This land is my land, this land is your land.

comme ci comme ca: This land is my land, this land is your land.: "Humankind is essentially and generally a social animal. One of the highest order social species known today. Humans have been known to trave..."

This land is my land, this land is your land.

Humankind is essentially and generally a social animal. One of the highest order social species known today. Humans have been known to travel thousands of kilometers (or miles) for that matter, to seek out greener pastures, more accommodating climates, better social comforts, safety from persecution, adventure and have proven to be able to make any place-however habitable or inhabitable-home.
It is widely accepted that humans settlement originally started somewhere in Africa and spread out throughout the world with different peoples settling in different regions that seemed to favour their aspirations at the time.

With the advent of sophisticated methods of travel and communication however, humans have re-visited their zeal to move and find alternative habitats, hunting grounds, the world over. Peoples have moved from regions earlier designated as their 'reserve' to regions where they would have been regarded as foreigners and have taken root, calling it home. There are members of the white race, the Asiatic peoples calling Africa, sub-Sahara Africa, home. They have become natives in these regions. There are black peoples calling Europe, the Americas and Asia their home. Orientals are known to be in the deep west and that boundary is now not so distinct-there is an uncanny Nipponese/Peruvian connection that simply suggests that east is west and west is east.

My point is that the world peoples have always been one. There has never been that sense of ownership, that sense of belonging, that feeling that a certain region belongs to a certain  people. This has been proven time and again, through millennia and all those who espouse these sentiments have been rudely re-educated by the passage of time. Our ancestral lands remain ancestral as long as we all belong to the same ancestors. Let's let the government resettle all our landless where there is adequate, uninhabited land and let's move on. It is such a disgrace to have people celebrating Christmas in refugee camps- refugees in their own land because of our culture/cancer of impunity.

Who is fooling who?

Just what happens to academic brilliance and intellect when one spends time in 'the august house' in Nairobi?

It seems like every academic who ventures into this house is churned round and round and turned into just a heckler of the lowest mental faculty.

Professors, doctors, lawyers-a.k.a. 'learned friends', theologians, all end up behaving like they have never been schooled in any form of educational institution where rational reasoning and forms of decorum and discourse is instilled.

-Most recent manifestation: A trained lawyer who happens to be a Cabinet minister (in suspension) has called on the government to put up a legal defense team-personnel and funds, for the 'Ocampo six'. Does he really know what he is talking about? Does he know that he is essentially calling for the government to defend 'the six' against the victims of the PEV (post elections violence)? Does he know that he is asking the country to rally behind 'the six' as they defend themselves against the allegations by the victims/survivers of the PIV (politicians' invoked violence) of our yesteryears?-or who does he see as the complainant in the Hague trials? Ocampo? As a lawyer, shouldn't he be in the forefront to educate and explain to the lesser mortals, the unlearned friends, the implications and complexities of the legal procedures at play?

Mr Minister, with all due respect, I submit that you ought to concentrate on your own defense in the yet to be resolved 'Tokyo Connection' and leave Kenyans to decide themselves on who to charge or defend as far as PIV or grand corruption is concerned.

Towards the death of impunity....

The recent flurry of activity in the usually sluggish body of public servants we call parliamentarians is in itself an indicator that something they hold close to their hearts is in jeopardy.

We usually see this when a bill is in the works to raise their perks, salaries or to introduce taxation to their incomes. This time around, the catalysing factor is the implication of guilt of some (if not all) in their midst, in the now infamous PEV of 2008. More so the implicated ones had been seen to be standard bearers in the forthcoming general elections in 2012. Some budding coalitions have been jolted loose and now they have no one to gravitate to. The KKK alliance is now an outfit without a center-bolt or a strong chassis.

