Introduction:
I wrote this article in January 2010 out of a anger and a sense of outrage that a wanted terrorist could find his way into Kenya through one of our official border posts all because of a 'technical hitch' in the equipment supposed to detect such unwanted people. The security operation targeting aliens around that time swiftly turned into a exercise that seemed to persecute and target the Somali community living in Kenya. I had not started my blog by then so the article had lost its relevance to some extent by the time I commenced blogging in November 2011.
However recent events relating to the Westgate terror attack have infused some relevance to the article and I reproduce it herebelow with no changes whatsoever to the earlier article. I have no doubt in my mind that corruption, ineptitude and deriliction of duty has played a key role in the events leading up to the massacre of innocent civilians on Saturday 21st September 2013.
The relevance of the article to the current government is not the issue, but this is merely an angry social commentary on what in my view ailed and continues to ail Kenya. Read on..................
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If I were Minister for Immigration, Otieno Kajwang, I would be having sleepless nights wondering how I dug myself and my country into such a deep hole in this saga involving persona non grata Mr. Abdullah al-Faisal. I would be wondering if I really have dedicated officers manning our border posts into the country or if I should just open up all the border posts to allow all and sundry into the country without so much as a cursory glance at them.
I would also wonder whether all the recent hullabaloo about illegal immigrants in the country is merely a smoke screen because since time immemorial, all manner of Somali, Ugandan, Tanzanian, Ethiopian and Sudanese have been waltzing in and out of Kenya through the very porous borders we have with our neighbors without the courtesy of announcing their arrival into Kenya whenever they have an overwhelming urge for the taste of Tusker, Blue Band, miraa and other assorted Kenyan goodies which may or may not be contraband in their countries. But off course this is Kenya which, as the Tanzanians say is a dog eat dog society, and Minister Kajwang probably lulls himself to sleep blissfully unaware of his role in this whole saga as he hums to himself the last few stanzas of his favorite ‘mapambano’ song!
The casual manner in which al-Faisal a person known to have terrorist links crossed over into Kenya from Tanzania because “the computer system that would have identified him as a terrorist was not working” points to a careless government. The online Encarta Dictionary defines careless as ‘not giving enough careful attention to the details of something’ and ‘disregarding or showing no concern about something.’
A government intent on protecting its people and its sovereignty should be a government that pays attention to detail and shows concern about issues that could be a threat to its security. It should be a government that is bent on ensuring that its mandate as a protector of its citizenry is not mortgaged to the highest bidder and one that genuinely strives to protect itself and its people from international opprobrium and ridicule. I would expect that such a government would have invested in the highest levels of IT and communication software so that in the event of a failed computer system it would have a back up contingency plan to continue the very necessary and expensive business of vetting visitors into our country. Therefore this business of a failed computer system indicates a careless government! In any case what was to stop Mr. al-Faisal from bribing an over zealous immigration official at Lunga Lunga who noticed that he was persona non grata so as to be allowed entry into Kenya?
This careless government has exposed us to the H1N1 virus after a very public announcement by Minister Beth Mugo assured Kenyans that no visitor would be allowed into our country if they so much as sneezed while on their way into Kenya only for tens of students from the UK to land at our very own JKIA and find their way to Kisumu where it was discovered that several of them were exposed to the virus. The ensuing circus was a study in how not to (re)act in such circumstances. Over the years this careless government has exposed us to the Artur brothers, the General Mathenge joke, the Anglo Leasing scandal, hiding of Felicien Kabuga, theft of funds from donors meant for free primary education, Triton petroleum scandal, Kenya pipeline scandals, gagging of the press though the recently gazetted Media bill and a myriad other scandals all in the last 8 years. I recall the words of Kiraitu Murungi in a moment of bravado telling retired President Moi to go back to his farm and look after his ‘ngoats’ and watch how a government is run and now we can see what he meant, a government ran at the whims and the foibles of a few to put the majority at risk!!
Which brings me to the issue of social corruption!!? In the last few days, there has been a concerted effort to arrest illegal immigrants in Kenya. The target of this exercise seems to be focused on the people of Somali origin across all major towns in Kenya………including the wife and daughter of former MP Billow Kerrow (by mistake)! I would like to think that this sudden energetic activity has been after a carefully planned and coordinated (co)operation between the Police and the Immigration departments that had already identified who was illegally in Kenya and therefore would be arrested and deported back to wherever they came from. Coming so shortly after the mass protests in downtown Nairobi that left several dead and scores injured and whose blame appears to have been laid squarely on the shoulders of the Al Shabbab militia whose origins are in Somalia then I am persuaded otherwise. It is generally known that Kenya is a Mecca that attracts illegal immigrants from as far as Asia, the DRC, Eritrea, Djibouti, Rwanda, Burundi and many other countries that have no common border with Kenya. Of the immediate neighboring countries that share a common border with Kenya I will not comment since our borders are so porous as to give a ‘kichungi’ a good name. Common sense therefore tells me that a well planned operation would be geared towards arresting ALL illegal immigrants and not merely those of Somali origin. This careless action by the government targeting people of Somali origins only exposes the rest of us to the risk of retaliatory attacks and continued protests. Or is it just recently that our careless government has woken up to the realization that persons of Somali origin pose a threat to the security of this country by their sheer numbers and combined economic acumen?
