Marto

True Rose

2006-11-18T05:29:00.000-08:00

As I depart from Australia, its interesting to note that I will never again look at the backpack carrying sneaker wearing foreign tourists in Nairobi quite the same way again. This army of visitors who look so peculiar in tee shirts and jeans in the midst of the suits and ties of Nairobi is crucial to our economy and keep thousands of kenyans employed.

Its heartening as well to see that more and more of these guests are roaming the streets of nairobi freely (I saw a couple making their way along Ronald Ngala Street, for anyone who knows Nairobi, that is no small feat) This is a testimony of just how the city has changed as the goverment improves security and sees off the pesky street boys.

But this is not about tourists or Nairobi, it is about one very special Australian called Jasmyn. I mantain it takes a bigger heart to be concerned for those who have nothing to do with you. In this regard. she has the biggest heart of all. Godspeed in Cameroon and hope you find your very own special niche in life.

Nyambua Ngeli Hii

2006-09-19T23:18:00.000-07:00

Since I turned 29 last week, I have been feeling very concious of the fact that as a generation Y, I am growing old. So in a bid to find solace (misery loves company; ask kevinmaina), am looking for other generation Yers. And the only way to do so is to invoke things that only they would know. so here goes

1. Maziwa ya nyayo
2. Radio lessons.

I remember this time in Offafa Jeri primo when we were told that the school milk had 'dawa' that would make us impotent ati as a strategy for family planning (which was the thing then along side mmonyoko wa udongo). I remember our headteacher (headi) calling an emergency parade and downing a whole packet of school milk.

And offcourse radio lessons and the ever memorable mnyambuliko wa ngeli " Ngeli ya wa wa' wanafunzi rudia sentensi hii 'watu hawa hawa hawana suruali'!

ok. I made up that.

The Pope On Evil

2006-09-18T21:59:00.000-07:00

When the Pope speaks of evil, we have to believe him. After all he is an authority on the subject, given the history of the institution he leads and his own personal history.

So now gracious Pope what do you want of your humble followers? do you want us to light up the stakes and burn the heretics? will it be the gas chambers of Auschwitz? or better still the machetes of Nyarubuye Parish?

Destroying the Western Civillization

2005-09-27T23:21:00.000-07:00

Today, the Australian federal Premier and the handful of State premiers reached an agreement to introduce new and draconian laws to help Australian law enforcers fight the menace that is terrorism.

On the face of it, the laws it seems like a good move, one that would keep Australians away from harm and prevent nightmares like September 11 befalling the good people of the Down Under Country.

But by a stroke of a pen, the Howard regime has managed to do the very thing that western leaders and their allies keep vowing that terrorists will never make them do; change their way of life. Now Australian police can arbitarily arrest and lock up people for 14 days. They dont need to tell you anthing, no explainations, no questions asked. After 14 days you will walk out of the station and back home again without neccecarily being told anything (and by the way if they arrest you at the gate while you are leaving, they could lock you up for another 14 days and keep going on till it pleases them to stop.)

Their are other even less pleasant tricks that the police can now play on anyone they dont like. They can tag you like a cow and track you electronically, they can burst into your house on any given day and they can listen in to phone converations. All this, without getting clearance from anyone.

The problem I see here is that these people have forgotten what it means to not have civil liberties. They are so caught up running away from a bearded caveman (literally) with a few sticks of explosives that they dont stop to ask themselves what damage, exactly, can islamic extremists inflict on their world. Aussies are caught up with such a lovely image of their own policemen that they dont remember how quickly Hitler turned the German ones into the brown shirts and later into the mass murderers history refers to as the SS

For 4 years, Adolf Hitler hurled a vastly more powerful and spohisticated military machine and somehow (admittedly out of his own miscalculations) failed to bring the West to its knees.

Osama can smash building with airplanes, he can even set off a nuke or two somewhere in down town Melbourne or LA. But at the end, it will take much more than that to destroy the west, assuming even, that that is his aim in the first place.

But the west, driven by fear and panic has every bit the potential to destroy itself. Today, the United States, that self confessed beacon of Freedom is running in Guantanamo, a stalin like gulag. They may call it other things, they may make detainees wear nice orange jumpers, or feed them bacon and steak but the principle behing stalin's gulag and Guantanamo is the same. A well dressed pig is at the end of the day still a pig, Guantanamo is a gulag!

I still do not understand why politicians have it that it is neccecary to loose civil liberties in order to fight terror. Deporting loose mouthed muftis and sheiks who keep gushing out anti western hate stuff is terribly comforting to people, but as a device to stop terrorists is totally useless. Real terrorists do not give interveiews on prime shows, and if they have the slightest trace of smarts (and they are smart) they probably keep away from mosques and other muslims as well. Good luck then to the hundreds of intelligence officers busy listening in to countless sermons in the mosques.

The British fought off the IRA terrorists for decades without changing giving draconian powers to law enforcement agencies. why the need to do it now?

