TRAVEL ADVISORIES WARNINGS!!

Are travel advisories the new cane for punishing African countries?  

The west and other major powers in enticing African countries use all kinds of beguiling adjectives and descriptive nouns; epitome of peace, panacea or the bastion of democracy, a stable country in a relatively volatile region or most recently due to the sustained economic growth and development some African countries have overnight been renamed as the ‘’the lion on the move’’, the ‘’new Singapore of Africa’’. All this are just but a few of the vocabularies that are employed in describing African countries. These terms are just short lived praises that can change overnight and are only used when the interests of those states are at stake. The same countries that are described with terms such as bastion, epitome of tranquility and a peaceful country can change radically and overnight without any kind of warning when sporadic travel warnings and advisories are issued by our friends in the west.

Yesterday the UK issued a travel advisory following the Eastleigh grenade blast near St. Teresas church on Sunday, just hours after the attack the UK had already  ‘’ reviewed and reissued with amendments to the Travel Summary...’’ and ‘’we advise against all but essential travel to within..’’

Just this year, 2012 Kenya has been slapped with more travel advisories than ever; any incidence that happens must be followed closely with an advisory. These advisories have a two pronged effect on the country besides portraying the country in a bad light internationally in that the nationals from those major powers in the country at the time the travel warning is issued will 1. Either leave or not enjoy their stay and 2. Those with plans of visiting the country will cancel their trips to Kenya. And since Kenya depends heavily on tourism as a major contributor to its economy, the travel advisories greatly affect its budget and income forecasts. Just a simple Google search shows that different international major powers most commonly the US, Britain and Australia have issued travel advisories for the flowing months in 2012 alone.

• January 7^th  
• January 11th
•  January 16th  
• April 4^th 
• June23rd
• July 5th
• July 9th 
• August 28th
• October 5th 
•  November 19^th

 

The travel advisories are not any different and are full of the usual cliché with only the dates being changed

‘’an imminent threat of a terrorist attack…….’’

‘’this is to alert all US citizens in Kenya, or planning to travel to Kenya in the near future, that the U.S Embassy in Nairobi has received information of an imminent threat of a terrorist attack in……’’

This trend is continuing and has no signs of ending anytime soon, even when Kenya triumphs the terror and barbaric attacks the UK has already issued an ‘’exercise extra caution and vigilance’’ statement ahead of our 4^th March elections.

‘’General and Presidential elections are due to take place on 4 March 2013. Significant violence after the last elections in 2007/2008 left 1,100 dead and 600,000 displaced.  We advise British nationals to exercise extra caution and vigilance, particularly in public places. ‘’

It will take several years before Kenya can get itself out of all this bad publicity that are resulting from all this warnings and travel advisories. The government should intensify the security situation and the Kenyan people should also be very vigilant and undertake community police roles to ensure that we are indeed safe.

Australia

Australia 

Issues travel advisory on citizens

Updated Tuesday, August 28 2012

''Australia has advised its citizens to avoid parts of Mombasa following the killing of Muslim cleric Aboud Rogo. “Further civil unrest is likely and Australians in the area should avoid all public gatherings and monitor local media for updates on the security situation,”''

''This Advice was last issued on Friday, 05 October 2012 “…We also continue to strongly advise Australians not to travel to the area north of Pate Island in Lamu District, border regions with Somalia, Ethiopia and South Sudan, because of the extremely dangerous security situation.”

 America 

July 9th 

“The U.S. government continues to receive information about potential terrorist threats aimed at U.S., Western, and Kenyan interests in Kenya. Terrorist acts can include suicide operations, bombings, kidnappings, attacks on civil aviation, and attacks on maritime vessels in or near Kenyan ports,”

Capital news- 

UK

Still current at: 19 November 2012issued just yesterday.