Most of us might sigh with relief at the scuttling of 'the unholy trinity' and wish that our parliamentarians exhibited the same animation when deliberating matters affecting the ordinary citizens like finding ways to alleviate the living standards of those living in abject poverty, like coming up with ways and means to have all stolen billions from public coffers repatriated and  the thieves put in public housing (jails and prisons)

My prayer is that we Kenyans, as a nation do not lose this opportunity to embed or entrench the fight against impunity that the ICC is instilling in our national mindset. We need to come to terms and accept that  as our constitution holds, no one is above the law and all citizens are accountable to the nation and the human community the world over. At this stage where we are at a cross-roads, where we have the chance to progress forward into a corruption, impunity free future, chances are the same that we may take the wrong turn and revert to where we were before. We need to take the bold step forward, towards the road unto our 'glasnost and perestroika'.

Kilio Cha Haki!!!

comme ci comme ca: Kilio Cha Haki!!!: "So the birds of the feather have realised that some in the flock have to land (and probably nest) in the Hague. Now they are frantic to have..."

Kilio Cha Haki!!!

So the birds of the feather have realised that some in the flock have to land (and probably nest) in the Hague. Now they are frantic to have the rules bent so that these unlucky birds don't have to be scrutinised by the esteemed International body.
Me asks; were the names first released by Ocampo belonged to some ordinary Kenyan wananchi, would the law makers have been so prompt and spontaneous to craft ways and means to thwart the Hague agenda?
When they seek to have Ocampo and company declared personae without legal standi to prosecute Kenyans, are they thinking of all the perpetrators of the PEV yet to be named or are they only thinking of these 'principle six'?
Stop this hypocrisy!
All persons will be held innocent until proven guilty, be they government ministers, administrators or otherwise.
These recent happenings only shout out what all Kenyans have come to know about their members of parliament-they are only interested in ordinary wananchi as long as there are votes to be cast in parliamentary elections, after that, it's everyone for themselves and God for us all. The PEV IDPs are still in the cold in the camps, and the MPs are busy fighting  to block justice. They only want the proceedings out of the ICC because they feel they may not be able to influence the outcomes. They want to do it 'the Kenyan way' which we all know is centered on 'who one is, whom one knows or/and what one owns or is worth.'
Put simply, they want to do nothing.-Exactly what they have been doing since 2008 when they settled on the august seats in the august house. Eat and not let others eat!

Grand Coalitions for Greater Corruption and Nation...

comme ci comme ca: Grand Coalitions for Greater Corruption and Nation...: "...It happened in Nairobi in 2008, then later on in 2009 in Harare and now it is happening in Yamoussoukro, Cote d'Ivoire. Is this the lates..."

Grand Coalitions for Greater Corruption and Nation...

comme ci comme ca: Grand Coalitions for Greater Corruption and Nation...: "...It happened in Nairobi in 2008, then later on in 2009 in Harare and now it is happening in Yamoussoukro, Cote d'Ivoire. Is this the lates..."

Grand Coalitions for Greater Corruption and National Plunder, Afrika Inc.

...It happened in Nairobi in 2008, then later on in 2009 in Harare and now it is happening in Yamoussoukro, Cote d'Ivoire. Is this the latest trend that Afrika has to offer the world, considering that Afrika is the cradle of mankind?

This is very disheartening and disappointing! It is a trend that all progressive minded citizens of Afrika- both on the continent and in the diaspora need to address to nip in the bud before it becomes a continental plague.

A peoples' will should not be blatantly sacrificed on the alter of greed, and impunity. 

'....Rise! Ye mighty people!.' ' Them belly full but we're hungry!... '- laments 'the prophet' in the grave.

Twapenda Jamhuri Yetu...

comme ci comme ca: Twapenda Jamhuri Yetu...: "There is a 'Tom and Jerry' circus playing out between the plotting foreigners, who are allegedly trying to topple our government and our plu..."

Twapenda Jamhuri Yetu...

