman and inveterate traveller, born, and currently living in Nairobi. She has worked extesively on various UK and international magazines and newspapers.

Click HERE to visit the Ubud Writers Festival website

Kwani Litfest Featured on Africa Journal

This year’s litfest is certainly not about to fade into our distant memories. Reuters have just released a feature for the Africa Journal entitled, “Is anyone reading in Kenya” which takes its story from this year’s Kwani Litfest.

Click on image above to watch the full documentary.

It is night (19:44 hrs) in Nairobi now and it looks like this:

The 24 Nairobi project is intended as a showcase of a modern African city through the eyes of its own photographers. A lot of times cities in Africa are viewed through the narrow lenses and stories of missionaries, career war photographers and aid workers.

24 Nairobi brings together local, regional and international creative professionals to evolve powerful and realistic images and narratives that would reflect the working-life diversity, cultures, energy and dimensions of cities in Africa.

This is an alternative, innovative, realistic and professional African perspective. All the photographers reside in Nairobi and grew up or now call Nairobi “home”. This aesthetic has now been captured.

Click HERE to visit the website

Education OR books: which is the façade?

By Joan Mwihaki

I am a third generation Kenyan commonly known as the ‘Y’ generation. With no experience of war in my short life, you can imagine my shock when Kenya’s ugly side was unveiled in form of the post-election violence. We have always thought ourselves better than the rest of East Africa, but panga’s, then thousands of IDPS and over a thousand deaths brought home a different reality. Presidential elections were the trigger for the slew of destruction. The unspoken truths about poverty, corruption, land issues and tribalism demanded redress in the crudest way.

For a generation that is an icon of education in Kenya we ought to have exercised diplomacy instead of hooliganism. Unfortunately the youths formed the largest part of the troublemakers on the loose. The politically instigated violence was just as the name suggests instigated by the so-called politicians of our land. Though most of them are highly educated yet they did nothing to help our country evade these anarchy.

In light of world literacy on 8th September Prof. Sam Ongeri says Kenya’s literacy level is among the highest in the world. He added that he expected an increase from 68% to 90 % by 2012, following free primary and secondary education. We are definitely educated! But does education make us equal? Does education cover for what we lack in ethnical supremacy? Is education what a man amounts to, or a façade man can live without.

Straight after the post-election violence, School Strikes follow suit and students burn each other. In all the confusion tuition is banned, Mock Exams are banned. Are these solutions? Personally I think the government’s measures are not pro-active - they do not bring about futuristic solutions. I too do not have all the answers but now more than ever I feel like burying myself in a book that will explain this state of affairs.

One thing is for sure we have to reinvent the reading culture, found in the literature of the 1st and 2nd generation of African writers (and readers). Literature about wars and woes of life; about character and integrity - ingredients that need to be reinforced in our lives. Maybe through reading books that focus on African struggles and troubles of days gone by, we can evade making similar mistakes. If we do not learn from them what is the point of the mistakes being made in the first place? Kenyans need to visit more bookshops and more libraries, if not only to read for leisure but also for us with this hidden talent to get inspired to write. Yes, the post-election crises needs to go down in writing. I remember getting one alarmist comment “God forbid someone writes a book” in my head, I replied, “God forbid no one does”. It is such memoirs that will serve to prevent anything like this happening again.

I finished 8-4-4 two months ago, I feel accomplishment all right! As a beneficiary of the system I can’t dismiss the feeling that we Kenyans students have been short changed. Education fails to produce savvy, learned intelligent individuals. Why? It’s theoretical, irrelevant and flaccid. All through primary high school and college I have accumulated heaps of theories that I will never put to use. Not all of us can afford the GCSE system. A reintroduction of 7-4-3-2 would be a place to start.

Buried alive

What have we done! We have forcibly buried the reading culture underground. A fluttering heartbeat remains thumping softly. If no one intervenes, the culture like many other in Africa will not see daybreak. The story telling culture is so dead and waiting for a rebirth, while the theatre going culture dies small deaths and like a spirit it reinvents itself once a while. We are killing priceless yet valuable resources.

