BM Security: Insecurity Company?

Few things make me feel quite as stabby as 'overlapping'.

This was on Tuesday, 2 Feb, around 7.30pm on Kanjata Road leading to James Gichuru. Traffic was flowing - slowly, but flowing -, until idiots like the BM Security driver started using the wrong side of the road and created a giant, entirely predictable clusterfuck.

I emailed BM Security yesterday, but no response yet. So off to Twitter with this.

Christmas cards, dictator style

Season's greetings for the discerning Africa geek! These were lovingly created by a wonderful friend of mine who prefers to remain anonymous.

From the delightful Nigerian who taught me about pink gin tonics

Today, I've had two in part practically identical discussions about homosexuality in Africa that made me repost this link. Here's a - clearly exasperated - comment from a lovely Nigerian friend on Nigeria's proposed anti-gay legislation:

Nigerians should stop choosing what part of Western culture appeals to us and what doesn't: we accept skinny jeans, MTV & Coca Cola, but reject two grown men or women doing what they like in the privacy of their homes. We reject the idea of homosexuality on the basis of what is preached in the bible which itself was forced on us by colonial oppressors (who incidentally also brought with them the whole concept of homophobia, which, like it or not, did not exist before they came, simply because we didn't care enough to define and label homosexuality).

Nigerians (more than most Africans) crave western designer brands and lifestyles, a significant portion of which are conceived, designed, created and delivered to us by "gay brains" (Versace, YSL, Gucci, D&G, just to name a very few). And then they say they don't want such brains amongst them.

You can continue to deny what really exists by chastising, banning, outlawing and ostracising it. And before you know it, we will be likened to Al Shabab in Somalia who have banned football and samosas because they are "evil", or the Taliban who forbid music, art, education and so much more. In fact, why look so far for examples of where Nigeria is headed when we have Boko Haram beating on our doors to let Sharia in!

If as a Nigerian citizen you have the right to say what you want, do what you want, be who you want, then that should apply to all citizens regardless of their religion, tribe, gender, sexual preferences. No one citizen is more of a citizen than the next!

Media Nitpicking: Friday Standard

Just scanned the Standard’s front page and holy cow, did they butcher it today:

In an article on new measures to save the shilling, Uhuru has, the Standard writes, lowered the limit on foreign exchange exousrue for commercial banks. I genuinely can’t figure out what this is supposed to mean (coffee just arriving at my brain) until a look at another paper unriddles it: foreign exchanges exposure.

Then I spot the teaser for Pulse magazine on the front page: ‘Kampala Courousal: Pulse transports you to Kampala for an afternoon of footbal and a ‘night run’’.

A courousal? Let’s have a look. On the Pulse cover, the courousal turns back into a ‘carousal’ and they’ve generously fetched another l to add to football. Onwards and upwards. In the main article on the football match (p. 10/11), you’ll find ‘As time tickles on’.

I quickly scan the fashion pages and have to give Pulse some credit: they manage to use ‘chic’ correctly. Twice. But the shoes described as loafers aren’t loafers, and the ‘statement heels’ aren’t exactly statement heels either.

Right, I’ve got stuff to do. If you find anything else in this edition of the Standard, stick it in the comments.

Le Sigh: Recycled Soap to Uganda

More evidence if you ever needed any that Africa is a bizarre theme park for good intentions:

Told by CNN no less, and in its CNN Heroes section: The heartwarming tale of Derreck Kayongo, a Ugandan living in the US, who was shocked by the waste from hotel soaps – every visitor gets a new piece of soap, every day, and the barely used soap is being thrown out. "Are we really throwing away that much soap at the expense of other people who don't have anything? It just doesn't sound right. … My dad said people in America can afford to throw it away. But I just started to think, 'What if we took some of this soap and recycled it, made brand new soap from it and then sent it home to people who couldn't afford soap?'”

The CNN article cites statistics that every year, more than 2 million children die from diarrheal illness in developing countries. Simply washing hands with soap could be a first line of defence. Mr Kayango argues that the problem is not the availability of soap, but its cost: for people on the mythical dollar a day, a soap bar is simply too expensive to purchase when there are many more pressing priorities such as food and medication. Fair enough.

