Alphonce SHIUNDU

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FLOODING on Dipity .

View Flooding hotspots in Kenya in a larger map

I don’t know if this day deserves a celebration or not, but my authentic colleague and perennial roommate, one Nathan Mpangala, captured it pretty pretty well in a cartoon. They say pictures are worth a thousand words; this cartoon is worth a million cheers! PS: Published with the Nathan’s express permission. Thank you very much Nathan. Your magnanimity is profoundly appreciated. See more of Nathan’s work HERE

Good people, Thank you for standing by me and reading all my thoughts. That 8,700 plus of you have been on my blog, read quietly and walked away is simply amazing. I appreciate that very much. That some of you had the time to read and leave a comment is equally enthralling. And I know more will be reading and going back through the posts to read some more. But, five years doing the same thing, is not fun. People grow old, things that we used to love sound silly, the stuff that we used to enjoy, sounds commonplace, and the things that helped us grow are taken foregranted. But no. You have been wonderful. Blogger too has been a great host for me, for free and I really appreciate that. The writing will never stop, I hope it gets better and better and better. For now though, I have to say goodbye.

Dear Mum! Last year, on a day like this, will forever remain unforgettable. It was April 24. It was Easter Sunday, quite early in the morning, when life finally left your ailing body. I remember watching you the previous day and earlier on in the night as you struggled eating food, as you struggled breathing, and as you had problems even lying on the bed. I know it was tough on you. It was heart-breaking on me. When I walked to your room to put you back on the bed together with dad, hoping to talk to you in the morning, only for dad to wake up me up from my house at four in the morning, with the sad news that you were no more. Darn Liposarcoma!!!! As I looked at your lifeless body on the bed, it all sunk in: you were gone. Forever. The mourning that followed, the flood of friends and relatives that swamped our home to pay respects to you, the many people who said all sweet things about you reminded me that I had the sweetest mum on earth. Twelve months have passed and every

If there’s one MP whose term in the Tenth Parliament can be described as full of chilling drama, it is Mr Gitobu Imanyara (Imenti Central), he who just five days ago pushed the government to beef up his security over threats to his life and his family. A look at some of the incidents which the fearless MP has experienced takes one back to February 2008 when he told journalists about his encounter with the First Lady, Ms Lucy Kibaki, at State House Nairobi. Mr Imanyara was in a meeting of the small parties group. The meeting was chaired by the President. But midway, State House operatives called him out of the meeting, something which, Mr Imanyara said, was quite odd. When he stepped out, all hell broke loose. “She jump(ed) at me and start(ed) throwing punches at me. She wasn’t wearing any shoes, she was half dressed, she was in pyjamas,” Mr Imanyara said of an incident that had happened days to the first sitting of Parliament. He survived the legendary fury of the First Lady.

Yesterday I had to attend a meeting of the Information Sciences alumni. The turnout was excellent. We were so so many. I was amazed. But, back to the meeting. It was one of those moments where you get revealed to yourself. You’re also made to feel a little bad about yourself, and partly, you’re forced to offer that uncomfortable explanation about whatever you do. You see, Katuu, was in the House. He said he had “a problem with journalists”. His beef is that we don’t give “thought” to what we write. He did not like that some journalist did a story about digitization of Nelson Mandela’s archives (or something like that) in such a manner that “to put it bluntly, it is just a clever way of copying and pasting.” “It is all on the website. Why would I not just go to the website and read whatever is written there?” he told me. Well, Katuu knows his stuff, plus, he’s got the advantage of having worked on the project that this journalist was writing about. “A journalist is an analyst,

“When the government begins to have fear of its own citizens, it means we’re in a democracy. If the opposite happens, that’s a sign of a totalitarian State,” Javier Sicilia, Mexican poet and journalist, and the leader of the MPJD I picked the title ‘Witness’ because there’s just no way I can tell the story of the Mexican movement against the drug war in a few paragraphs. It is huge. But I don’t mind sharing my experience when I stood side by side with the victims of the Drug War last Wednesday. On March28, I was in Cuernavaca, some city in Mexico’s State of Morellos. Like the rest of the 70-plus journalists, I was there to cover the one-year anniversary of the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity for Narconews. It was one of the major assignments for the School of Authentic Journalism this year. The moment I stepped on the Zócalo (public square) I saw the pain in the faces of the people who had come for the commemoration. If felt so much like a memorial mass –but there w

My mind is at it again. It is “seeing things”. First a disclaimer: What you’re about to read is just one of those flights that my head takes to paranoia. Three weeks ago, someone earned the tag “bloody bure kabisa” (very useless) for exposing a contradiction in the President’s message as to the date of Kenya’s next elections. You see, the President said the courts had instructed the country that the elections will be held in March 2013, I know that’s not what the courts said. But that’s not what I want to say today. Days later, the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission announced that the election date is March 4, 2013. . I see a connection, but I have no evidence or as we say, I don’t want to impute improper motive on such a young commission or the Head of State. See what I mean? Then, there’s the Gema meeting , just days ago, which, though planned weeks early, was full of its own intrigues. I didn’t attend the meeting, but the footage that I have seen shows that t

It breaks my heart every time I see lawyers, activists and journalists –who, really, have no excuse for being ignorant on what is essentially public information – persist that the vetting of judges and magistrates should be public. That they go ahead and accuse the Vetting of Judges and Magistrates Board of having a hidden agenda, for holding their proceedings in camera, is simply absurd and mean. I have also seen and heard Mr Sharad Rao, the chairman of the Board, many times, come out to explain to the public that the law does not allow for public hearings. But every time he makes that statement, he wakes up to screaming letters-to-the-editor, opinions, commentaries, press conferences and voices in all manner of platforms, all urging him to make the proceedings, public. For starters, the Board is a creation of an Act of Parliament. That piece of legislation is the Vetting of Judges and Magistrates Act. It has an explicit clause on how the proceedings of the Boar