A word has reached us that the world wide leader of the Sikh religion will be visiting the Sikh Temple and University College in Kericho,Kenya on the thirtieth day of the month of January.This was told to us by the University's Principal during an interview with him on the morning of the twenty ninth day of the same month in the morning as he went on with the preparations to receive his guests.
It was said that the leader will be arriving in the country from the UK and that he will be here on Private and religious business only .
The religion has been contributing a lot to the bettering of the lives of the small Kenyans .They have built bridges ,the university college,and much more in this region alone .There could be much more out there in the other parts of the country.
Friday, January 29, 2010
Thursday, January 28, 2010
PETROL TANKER LOSES CONTROL AND BURSTS INTO FLAMES
A petrol tanker lost control at masarian crashed in to a saloon injuring the trucks driver and conductor plus the saloon cars driver on the twenty seventh date of the month of January the two thousand and ten .Masarian is about ten kilometers from Kericho town center..The tanker bust in to flames immediately it stopped rolling and burned a half way and also burnt a half an acre of a teas plantation .
The casualties were admitted at the Kericho district hospital.The cause of the fire was not clearly known but eye witnesses guess that it could be because of the sparks form the trucks batteries.
The casualties were admitted at the Kericho district hospital.The cause of the fire was not clearly known but eye witnesses guess that it could be because of the sparks form the trucks batteries.
TREE OF DEATH IN KENYA
There was a story in the kenyan press in the nation news paper about this tree .It was a weird and blood chilling story that is not far from the voo doos and human sacrifices that we have been hering about ,and the truth is that the story can not be far from witcraft ,soucery and religious miinformation.
A tree at Chaka trading centre in Nyeri has earned the reputation of the ‘tree of death’. Troubled people, some from as far as 20km away, are trooping to the trading centre to hang themselves from it.
Local police don’t know what to make of it. Villagers claim seven people have hanged themselves from that one tree in the past year. Police said they could only confirm two. Officers said Peter Muchiri, 25, and Stephen Gathara Kaburia, 40, hanged themselves on that tree within a month of each other.
The two came from Ruring’u, Nyeri, although they did not know each nor were they related, according to relatives. Mr Kaburia, a butcher, left home on a Friday to go and look for a cow for slaughter. He even called his wife, Ms Monicah Gathara Karaya, to say he would be home for lunch.
Four days later, he was found hanging from the tree of death, 20km from his home. The rope around his neck was the one he had carried to lead the cow back home. Police said nothing was stolen from him; even his phone was still in his pocket.
Locals said he was dropped off by a taxi a few metres from the place where his dangling body was found, although police investigators could not confirm this. Last week, Mr Karaya, 25, a lorry driver, was found hanging in the same spot.
According to his mother, Ms Tabitha Karaya, Mr Karaya had said he was going to Nairobi on the day he died. His lifeless body was later found on the tree of death. According to witnesses, his shoes were neatly arranged and the rope carefully slipped over the top of his pullover collar.
Same spot
In his pockets, police found a puzzling, roughly scribbled suicide note, thanking his young wife for giving him a baby boy before signing off with the words “Dhambi ni dhambi” (A sin is a sin).
Are the two deaths related or was it by pure coincidence that the two were found dead on the same spot? That is what police are trying to figure out. Relatives are mystified too. “As far as I know, the two did not know each other, and we are not related in any way,” says Ms Karaya.
“Now we know each other very well, although we are not related,” says Ms Monicah Gathara, Gathara’s wife, now a widow with three little children. Nyeri police boss Kirunya Limbitu described it as a strange coincidence. “It is puzzling. Normally, suicidal people kill themselves within their home area. These ones, it seems, travelled 20 kilometres to kill themselves,” he said.
Locals maintain five more bodies have been found hanging from that tree. Inevitably, it has become a source of fear and superstition. Some want it cut down, others swear never to touch a leaf of it. “I have seen four bodies removed from this spot. I think these trees here are cursed,” area resident Nderitu, 22, says. Police are asking the locals to volunteer information to help solve the case. They have opened inquest files, but there is not much in them.