Mr Kayongo sets up what is now the Global Soap Project. Here’s CNN’s description:

“So far, 300 hotels nationwide have joined the collection effort, generating 100 tons of soap. Some participating hotels even donate high-end soaps such as Bvlgari, which retails up to $27 for a single bar. Volunteers across the U.S. collect the hotel soaps and ship them to the group's warehouse in Atlanta. On Saturdays, Atlanta volunteers assemble there to clean, reprocess and package the bars.

"We do not mix the soaps because they come with different pH systems, different characters, smells and colors," Kayongo said. "We sanitize them first, then heat them at very high temperatures, chill them and cut them into final bars. It's a very simple process, but a lot of work."

A batch of soap bars is only released for shipment once one of its samples has been tested for pathogens and deemed safe by a third-party laboratory. The Global Soap Project then works with partner organizations to ship and distribute the soap directly to people who need it -- for free.”

Rethink this for a second: The Global Soap Project requires managing the participating hotels and the collecting volunteers. The volunteers pay for shipping. The soap people need to buy machinery, pay for space, do lots of sorting-producing-heating-sanitising-testing type things ('a lot of work', as they say), pay for shipping ... to get soap to Uganda.

Here's the thing: Uganda has shops. Many. Even supermarket chains. Uganda also has soap manufacturers. When I lived in Uganda ten years ago, you were given those long soap bars for free at the petrol station if you purchased a certain minimum amount of petrol. I have heard of recent fuel and sugar shortages, but no soap shortages have hit the headlines.

If you think distributing free soap to Ugandans who can’t afford it is a good thing, then this is probably single-handedly the least efficient way of doing it. It is also latently ignorant and patronising: Send US rubbish to the ever grateful Ugandans.

How about sending some cash to Uganda to buy the soap there and then have it distributed by the local partner organisations?

Brains, people. Use them.

But heartwarming, hey?

A Touch of Vagina

In last Saturday's column, I wrote about my suspicion that the new Kenya log as proposed by Brand Kenya suggested a female genital. Once you see it, it's difficult to unsee.

Check it out:

I can't imagine that I'm the only one who spots this, so I think this might actually be useful feedback.

Brand Kenya didn't think so. I'll post the link to their reply in today's Star as soon as they put it online.

Homophobia Smackdown 101

1. It’s unbiblical: That may or may not be true – there are lots of people who argue that the bible is at least inconsistent on this issue, and that Jesus wasn’t much bothered. I don’t care. I’m not a Christian, and Christianity is not state religion, and I don’t care what the bible says. If you follow the bible, that’s your choice. But you can’t selectively turn biblical bits into secular law.

2. If we let the gays do their thing, we also need to let rapists and pedophiles do their thing: Err, no. Come on, use your brain: There’s a substantial difference between a situation of consenting adults and a situation where one is the aggressor and the other is the victim. If you don’t understand those basic concepts, you shouldn’t be out and about here in cyberspace.

3. If we let gays do their thing, MANKIND WILL DIE OUT: Nope. You can’t catch the gay. You are the best example for that: you foam at the mouth rather than get all hot and bothered in a nice way when you think about two guys kissing, right? See. There’ll always be a gay minority. It’s a minority. Look up the concept of the bell curve.

4. Even animals have more common sense and won’t do this: Not true. Plenty of evidence from wildlife that they do do it. And gaily so.

5. But you can’t compare humans to animals: I didn’t – you started that line of argument.

6. It’s unAfrican: Me, I don’t know. I’m not African. I think all the African gay men and women might have a thing or five to say about this. And they can perfectly well speak for themselves.

7. What if the children see it? Yeah, then what? Nothing.

8. Anal sex is wrong – the anus wasn’t made for this: If you think anal sex is wrong, then don’t have it. Not all gay people have anal sex, and there are plenty of straight guys (and women) who get all bright eyed and bushy tailed about it.

9. It’s a lifestyle choice: No, it’s not. The foam-at-the-mouth hysteria in Uganda, ‘corrective rape’ and other such charitable, love-your-neighbour activities are the best example. It’s extremely unlikely that anyone would choose that kind of hatred and threat of violence just for kicks.