In his book ‘What Black People Should Do Now’ deceased author/journalist Ralph Wiley includes a chapter entitled “Why Black People Don’t Buy Books”. Wiley’s chapter title, undoubtedly, is a reference to the often said phrase:“If you want to hide something from a black person put it in a book!” The anonymous wise man behind it was so on point. It seems Africans, particularly Kenyans abhor reading. Insulting as this adage may sound, there is a great deal of truth in it.
I recently attended the Kwani Litfest that hosted a series of writing workshops. Kwani previously came up with Concerned Kenyan Writers, who tried to make sense of the violence. A series of writers created stories, some of which were published in a kwanini – a little pocket size book called “After the Vote”. The festival which started in Nairobi and ended in Lamu was meant to breed new writers and also endorse this reading business in Kenya. It brought together acclaimed writers as tutors from all over Africa.

I remember our Ugandan tutor Serumaga Kalundi asking of our favorite books and most of us-young students were oblivious. It was from the more mature students that names such as Ngugi WA Thiongo and Wangari Maathai popped up. I too scratched my head for, “Return to Paradise” by Yusuf Dawood read sometime long long ago.

The reading culture is close to nonexistent in Kenyan circles, except for the set books read in high school. Such is “The River and the Source” which is forever my masterpiece from high school (a pity I never made any effort to find other books by Margaret A Ogolla). Those who read for leisure are few; others do so to be at par with societal issues are even fewer. Technology has become the scapegoat for this; not only to we prefer to watch TV, but apparently the media is said to have intensified the violence, while school strikes were caused by infiltration of cell phones! But is technology really to blame?

Resuscitated in Asia

The Japanese are apparently the most technology friendly people I know of. They are role models in reading, because they do all the time - when waiting for a ‘matatu’, standing in a queue to see the doctor or en route to wherever. I derive a lot from Japan because it’s a country in Asia - a continent in a similar position to ours in the 1960’s but which has risen to be known as a High Performing Asian Economy. The Japanese are well aware of their rich history which is elaborately recorded in books’ and have brought to life the cliché; reading is paramount for a bright future. They are an icon of development, from the depths of Hiroshima and Nagasaki catastrophe. Today they are endowed with high-tech infrastructure, cars, computers, cell phones - name it. Could this be related to their disciplined reading culture?

A Chinese philosophy says that “Through reading the poor can become rich, and also through reading, the rich can become elegant”. Books tend to challenge our thought processes. They empower us with ideas that translate to actions and changes that will improve our livelihoods.

Well! No one will probably ask how many books you have ever read but in this small life we should aspire to be progressive in all we do. The goal here is to amplify our readability, and you can gauge this by knowing whether your reading list is increasing or decreasing. Recently I read a review on a ‘kawaida’ Kenyan who is an avid reader. With accounting as a day job she can juggle with books amicably. Her goal being to read a hundred books every year the closest she has ever got was 70. Talk of achievement!

Just as Japanese are well read, they are well published they rank first position in Asia and third in the world, after United Kingdom and Germany. According to the International Publishers Association Canada, in the new millennium, United Kingdom published about 110,155 titles of books and placed the first rank. The second was Germany with 80,779 titles. Then, the third rank was Japan with 65,430 titles.

Time for a reincarnation

With so many great minds why are we lagging behind in publishing? Could it be related to the fact that we are also sluggards in reading? Africa has so many experiences that could be put in books that would become best sellers, that could sell a million copies, don’t you think? A time has come for us to use our experiences good and bad, for our sole benefit. We need to put them in books and prove to the world that we too can unveil our intellectualism and turn our lives into memoirs and essays that will rebuild our country.

By the end of this year I will be given the powers to read (literally). I know I have been down for a while but I am willing to rise up and take advantage of books in both reading and writing. Years ago I read a novel on the Biafra war by Elechi Amadi. I was so captivated that when my book ended unceremoniously since the last five pages were missing I looked for it everywhere. To date I have never found the book and the sad story still hangs precariously in my mind. I hope to read Ishmael’s Beah’s book ‘A Long Way Gone’ and Chimamanda Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun by. That is after Wangari Maathai’s Unbowed -which I started this week.