It is also suspected that much of the ill gotten wealth in the form of ransoms paid to pirates who hijack ships in the Gulf of Aden and the wider Indian Ocean finds its way into Kenya though one way or another and is one of the factors that has raised property prices across the country to astronomical proportions as these ill gotten funds are laundered through purchase of land and property at whatever price. I am convinced that the people who have been buying up prime chunks of land at exorbitant prices have not escaped the eagle eye of the Kenyan intelligence and security services and are therefore very well known and perhaps have godfathers who ensure that their investments are protected at all costs probably with handsome profits shared in the process.
I also believe that many of these people have paid handsomely for the privilege of acquiring Kenyan citizenship since it is widely known that in Kenya so long as you can pay the going price or facilitation fee then becoming a citizen of this great country is the easiest thing in the world as is acquiring a valid work/business permit to work as a supervisor on a construction site while thousands of well educated Kenyan have no jobs. This explains why we have so many people strutting around arrogantly holding Kenyan work permits, Kenyan ID’s and Kenyan passports who cannot construct a coherent sentence in English and/or Kiswahili because they can always fall back on their masters when they need to…………at a price off course! We have mortgaged our country to all kinds of bidders and we are paying the price for this!
This payment of a facilitation fee for acquisition of Kenyan work/business permits, Kenyan ID’s and Kenyan passports is what I refer to as social corruption since both the corrupter and the corrupted get a benefit and neither has the motivation to report such corruption since they would be stripped of the benefit that one has gained from the other. Often the fee is paid over a cup of coffee or a beer after office hours at an agreed social venue, hence the term social corruption. Often this fee is shared out in a certain proportion to a cabal of willing officials at a preset agreed percentage making it a very difficult cartel to infiltrate and break up. Since the final decision on Immigration matters rests with the Minister for Immigration, it is safe to assume that over the years consecutive Ministers have been aware of these shenanigans and perhaps directly benefits from it though I hope I am wrong and that they have been duped over the years by their underlings.
This is endemic corruption at its best and some of the wealthiest and most well connected individuals in this country have very definitely profited handsomely from such facilitation fees either directly or as go betweens to whisper in the ear of the relevant official in the relevant Ministry for special exceptional consideration for a well connected so and so foreigner to have their citizenship/work/business permit issues fast tracked through the system another feature of a careless government. The level of corruption under this social corruption could easily reduce the Police Dept, that bastion of corruption year in year out, into position No. 2 in the Kenya corruption index if only those paying such fees would talk!
It is high time that the government shows us that it is a caring government by putting in place systems and processes to protect its borders and its people as well as properly vet those who aspire to live work and do business in Kenya. It is incumbent on the relevant investigative and intelligence organs of government to audit the activities of the Immigration Ministry in order to establish who over the years has not met the minimum criteria for living, working and doing business in Kenya and who should then be stripped of their ill gotten citizenship and work/business permits and then shipped back from wherever they came from.
Let us not have another al-Faisal debacle so that we stop being the clown, cartoon and laughing stock of the international community due to the sheer ineptness and carelessness of those who have sworn to defend our country in the handling of small matters that have the potential to spiral out of control due to careless and ill coordinated statements and press conferences.
W Mwangi - A concerned & patriotic Kenyan
21st January 2010
Wednesday 25 September 2013
Tuesday 24 September 2013
Is it time to allow civilians the right to bear firearms?
I am angry at what happened at Westgate Mall in Nairobi on the morning of Saturday the 21st September 2013 and it is as shocking to me as much as it is to the rest of Kenya and the world at large. I add my condolences message to the families of those who have needlessly lost their lives in that siege and continue to pray for the speedy recovery of those injured by the callous terrorists who opened fire indiscriminately on innocent men, women and children collateral targets in a war they have little knowledge and understanding off. Even though I was not directly affected by the events, I was very traumatized over that weekend and a stiff uncharacteristic drink late on Saturday night is what enabled me to get some semblance of sleep with the disturbing nightmares coming back to haunt me on Sunday night as we waited to see what would come out of the standoff that thanfully now as I finalise this article seems all but over.