10. I have no issues with gay people as long as they don't chat me up - then I'll hit them: Easy, my friend. If that happens, be civilised and say 'thanks, no, but thanks'. If I hit everyone who chatted me up and who I'm not interested in, there'd be lots of black eyes, and I'm not Marilyn Monroe by any stretch of imagination. I say 'thanksbutnothanks'. To all those good Christian married guys, too.

11. Gay guys are sick, but lesbians are kinda cool: You're not talking about lesbians, you're talking about two straight women getting it on with each other for the sake of a straight man. As with the vast majority of couples, two lesbians won't be very keen on having you drool away when they get it on with each other. Pretty much like you won't slap your best buddy on the shoulder and ask whether you can watch while he's doing his wife.

Upstanding Sudanese Citizens (North and South)

I'm reading Sudan news.

Thankfully there are occasionally some good news. Very pleased for the citizen (and, possibly, the sheep, although I suspect that Eid might have ended their lives prematurely):

'Citizens in Abu Hamra (South Darfur) recovered over 50 sheep belonging to citizen Haroon Ishaq al-Bakhit from three armed horsemen on Sunday.'

And more upstanding citizens in the South:

'Bul Community in Diaspora Challenge the Wisdom of Abysmal SPLM Leadership in Unity State [press release]
Unity State (Bentiu) is the underwriter for the South Sudan nation in term of wealth and manpower, the oil-rich Bentiu accounts for 90 percent of South Sudan's daily oil production of 490,000 barrels and the sons and daughters of Bentiu are well known for their courageous and determination, they will always willfully takes risks if they observed injustice and unfair play.'

One should always challenge the wisdom of abysmal leadership with courageous.

One of my favouritest Southern Sudan articles ever was a news report on cattle wrestling. Regrettably, I don't have the link anymore. Also, I fear I'm getting a bit carried away here.

More Le Sigh from the US – or: God’s Recruitment Process Flawed

It’s a good day for Africa stories from the US: Here’s a fun article about the Riegers, a family from Tillamook who are about to move to Gulu in northern Uganda as missionaries. God called them, you know. They will set up the Rieger Ministry that will ‘focus on orphans, child moms, ex-child soldiers and those afflicted with HIV/AIDS.’

Susan Rieger is ‘excited about what she has to offer the women and girls of Gulu. “I’m going to teach nutrition, gardening, work in the school, and develop exercise programs for people with AIDS.” She’s quite fit and likes running, but anticipates that being difficult:

‘She and her daughters will wear modest dresses and avoid doing anything to put themselves in overt danger, such as running for exercise. This will be a difficult adjustment for Susan, who is an avid runner.

“I put in 30 to 40 miles per week here,” she said. “When we get there I’m going to have to do step aerobics and yoga in the house. I might be able to run with Joe, but I would have to wear a dress, and we would have to go early in the morning before it gets too hot.”

I’m not really sure how a dress is going to help. I checked with Jane Bussmann (not known to jog in dresses) and she said she went running in Gulu, no probs.

She’s also not so confident about the school system:
‘Susan will also be homeschooling four of her own children in Africa. “In Uganda there is no public school,” she explained. “Every child who attends school has to be able to pay the fee, and the highest grade they teach is sixth.”’

Well. Uganda has a free primary education system, although I expect that like in Kenya, some ‘fees’ must be paid regardless, and the quality probably isn’t impressive. Wikipedia says: ‘The system of education in Uganda has a structure of 7 years of primary education, 6 years of secondary education (divided into 4 years of lower secondary and 2 years of upper secondary school).’

Anyhoodle. More substantially, what bugs me is this:

Here is a population that has indeed lived in incredibly difficult conditions. How is a bunch of Americans, well intended, but who seemingly can’t use google, who literally have no idea where they are going, qualified to address this? “These people have lived in trauma, it’s all they know. It is our mission to teach them how to function in peace.” Because you understand what it’s like to live in a civil war zone, because you have the skills for post-traumatic stress disorder counselling?