There is a 'Tom and Jerry' circus playing out between the plotting foreigners, who are allegedly trying to topple our government and our plundering leaders! I am still trying to rationalise my predicament and figure out the humour of it all, if any, and I'm just about to get to a conclusion. It is despicable!  I still find it curious that our leaders have not mentioned anything about the stolen billions that have been itemised for us to see, but have poured vitriol on the allegations of millions being poured into the country for the youth to use in toppling the country's leadership. It very much reminds me of the days Moi used to scream on mountain tops about scheming foreign masters pouring funds to topple his regime! Looks like we did not change at all. The stark reality of our situation is very apparent; out goes the white colonialist, in comes the black colonialist, out goes the Moi dictatorship, in comes the Grand dictatorship.
Dare I say that some, if not all, of the people demonstrating against the 'evil envoys' may have been paid by the plundering indigenous thieves? How come the police have licensed these groups' intended demonstrations so easily? There's a stinking rat here and we need to be more transparent with each other as a nation-the governors and the governed. Just who's fooling who?
How comes nobody is demonstrating to have the stolen billions repatriated to the country to fund the healing of some of our self inflicted plagues like the resettling of the IDPs, rehabilitation of our slums and infrastructure? Yes, who's fooling who?
Oh how I crave for actual, real, meaningful change for my country. Dare I shout, 'Yes we can!'? or will I be labeled as yet another stooge of the foreign masters trying to impose their ways on the peaceful peoples of Kenya?

comme ci comme ca: Jamhuri Day Njema!

comme ci comme ca: Jamhuri Day Njema!: "In the wake of the disclosures by wikileaks (though most of it is information we already suspected), it is our hope that our leaders will be..."

Jamhuri Day Njema!

In the wake of the disclosures by wikileaks (though most of it is information we already suspected), it is our hope that our leaders will be reminded that all they do in the dark will be brought to light one of these days and that their actions will be laid bare for all to see. Let the national economic thieves repatriate the stolen resources so that we could sit together and chart our future with a clear national conscience. Let's have more 'glasnost and perestroika''-Kenyan style, to move us in the new political configuration spelled out by the new constitution.

Prophets of Doom and the Profits of Doom

Doom's day prophets or are they prophets of doom have had their days in the sun for Kenya, many times in the past.

The colonialists declared indigenous  leaders, the late Jomo Kenyatta, to be specific, 'leaders unto darkness and death' insinuating that replacing their (colonial) governance with that of Kenyatta and his cronies would plunge the nation unto darkness and death.
This was soon to be self evident that it was just a phantom fear held by an individual and propagated to a minority white population and on to the colonial masters in Europe. Kenyatta later on assumed leadership of this nation and was soon deified by the mostly ignorant and marginalised masses catalysed by the few cronies in his 'power train'. To imagine his death was outlawed and was treasonable! There could not be Kenya without the aptly named leader- Kenyatta (how did he get this name anyway?)

In 1978, the gods crashed and hit the dust! Kenyatta had died! The whole nation held it's breath! The unthinkable had happened. The nation waited for the inevitable explosion or implosion. Life stood still, only the clock of time was audible- click...clock...click...clock...click...
Whatever we waited for did not happen. Then as a nation, we exhaled. We tentatively resumed our daily chores, cautiously; lest we unbalance the delicate setup of things. We could not refer to the late president as the usual 'Marehemu', our language doctors referred to him as 'Hayati'. Even post humous, he was not 'an ordinary deceased-' marehemu wa kawaida'. Marehemu is a mwananchi wa kawaida (a regular citizen) after dying.

After we survived the death of our first president, the celebrated 'Moi error' saw the nation through the subsequent twenty something years. Moi himself once declared in front of his whole cabinet including his vice-president, that no one was capable of governing Kenya other than himself. They all agreed with him and even clapped for him for enlightening the nation thus! There would be no Kenya without Moi! He would dare the whole nation anytime change of leadership sentiments were hinted. He referred to anyone not toe-ing his line (following his foot-steps), as 'disgruntled elements' or 'drug addicts'- these included some of the leaders in government today. His cronies went on to device proofs that without Moi Kenya would be chaotic by planning, facilitating and executing ethnic clashes from the 1992 general elections and these machinations are still haunting us today.