A tree at Chaka trading centre in Nyeri has earned the reputation of the ‘tree of death’. Troubled people, some from as far as 20km away, are trooping to the trading centre to hang themselves from it.
Local police don’t know what to make of it. Villagers claim seven people have hanged themselves from that one tree in the past year. Police said they could only confirm two. Officers said Peter Muchiri, 25, and Stephen Gathara Kaburia, 40, hanged themselves on that tree within a month of each other.
The two came from Ruring’u, Nyeri, although they did not know each nor were they related, according to relatives. Mr Kaburia, a butcher, left home on a Friday to go and look for a cow for slaughter. He even called his wife, Ms Monicah Gathara Karaya, to say he would be home for lunch.
Four days later, he was found hanging from the tree of death, 20km from his home. The rope around his neck was the one he had carried to lead the cow back home. Police said nothing was stolen from him; even his phone was still in his pocket.
Locals said he was dropped off by a taxi a few metres from the place where his dangling body was found, although police investigators could not confirm this. Last week, Mr Karaya, 25, a lorry driver, was found hanging in the same spot.
According to his mother, Ms Tabitha Karaya, Mr Karaya had said he was going to Nairobi on the day he died. His lifeless body was later found on the tree of death. According to witnesses, his shoes were neatly arranged and the rope carefully slipped over the top of his pullover collar.
Same spot
In his pockets, police found a puzzling, roughly scribbled suicide note, thanking his young wife for giving him a baby boy before signing off with the words “Dhambi ni dhambi” (A sin is a sin).
Are the two deaths related or was it by pure coincidence that the two were found dead on the same spot? That is what police are trying to figure out. Relatives are mystified too. “As far as I know, the two did not know each other, and we are not related in any way,” says Ms Karaya.
“Now we know each other very well, although we are not related,” says Ms Monicah Gathara, Gathara’s wife, now a widow with three little children. Nyeri police boss Kirunya Limbitu described it as a strange coincidence. “It is puzzling. Normally, suicidal people kill themselves within their home area. These ones, it seems, travelled 20 kilometres to kill themselves,” he said.
Locals maintain five more bodies have been found hanging from that tree. Inevitably, it has become a source of fear and superstition. Some want it cut down, others swear never to touch a leaf of it. “I have seen four bodies removed from this spot. I think these trees here are cursed,” area resident Nderitu, 22, says. Police are asking the locals to volunteer information to help solve the case. They have opened inquest files, but there is not much in them.
Monday, January 25, 2010
ANOTHER KENYAN WINS THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE
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Dekha Ibrahim Abdi, a peace activist from north Eastern Province, is the winner of a global award, the 2009 Hesse Peace Prize which she received in Germany last week.
Her peace activism is long and chequered, having started the Wajir Peace Committee in the early 1990s to try and end persistent clan wars in the region.
A the time, her passion was to see peace prevail in a region where hostile clans were in a permanent war mode. It did not occur to her that the world was watching. And last week on Thursday, Ms Abdi scooped the global award that told her that her efforts were not in vain.
Wajir was under emergency law from 1963 to 1990, with government forces fighting an active guerrilla movement (the Shifta war). When the emergency and quasi-occupation ended, the security situation deteriorated even more.
There was an open conflict which claimed 1,500 lives, and which resulted in a lot of hatred between different clans.
In 1992, Ms Abdi and other women as well as concerned men started a grassroots peace initiative, bringing together people from all clans.
Despite opposition from the traditional clan leaders, they began to organise mediation between the warring parties (with representatives of minority groups acting as moderators).
When an agreement was in place, they set up the Wajir Peace Committee, with representatives of all parties — clans, Government security organs, Parliamentarians, civil servants, Muslim and Christian religious leaders and NGOs — to implement the agreement.
Ms Abdi, who had been working as coordinator for a mobile primary health care project for nomadic people, was elected as secretary of the peace committee hence undertaking dual roles.
The model developed in Wajir, which Ms Abdi describes as “a peace and development committee - a structure for responding to conflict at a local level”, was used again in 1998, when the Christian community in Wajir experienced some violence.