My tutor at the nonfiction writing workshop accentuated the importance of reading. In that class I rediscovered myself as someone shallow who has not read a single biography. Not Mohamed Amin’s, Mandela’s or even Malcolm X. Yet they are role models. I call to all scholars to join me in uncovering all those secrets hidden in books, hopefully deal with our demons and live better if not bearable lives.

(Joan Mwihaki is an intern with BirdLife International)

Ishmael Beah talks to Kwani

Ishmael Beah talks to Kwani about life and literature. Please click the arrow above to listen to the podcast. Alternatively you can download it to listen to on your computer or mp3 player.

Ideas, Words, Markets…

Click HERE for lots more pictures…

Photos by Kirstie Wielandt and Aurelie Journo (two of the coolest volunteers you can come across!)

A Braver New World for children

By Aurelie Journo

Bravely conquering the cold and damp Nairobi weather, and making their way to the lush green gardens of the Lower Kabete Junior Academy, over 40 school children, joined by their parents, teachers, writers and volunteers, spent a colourful and inspiring afternoon combining work and play.

The kiswahili translation of ‘The Unlikely Burden‘, sponsored by the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) was launched by award winning author Stanley Gazemba, reading the title story of the book written by him. The launch was an opportunity for children, parents and teachers alike to remember the importance of animal welfare in their daily lives.

This was followed by the launch of author John Sibi Okumu’s latest book ‘Tom Mboya, Master of Mass Management‘ (A Sasa Sema/Longhorn Publication). After reading a short passage from the book, John talked poignantly about the importance of documenting Kenyan political history. Generations met and exchanged ideas, as Mr Wamalwa, a protagonist in the book and permanent secretary to Tom Mboya, shared with the audience his early days by his side.

But the day would not have been complete if books were the only focus. One look around the garden, with the colourful faces, adorned with flowers, butterflies or animals, one look at the joyful gait of children stepping out of the bouncy castle and heading for the swings, were the perfect illustration of the proverbial saying “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”. No dull boys or girls at the children’s day indeed.

Storytelling has various facets that should not be limited to their written form. Simiyu Barasa led the audience into the world of animated stories. From words highlighted in the Kenyan school curriculum, he created a story that was then turned into an animation film, proving that stories don’t only entertain but also teach. Mediae presented the workings of the transformation of a text into a storyboard and then an animation picture, conjuring images from words, and movement from images. The animation, The hyena and the ostrich, was then shown, as a première, the children being the first viewers of a cartoon that will be featured in the TV show ‘The Know Zone’, and the film itself being the first cartoon written, drawn and created in Kenya.

The exciting day ended on a thought provocating workshop by Storymoja, around the story of ‘In the land of the kitchen’. The adults were asked to sit back and observe while the discussion went on between the children. After a lively and highly entertaining storyteller told the story of antagonism and destruction in the kitchen community, the children were led to reflect on the meaning of key terms such as community, stereotypes, conflict, and eventually peace. In the light of the post election turmoil, the workshop showed that stories are not only an end in themselves but also the beginning of other stories that seek to question the ideas and terms we take for granted.

The day was long and full, but as they walked towards the school buses that were to take them home, the children were certainly not only tired, but also inspired to become, who knows, the future great storytellers of Kenya.

Revisioning Kenya

Revisioning Kenya, the highlight of Kwani Litfest 2008 hosted by RaMoMA gallery on Friday afternoon, was a climax of highs and lows. We arrived to find organizers Dipesh Pabari and Shalini Gidoomal scuttling around with a hunted look in their eyes, as though this were January 2008 all over again and we were in Kibera, not Parklands. But they sorted out the electrical snafus that threatened to nix the whole show at the last minute, and about seventy of us crammed into the presenting room to listen to fifteen ‘visionaries’ from every field of endeavor talk about the future. (The idea came from Bill Gates, who a while back invited the most innovative thinkers on earth to Arusha to give him an eight-minute presentation about their next big idea.)