Now, some of those who have benefitted from politic-induced ethnic suspicions, animosities and political patronage since those days of post 1992 change of governance are shouting that Kenya will not be the same if they are tried by the ICC sitting in Hague, or Nairobi. They would like us to believe that they are best left alone, their guilt/innocence not proven for the sake of Kenya. They would like us to believe that they are the pillars that Kenya is built on and that they are best left untouched lest the very foundations of this nation crack and tumble.

Let them be told that Kenyans have been tested and found not wanting- as far as their political maturity is concerned. They may not be as reactionary as some might want them to be. They are able to rationalise matters in their own way and they surely know that their leaders are not wholly sacrosanct, and they sure as the sky is up above know that some of these leaders have the blood of innocent Kenyans in their hands. These 'leaders' sincerely deserve their day in court.

Lamentations of a 'Mwananchi wa Kawaida.'

.....and so it has come to pass that the whole grand coalition was nothing more than a grand conspiracy to cover up the continuum that is 'corruption in Kenya'. They had very little to do with the...'For a just society and the fair government of men'...they claimed to uphold.
They have come up with various tools to get work done e.g. 'House Committees', 'Commissions of Enquiries', 'Parliamentary Committees', 'Presidential Commissions', etc
only because they know these tools are the wrong ones. They know that working with the wrong tools has the visual effect of 'being seen to be busy' while actually nothing is being accomplished-' just like bringing down a mugumo tree with a razor blade!!!'
I say Kenyans! Let's wake up and take off the blind-fold! These fellows have only themselves in their sights, their wallets and those of their kin and kith! How can parliament be left to decide which Cabinet minister/member gets investigated, who gets fired, who needs to step aside to facilitate investigations? I say all of them need to do just that, and KACC be given a free hand to do its work.
My only worry; Is the said KACC yet another poorly designed tool for the regime? Is it secure enough in its tenure? Is it 'teethed' enough to carry on its mandate? What about the newly found 'stone' of 'State Secrets Act' rolling onto the corrupt affairs of public officials like Ministers and PSs, will KACC be allowed to turn these 'stones' or will it be infringing the 'State Secrets Act'? If witnesses to corruption will be Ministers or PSs, will these be muzzled/gagged by the newly invigorated 'Principles of collective responsibility'?
Me says all these reminds the parliamentarians that 'it is their turn to eat' and so, they will 'eat and let eat' ad terminus parliamentary aevum (Latin for end of parliamentary term?)
And I stand to be corrected.......

the death knell of higher education in Kenya?...

The low standards of higher education in Kenya is now an open secret, acknowledged by all and shouted out from the mountain tops by the mass media! It has been known, in some circles, since those days of experimentation of the quota system by the KANU (baba na mama) government of the '80s. The introduction of the 8-4-4 system forced down our throats by the Breton Woods twins through their cure-all prescription of STAPs did not help the situation either. We now know why the graduates of our universities both public and private are coming out half baked or uncooked all together! Considering that they are going through their courses without ever being supervised by a professor. This is an addition of salt onto injury in view of the fact that most of these graduates are products of the 8-4-4 system of education for whose jury is still out deliberating its efficiency/competency.
Others being churned out by the cog wheels in the universities are beneficiaries of the ill planned, ill implemented, exam system overseen by the KNEC where exam cheating is the norm rather than the exception at all levels. These graduates eventually end up in government board rooms where some issues/policies being deliberated are the issuance(s) of charters to  tertiary colleges to start degree courses-they don't consider how poorly or well placed a college is to allow it to upgrade to a university!
As long as a college has buildings, students and boasts of a bank account, it can be a university! Other colleges have been upgraded into universities to please/appease ethnic populations' aspirations and in the process secure political patronage, all these, to the detriment of the education standards.
Large populations of university grade school leavers should not be used to water down the quality of university education. These mushroom university colleges should be merged, with respect to logistics and viable institutions of higher learning thereby formed and the multitudes of university entrants absorbed according to merit.
We could also try and discourage professors from joining politics and pay them well to encourage them to remain in the lecture theatres. Research funds could also be allocated for in our national budget to be allocated to performing professors.
I stand to be corrected.