 

ESTABLISHING A PEOPLE DRIVEN POLITICAL FEDERATION IN EAST AFRICA

The status of the East Africa political federation

A lot of mystery, fallacy, myth and a certain indefinable fear surrounds the EAC political federation debate. This fear is warranted, from the state centric realist approach, one can openly be skeptic on how states can ever give up their sovereignty to form a bigger and a more powerful state. It seems quite an impossible undertaking given that there is yet a union to gain political federation, the European Union which has managed to develop some highly advanced level of deeper integration is yet to achieve political federation status, so how can a couple of sub-Saharan countries struggling to make a mark on the international political economy be as ambitious as to hope for a superior political federation less than two decades after its revival? One might be forced to ask!

A simple Google search on East Africa federation will give you very diverse opinions: from ill shaped to very plausible arguments on how the federation will turn out to be, from western skeptics portending doom for the East African Community to very optimistic and ambitious debates by East Africans. Despite the varied debates and arguments one thing that cuts across and is agreed upon by many is the enormity of this task, all articles ever written on the EAC does not fail to mention the enormous changes and challenges that face the individual members of EAC in establishing this EA federation. 

How the political federation in East Africa be like? 

Scholars such as Peterson(2005) and kasasira(2007) believed that by 2013, the EAC plans to have facilitated the creation of the East African Federation which will be a federal super state where all member countries will keep their own identities with national parliaments, presidents, and flags, but share a

1.       Federal parliament & cabinet,

2.       A chief justice,

3.       A supreme court, and

4.       A super state president appointed by rotation from the member states. 

Are the people of East Africa fully engaged in the integration process?

The right information and informed opinions on the EAC political federation and knowledge on many other aspects of the EAC integration process is a reserve of a limited number of elites and government executives. The fear borne by many of the EAC citizens and its people is majorly driven by lack of adequate knowledge and for the revived EAC to continue its existence it has often been mentioned that it needs to employ a different approach in how it engages with its people, the EAC treaty has indeed gone to great lengths in promoting its aims and policies as people-centered and is working to strengthen the development of a working model through the developing administration, policy, management and organization structure for engaging and incorporating all major economic integration systems, from establishing the common market to the customs union, from plans to put in place a monetary and a single currency for the region to the ultimate goal of instituting a political federation.

This people-centered political federation can only be achieved by heightened levels of engaging the people; the youth, men, women, children and every individual in the social strata of the region; this in turn will mean a more informed populace that will speed up the people owned and people driven EAC integration process. Currently the avenues through which the EAC policy formulation, orientation and its subsequent implementation is limited only to a few media houses and the EAC owned monthly Jumuiya news. A more robust and one on one engagement with the people involves having open public forums that will adequately engage everyone in having a say in what decisions and policies reached and pursued by East Africa as a community. This forum should be running in all the EAST AFRICAN UNIVERSITIES, the current university and college students will be running the EAC integration process in a few years and without their full engagement, full progress and people centered integration will be hard to come by.

Once as a first year student, the Kenyan ministry of East Africa Community under the leadership of hon. Jeferson Kingi, and the late MEAC Permanent Secretary Mr. David Nalo held the first ever EAC integration sensitization forum in Maseno University. As a very naïve and idealistic first year I wished such forums would be an annual event. I greatly benefited from the, debate, the EAC Development Strategy (2008-2012), Jumuiya news and a few other documents that the ministry gave for free.  A few weeks later having read the entire MEAC development strategy I wrote an email to the permanent secretary’s office expressing my fears and concerns, asking for explanations on certain aspects of the EAC integration process (read the questions and feedback received from my email to the permanent secretary here.) It’s been a whole four years since and there is not a sign of any such forum on EAC in our campus and it’s a shame that those of us at the university are being cut out of the EAC integration process.

It’s about time the university students demanded to be listened to, to be involved, to be consulted and it is about that time we took an active role in the EAC integration process. Connect,Vuka Border is one initiative that needs to be replicated everywhere and at every level for our universities to include the EAC week in its academic calendar and in the process fostering a more robust relationship between the students body and those in the frontline in running the EAC integration process. 

