Warning : This blog may impair your morals
Kenya was covered by my small town, mid-west America gazette (Alright, I admit it, one of my passports is American):
“….Kibaki the leader of the kikuyu tribe, and Raila Odinga the leader of the luo tribe smoked the peace-pipe by signing a power-sharing deal, thus marking an end to months of ethnic violence…”
They might have as well shown them wearing feathers and banging on a drum.
There is this channel called K24. Its not bad really. First there is the funny talking anchor, then there is the rampant unedited footage without any background commentary (I know pictures speak for themselves, but…. we were born with ears). However, they are trying to cover stories from different angles. You have to give them that.
I witnessed a recent example of a news story being covered from a different angle. Literally:
An intrepid K24 reporter conducts an interview in an IDP camp (an IDP = Internally Displaced Person, the newest addition to the long list of gazetted tribes). The interviewee is identified as a “IDP woman”. Woman doesn’t want her identity to be revealed, so the reporter smartly turns the camera down to her chest – and proceeds to conduct a question-answer session with the interviewee’s breasts.
When you have a pair of breasts filling up the screen, whispering answers into an intrusive microphone - responses like: “I was forced out of my home”, almost acquire a new dimension.
(Clearly, the reportage was inspired by Philip Roth’s audacious novella about the loss of identity: The Breast, where a learned professor wakes up one day to learn that he has been transformed into a gigantic breast.
Though this novella in turn has its inspirational roots in Kafka’s The Metamorphosis)
I am not dead. Just back from a long-winded matter of official business. Logistics is not a sedentary vocation you see.
So I switch on my computer, and the first email is from my friend from the Big Apple:
………..
Thought you would find this funny:
Clintonite stabs Obama supporter:
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2008/0225081ortiz1.html
“The Pennsylvania man allegedly stabbed his brother-in-law in the stomach after the pair quarreled about their respective support of Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.”
So here its down to a skinny Raila vs a feminine-and-whiter Mbaki.
……….
Note: Kibaki = Mbaki, my friend is terrible with names.
Ten thousand years of humanity, and we still have professionals among us, who write 1,200 word essays – yet, they still don’t make a point: (And the writer even has the temerity to admit it 500 words into the article)
Letter to Bush from a humble citizen of Kenya
Well, I seem to have a difficulty saying what I want to say. You see, it makes one nervous preparing a presidential note. It is no easy task at all.
Apparently the sms-messaging head-hunters are after him. You people, wherever you are, I urge you to come and quickly be off with his head. Either that, or somebody should award him the Nobel peace prize, under condition that he never speaks or writes again, thus preserving growth-forest depleting news-print.
On the other hand, you can be short and sweet, and still make a point.
** à titre documentaire : “just for the record” , or something close to that.
AfricaNews.com: Final question, if you became the President or the Minister for Internal Security how would you fight Mungiki?Mathenge: I would adopt them as a crucial part of the economy.
Isn’t it odd. No respectable politician is able to utter a truth. And the only one speaking honestly is a thug.
Extortion makes good economic sense when instruments of the state, like the courts, do not enforce contracts – thus even corruption does not ensure a secure relationship with the state.
Its only a matter of time before such mafias compete for the extortion cake with the two other such established entities: the police force, and the city council.
Note: All this sounds eerily similar to the town where I was born many years ago in a different continent.
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