Disaster....disaster!

It's really sad to speculate or comment on an incident where innocent life has been lost and my condolences and sympathies to all the families affected by the incident at Nyayo Stadium last Saturday and in the other incidents herein mentioned. In all fairness, what we should be doing right now is acting to prevent a recurrence, especially because we believe as some learned professor once said..."It was an act of God". We should at least be ready to do something helpful when the next one happens!
...here we go again! Another disaster, more tears flow, more catalogues in our library or archive of national disasters! Tears had not dried from our faces and we had not finished going through the latest addition to the library. We were just going through the motions of doing post-mortems to the disaster and simply moving on with our lives (as we have always done) when, lo behold, another one happens!
There were incidents like; 'Ngai ndeinthya', 'Bombolulu', 'Kathyaani', thousands of matatu vehicles' contributions, marine vessels like the Likoni ferry have not been left out, we've even been bombed in our city with many lives lost!
Yet, with all this experience in our 'CV', we still lack when we look at the paragraph detailing our disaster preparedness. Actually that paragraph is non-existent in the said CV.
Compounded with this lack of preparedness is the fact that we are still suffering from our own home-grown, home and internationally practiced corruption. The culture of impunity is still squeezing tears out of our eyes-just like a painful bodily injury or an irritating onion peeled in a non-ventilated room. Why were the stadium tickets over sold? Why did the gate keepers only open two gates out of the available six? Did we have first responders-police, paramedics, ambulances, first aid trained personnel like the St. John, in place at and around the stadium or did the organisers feel these to be an added unnecessary expense to be avoided?
Corruption!
Someone benefitted from the excess tickets sold or someone had printed their own tickets and sold them pocketing all the proceeds.
May be there was a cartel that controlled who got in at the gate-(valid ticket or no) which needed to concentrate on their activities so they felt it was better for them to have as few entrances as possible open.
Were there extra traffic police officers directing traffic around this stadium?-I might even imagine that the traffic lights at the nearby round-abouts were not working and the motorists decided on right of way by mere urgency of one's intended destination! But here again, I speculate.
At this point in time; the planners of this event, the staff at the stadium, all those involved should answer questions and those answers should help in formulating regulations for planning such events in future to avoid recurrence. If such regulations are in place, then we need to know who did (or did not do) what and what becomes of them.
I am speculating, and I stand to be corrected.

CDFs....? Does the new constitution....?

One thing that always manages to bewilder me is the persistence of our tendency to take short-cuts. Even when we know that short cuts will lead us to pit falls and patches of quick sand, we still convince ourselves that we are better than those before us who fell along the way. Nobody wants to put in a day's honest labour to earn an honest day's wage. Everybody wants to grab other peoples' lifetime earnings in one day and make it their own. They don't care about the repercussions on the whole community thereby caused. We have simply internalised and justified GREED and the saddest thing is that we have tailored our laws to protect and perpetuate this vice!--or so it seems.
Year after year, we wait to read, and do read, the Auditor-General's report on fiscal spending (or is it mis-spending) by our Civil servants and in unison cry out loud, "Oh No! Not again!"
.
.
That's it. That's all we do.
I wish the report could be re-formatted to show the misappropriated funds side by side the numbers of  deprived citizens in our midst, the names of the perpetrators. If we cannot take action on those criminals in our midst, let us at least know them by name.----but then again, maybe I'm living in an Utopia?

Tribute to a liberator.