Unlike the previous day’s event at the University of Nairobi, almost nobody stuck to their time limit. Sometimes we didn’t notice, like with Judy Kibinge’s movie Coming of Age, which took us on a moody romp through post-independence Kenya – starting with the early Kenyatta days, “when a carjack was a thing you used to change a tire”; through post-coup Moi, when Kenyans learned what it was like to live under a dictatorship: “at night, people drew the curtains shut and whispered rumors about rumors in the dark”; following the euphoric “second liberation” of Kibaki’s election in 2002, and finishing with his stolen victory last year, when “Kenya began to burn, and we wondered, what is democracy? Do we even want it anymore?”

Same kind of roller coaster that characterized our little event. I hate to hate, but in the spirit of constructive criticism I can’t help wondering why Alfred Omenya, who actually is a visionary architect, felt it necessary to talk about himself for eight minutes before getting round to the subject at hand. By then, moderator Wambui Mwangi had no choice but to yank the mic on him. And John Kiarie, the former Redyculass comedian who these days is trying to prove Beth Mugo rigged him out of victory in the race for Dagoretti’s parliamentary seat – great speech, John, we laughed and cried, but where were the new ideas?

Rob Barnett, Kwani?’s first sponsor back in the day (thanks Rob) gave an interesting talk about Diffusion Theory, basically, how do bright ideas take root in society and become widespread? I’m all for spreading the love, but can’t help wondering about the NGO-esque philosophy underpinning the concept: ‘we know what’s good for you, now LISTEN.’

But that’s what Revisioning Kenya was all about after all – if more of us listened to the good ideas stored in the minds inside that room, maybe Kenya and the world would be a better place. For instance why is it, as former Olympian Ole Munyai asked us, that Kenya’s pyrethrum farmers are only earning $16 million in a world market that is making $600 million off their harvest? Why don’t we set up a distribution company in the US, where most of the global trading takes place, and channel Kenyan pyrethrum through that? As Ole said, “we could pay our farmers five times what they currently earn and still make a profit.”

Now that’s what we came to hear. More good stuff came from Kevit Desai, who talked about the potential for ICT to improve just about everything, and Dr. Moses Musaazi, who broke down the alternative technologies we have at our fingertips (ranging from solar water heaters, which everyone’s heard of, to papyrus sanitary pads, which I bet you haven’t). Tony Mochama represented the poetic outlook, and though I’m not sure exactly what it was he said, I know it wasn’t bad.

The best came last. Ishmael Beah, the child soldier from Sierra Leone, stirred us up with some of the lessons learned by his country’s civil war. He finished by describing a village tree where he and his fellow soldiers used to kill prisoners. Back then, its bark had been hacked up by overzealous machetes and blackened by the blood of so many victims; but when Beah recently revisited the spot, he found “the tree had healed completely and now bloomed a bright, clean green.”

Tough act to follow, but Ambassador Bethuel Kiplagat did so tremendously. Looking like a 70-year-old version of Ishmael Beah, Kiplagat is the kind of fellow whose dignity fills the whole room. So does his deep bass of a voice. He described for us the battles he’s fought not just for Kenya, but all of Africa over the course of his illustrious career. “I realized one day that all these problems this continent suffers are not just political, they are my own personal problems,” he said, leading up to an admonishment against reliance on foreign aid. “Don’t ever let anyone take your problems away from you, because then you will not devote every last minute and mobilize every resource you have to solving it.”

In 1984, Kiplagat became Kenya’s Permanent Secretary to the department of Foreign Affairs. “I looked around the region and the continent, and I decided then that I would do what I could to bring peace to our neighbors.” There’s a long ways yet to go, but as Kiplagat pointed out, some signs of hope have bloomed amidst the rubble. Take, for instance, the fact that only two African nations are left in the hands of a military regime, quite an improvement from the time Kiplagat entered Foreign Affairs. “That was 1984,” he said, and although he’s held various positions in government since, he’s still working at the same goal of peace. Twenty four long years, good people, “and do you think I’m going to give up?”

Conflict, or, All a Writer Needs

By Arno Kopecky,
Kwani Editor

Incredibly, no one went over their five minutes. Going by the event’s title – “Writer’s Stories: Unpacking Kenya’s Crisis Session” – not to mention the venue, a Nairobi University lecture hall, all signs were pointing to a listener’s crisis of over-pontification.