I have decided to write this piece in my anger because some anger makes one say things that they would not ordinarily say. A great many opinions have come out of this incident and will continue to come through in the days and weeks to come and one of them was narrated to me over the weekend by a close friend whose wife and daughter were caught up in the action but thankfully were unscathed in the ensuing commotion. This person says that he shall no longer take his personal security as well as that of his family for granted and he is getting himself a firearm and before you are all up in arms (pun intended) about it, he will follow the due process of getting a permit and follow all the requirements of the law and not get one of those bootleg guns you get in some border areas, or so I hear, in this country.
Why his sudden interest in owning a firearm? Why the sudden conclusion that the police force does not offer adequate protection to you, your family and your property? His argument is based on the logic that an incident such as the one that happened at Westgate Mall could not have happened in the neighboring countries of Uganda and Tanzania simply because a large number of civilians in those countries are licensed firearm holders. Many of the security guards in those countries are also armed with a variety of small arms and would have immediately have subjected the armed assailants to a barrage of small arms fire sufficient to kill or wound a few or all the attackers and force the rest to back off. I suppose this is the reason why Al Shabab terrorists chose to detonate an explosive device that killed scores of people in Kampala a few years ago rather than go in guns blazing with all the risks of being shot at by those you are targeting!!
Here in Kenya, with all due respect the guards armed with their ‘rungus’ and walkie talkies as well as the civilian population going about their daily business were sitting ducks literally at Westgate. When heavily armed gunmen alight from vehicles and begin shooting randomly and indiscriminately into crowds of people with little or no return fire you can be sure they shall overwhelm whatever little resistance there shall be. His argument therefore is to allow civilians and security guards to bear arms so that the battle lines are not skewed so awkwardly in favor of those with the guns against the majority without.
He further goes on to say that the reason we have such brazen armed criminals in Kenya is because they know that they will get away with threatening you even with an unloaded firearm simply because the possibility that you are armed is quite remote. Unless trained in the art of handling a firearm, many people cannot distinguish between a real gun and a toy one something that thugs have taken full advantage off. Arming civilians means that an armed criminal will have to think twice before attacking someone.
While on a visit to Kampala about a year ago, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that one can walk in all areas of the city at any time of the day or night without fear of being harassed or molested simply because no one will dare risk attacking you lest he gets shot dead so the crime rate is generally much lower than in Nairobi. In Nairobi, you stand to get "ngetad", knifed or smeared with excrement by the common hoodlum between the hours of 7.00 pm and 6.00 am as you get your phone, handbag and wallet stolen because the only resistance you are likely to offer is almost non existant!
I am not saying that I necessarily agree or disagree with the argument that many guns in the hands of civilians shall result in many more incidences of accidental shootings and an escalation in the crime rate, but how many have felt completely helpless when confronted by a gun toting gangster who robs you, beats you up, rapes your wife and children and probably sodomises you also and casually walks away probably never to be apprehended. Don’t you wish that if you had a gun you would have attempted to use it to injure or kill this thug who has invaded your personal space and has violated your family? Would you rather have had a better chance of protecting your family if armed with a firearm in such an instant and giving yourself a slim chance of salvaging your pride rather than no chance at all? This is the overwhelming reaction that those that have been caught up in these situations invariably feel or so I have been told countless times because the vulnerability of being unable to defend yourself or your family simply because someone has a gun while you don’t is the most frightening thing that can happen to someone!!
This particular issue is mired in controversy the world over with those arguing for and those arguing against such a case of civilians holding legal firearms. The reality on the ground as has been admitted countless times by our law enforcers is that there are too many illegal guns in the hands of the wrong people and this drives a thriving criminal underworld with guns for hire at a relatively cheap cost. Secondly, what came out of the Westgate attack is that Kenya is actually at war with Al Shabab and Al Qaeda types who will not hesitate to mow down deadly soldiers including toddlers, children and women in furtherance of their twisted political agendas. Why then should I not also be able to protect myself as a soldier in this war that will be brought to my doorstep?
The powers that be need to come to the realization that while we have a police force that is supposed to protect us, the force is severely constrained in terms of numbers and therefore in their abilities to respond to my calls for assistance as well as in access to reliable vehicles and other resources needed to ensure that I get their help when I need it. It is up to the policy makers to grapple with the delicate issue of enabling laws and how to control and manage a process where the owning of a firearm is a basic citizens right but it has happened in other countries and there is no need to reinvent the wheel.
So, with the recent incident in mind and me still being mad as hell, is it time to consider arming civilians willing to follow due process of the law in obtaining a firearm, with full training of handling and using of a firearm more so now that the Al Shabab and Al Qaeda militia have shown that they are hell bent on creating havoc in our midst since they know that there shall be little or no resistance from the general civilian population in Kenya if they attack us? My friends argument seems to suggest that it is.
I have decided to write this piece in my anger because some anger makes one say things that they would not ordinarily say. A great many opinions have come out of this incident and will continue to come through in the days and weeks to come and one of them was narrated to me over the weekend by a close friend whose wife and daughter were caught up in the action but thankfully were unscathed in the ensuing commotion. This person says that he shall no longer take his personal security as well as that of his family for granted and he is getting himself a firearm and before you are all up in arms (pun intended) about it, he will follow the due process of getting a permit and follow all the requirements of the law and not get one of those bootleg guns you get in some border areas, or so I hear, in this country.