 

Sign this petition to have EAC week included in the varsity calendar.

 SIGN PETITION

The EAC integration should not an elite talk or a purely government officials and ambassadors run process. The mama mboga talks in roadside stalls should be listened to and acted with the same vigor that our campus room debates need to be listened to and used as a guide in shaping the direction of the EAC integration process.

    Tweet about this and let all in your network know of the urgency of this matter! 

          @cvukaborder

          #connectVukaBorder

          #TeamMasenoUniversity

                       The writer is a fourth year student  International Relation student at 

  Maseno university.
Twitter handle  @Dalle22

Connect, Vuka Border EAC Integration

 

The Inter- University Social Media Challenge is an initiative by The Ministry of The East African Community funded by TradeMark East Africa. The challenge is working towards ingraining EAC weeks as part of University calendar activities from 2013 through collection of petitions from universities (please see below petition links to petition now)

Through the challenge, 14 participating universities will hold EAC weeks that will drive knowledge around the benefits and opportunities that the EAC presents to students. All activity photos will then be shared on Social Media Sites (Facebook - Connect Vuka Border & Twitter - @cvukaborder)

Ultimately, one university will win the Kshs 1.3m East Africa grand prize tour with five students from the university visiting the hottest destinations sites in the E.A region. The announcement will be made on December 10, 2012.
 

This social media competition seeks to engage the EAC youth and varsity students to take up very active roles in the EAC integration process. There competition has drawn much publicity with various types of events being organized within the institutions of higher learning in the whole of the East African region. 

Please take time to sign  the petition to convince the various university to include the EAC week in its academic calendar.

  

sign it here

Who is the clown in the loo?

Every Thursday night, we meet in a lecture hall as SPOKEN HEART family, poets, writers and rappers. The talent flowing in Maseno is enormous. I sometimes write, overcoming my weaknesses and hurriedly jot pieces of stories that are half corrected and in its first draft. I read them out, despite the many grammatical mistakes that am too busy to correct here is one flash fiction that I wrote and read out in one of SPOKEN HEARTS weekly meetings.

Its evening, the sun sinking fast into that abyss in the far west, activities picking momentum by the minute, Jikos are being fanned vigorously, Utensils clanking and sufuria’s being scrubbed in front of open rooms in readiness for the evening meal. Someone is bent over the underground tank tagging at a 6 meter rope to draw water. Black paper bags with evening mbogas (normally kales) swinging in hands of tenants coming back after a day of sexual escapades in the girls hostels.

Allan my roommate had gone to Nyawita for sukuma wiki and some omena for our supper, he walks in and without any warning hits me with

‘aki kuna sauti inatoka kwa choo!’ his hands on his mouth and a disturbing look on his face.

‘Ati choo?’

‘kuna mtu anaongea kwa choo’

‘choo gani?’ I ask.

‘hii ya hapa mbele’

You see, this particular choo is the sort that one prefers to use the bush instead. It’s an old pit latrine, its door precariously hanging on its faulty hinges, the choo is filling up. You shit and the heavy thud is not far off, it’s instantaneous, it echoes back. So close. The walls are almost touching, giving just enough room for squatting space. You would literally see the murky deposit from a thousand previous squats eating up the dark hole below. Green and well fed flies decorating most parts of the walls. Little white worms wriggle on the floor as if they were late for a busy dung market. Any sane minded person uses this latrine with a painful frown like one in deep agony. I confirmed this from the frowns that people still had on their faces whenever they walked of that old latrine.

It is this choo that Allan now said he heard voices coming out of.

‘No way’, I said.

‘I’m sure’, he said, his disgust shown with that agonizing frown on his brow.

Sitting in there is an agony of its own magnitude, how in the world anyone can be talking in there, is something that can be explained by the examination of the more than 30 inhabitants of the place.

‘Could it be the no. 17 guys?’

The ones with a thousand avocados spread over an old sack in their room? Just as we mentioned their names; they appeared, walking sullenly as is their nature, probably brooding over how they could replenish their avocado stock.

