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.