Why his sudden interest in owning a firearm? Why the sudden conclusion that the police force does not offer adequate protection to you, your family and your property? His argument is based on the logic that an incident such as the one that happened at Westgate Mall could not have happened in the neighboring countries of Uganda and Tanzania simply because a large number of civilians in those countries are licensed firearm holders. Many of the security guards in those countries are also armed with a variety of small arms and would have immediately have subjected the armed assailants to a barrage of small arms fire sufficient to kill or wound a few or all the attackers and force the rest to back off. I suppose this is the reason why Al Shabab terrorists chose to detonate an explosive device that killed scores of people in Kampala a few years ago rather than go in guns blazing with all the risks of being shot at by those you are targeting!!
Here in Kenya, with all due respect the guards armed with their ‘rungus’ and walkie talkies as well as the civilian population going about their daily business were sitting ducks literally at Westgate. When heavily armed gunmen alight from vehicles and begin shooting randomly and indiscriminately into crowds of people with little or no return fire you can be sure they shall overwhelm whatever little resistance there shall be. His argument therefore is to allow civilians and security guards to bear arms so that the battle lines are not skewed so awkwardly in favor of those with the guns against the majority without.
He further goes on to say that the reason we have such brazen armed criminals in Kenya is because they know that they will get away with threatening you even with an unloaded firearm simply because the possibility that you are armed is quite remote. Unless trained in the art of handling a firearm, many people cannot distinguish between a real gun and a toy one something that thugs have taken full advantage off. Arming civilians means that an armed criminal will have to think twice before attacking someone.
While on a visit to Kampala about a year ago, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that one can walk in all areas of the city at any time of the day or night without fear of being harassed or molested simply because no one will dare risk attacking you lest he gets shot dead so the crime rate is generally much lower than in Nairobi. In Nairobi, you stand to get "ngetad", knifed or smeared with excrement by the common hoodlum between the hours of 7.00 pm and 6.00 am as you get your phone, handbag and wallet stolen because the only resistance you are likely to offer is almost non existant!
I am not saying that I necessarily agree or disagree with the argument that many guns in the hands of civilians shall result in many more incidences of accidental shootings and an escalation in the crime rate, but how many have felt completely helpless when confronted by a gun toting gangster who robs you, beats you up, rapes your wife and children and probably sodomises you also and casually walks away probably never to be apprehended. Don’t you wish that if you had a gun you would have attempted to use it to injure or kill this thug who has invaded your personal space and has violated your family? Would you rather have had a better chance of protecting your family if armed with a firearm in such an instant and giving yourself a slim chance of salvaging your pride rather than no chance at all? This is the overwhelming reaction that those that have been caught up in these situations invariably feel or so I have been told countless times because the vulnerability of being unable to defend yourself or your family simply because someone has a gun while you don’t is the most frightening thing that can happen to someone!!
This particular issue is mired in controversy the world over with those arguing for and those arguing against such a case of civilians holding legal firearms. The reality on the ground as has been admitted countless times by our law enforcers is that there are too many illegal guns in the hands of the wrong people and this drives a thriving criminal underworld with guns for hire at a relatively cheap cost. Secondly, what came out of the Westgate attack is that Kenya is actually at war with Al Shabab and Al Qaeda types who will not hesitate to mow down deadly soldiers including toddlers, children and women in furtherance of their twisted political agendas. Why then should I not also be able to protect myself as a soldier in this war that will be brought to my doorstep?
The powers that be need to come to the realization that while we have a police force that is supposed to protect us, the force is severely constrained in terms of numbers and therefore in their abilities to respond to my calls for assistance as well as in access to reliable vehicles and other resources needed to ensure that I get their help when I need it. It is up to the policy makers to grapple with the delicate issue of enabling laws and how to control and manage a process where the owning of a firearm is a basic citizens right but it has happened in other countries and there is no need to reinvent the wheel.
So, with the recent incident in mind and me still being mad as hell, is it time to consider arming civilians willing to follow due process of the law in obtaining a firearm, with full training of handling and using of a firearm more so now that the Al Shabab and Al Qaeda militia have shown that they are hell bent on creating havoc in our midst since they know that there shall be little or no resistance from the general civilian population in Kenya if they attack us? My friends argument seems to suggest that it is.
Tuesday 17 September 2013
The road to riches is paved by those with evil intentions:
I am constantly bemused by the barrage of people wanting to interest me in one form of therapy or another, or in one cure all or another, or in one weight loss program or another, or one magic portion bullet or another to fight a variety of conditions from obesity, to AIDS, to TB, to Cholera, to being poor and to guarantee future riches.