Yet another of the freedom heroes of Kenya has passed the divide and we have again, as we have done so many times in the past, assembled at their homesteads to pay our last respects and shed tears.
We have perfected the art of paying last respects although these are usually the only respect the deceased ever got from the nation they sacrificed so much for. We shed tears though the deceased from their vantage point in the here-after can tell they are of the crocodile variety.
What a shame!
It is high time, especially with the recent re-birth of our nation and the accompanying new spirit of nationalism, that we chronicled our struggle for 'uhuru halisi'. We need to recognise all those who have played roles in our freedoms and know them by name. We don't have to carve or make sculptures of them but at least we ought to have a wall like memorial- most appropriately at the so called freedom corner and/or on other appropriate locations nationwide, and their names etched thereon. We need to know how and where the still living heroes are, the conditions of their lives, their health status. It really is national immorality to decry a former freedom fighter's poor conditions at their gravesides, after they die.
Farewell, Peter Young.

life is like that....

Yesterday, I strayed into my gym (don't ask me after how long). I cannot explain it (I guess it's those primeval suicidal tendencies prevalent in the human species that have kept global populations in check these millennia) but I somehow found myself in the parking lot and I asked myself,"..why not?..."
"May be they have new machines", and so I ended up in the gym. The receptionists did not seem to notice a stranger enter and so I thought, "You see, you belong."
I joined the busy bodies endlessly running to nowhere with no one chasing us, experimented with a bunch of contraptions my son would have had a field day labeling the various components of compound machines; pulleys, levers, wheel-and-axles, block-and-tackles and other dumb ones- ever wondered why they call them dumbbells? I was perfectly OK before this escapade but now I find it quite straining to simply de-cork (or is it un-cork) a bottle of Belvedere. Getting up from a sitting or lying position is a painful experience so I have resigned to not putting myself to this uncalled for torture. Thanks to the Oracle of Būsen, my bottle of Belvedere is open, and me thinks it's going to rain today.

Please Kenyans, Not again!

We, as a nation are at a cross-roads again and it is my hope that race memory will save us this time around. Kenyans have had two opportunities in the past to liberate themselves but in both instances, their endeavours have been dashed by; ignorance, greedy politicians, external (foreign) puppeteers, indigenous thugs, high expectations from these two past events were smashed, scattered among the wilderness with the results of abject poverty, illiteracy, disillusionment and the perpetuation of master/slave attitude in the citizenry.

The handover of political reigns from the British colonialists to the so-called African leaders was a well stage managed show that left the African feeling liberated and settled back into hard labour and complacency while the nouveau political class settled into the tasks of plunder and rape of any and all resources. The best placed to take up this political class were the former colonial collaborators, home guards, their kin and kith.

In the early 90's Kenyans agitated for a change in the way they had been governed since the 60's. Lives were lost and property destroyed in this so called 'Second Liberation' struggle and just as we were at the brink of a new dawn, tables were turned and the same politicians who had grabbed the reigns at independence, the same who had modified the governance contract to favour them at all levels, manipulated the citizens' ignorance re-acquired the leadership roles again.

As the new constitution unfurls, new political positions, powers and posts are becoming apparent and as the politicians who have been in our parliament since as far back as most of us can remember start jostling for the new positions, I can't help it but shiver with the feelings of déja vu.

New wine in old wine skins and vice versa. These games have to end.

Back in the days when my old man used to take us to Jamhuri Park for the International Show, my siblings and I would start planning for it way in advance even before it was confirmed that we would actually be going- with him it was never a 'Go' until he would say,'..get in the car, it's getting late'.- Then we knew for sure we would be 'going to 'the show''. As soon as second term commenced, the show spirit was in the air and we would promptly get in the mood. The Air force fighter planes practice flights only heightened the growing hysteria and anxiety attacks- we would plan what rare delicacies we would eat; fish & chips, mandazi, lollipops, ice-creams, biscuits, we would start betting on who would eat the most mandazis, we would get ready to collect as many balloons, sun visors and brochures as possible ( to produce next day at school as evidence that we had gone to 'the show')
When in the show ground, our confusion and unpreparedness became most apparent at the entrance to the 'Fun Fare'. For all kids, and parents with dominant kids, all roads led to the fun fare section of the show. That was 'The Show'. Everything else was just a side show. At the entrance, we could not decide which lane to take first. We could not decide whether to take the merry-go-round, the go-cart rides, the myriad games on offing, the circus shows or other kiddish entertainment events available.
For no proper prior arrangements, we ended up spending excessive time at particular stands and by the time  we grudgingly navigated the way back to where Ol'man had dictated we meet to start our ride back home, we always felt we missed something or other and this would be proven next day at school when some kids would proclaim having seen this or that, a five legged cow or a banana so big one person could not lift it off the ground- there was always something one missed- but, so much for the 'Show'.