It can’t be the pious guy in number. The one who looked at you like you were are a devil, I hated the-you-are-going-to-hell look in his eyes. 

My friends in number three were real “Tombinohs” and by that I mean screams and moans from their room every night. So one day the pious guy in number two walks in as we were having a good time talking in room 3 and with that heavenly tone says

‘Bwana asifiwe’

‘asifiwe sana’ they answered in unison.

‘Bwana anawapenda sana’ he began

Silence reigned with a deathly flair. We only stole confused glances to each other. And getting no response from us he continued

‘Whatever you do at night will get you in trouble’, but before he said anything further. The Tombinoh guy cut in

‘I swear I use condoms, hata juzi  tulipimwa HIV!!

It wasn’t a stifle that came from me; it was an uncontrolled burst of laughter. I couldn’t sit there anymore. I walked out laughing, thinking how different and far apart our worlds were, how different our morals were.

The guy talking in the Loo was neither of the number 3 nor the number 2 guys.

‘Or could it be the pregnant lady in no. 6?’

‘It is a man’s voice!’ Allan, quick with his response cut me short

So that rules out the ladies, including the number 10 one, who was a self confessed tomboy.  But it still could be the guy in number 6 living with his girlfriend, the mshamba one, their quarrels often forced me to wonder how this guy keeps up with the shouts from his ‘wife’.

‘Get out of my room!’ she would often be heard saying.

‘umechangia nini kwa hii nyumba?’

The number 4 guy was a big time loner, his obsession with gym and weight lifting evident on the numerous biceps on his body!, stocky he was. It was one person I didn’t want to mess with. At the tank I always gave him way. It couldn’t be him either.

‘ama ni hawa wasee wa namba 8?’

It couldn’t be them, their woofer was already blaring the same tune of

 ‘merimela kipenzi ulikuwa mpole….’

 How in the world can anyone be listening to the same tune for a whole two weeks without being bored? They sometimes alternated it with their other all time favorite- kigeugeu. The speakers on full blast; even when lying in my bed and their speakers off, the irritating tune still continued playing in my ears. It wasn’t either of them.

The guy in the latrine was animatedly talking now, we were sure he was speaking on his phone.

‘sisi tumeshinda tukilala tu hapa…nikukula na kulala…’

Silence

‘Eeehe….’

Silence

‘Hapana, hata wakitaka wasirudi, kwani ni nini wanatufunza?’

Silence

‘hahaha….si unajua, mimi nilioa kitambo, hiyo kitu, nimeifanya mpaka imenichosha’

An elongated silence…

‘aaaii siwezi blunder hivo…lazima nitumie CD sitaki kukufa’

We were outside our room now, watching silently, listening to this one sided conversation. Size eight, the landlord’s dog had also joined us. Watching intimately, like one also understanding the conversation going on in the latrine. Excitedly wagging its tail like it was impatient to know who the clown in the latrine was.

‘Who can it be?’

The Ombitho guys were sited outside their room, rolling their evening meditation sticks.

‘These merimela guys are distracting our meditation’ I heard them complain one day. Their definition of meditation was something they alone understood.

It was already dark. The latrine guy was someone we could not place in any of these rooms. It seemed like he had forgotten about why he was at the latrine and taken on a whole new role of speaking with his friend on topics ranging from how tired he was fucking his girlfriend, to lecturers strike and how his HELB loan was now reduced to manageable amount. We stood impatient waiting for him to come out. Moran, my other very tall and lanky roommate too had joined us. No one was talking to the other. Seconds ticked. The guy in the latrine too, like someone who’d sensed that we were waiting for him to come out had stopped talking.

The loo’s door was pushed forward. And we craned our necks along with its movement. Here he was, about to walk out.

The silhouette of a man appeared in that tiny doorway. He took several steps towards us and just as he stepped into the lights from our room.

The goddamned lights went off.

Aaaaakhh fuck!