There maybe some benefits to all these laws but I doubt if they outweigh the negatives they will bring. Isolating whole communites, heightening racial tensions and worse setting precedence for civil right abuses.

Terror can be stopped and should be stopped. But it will come through tradittional police work and co-operation among law enforcement agencies. Thats how the marxists terrorists like Badder Meinhoff and nationalsists like the IRA were beaten back. Gung ho solutions like Iraq and Guantanamo make politicians look good but their bennefits are doubtful and their consequences counter productive to defeating terror.

As so brilliantly depicted by Orwell, Tyranny does not suddenly befall a nation, it creeps one civil right violation at a time. There are not many things we Africans can teach the West but we know what tyranny is and how it comes about. Might Australians wake up one day and find extreme rightwing militias marching down the streets in Perth or Sidney? laugh if you may now, it wont look so funny when its you wearing the orange jumper.

The Sherriff of the Wild Wild East- Patrick Shaw

2005-04-30T00:27:00.000-07:00

Growing up in Eastleigh and schooling in Offafa Jeri primo, The name of the late police reservist Patrick Shaw was legendary. The burly senior Supritendent was said to be very fast on his feet and on the draw and inspired terror in all of us.

The class wag would memserise us with tall tales of how he and and his pals had been chased at night by the arguably most memorable police officer in Kenya's history. We would be told of how one of his pals had been shot by shaw but the bullet had passed through his shoulder and the bloke had gotten up and kept running (this heroic bullet dodging chap was, mark you, an 11 year old primary school kid, oh the innocence of childhood that we actually believed such stories!)

It was said that Shaw did exile a couple of hapless thugs from Nairobi ('go back to Muranga and never step a foot in Nairobi again or else...')

I despite my curosity and terror of Shaw, never did get to encounter him. If one of you ever did, please tell me of the encounter

And for all potential grooms out there.....

2005-04-26T04:12:00.000-07:00

As me and my best pal Mose keep saying (probably because we are envious of other blokes who manage to get themselves hitched)

Once you say I DO ......You are surely DONE! .....completely.. kabisa done for!

Remember this Song?... anyone?

2005-04-26T03:59:00.000-07:00

Remember this song on VOK radio morning in the mid eighties,

Hata wewe karani, amka kumekucha, Kwani hizi ndizo saa za kwenda kazi
Hata wewe mwalimu amka kumekucha, kwani hizi ndizo saa za kwenda shule

Uvivu ndio adui, wa ujenzi wa taifa, jiepushe na uvivu...wewe!
Tujenge taifa!

And we thought every one was jengaring the nation then. How so naive we were!

Tragedy and Joy abound!

2005-04-26T03:42:00.000-07:00

They are about to name into the cabinet a thief and a murderer. Where did the rain start to beat us?

on a happier note, my friend John is getting married later this year to. How I wish I was back at home. I miss my ol beautiful land! and the simplicity of life there. I miss my friends, Dear Mose, Mercurial Sara, The hilarious Silas, Sensible Toni, Delightful Eve and Forceful Sue.

Send a shout out if any of you happens to visit this blog sometime soon!

Design or Chance

2005-04-26T03:21:00.000-07:00

Evolution as proposed by Darwinists (if they can be called that) is something that logically speaking is not even possible. Ofcourse this does not mean that it proves that God created the world, you need Faith to believe that. Just that as an alternative to creation, it sounds even more unbelieveable if you think deeply about it.

The universe as it is is not a hierarchical system where components are placed in order of increasing or decreasing importance. if it was, then the darwin theory might have been, theoretically at least, possible. But as it is it is a system of intertwinned components which cannot possibly function or even exists without the other.

Take life for example. A possible darwin suggestion is that life started as a single cell structure coming into being through a chemical reaction of sorts (which no scientist to date has ever managed to understand let alone duplicate but let us assume it is possible) the single cell then mutated to be a multi cellular organism and later with specialised organs such as the heart tissue, blood tissue and so on. Which leads us to an immediate problem. say the heart exists inorder to pump blood through the body. If that is the case, blood tissue could not then possiblly have evolved before the heart tissue did otherwise it would just congeal and the organism would die. But the heart cannot function without blood which feed it with the oxygen it needs to keep its cells alive. so did the heart cells evolve, stay for a couple of million of years without oxygen while awaiting the mutation and hence the evolution of the blood tissue? these are just two organs. look at it more broadly to include the lungs, the kidneys, the liver, muscle tissue. did our great animal ancestor have to move around for a couple of million of years without lungs while awaiting their evolution?

A possible way out of it would be ofcourse that all the organs evolved simoultaniously, which again is as silly as saying that in multi secconds, an ameobe suddenly turned into a highly comlex multi system organism. if you can believe that, then you might as well believe in creation.If you now stretch this arguement to cover the highly complex flora and fauna system that constantly feed and sustain each other as well as the delicate temperature system that keep the earth being just right to sustain life (an which men seem to be hell-bent on destroying) then evolution sounds more and more absurd. That is my opinion.