This bemusement also extends to those intending to sell to me pieces of glass orbs that supposedly purify and deionize water, to necklaces that you wear to ward off bad karma, to foot baths that rid the body of toxins to gadgets with beams that you direct at certain parts of your body for instant healing. Those selling all sorts of poultices, herbal creams, mineral and vitamin supplements, ointments and balms are also in their hundreds every one proclaiming that their product is better than the next or has health benefits unheard of before and can be yours for the low, low price of Kshs. 50,000.00, Kshs. 100,000.00 or such other large amounts of money. The pricing is the key because while what you purchase is never intrinsically worth what you pay for it, the pricing ensures that only those with that kind of money can afford it thus giving the whole show some semblance of exclusivity.
But call me a skeptic or whatever else you wish to call me, but all that is balderdash, hogwash and a load of bull and is most likely just some get rich quick scheme like that hoax hatched some years ago by a company based in the UK that manufactured a gadget that they claimed could detect, explosives, guns and other contraband items from a great distance.
Now for a fair warning. For those who feel slighted by the direction of this blog article, stop reading NOW because it is likely that some of my comments will hit below the belt. If you do choose to continue reading it is with the tacit acceptance that you will not hold me accountable for any ill feelings you may harbor against me now or in the future so you continue at your own risk.
Many governments have over the years been convinced to buy that useless detection gadget for use by their police and military forces while there is no conclusive evidence that it even does what it is claimed to do. Our very own Kenya Police purchased these expensive devices and have defended their effectiveness over the years perhaps to avoid looking foolish in the eyes of the tax paying public. The gadget was described as "a useless quack device which cannot perform any other function than separating naive persons from their money. It's a fake, a scam, a swindle, and a blatant fraud”………which would pretty much be my definition of many of these devices and gadgets said to be magical cures to a host of ailments by directing a ray here, a beaded necklace here and a glass orb there and so on.
But the story doesn’t end there because these merchants and masters of chicanery having sold you some worthless but expensive piece of junk then encourage you to establish a down line of other people willing to purchase the product or the benefits of the product where you stand to earn a commission on the sale thereby recovering your initial investment.
These multilevel scams have invaded churches, clubs, colleges, homes and offices with people actively holding meetings and selling junk to others naive enough to be separated from their money with the initiators of the scam laughing all the way to the bank while spinning fantastic stories of sudden great wealth and access to all the good things that money can buy once your down line is 5 or 10 strong only for the game to reach its logical conclusion and collapse on itself when the saturation point and life cycle of the scam reaches often in a very short time.
As the cycle of the never ending quest for instant riches continues the next day as yet another charlatan opens up shop with another fantastic story to tell of a magical gadget that is guaranteed to put money in your pocket just going to prove how fickle and shallow minded the human mind real is. The cacophony surrounding this phenomenon would see our country hurtling towards becoming a very wealthy country within the next 10 years if only half the energy in the multilevel business was directed toward more meaningful pursuits.
So you have been warned, the road to riches is paved with the evil intentions of the crafty and fed by the insatiable greed of the naïve and at the end of the day, only one will make his money..............the crafty !! Ask the government of Kenya.
This bemusement also extends to those intending to sell to me pieces of glass orbs that supposedly purify and deionize water, to necklaces that you wear to ward off bad karma, to foot baths that rid the body of toxins to gadgets with beams that you direct at certain parts of your body for instant healing. Those selling all sorts of poultices, herbal creams, mineral and vitamin supplements, ointments and balms are also in their hundreds every one proclaiming that their product is better than the next or has health benefits unheard of before and can be yours for the low, low price of Kshs. 50,000.00, Kshs. 100,000.00 or such other large amounts of money. The pricing is the key because while what you purchase is never intrinsically worth what you pay for it, the pricing ensures that only those with that kind of money can afford it thus giving the whole show some semblance of exclusivity.
But call me a skeptic or whatever else you wish to call me, but all that is balderdash, hogwash and a load of bull and is most likely just some get rich quick scheme like that hoax hatched some years ago by a company based in the UK that manufactured a gadget that they claimed could detect, explosives, guns and other contraband items from a great distance.
Now for a fair warning. For those who feel slighted by the direction of this blog article, stop reading NOW because it is likely that some of my comments will hit below the belt. If you do choose to continue reading it is with the tacit acceptance that you will not hold me accountable for any ill feelings you may harbor against me now or in the future so you continue at your own risk.
Many governments have over the years been convinced to buy that useless detection gadget for use by their police and military forces while there is no conclusive evidence that it even does what it is claimed to do. Our very own Kenya Police purchased these expensive devices and have defended their effectiveness over the years perhaps to avoid looking foolish in the eyes of the tax paying public. The gadget was described as "a useless quack device which cannot perform any other function than separating naive persons from their money. It's a fake, a scam, a swindle, and a blatant fraud”………which would pretty much be my definition of many of these devices and gadgets said to be magical cures to a host of ailments by directing a ray here, a beaded necklace here and a glass orb there and so on.
