18th July - It's Our Turn To Eat: Readings in Kisumu

This Saturday July 18, 2009 11am to 4pm International PEN Kenya Chapter, takes the READING of Michela's 'Its Our Turn To Eat,' to Kisumu. The VENUE: Aga Khan Sports Centre.

'Every age,' said Oscar Wilde, 'is fought using its own weapons.' Ours is the information age. Let Kenyans be told something about their government and individuals who waste their resources and time, trying to project themselves as leaders. No, they are not, and this we do not need to belabour. Its WHY the ASIAN TIGERS are ahead of us today.

Kenya needs recalibration. That calls for a good sense of history.


Michela Wrong gathers together pieces of a fragmented nightmarish narrative, and delivers it to the victim, a community afflicted by capricious gods undieted on Olympian foods. Put differently, they are not invincible. Whatever the community does with the message is not for the messenger to decide.

Khainga O'Okwemba, poet/literary critic &
Treasurer, International PEN Kenya Chapter

Putting Lipstick on a Pig...

Latest Partnership for Change publication is out and a must read and share...the horror has not stopped...

Click on the image below to download full publication of visit the Partnership for Change website HERE

Tactical Tech: The Quick ‘n Easy Guide to Online Advocacy

"The Internet has opened up many possibilities for rights advocates. In order to make the best use of the online world for their campaigns, however, advocates need to know what services are available, how they can be used in an advocacy campaign, who owns them and their hidden dangers."

"The Quick 'n Easy Guide to Online Advocacy developed by Tactical Tech, aims to expose advocates to online services that are quick to use and easy to understand. The guide provides descriptions of online services including social networking sites, image and video hosting services, and services that enhance an organizations web presence. The guide also offers advice on where and when to use these services. Case studies, security concerns as well as the advantages and disadvantages of various web services are discussed, with the aim of improving advocates ability to conduct online advocacy campaigns."

The internet services listed in the guide covers four main areas in which advocates operate: informing and communicating; documenting and visualising; mobilising and coordinating; and bypassing and accessing.

http://onlineadvocacy.tacticaltech.org

Usinibore

The first single from Just A Band's upcoming second album - 82.
http://www.just-a-band.com

Wajibu Magazine is out: Digitizing Kenya

Now Available in all major bookstores in Nairobi.

Content:

• Digitizing Kenya: some cracks in the digital divide
• Preventing collective amnesia: The challenge of preserving digital materials in the age of the internet
• Tourism and the Internet: what prospects for the small operator?
• Blogging About Kenya: National Discourse in a Transnational Space
• Digitally Networked Technology in Kenya's 2007-2008 Post-Election Crisis
  

Features:

• Making a difference: Africa Yoga Project – Journey into Power with Baron Baptiste
• Youth Speaks: Daring to live anew / Rose Njeri Ng’anga /
• Book review: It’s our turn to eat / Michaela Wrong /
  
• Poetry by Philo Ikonya

For more information email: gwakuraya (at) gmail (dot) com

CAN YOU WEAR THIS?

Destruction constructed...

Ignorance unclothed...

"This will go down as the worse day of my life. In the emergency room I step over the dead to reach for those dying. They were out of supplies. They had to use the same needle to suture multiple people. They were out of IV's in the hospital and all drug stores in town are closed. Called the owner of Eldochem and he met me at his shop within 10 minutes. Loaded my car to the brim with all of his IV fluids, tubing and suture sets and returned to the ER. Many burns along with at least a hundred with lacerations all over their bodies. Too many were just bodies. We lost an unknown number of children in Eldoret in a single church fire. Best guess is >30 children may have died in this single blaze. Many of the burned adults and children survivors are in our ER."

"More people have died today in Eldoret than the number reported in the media for all of Kenya! Got our food truck and formed a caravan: Armed guards in front and behind, our truck, I was in a Kenyan Red Cross truck. We drove to the Eldoret airport to pick up supplies flown in to us by the Red Cross. We loaded literally tons of wonderful supplies and just got them back to the hospital. Even included a Red Cross trauma surgeon who flew up with the supplies. The drive to the airport is just too much. There are fires in all directions as homes and shops burn. Literally hundreds of refugees walk along the road. Sometimes it is 30-50 children and a single adult walking along carrying what they can. The road itself was cluttered by large stones that represented road blocks where they look in the car for those who are the "wrong tribe". There must be 20 blocked areas in that short drive. Most abandoned but not all. Passed many burned out homes and shops on the way. Standing on the tarmac of the airport, I could see smoke coming up on the horizon in all directions. I have pictures but lack the courage to even look at them myself much less send them until I relax a bit."

"It is my understanding that things in Western Province are pretty stable. The bulk of the crisis is in Rift Valley where we are, Nyanza, Nairobi and Coast. Those who flew in on the plane describe smoke coming up all along between Nakuru and Eldoret. I will not be able to process what I have seen; perhaps never understand my feelings. Be assured that the human genome needs many more years of evolution if it can get there biologically. The only way I can see to jump our inherent flaws as a race is to encounter something deeper in our lives than just self. It is a precious thing to have a deep feeling of being changed by our faith."

"Never take that for granted. It is all that gives sanity to what I have seen today."

PRINA SHAH
b.1973, Nairobi, Kenya
Live and Work in Kenya
Probe:
The Amnesia Project Platform 7

Towards a Just Society...