Susan Rieger plans to “to mentor and disciple child moms. I want to get to know them and teach them how to tend their children. The idea is that if we love on them and show them love, they will then be able to turn and love their children.” Because Ugandan child moms don’t know how to love their kids, and they don’t have parents, family, mothers and grandmothers to teach them parenting in their own community?

Is it just me, or is there something quite (albeit unintentionally) patronising about this whole venture?

Le Sigh: First Lady-Type Persons Visiting Dadaab

Mike Pflanz recently wrote a great piece about the visit of Jil Biden, the US Vice President’s wife, to Dadaab. Dadaab is really the hotspot of ‘look, people are dying!’ tourism at the moment. Here are the logistics behind Biden’s two-hour visit, according to Pflanz:

‘Watching the wife of the US vice-president touring the world's biggest refugee camp for famine-hit Somalis was a scrum of television cameramen, international reporters and Washington staffers thumbing their BlackBerrys. A circle of secret-service agents, their oversized shirts flattened by the hot wind onto the outlines of bullet-proof vests and pistols beneath, fanned out, watching 'the perimeter'.

Parked off to the side, waiting to whisk the visitors back to the airport, was a convoy of 29 polished vehicles, including armoured US embassy Land Cruisers driven the eight hours up from Nairobi the day before.

Two US Army Hercules C-130 aircraft were flown in – one as a backup in case of technical hitches – to transfer the Americans to Dadaab from their overnight flight from Washington. They would fly home the same day.’

And we’re working our way down the hierarchy: Just now, Cindy McCain, wife of US Republican Senator John McCain, has found her way to Kenya and to Dadaab. She found horror, death and starvation of biblical proportions, as she recounts in an interview with her daughter Meghan McCain:

‘It’s a horrible situation that has been going on for quite some time; it escalated recently due to lower-than- normal spring rains and lack of food security due to the increased conflict.’

Yeah, that. And also two decades of civil war in Somalia and no functioning government, which doesn’t really help. Aidan Hartley recently pointed out in a good piece in the Spectator, ‘Drought didn’t cause Somalia’s famine’: ‘the ‘Somalis’ are not starving. The victims are mainly the weak or minority clans — or anybody who has not armed himself to the teeth. Add to this political mix the failures of the United Nations and its main sponsors.’

Well, she does try to look at the context. Here’s an insightful piece of analysis:
‘There are bad guys roaming around this place not because they want to be good citizens but terrorists. Somalia is where the pirates are. We’ve had so many issues in regards to our military. They kidnap people on a regular basis— kidnapping is an industry there. It’s in our best interest to make sure these people are helped. I also encourage those that have the means and are willing to come here—and I’m particularly pointing at Hollywood.’

But my favourite bit of the whole article – Meghan: ‘If you weren’t my mother, I wouldn’t know this was going on.’

Try reading the bloody news, for crying out loud.

Social Media and Nairobi Social Capital

Good things in sadness?

Last week, I received this email from a friend:

‘Looking for A+ blood in Nairobi for little Jamie, age four and a half. His parents were in Uganda doing voluntary work and he got food poisoning last Thursday and then renal failure Saturday. After an eight-hour overnight drive to Kampala where they can't do dialysis for children, he's in ICU at Gertude's and has been unconscious since Monday; he's struggling to wake up but his haemoglobin's low and they've run out of blood.’

I put a brief appeal for blood donations on my Facebook page and on my Twitter page as well, and was impressed by how quickly everyone spread the word. Sadik, a Facebook friend who I’ve only chatted with online and who I’ve never met in real life, was one of the people who went to Gertrude’s to donate.

Sadly, little Jamie lost his struggle, and my heart goes out to his parents – I can’t even begin to image how horrific a loss this must be. I’ve never met Jamie or his parents, but I sent a short note to the lady who had acted as the liaison to his parents to pass on my condolences, and she replied as follows:

‘Thank you so much for your love and caring. We were astounded at the response to the blood appeal - only two phone calls and 10 emails started it. When donors said they'd seen it on twitter, don't even know how that works, it was enough to make us cry. James and Avril were so thankful and amazed; they went down to thank every new group of donors who arrived. They were frantic on Friday morning - in the UK, it would be unimaginable for strangers to take it personally and act so fast, in Nairobi they had five donors within two hours. His death is a devastating loss.’