Ms Abdi assisted in the formation of a disaster committee of Muslim women to assist and make amends with the Christian community. They held prayer meetings with Muslim and Christian women, in which both shared their experience and thereby strengthened their relationship.
Subsequently the Wajir Peace Committee began to include Christian women, leading to the formation of an inter-faith committee for peace which has undertaken further activities to intervene in religious conflicts.
Fostering inter-faith dialogue and attempting to resolve tensions and conflict between religions has been a central focus of Ms Abdi’s activity since her first involvement in working for peace, and her methods have now been copied not only elsewhere in Kenya, but in Uganda, Ethiopia, Sudan, and South Africa.
In addition, Ms Abdi has taught in Somalia, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Canada, Cambodia, Philippines, Ghana, Nigeria, Netherlands, Zimbabwe, and the UK.
Ms Abdi now lives in Mombasa and works on peace, conflict and development issues with a number of organisations. She also raises funds to support community groups in peace-building and communication infrastructure and continues to work for the Wajir community with young people to create economic development.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
A FILM MADE IN KENYA AND ANGERED SUDAN
http://www.nation.co.ke/image/view/-/847630/highRes/128548/-/maxw/600/-/x8fq7q/-/kikopey.jpg
An IDP with a child strapped on her back against the backdrop of Kikopey camp for the internally displaced. Photo/FILE
An IDP with a child strapped on her back against the backdrop of Kikopey camp for the internally displaced. Photo/FILE
By EDDY NGETAPosted Friday, January 22 2010 at 18:48
Even as dark rain clouds pepper the skies over the barren hills overlooking Kikopey in Kenya’s Rift Valley province, inhabitants of these vast plains are unaware of an even larger shadow looming over their heads, occasioned by a possible international standoff over their participation in a controversial film.
The government of Sudan has petitioned its Kenyan counterpart to intervene and stop Danish film makers from releasing a movie. The movie blames Kenya’s northern neighbour for widespread genocide in the Darfur region. The film, Havnen (Danish for revenge), is centred around the war in Darfur and the vicissitudes of life for a group of refugees living in a town on the banks of river Funen in Denmark, and is scheduled to be released in August, this year.
According to media reports, the director of Sudan’s Department of Conflict Resolution and Management, Omer Dahab, has allegedly submitted complaints to the Kenyan embassy in Khartoum, saying that the film has racist contents. He contends that it will negatively affect ethnic harmony in Darfur.
The same reports quote S. Somaya, the Sudanese government spokesperson at its embassy in Nairobi, as saying that it is misleading for the film producers to shoot the movie in Kenya using 2007 post-election violence victims, and then claiming that the location in question is Darfur.
Ms Somaya claims also that the IDPs were lured with low pay, and taken advantage of because they could hardly afford to reject the offer. But IDPs who participated in the film beg to differ. Take 15-year-old Esther Nyambura who has called the IDP camp in Kikopey home for nearly two years now.
She and her parents were displaced from their Narok home at the height of the 2008 post-election violence and fled to the Naivasha showground, from where they were moved to the Ebenezer camp in Kikopey.
Absentee parents
Her mother Ann Waithera, and father David Maina are virtually absentee parents. They have been gone for weeks now, and she doesn’t know where they are. They occasionally drop by to give her money for food and then disappear again for days on end without telling her where they are.
The diminutive but energetic teenager, who at her tender age acts as both father and mother to her five siblings — feeding, clothing and taking care of their every need almost single-handedly — bubbles with enthusiasm and absolute joie de vivre, or the joy of living. True, life has been hard for the Standard Seven pupil at Mukinduri school, but when the film crew dropped by in October, bringing with them an unprecedented financial windfall, Esther was right in the thick of things.
For her trouble, she got five full days of sumptuous dishes and more money than she had ever had in a single day — enough to buy herself a new pair of shoes, a school bag and a new pen, besides presents for her brothers and sisters. It all started in early October when a bus-load of strangers drove up to the camp, clutching an introductory letter from the Naivasha district commissioner’s office and asked to see the IDPs.