But the story doesn’t end there because these merchants and masters of chicanery having sold you some worthless but expensive piece of junk then encourage you to establish a down line of other people willing to purchase the product or the benefits of the product where you stand to earn a commission on the sale thereby recovering your initial investment.
These multilevel scams have invaded churches, clubs, colleges, homes and offices with people actively holding meetings and selling junk to others naive enough to be separated from their money with the initiators of the scam laughing all the way to the bank while spinning fantastic stories of sudden great wealth and access to all the good things that money can buy once your down line is 5 or 10 strong only for the game to reach its logical conclusion and collapse on itself when the saturation point and life cycle of the scam reaches often in a very short time.
As the cycle of the never ending quest for instant riches continues the next day as yet another charlatan opens up shop with another fantastic story to tell of a magical gadget that is guaranteed to put money in your pocket just going to prove how fickle and shallow minded the human mind real is. The cacophony surrounding this phenomenon would see our country hurtling towards becoming a very wealthy country within the next 10 years if only half the energy in the multilevel business was directed toward more meaningful pursuits.
So you have been warned, the road to riches is paved with the evil intentions of the crafty and fed by the insatiable greed of the naïve and at the end of the day, only one will make his money..............the crafty !! Ask the government of Kenya.
Monday 16 September 2013
What happened to the English language?
Mrs. Jill Davies was my English teacher in Form One and for most of my high school years. She was a quintessential English school ma’am, insisting on being addressed in correct English and with all the i’s dotted and t’s crossed in the essays that you handed over to her. English under her tutelage was fascinating because she had the clipped British accent that was so enthralling to the young boys that we were.
Those of us who had completed our primary level education in Nairobi or any of the other large towns in Kenya or at any of the few private primary schools back then were lucky in that our English was by and large quite refined. It was quite another story for those who had attended primary school in the more rural areas tongues heavy with the dialect of the part of Kenya they came from and English as a second language taught only in classrooms and with no real reason to put what you were taught into regular practice.
Jill Davies’s accent was to these guys (and with all due respect to anyone who was similarly afflicted) a real challenge to keep up with and many would stare mesmerized at Mrs. Davies as she prattled along, not understanding a word she said but nodding their heads whenever those who could make out what she was saying did so, and then being caught off guard as she would fire off a question directed at one of the head nodding boys who would then nod back to her unable to comprehend that a question was being directed at him. The fumbling, mumbling and obvious confusion would send the rest of the class into a paroxysm of laughter often resulting in someone being punished to kneel at a corner or a quick rap with a ruler on their knuckles.
The experience with Mrs. Davies however by and large ensured that we would all become fairly conversant in our spoken and written English once done with high school something that I am eternally grateful for today. I am able to construct a semblance of a sentence and string together several sentences to make a paragraph and I still enjoy reading and have a stock of novels both bound and online that I treasure immensely.
However, in this digital age of the internet, auto correct, online dictionaries, websites dedicated to helping people communicate better and social media I get quite disappointed at the quality of the written word. Hasty contractions and abbreviations, poor sentence construction, no due regard to capitalization of proper nouns, no pagination, apostrophes and exclamation marks taken for granted and used anyhowly!!!! Question marks where none is required? Silly speling errors……..the list is endless and Jill Davies would be beetroot red hopping mad if she discovered who was responsible for this massacre of the queen’s language.
Truly the language of English has been stretched, pulled, pulverized and convoluted so badly over the years that in the process we have been reduced to being poor communicators both in our personal and business lives content with struggling to read incomprehensible gibberish, shortened for convenience sake and to save a few shillings on an SMS and in a combination of English, Swahili, sheng and our mother tongue. It’s no wonder that the comic relief provided by the poor English speaker is one of the most hilarious things one is likely to encounter anywhere in Kenya today including in our hallowed precincts of Parliament and in positions of responsibility and power!!
I do not claim to be the best in this English thing or anything else but do take the trouble to check what you have typed before hitting that send, print or share button because now more than ever before spell prompt and predictive text has also added new unseen and hidden dangers to the typing of a letter, email message or SMS because it predicts what you want to write and populates (or is it pollutes) it even before you have had a chance to figure out what you wanted to say!!
NB - Read also my earlier blog on this link on a similar subject http://www.joe-wonderingallowed.blogspot.com/2012/01/and-you-wonder-why-they-speak-funny.html
Those of us who had completed our primary level education in Nairobi or any of the other large towns in Kenya or at any of the few private primary schools back then were lucky in that our English was by and large quite refined. It was quite another story for those who had attended primary school in the more rural areas tongues heavy with the dialect of the part of Kenya they came from and English as a second language taught only in classrooms and with no real reason to put what you were taught into regular practice.