Why is Amos Wako behaving like us (in our childhood) this day in time?  Why is he taking us back to the Fun fare entrance? So many months after the CoE passed the draft to him for perusal, editing and reference. So many days after the 'Yes' vote and now he wants us to be happy that he's expecting to go to Europe and Asia to engage constitutional experts to help craft the  numerous bills expected to enact the new constitution. Why had he not foreseen the incapacity of local (indigenous) law experts all this time? And anyway, the CoE which was primarily indigenous produced the law why not get another body of indigenous legal drafters to draft the bills?
I need to be enlightened.

Kenya, Our Kenya ( Tribal Enclaves?)

The exiting of the colonialist from Kenya, whether from the white highlands or from the rich arable tracts of land scattered all over the country opened the floodgates for land ownership. Some ambitious businessmen-cum-land buying cooperative magnates staked out pieces of land, collected hard-earned monies from their peasantry tribesmen and settled them there. Through the years, some of these parcels of land changed hands in willing-buyer-willing-seller contracts between peoples of varying ethnic backgrounds and thus begun a lifetime of aliens-in-own-motherland status.

There are pieces of land that the government appropriated for public use such as the ADC farms or for research institutes like KARI, KEFRI, KEMRI, Potato Research, forest reserves and these were spread all over the republic on what we may collectively refer to as ‘ancestral‘ lands. Some of these were later misappropriated to powerful individuals in government or to their cronies, family and sympathisers. These we need to know and the beneficiaries either forced to remit their true market values to the government or the land is repossessed by the government. If there is no use the government could put this land to, then the locals should be consulted (in genuinely fair fora) to find out their wishes- maybe genuine, bona-fide landless peoples in these parts could be settled on these lands. We still have IDPs scattered all over the country since the invasion of Kenya by the white man!

Lands that have changed hands in what is legally termed as willing buyer willing seller arrangements and these, ethnic backgrounds of the participants notwithstanding, ought to be treated as such- business transactions which are sacrosanct and protected by the laws of the land- if the original owner(s) did not benefit from a mis-appropriation, or land-grabbing scheme.

The Kenya we want today has no room for a blanket branding of regions as ‘ancestral’. We all know that our ancestors did not ‘own’ land, they just occupied what they deemed useful to them without regard to borders or boundaries. Statements by the likes of Gideon Moi, Daniel Moi, Ruto and others who have re-demarcated Kenya into tribal enclaves and sponsored ethnic cleansing are nothing less than criminal. There was no distinct line separating the Masai-land from Gikuyu-land or was there? I stand to be corrected.

I'm your friend. Honestly.

In these times of electromagnetic lifestyles, where friends are just a byte or gigabytes of disk space, our lives have simply become a retention period. One simply has to figure themselves in the hierarchies,  either son, father or grandfather levels in their acquaintances' storage. either just about to be deleted, blocked, status updated or fervently saved. The golden chain, which is friendship, has been remodeled with very fragile links of cyberspace presence.
.."Why was I not invited here?.." You'll ask and the answer will be simply be you never checked your friend's facebook posting.
"Ba!" Your email landed in my junk mail folder which 'self-empties' when the count hits 5.
"...and why did my email get filtered as spam?..."
Good old friendship is now regulated by some database management systems hosted in servers spread all over the globe.
A server somewhere in the Alpine shadows determines whether my village mate down the lane, in Nyathuna, gets to attend my son's 11th birthday.