Nairobi can work like that.

Also encouraging:

An alliance of Kenyan media houses and large corporates launched the Kenyans for Kenya initiative – a straightforward fundraiser for the famine victims in northern Kenya that you can contribute to with a simple mobile money payment (although you can write a cheque as well). The smallest contribution is KES10, and there is no transfer fee. Today, Airtel announced that they have joined the initiative, too. Kenyans for Kenya aims to raise KES500m.

There’s another, very similar initiative called FeedKE that also seeks to raise funds for the Kenyan Red Cross by mobile money. There’s a bit of a palaver in the blogosphere over whether the media owners and corporates shouldn’t have hooked up with FeedKE, but I think that’s pretty irrelevant: These are not competing products or services, and it doesn’t really matter where you send your money to as it’s going to famine relief anyway and there’s no costly bureaucratic infrastructure duplication. FeedKE had good outreach on social media, but having major media houses and corporates included in fundraising means much, much wider outreach. So send a couple of hundred shillings to either one of them!

In an ideal world, focused economic policy would pre-empt some of these crises, and a competent government would have an early-warning system and, importantly, act on it – I had a little vomity rant in my Star column last week. But this is clearly not an ideal world, and I think it’s great that Kenyan citizens and corporates got on the case. I also think it’s amazing to see how mobile money and social media can give this a huge boost.

The Standard's Financial Journal is having a particularly impressive day

The Standard was the second paper I read today, and by the time I got round to the Financial Journal insert, I felt a little worn down already, so it took a nudge from the ever lovely Limo for me to do my duty to society. Here goes:

KQ is yearning for growth!
Kenya Airways, we learn, is hugging risks to drive revenues, possibly biting off more than they can swallow. This will involve complimenting ticket sales with other revenue streams. And now that KQ has ordered 10 Embraer, it is sending shivers among small airlines serving the East and Central African market. This article is accompanied by a text box titled: ‘Airline Woes: It’s Just a complicated Math’.

Then turn the page.
On p. 6 and 7, you’ll find exactly the same article published twice, albeit with different photographs and two different headlines, none of which is particularly elegant:

CBK finally concedes foul play in shilling attack

and

Central Bank smells fishy attack on sliding shilling.

There’s a lot to be said about this, and the fact that Standard can’t make up its collective mind whether to use CBK or Central Bank is just a minor issue.

Moving on swiftly. On p. 8, we find this intriguing subtitle: ‘Commercial banks return peanuts on savings even as they rip from high lending costs’.

I’m feeling exhausted. And there are more pages.

Africa Curios

Alice Temperley makes pretty clothes, but I had a bit of a WTF reaction here:

'We stayed with the Mursi tribe ... I asked one of the women to take out her lip plate and I engaved William and Catherine on it with a nail. I know they love Africa, so I've just sent it to them as a wedding present. It's a piece of history they'll really appreciate' (Sunday Times magazine from 12 June 2011).

Buy fragrance, donate water - how does that work?

A Ghanaian friend sent me a blog post on this Acqua for Life Challenge sponsored by the Giorgio Armani:
http://www.acquaforlifechallenge.org/en/content/project

It promises to provide 100l of clean water for every bottle of fragrance bought.

Since I do finding-out-things for a living, I was curious how exactly this worked.

The one bottle of fragrance = 100l of water equation sounds like a great deal, but is clearly a PR tool: lots of charities use something similar to fundraise. The send-a-cow charities often let people choose cows, goats etc from a catalogue to send to a specific village, but typically, that money goes into the fund for a programme rather than to individuals. Which makes sense, but it's still a little dishonest in advertising. Same with Kiva, the online small loan platform: people who choose to provide a small loan to help small entrepreneurs in developing countries are given the impression that their money will go to a specific entrepreneur. Again, this is not true, as the money is bundled and then given to (micro) finance institutions to onlend to their clients. This has been debated online quite extensively recently.

But back to fragrance purchase = water for kids. So how *does* this work?