Instead, we started out with a sneak preview of Wanuri Kahiu’s new film, From A Whisper, marking the tenth anniversary of the American Embassy bombing with possibly the best film about it to date – I say possibly because it wasn’t long before her characters all started speaking Swahili and I had to start inventing the plot. The preview was followed, appropriately, with a moment of silence, and then, melodramatically, with the national anthem. “Remind me to tell you what Oscar Wilde said about patriotism,” whispered Kwani? editor Billy Kahora before we’d even sat back down.

Oxfam director Irungu Houghton took over from there, MCing the mostly-full auditorium through a rapid succession of five-minute readings by all kinds of fiendish writers. The good professor, Wambui Mwangi, started out by reading the poetic hate letter Shailja Patel wrote to ECK chairman Samuel Kivuitu a few months back. Moving, yes – but it’s too bad the letter Kivuitu published in response never made it into the auditorium.

Binyavanga Wainaina came up next, introduced as the man who’s “collected over 1300 African recipes.” (“Bullshit,” coughed Kahora in the seat next to me.) True to form, Wainaina told a whimsical tale of the evolution of his name’s pronunciation over the thirty-some year’s he’s been hearing it, a subject he somehow related to the topic at hand.

Playwright Simiyu Barasa followed that up with the obituary he wrote himself in January – you know, just in case. It was that kind of month. The letter found its way into the New York Times and marked Simiyu’s descent from unchecked optimism to miserly cynicism as far as his beloved Kenya was concerned. Apparently he’s swung back to the middle, having “learned that too much love can make you a fundamentalist.”

Betty Murungi – yep, ODM stalwart James Orengo’s wife – then took us through an excerpt from the Diary of a Mad Kenyan Women, aka Wambui Mwangi’s blogsite, which as early as January 2nd presumed to say of the post-election madness: “we caused this, let’s fix it.” We’re trying, you madwoman, we’re trying.

I lied earlier, by the way. Irungu fielded some questions from the audience at this point, provoking an unsolicited poem which breached the five-minute mark.

Was that what Kalundi Serumaga had in mind when he took the stage next and said “When I get to disturbed, I like to share the feeling”? Hard to say. The razor-witted Ugandan leaves very few crimes unexposed, starting with the writers beside him: “When you say the violence started in January,” he wondered, “what exactly do you mean? Kenya has been violent to the core since independence…the role of the writer is to talk about these things in good time.” That is, before they happen, you assholes.

But where would we be if we actually learned to prevent them? Nairobi U professor Okoth Okwombo came on to point out the “paradoxical relationship between writers and conflict,” as in, how many great novels have you read about peace? (And yet, I wondered, how can it be that my own polite, well-ordered country has produced writers like Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, and Alice Munro?)

The Okwombo Paradox was a good segue to Ishmael Beah, child soldier extraordinaire and the afternoon’s final contestant. Beah’s memoir A Long Way Gone tells the story of his recruitment to Sierra Leone’s civil war at the age of 13; it’s sold a million hardcover copies in a year, making it the best selling African book ever. I wonder – would it have sold as many copies if Beah still looked like a drugged-out badass instead of a Benetton model? Either way, it’s an ironic shame A Long Way Gone remains unavailable in Africa, as Ishmael ruefully pointed out to me later. “Conflict is a part of human nature, it’s inevitable,” Beah surmised on stage. “What we can do as writers is minimize it.”

Question-and-answers from there on in. You shoulda been there. Suffice to say we reached a few tentative conclusions, chief among them the fact that writers have a tendency to take themselves and their so-called role too seriously. Or do we? Why then, as Binyavanga pointed out, does a government like Zimbabwe’s, which can’t even fill a pothole on Mugabe Boulevard, still find the time to bomb its independent newspapers?

Whatever the case, next time you feel like throwing a Molotov into the Kenyan Parliament’s nonstop cocktail party, keep Beah’s closing quote in mind (penned by the incontestable Maya Angelou): “We must be angry, but we must never be bitter.”

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