The film crew first arrived at the camp on October 1 after scouting the country for an ideal location for their movie. After explaining their mission, they drew up and signed a written agreement with the IDPs, saying that the IDPs understood the purpose of the film shoot and that they had agreed to take part in it for a daily wage.
The crew then pitched camp on the hillside, peppering its slope with a sea of dark green tents. They stayed there for almost a month building the movie set, only leaving on Sunday November 1 after the shooting. For power, the residents say they used a heavy-duty generator which lit up the whole camp.
They brought with them also hundreds of tall, dark strangers whom the IDPs claim were of Nubian origin. “They spoke fluent Kiswahili and Sheng, so I think they are Kenyans,” says Lucy Wambui, a 30-year-old mother of three who was also chosen for a role as supporting cast.
“They told us that they had been picked from Kibera (slums) in Nairobi,” she adds. “I think they picked our camp because it looks like a desert. It is dry and windy, and has a lot of dust,” says John Mwangi, the Ebenezer IDP camp committee, who acts as their spokesman. The film was shot between October 20 and 24.
Internal refugees
An IDP with a child strapped on her back against the backdrop of Kikopey camp for the internally displaced. Photo/FILE
An IDP with a child strapped on her back against the backdrop of Kikopey camp for the internally displaced. Photo/FILE
By EDDY NGETAPosted Friday, January 22 2010 at 18:48
Even as dark rain clouds pepper the skies over the barren hills overlooking Kikopey in Kenya’s Rift Valley province, inhabitants of these vast plains are unaware of an even larger shadow looming over their heads, occasioned by a possible international standoff over their participation in a controversial film.
The government of Sudan has petitioned its Kenyan counterpart to intervene and stop Danish film makers from releasing a movie. The movie blames Kenya’s northern neighbour for widespread genocide in the Darfur region. The film, Havnen (Danish for revenge), is centred around the war in Darfur and the vicissitudes of life for a group of refugees living in a town on the banks of river Funen in Denmark, and is scheduled to be released in August, this year.
According to media reports, the director of Sudan’s Department of Conflict Resolution and Management, Omer Dahab, has allegedly submitted complaints to the Kenyan embassy in Khartoum, saying that the film has racist contents. He contends that it will negatively affect ethnic harmony in Darfur.
The same reports quote S. Somaya, the Sudanese government spokesperson at its embassy in Nairobi, as saying that it is misleading for the film producers to shoot the movie in Kenya using 2007 post-election violence victims, and then claiming that the location in question is Darfur.
Ms Somaya claims also that the IDPs were lured with low pay, and taken advantage of because they could hardly afford to reject the offer. But IDPs who participated in the film beg to differ. Take 15-year-old Esther Nyambura who has called the IDP camp in Kikopey home for nearly two years now.
She and her parents were displaced from their Narok home at the height of the 2008 post-election violence and fled to the Naivasha showground, from where they were moved to the Ebenezer camp in Kikopey.
Absentee parents
Her mother Ann Waithera, and father David Maina are virtually absentee parents. They have been gone for weeks now, and she doesn’t know where they are. They occasionally drop by to give her money for food and then disappear again for days on end without telling her where they are.
The diminutive but energetic teenager, who at her tender age acts as both father and mother to her five siblings — feeding, clothing and taking care of their every need almost single-handedly — bubbles with enthusiasm and absolute joie de vivre, or the joy of living. True, life has been hard for the Standard Seven pupil at Mukinduri school, but when the film crew dropped by in October, bringing with them an unprecedented financial windfall, Esther was right in the thick of things.
For her trouble, she got five full days of sumptuous dishes and more money than she had ever had in a single day — enough to buy herself a new pair of shoes, a school bag and a new pen, besides presents for her brothers and sisters. It all started in early October when a bus-load of strangers drove up to the camp, clutching an introductory letter from the Naivasha district commissioner’s office and asked to see the IDPs.
The film crew first arrived at the camp on October 1 after scouting the country for an ideal location for their movie. After explaining their mission, they drew up and signed a written agreement with the IDPs, saying that the IDPs understood the purpose of the film shoot and that they had agreed to take part in it for a daily wage.
The crew then pitched camp on the hillside, peppering its slope with a sea of dark green tents. They stayed there for almost a month building the movie set, only leaving on Sunday November 1 after the shooting. For power, the residents say they used a heavy-duty generator which lit up the whole camp.
They brought with them also hundreds of tall, dark strangers whom the IDPs claim were of Nubian origin. “They spoke fluent Kiswahili and Sheng, so I think they are Kenyans,” says Lucy Wambui, a 30-year-old mother of three who was also chosen for a role as supporting cast.
“They told us that they had been picked from Kibera (slums) in Nairobi,” she adds. “I think they picked our camp because it looks like a desert. It is dry and windy, and has a lot of dust,” says John Mwangi, the Ebenezer IDP camp committee, who acts as their spokesman. The film was shot between October 20 and 24.
Internal refugees
MONEY MISTAKES
Time is what we want most and waste the worst,” observed writer William Penn. Our spending habits are another classic paradox of something we so passionately pursue and then so inappropriately dispense.
And this despite the availability of financial facts, trends and reality that would propel one towards achieving goals and ultimately financial security and freedom.
Many are still making bad or self-depreciating decisions that are regressive rather than progressive in the long run.
*Sue has been working in a bank for almost two years now after getting her first degree. She considers herself quite financially savvy and has her plans well laid out.
She intends to take out a loan for a new car and move out to a better location where her car will be safe, and perhaps take a home loan after that.
*Patrick, a first-time father, says his priorities have to change to give his son the best chance at life. So he has opened a junior savings account in which he intends to deposit money often.
And he certainly agrees with spending more time at home now but doesn’t agree with his wife about cutting down on going out on weekends or evenings with his colleagues and friends.
Furthermore, he does intend to take out an education policy with an insurance company when the boy is a little older.
*Millie, a public secondary school teacher in her early fifties, doesn’t agree with her advisor at the bank where she wants to take a mortgage about where she should buy a home.
She has been shopping for a house for months and has chosen a three-bedroom apartment in a secure, serene court off Mombasa Road.
Her mortgage advisor feels she should consider her remaining working years and go for a home in another location such as Athi River or Kitengela or take a construction loan and put up a house there so that she is not struggling with a loan on retirement.
Millie intends to teach in a private school upon retiring and is, therefore, confident that she can handle the mortgage.
Mr Danson Mutethia, an investment consultant with Fortune Advisors, points out the flaws with all the above plans and other mistakes we need to stop making that create roadblocks.
1.Here is the first commandment in financial management that most of us know but ignore – live on less than you earn.
“Carefully draw the line between things you want and things you need so that you see where you can cut down on expenses, especially in circumstances that include a new addition to the family,” Mr Mutethia emphasises.
Friday, January 22, 2010
POVERTY COULD BE ANOTHER CAUSE OF THE POOR PERFOMANCE
I watched the Kenya certificate of primary education resultsof all the schools in kericho town and i must accept that poverty could be a cause for the big difference between the performance of all the schools in the town.Holy trinity primary school was another school with very good results .I went and watched the school population and i really was surprised at what i discovered .then i went to kericho primary school ,it was worse here .And when i went to the highlands primary school \,Then i discovered something that i wished that every body would listen to me.
I realized that the two schools ,Kericho primary school and Holy trinity primary school had an almost similar environment that was very different from that of the Kericho highlands primary school and that of the Saint Patrick primary school.The first two schools had an environment that displayed the life of a well of pupil and the second group of schools displayed the typical life of a low class kenyan pupil .
Judging from the above observations ,it is obvious that the results of the exams were affected by the quality of the lives of the pupils .Those with high quality lives had the best while the others had the worst .There is no way that we can escape from this situation though .,The only good solution lies with the Kenya national examinations Council.
The Council has to be careful the next time that they will be making the exams so that the poor pupils from the villages or the slams can have a chance .Your questions in general ,must come in favor of both environments so that poverty can not be a reason next time.And may this apply to all levels of education in the country.Be it in the high school or university levels.
We can't keep on blaming poverty like this ,everyone is gonna sit at home in a few years time .There has got to be a solution of this kind.
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