Jill Davies’s accent was to these guys (and with all due respect to anyone who was similarly afflicted) a real challenge to keep up with and many would stare mesmerized at Mrs. Davies as she prattled along, not understanding a word she said but nodding their heads whenever those who could make out what she was saying did so, and then being caught off guard as she would fire off a question directed at one of the head nodding boys who would then nod back to her unable to comprehend that a question was being directed at him. The fumbling, mumbling and obvious confusion would send the rest of the class into a paroxysm of laughter often resulting in someone being punished to kneel at a corner or a quick rap with a ruler on their knuckles.
The experience with Mrs. Davies however by and large ensured that we would all become fairly conversant in our spoken and written English once done with high school something that I am eternally grateful for today. I am able to construct a semblance of a sentence and string together several sentences to make a paragraph and I still enjoy reading and have a stock of novels both bound and online that I treasure immensely.
However, in this digital age of the internet, auto correct, online dictionaries, websites dedicated to helping people communicate better and social media I get quite disappointed at the quality of the written word. Hasty contractions and abbreviations, poor sentence construction, no due regard to capitalization of proper nouns, no pagination, apostrophes and exclamation marks taken for granted and used anyhowly!!!! Question marks where none is required? Silly speling errors……..the list is endless and Jill Davies would be beetroot red hopping mad if she discovered who was responsible for this massacre of the queen’s language.
Truly the language of English has been stretched, pulled, pulverized and convoluted so badly over the years that in the process we have been reduced to being poor communicators both in our personal and business lives content with struggling to read incomprehensible gibberish, shortened for convenience sake and to save a few shillings on an SMS and in a combination of English, Swahili, sheng and our mother tongue. It’s no wonder that the comic relief provided by the poor English speaker is one of the most hilarious things one is likely to encounter anywhere in Kenya today including in our hallowed precincts of Parliament and in positions of responsibility and power!!
I do not claim to be the best in this English thing or anything else but do take the trouble to check what you have typed before hitting that send, print or share button because now more than ever before spell prompt and predictive text has also added new unseen and hidden dangers to the typing of a letter, email message or SMS because it predicts what you want to write and populates (or is it pollutes) it even before you have had a chance to figure out what you wanted to say!!
NB - Read also my earlier blog on this link on a similar subject http://www.joe-wonderingallowed.blogspot.com/2012/01/and-you-wonder-why-they-speak-funny.html
Thursday 5 September 2013
Extinct animals back to life?
I have just finished reading a novel entitled ’Sector C’ by Phoenix Sullivan. It is one among a collection of 7 novels that I recently purchased on Amazon.com at a ridiculous price of $0.99…..for all 7 novels!!
Being a voracious and avid reader of novels Amazon.com has proved to be a revelation to me and with a Kindle app that I downloaded on my tablet sometime back this has got to be the best thing that happened in the digitization of books.
But this is not about Amazon.com or the many books that I have purchased online at a fraction of what it would cost at a bookshop, but about ‘Sector C’ a novel unlike any that I have ever read since it is in a genre that I usually would not be interested in since it is set in the future (sci-fi), contains a hint of romance and on a subject matter that I have the least interest in generally - genetics! I guess when you buy a collection of books together like in this case for $0.99; you inevitably also purchase something you may not necessary have an interest in.
But of the novels that I have so far read in the 7, ‘Sector C’ is the most intriguing. It is a story set in the indeterminable future where a bioengineering company sets up a laboratory and facilities somewhere in rural USA where they have somehow managed to extract the DNA of long extinct wooly mammoths, sabre toothed tigers, short faced bears, wolves and other creatures that have been extinct for many hundreds of years and through a genetic process have been able to extract the cells of these creatures and then through in vitro fertilization have formed a zygote which they have then implanted into surrogate mother animals who have then delivered after full term pregnancies living mammoths, sabre toothed tigers, wolves etc that now roam in large enclosures within the company’s land. Fascinating stuff you will agree.
But to me that is not the exciting bit because in the process, they have also replicated a protein embedded in the genes and DNA of the animals being ‘reborn’ that was (in the novel) the probable cause of the extinction of the dinosaurs millions of years ago and this protein is now able to jump across species very quickly (unlike most viruses and bacteria that do not jump between species) and is now manifesting itself in cows, pigs, sheep, dogs, cats and humans infecting and killing all as there is no cure to this protein which is likened to ‘mad cow’ disease and the ‘avian flu’ that a few years ago wreaked havoc in the beef and poultry industry across the world.
The unfolding scenario where a state of emergency is declared in the affected states, a quarantine is imposed on travel to and from the affected places, people are urged to destroy all meat and poultry products and the National Guard is called out to keep the peace as well as to destroy and ensure the burial of all livestock, dogs, cats, rats, deer etc – millions and millions of animals - and the ensuing panic as people scramble to look out for their lives and those of their loved ones in this pandemic makes for a mesmerizing read!!