The website is full of very pretty blue pics, and hardly has any useful information. Nothing of substance even here:
http://www.acquaforlifechallenge.org/en/content/whats-ghana

I then consulted Google, and Google tells me that the implementing partner organisation, Green Cross International (GCI), is a Geneva-based non-governmental organisation founded by President Mikhail Gorbachev in 1993. Its main areas of activity are:
• conflict prevention
• sources of conflict and war, and
• value change

The section on structure and organisation shows an impressive governing and honorary board. See here:
http://www.gci.ch/en/who-we-are/structure-and-organisation-of-green-cross-international.
Robert Redford is an honorary member - yumm!

The staffing section is much skinnier with 11 employees: http://www.gci.ch/en/who-we-are/staff.

Since this includes the president, vice president, and chief operating officer, it's a bit top heavy, but they might all be incredibly effective in preventing conflict. It doesn't strike me as an organisation that has much experience in carrying out on-the-ground water projects, but then they have a local implementation organisation: Green Cross Ghana.

But back to my initial quest of finding out how this water for fragrance thingie works:

I have dug around a bit and found the Ghanaian school programme under Conflict Prevention, sub-category Water for Life & Peace, sub-sub category Access to Water and Sanitation. Logical, not so? There's the 'Case Study Ghana'. I'm not sure this is quite the right term as Ghana seems to be the only project and is actually a pilot - they state that they plan to expand the project beyond the five communities that they currently work in.

The programme was launched in February 2010 and plans to do this:
'SWGS aims to provide safe drinking water, as well as sanitation, environmental and health awareness for children and their local communities in transboundary river basins. This includes:
1. Setting up a rainwater harvesting system
2. Providing ecological latrines
3. Bringing more water to the communities by building additional water systems
4. Running educational programmes'
(from http://www.gci.ch/en/what-we-do/conflict-prevention/water/access-to-water).

I can't find more details. They have a backgrounder on the school initiative in Ghana to download, but it basically repeats the information from the website.

So I still don't know how one bottle of fragrance = 100l of clean water actually works. I'd be keen to see the amounts raised through this so far, and what exactly they have been spent on – and how much went to GCI and how much to their local implementation organisation. When I clicked on the Aqua for Life Challenge website, an automatic counter told me that 44.646m litres of water have been ‘raised’ so far.

I think I’d also be more comfortable with donations being used for such a project if the implementing organisation had done the pilot already and had therefore demonstrated its expertise in running such projects.

Grace and Graceland

When I was a teenager, I had a copy (on tape – remember those?) of Paul Simon’s Graceland. Back then, I loved the music, even though I had no idea of the history behind it. A while ago, I bought the DVD of the 1987 Harare Graceland concert after fishing around for the individual tracks on YouTube. The music still stands all those years later, and I was blown away by the beauty of the performance and the strength of the performers – it’s a historical document.

Ethan Zuckerman has an interesting write up on the background to the Graceland album here.

Simon recorded the album and played the Zimbabwe concert with an amazing line up of African artists, for which I love him muchly: a musician doing what he does best, and to do so, he sought out his South African peers.

The Daily Mail of all publications recently had an interesting article on the corrosive legacy of LiveAid, and what I find particularly irritating is that these days, musicians and actors expect us to listen to them hold forth on how to save Africa. Shouldn’t we have sent Wahu and Nameless to Greece to advise them on their financial crisis?

Live 8, the 2.0 version of LiveAid and a massive global circus to fight poverty in Africa, started out without African musicians. When they were later added to the agenda, they were sent to play in an artificial rain forest – interesting symbolism no?

When Bono heard that the great, late Ali Farka Touré, accomplished musician and mayor of Niafunké, did not think the Live 8 concert was a good idea, he reportedly said: “If he doesn’t reckon Live 8 are helping his people, maybe they should rethink him being mayor.”

I will listen to Bono et al when they play concerts in Africa like they play concerts in Europe and the US. Nairobi, Kampala, Kinshasa, Lagos, Accra, Bamako, Dakar. They are musicians. They do music. Just not in, for, with Africans?

I’m looking forward to the Hugh Masekela concert tomorrow and Albertina Sisulu’s recent passing made me think about South Africa’s history again.

With gratitude to those who stood up: