Posted by: afrowrite on: December 31, 2008
By Muli wa Kyendo
This is season of goodwill. In the spirit of the season, I am wishing all those dear readers who have participated in the discussions in Afrowrite, a happy and prosperous New Year.
We in Kenya are starting the year with many hopes that a messiah will come and help our country to develop. Greed among our leaders is killing all of us. And we don’t know where to turn. We had hoped that the Messiah would come in the form of our opposition leaders. But we were wrong. We are only learning, as some vulgar people will put it, that everyone has a mouth and a stomach!
Poverty amidst plenty
Everyone tells us that our country is rich. In deed, it is so rich that everyone who hears of starving Kenyans covers their mouths with wonder. An example, we have so much maize and wheat that it is rotting in the fields. Farmers are every day complaining in the mass media that they have no market for their products.
Despite this, many Kenyans are starving. Those in urban areas and those in drier areas of the country do not have food. Many have the money to buy the food. Many have cattle they can sell and buy the food. But the government has regulations and rules that make circulation of services and products impossible. These rules ensure that all things are sold through a narrow band of middle-men and women—often well connected with the political elite.
This is just one example where very inept leadership is slowly and surely creating another Zimbabwe, if no messiah comes. Or if the messiah delays!
Happy and prosperous New Year to you all!
Posted by: afrowrite on: December 23, 2008
By Muli wa Kyendo
If you are working in Africa’s many urban centers, you are going to be travelling to your rural home to spend the Xmas with your family. You will have been saving bit by bit for this day because we, the average Africans have a few very important expenses for which we save our money.
One is to put up a rural house. If I am working I must upgrade my rural home from grass thatch to iron sheets. Otherwise, what am I working for if I can’t do that?! Don’t think it is that simple. Some of us have been building our rural homes since we started working and we are still at it. Every now and then we borrow a loan and add a few lines of stones or bricks before the money runs out. When it runs out, I have to wait for another year—may be two years—before I can get another loan. Many of us will finish our houses with our retirement money when we quit employment. That’s life!
The second thing we save our money for are funerals, births and circumcisions. It costs more than the average salary to have your son circumcised. Mostly, you will need a loan. Certainly you will do if you have two sons or more to be circumcised at once which often happens. These expenses cover not only the circumcisers fee, they cover dancers fee, the cost of rare, ceremonial foods like meat—a bull must be slaughtered! – and clothes. You provide the same things for funerals and births.
The third thing we save for is Xmas. Many of us take loans to go for Xmas—at home, in the rural areas! Whoever went home empty handed on Xmas day? The children need “ceremonial foods.” They need new clothes. We used to smell ours to see if they were fresh, starched materials. And we wore them fresh like that on Xmas Day, so that everyone who saw us would say, “Wow, I’ve never seen you in this one!” So attired, you are ready to eat all the things that you haven’t eaten throughout the years. And you are ready to roam around in your bright new clothes in the bright African sun until the second of January next year.
Well, it used to be fun for us as children. Now that it falls on me to provide the entertainment, I know it’s not fun, it’s an expense. But would I have it another way?
Posted by: afrowrite on: December 14, 2008
By Muli wa Kyendo
If, you are in Kenya and have a secret to help your friend to become a president, don’t do it. If you do, remember that tomorrow, when he is the president, you will be his target for elimination. That is the wisdom that informs our political class.
When Kenyans were oppressed by the dictatorship of former president Daniel arap Moi, the media became the focal point for the campaign to remove him from power. The media galvanized the opposition and pressured them to unite under former Vice President Mwai Kibaki—a man who had tried many times before to become president and failed. The media dressed him up and shepherded him into power.
But who became the biggest enemy, to Mwai Kibaki, the president? The media!
Ever since coming into power Mwai Kibaki and his entire family have been at war with the media. Kibaki has, at every opportunity, brought in laws that are against the media. The wife, Lucy Kibaki, has even walked into newsrooms in the dead of the night and dismantled cameras and other equipment, slapping journalists she didn’t like. The culmination was the night attack of the Standard newspapers and Kenya Television Network (KTN, Kenya’s second largest media house) by hooded hooligans in 2006. They disabled broadcasting equipment and burned newspapers.
Last year, in the General Elections, the opposition, led by Mr. Raila Odinga, posed as the best alternative to the Kibaki regime. The media once again came out in Raila’s support. And even when he was “rigged out” by the Kibaki regime, the media stood by him, forcing Kibaki to agree to share power with Raila. Now Raila is the powerful Prime Minister.
And now that he is in power, Raila, too, has joined Kibaki to oppress the media. The new Media Bill which allows the government to dismantle equipment belonging to “hostile” media houses, and to open individual letters and intercept emails, was passed by the two men! And not surprisingly, the two have remained mum even when chaos occur in front of their noses.
The media will have to look elsewhere, not upon these two men, if they are to survive.
Posted by: afrowrite on: November 18, 2008
Muli wa Kyendo
It’s a pity that no one said a thing—unless they whispered—against the illegal harassment of Nigerian Mohammed Bello Abubakar, the best known polygamist in the world. Abubakar, 84 years old, has 86 wives. According to interviews we have read, the women have voluntarily married him and are happy. Even the youngest in her 30s is satisfied with her life, as we have read.
Essential Criterion of Marriage
This fulfils the essential criterion of a marriage. A marriage is a union of two adults—a male and female—who choose to live together as man and wife. There is in this definition the inviolable element of individual human rights. The edict is: No one shall be interfered with when he or she pursues what they consider essential for their happiness, unless in they pursuit their interview with the rights of others to pursue theirs. A marriage can only interfere with the happiness of those involved—a man and his wife or wives.
But Mr. Abubakar, while in pursuit of happiness was arrested by order of an Islamic Court. According to the Court, he should divorce all his wives but two. I don’t need to belabor the stupidity and inhumanity of an order like this. If I go against cultural or religious norms, the normal thing is for the religious or cultural group to excommunicate me. Eurocentric Christian religion came to Africa with the same bigoted attitudes—forgetting that the Bible itself was more supportive of African culture of polygamy. But before people could breathe and see that they had been swindled of their heritage, many wives were without husbands and many children had already been rendered technically “bastards.” Who knows whether the psychological damage done to the children isn’t the cause for myriads of problems that Africa is now experiencing? It is a pity that the Muslim, whom African has supported since time immemorial, regardless of whether Mr. Abubakar is a heretic or not, wants to go the same stupid route.
African Culture is Superior to All This
It’s time for us as African to tell the world that being an African is superior to being a Muslim or Christian. I can change my religion tomorrow. I cannot change my community or my race.
Polygamists of the world, come out to condemn harassment of polygamists wherever they are. Don’t be afraid of Muslims and their fatwa’s. Our religions also have fatwa’s!
Saluting Nigerian High Court and Abubakar’s Lawyer
Start by writing to express support for the sentiments of this post. Let us express our protest to Nigerian Muslims and in deed to the rest of people who think or may think African culture is inferior to theirs.
Let me end by saluting the High Court of Nigeria for releasing Mr. Abubakar and giving an order against his being rearrested. I salute also his lawyer for putting up good fight. But shame is to those of us waging spineless campaigns for polygamy on internet.
Posted by: afrowrite on: November 12, 2008
Muli wa Kyendo
When someone like Miriam Makeba passes away, you are left with the feeling that God should have let her do something more. But then what is the something more? Mrs Makeba made great contribution to African and international music and to African fight for freedom. Maybe she wasn’t a complex mind – like Bob Marley – to come out with strong statements about human rights as people expected her to do coming from the hotbed of racism and discrimination. And in deed there are many who think that she actually gave support to Africa’s dictators.
But what could a simple village girl, caught in the whirl wind of international politics do? Just what she did. She had known the role of women in encouraging their men folk when they went or returned from war or cattle raids. The women sang urgent praise songs that urged set men stamping and tearing their hair with desire to success. And that’s what she did. Few countries in Africa weren’t the subject of her songs. Few leaders n Africa weren’t the subject of her songs. And in all of them she told them. “You have done very well but until all Africa and the black race is freed, Aluta Continua!” In this case, to criticize the African leader would have gone contrary to her mission. Hers was to help bring freedom – to help kill the animal as it were. How the meat was shared among the villagers wasn’t her duty.
So what else could she have done? I don’t know what else an artist can do that’s greater than that. Writers can only write and hope that they will create change. Musicians can only sing and hope that we will create change. That’s all. Artists should never – like Christopher Okigbo of Nigeria – take a gun and go to the battle field even when their achievements may look small to the ordinary man and woman.
Posted by: afrowrite on: October 17, 2008
By Muli wa Kyendo
A few months ago, I said in Africa we are never bored because there are so many things happening in our Great Continent. Some of these are of such momentous importance that if they were happening in another continent, they would be “World Lead” news headlines. But we never bother because we don’t know when we are making history.
when was it that you heard of a cultural change—a whole community abandoning its ways and beliefs and adopting another? People may abandon their cultures one by one, but a n immediate total change of a community, I believe is a historical event, not only because it rarely happens, but because it has tremendous implications in all spheres of life. In Kenya, the last it happened is estimated to be in the 15th century, when a warring clan of the Maasai which was called Akavi, overran the surrounding communities forcing them to abandon their god, Mulungu or Murungu and worship the Maasai god, Ngai. Today, the communities, including the Akamba and Kenya’s largest tribe, the Kikuyu still worship Ngai. And even in the Christian churches, Ngai is still the god worshipped.
Today, we in Kenya are in the midst of another cultural change. Kenya’s second largest community, the Luo, are abandoning their culture of non-circumcision of boys. Studies have show that circumcised men are less likely to contract the dreaded Aids/HIV virus. Following this, Luos, young and old, are queuing at hospitals to be circumcised. Prominent Luo politicians, including Kenya’s Prime Minister, Raila Odinga have led the cultural change campaign with the message: Change or we perish.
The unintended consequence will be that the Luos will have removed the biggest stigma which has stood between them and leadership of the country. Most other tribes in Kenya circumcise their boys (and even daughters) and an uncircumcised man is traditionally regarded as a boy who is unfit to lead. This prejudice stood between the late Vice President Oginga Odinga (the father of Raila Odinga) and the presidency of Kenya. Without that prejudice, Raila Odinga would today be Kenya’s President.
We are anxiously waiting to see what this cultural change will bring for the Luo community, for Kenya and even for Africa.
Posted by: afrowrite on: September 15, 2008
By Muli wa Kyendo
Nothing generates as much heat as an attack on a people’s culture. Much of it is because both sides – the attackers and the attacked – are blindly committed to their arguments. And worst of all, because these arguments are deeply rooted in belief systems. And belief systems raise fears, worries, and at their extremes, nervous or mental breakdowns.
Let’s Appreciate “Otherness”
When European missionaries arrived in Kenya, they found cultural systems that encouraged circumcision of both boys and girls. While circumcision of boys was apparently not new to the Europeans, circumcision of girls was. And so they set about trying to discourage it with vehemence. The reason for this was not necessarily medical. It was simply a desire to subjugate, an in ability to appreciate other people’s “otherness.” They wanted Africans to be like them because they applied Eurocentric development paradigm that put European culture at the top with all other cultures “struggling to catch up” at the bottom.
Kenyans fought to maintain their cultures – including female circumcision – as much as they fought to regain their land alienated by the European colonialists. They even established their own schools to oppose European policy of refusing to admit to their colonial schools Africans who observed African cultural practices. Political independence came, but the cultural battle continued. And it continues even today.
The Truth About FGM
The truth is this – cultural practices, despite their emotional content – are not static. Cultures are meant to regulate order within certain economic conditions. When those conditions change, cultures change too. When family labor was important, marrying many wives was encouraged. Even though there is no law against polygamy, many Africans are not marrying many wives. Urban houses are small, maintaining large families are expensive, not to mention that at a certain level, marrying many wives is frowned upon.
Similarly female circumcision or FGM is dying on its own as conditions that encouraged it are changing. In deed, in some communities such as the Akamba, Kikuyu and Kalenjins, FMG has almost died on its own. So why waste time and effort kicking a dying horse? This is they quarrel I have with NGOs that wander about in Africa diverting people’s efforts from real food generating work and creating unnecessary discords in families. Is it better that a girl is ostracized from home with the immensurable, life long mental anguish than that she undergoes harmless circumcision? As a sociologist and journalist, I know what trauma girls who are helped by NGOs – or even the Government – to defy parents go through. Why subject someone to such anguish only for you to get money from donors?
The best way to fight FMG is to leave it alone and encourage development. It will die on its own.