The interesting and scary thing to me, is this beyond the realms of possibility? Is it possible for extinct animals to be brought back to life through extracting their DNA and then through in vitro fertilization giving life to living breathing dinosaurs and other creatures? Would such a feat also give rise to possible revival of long dormant strains of diseases now awakened through the DNA of these long extinct creatures for which no known cure exists?
In September 2012 a specimen of a wooly mammoth baby was discovered perfectly preserved in the permafrost somewhere in the Siberian tundra. Scientists and paleontologists have heralded this as a breakthrough in their quest to discover the genetic make-up of the now extinct animals and possible clues as to how they became extinct amongst other things and then clone it into a living breathing animal ‘Jurassic Park’ style. With improved scientific methodologies and technologies available now this should be possible, given that Dolly the sheep cloned in 1996 lived a hale and hearty life as did many other different animals cloned in the last 50 years or so.
Shall I live to see a living breathing wooly mammoth, dinosaur or sabre toothed tiger in my lifetime? Possibly given the advances in science that I mention and the very real scenario painted in the novel “Sector C”.
Cloning has been successfully done many times with varying degrees of success so why not this time around with the wooly mammoth though fooling around with nature would not necessarily be a very wise thing to do!
Being a voracious and avid reader of novels Amazon.com has proved to be a revelation to me and with a Kindle app that I downloaded on my tablet sometime back this has got to be the best thing that happened in the digitization of books.
But this is not about Amazon.com or the many books that I have purchased online at a fraction of what it would cost at a bookshop, but about ‘Sector C’ a novel unlike any that I have ever read since it is in a genre that I usually would not be interested in since it is set in the future (sci-fi), contains a hint of romance and on a subject matter that I have the least interest in generally - genetics! I guess when you buy a collection of books together like in this case for $0.99; you inevitably also purchase something you may not necessary have an interest in.
But of the novels that I have so far read in the 7, ‘Sector C’ is the most intriguing. It is a story set in the indeterminable future where a bioengineering company sets up a laboratory and facilities somewhere in rural USA where they have somehow managed to extract the DNA of long extinct wooly mammoths, sabre toothed tigers, short faced bears, wolves and other creatures that have been extinct for many hundreds of years and through a genetic process have been able to extract the cells of these creatures and then through in vitro fertilization have formed a zygote which they have then implanted into surrogate mother animals who have then delivered after full term pregnancies living mammoths, sabre toothed tigers, wolves etc that now roam in large enclosures within the company’s land. Fascinating stuff you will agree.
But to me that is not the exciting bit because in the process, they have also replicated a protein embedded in the genes and DNA of the animals being ‘reborn’ that was (in the novel) the probable cause of the extinction of the dinosaurs millions of years ago and this protein is now able to jump across species very quickly (unlike most viruses and bacteria that do not jump between species) and is now manifesting itself in cows, pigs, sheep, dogs, cats and humans infecting and killing all as there is no cure to this protein which is likened to ‘mad cow’ disease and the ‘avian flu’ that a few years ago wreaked havoc in the beef and poultry industry across the world.
The unfolding scenario where a state of emergency is declared in the affected states, a quarantine is imposed on travel to and from the affected places, people are urged to destroy all meat and poultry products and the National Guard is called out to keep the peace as well as to destroy and ensure the burial of all livestock, dogs, cats, rats, deer etc – millions and millions of animals - and the ensuing panic as people scramble to look out for their lives and those of their loved ones in this pandemic makes for a mesmerizing read!!
The interesting and scary thing to me, is this beyond the realms of possibility? Is it possible for extinct animals to be brought back to life through extracting their DNA and then through in vitro fertilization giving life to living breathing dinosaurs and other creatures? Would such a feat also give rise to possible revival of long dormant strains of diseases now awakened through the DNA of these long extinct creatures for which no known cure exists?
In September 2012 a specimen of a wooly mammoth baby was discovered perfectly preserved in the permafrost somewhere in the Siberian tundra. Scientists and paleontologists have heralded this as a breakthrough in their quest to discover the genetic make-up of the now extinct animals and possible clues as to how they became extinct amongst other things and then clone it into a living breathing animal ‘Jurassic Park’ style. With improved scientific methodologies and technologies available now this should be possible, given that Dolly the sheep cloned in 1996 lived a hale and hearty life as did many other different animals cloned in the last 50 years or so.
Shall I live to see a living breathing wooly mammoth, dinosaur or sabre toothed tiger in my lifetime? Possibly given the advances in science that I mention and the very real scenario painted in the novel “Sector C”.
Cloning has been successfully done many times with varying degrees of success so why not this time around with the wooly mammoth though fooling around with nature would not necessarily be a very wise thing to do!
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