Mau Mau Crucible of War

Mau Mau Crucible of War

Author: Nicholas K. Githuku

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2015-12-09

Total Pages: 575

ISBN-13: 1498506992

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Mau Mau Crucible of War is a study of the social and cultural history of the mentalité of struggle in Kenya, which reached a high water mark during the Mau Mau war of the 1950s, but which continues to resonate in Kenya today in the ongoing demand for a decent standard of living and social justice for all. This work catalyzes intellectual debate in various disciplines regarding not just the evolution of the Kenyan state, but also, the state in Africa. It not only engages historians of colonial and postcolonial economic and political history, but also sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists, and those who study personality and social branches of psychology, postcolonialism and postmodernity, social movements, armed conflict specialists, and conflict resolution analysts.


A Place to Call Home

A Place to Call Home

Author: Dr. Tom Obondo Okoyo

Publisher: Partridge Africa

Published: 2015-11-20

Total Pages: 786

ISBN-13: 1482809257

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A Place to Call Home is a story of refugees no community wanted to see anywhere close to them, as if they were good for nothing. It is an epic portrayal of a painful dilemma of thousands of homeless internally displaced persons (IDPs) who were victims of the highly contested and disputed presidential election. The novel is a true, tear-jerking reflection of a botched election in December 2007 and January 2008, which culminated into a postelection violence that brutally killed almost there thousand innocent people. Some were burned alive inside a churchGods territory as they calledwhere they had taken safe haven. About seven hundred thousand people were forcibly removed from their homes; some took refuge at police stations, while others fled to neighboring countries to remain alive. Business premises, vehicles, and other properties worth billions of shillings were destroyed, and domestic animals were stolen. This spate of violence happened at a time when thousands of ethnic militias heavily armed with homemade crude weapons were chanting war slogans and singing traditional war songs everywhere in the country. Loyal to their respective presidential candidates, the militias roamed the streets of towns and villages, making every journey perilous. Enemies who got caught were beheaded, and their heads were paraded or displayed on the main highways. Women were seized and gang-raped by the militias and got infected with the deadly HIV-AIDS virus. Amazingly, communities turned their backs against the combined IDPs who were looking for a permanent settlement, calling them foreigners, invaders, or land grabbers in their own country. Breathing under such horrifying circumstances, all IDPs drawn from various tribes resolved to live together in peace and harmony and to prove to the world that they could live with people from other communities without any problem, in spite of their language and cultural barriers. The idea of living together was instilled in the IDPs by VP Nyandege, who emerged as the leading light in their plight and the quest for what they could call home. VP Nyandege won a special place in fellow IDPs hearts and made them believe that life was worth fighting for. For seven years, these IDPs have been living in squalid conditions or in makeshift camps, waiting to be settled as promised by the ruling elite. The IDPs lived in rough and ready dwellings with no food, water, toilet facilities, social amenities, or sanitation at all. They were living in a world of their own; no laws, rules, or culture to observe. The fate of these IDPs is reminiscent of the Jews when they lived in Europe and were rejected by people in all countries after World War II and consequently had no place to call their home. After seven years in isolated makeshift camps, the IDPs were offered land to settle on by the Biblical Good Samaritan to prove that tribal groups, once sworn enemies, could live together peacefully and harmoniously. And now these IDPs would like to build the countrys first utopia, the same way the Israelis have transformed the desert land of Israel into another biblical Promised Land of Canaan, the land of milk and honey. (This unfortunate event was disseminated throughout the world by the mass media.)


The Last Hunger Season

The Last Hunger Season

Author: Roger Thurow

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Published: 2013-05-14

Total Pages: 307

ISBN-13: 1610393422

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At 4:00 am, Leonida Wanyama lit a lantern in her house made of sticks and mud. She was up long before the sun to begin her farm work, as usual. But this would be no ordinary day, this second Friday of the new year. This was the day Leonida and a group of smallholder farmers in western Kenya would begin their exodus, as she said, "from misery to Canaan," the land of milk and honey. Africa's smallholder farmers, most of whom are women, know misery. They toil in a time warp, living and working essentially as their forebears did a century ago. With tired seeds, meager soil nutrition, primitive storage facilities, wretched roads, and no capital or credit, they harvest less than one-quarter the yields of Western farmers. The romantic ideal of African farmers -- rural villagers in touch with nature, tending bucolic fields -- is in reality a horror scene of malnourished children, backbreaking manual work, and profound hopelessness. Growing food is their driving preoccupation, and still they don't have enough to feed their families throughout the year. The wanjala -- the annual hunger season that can stretch from one month to as many as eight or nine -- abides. But in January 2011, Leonida and her neighbors came together and took the enormous risk of trying to change their lives. Award-winning author and world hunger activist Roger Thurow spent a year with four of them -- Leonida Wanyama, Rasoa Wasike, Francis Mamati, and Zipporah Biketi -- to intimately chronicle their efforts. In The Last Hunger Season, he illuminates the profound challenges these farmers and their families face, and follows them through the seasons to see whether, with a little bit of help from a new social enterprise organization called One Acre Fund, they might transcend lives of dire poverty and hunger. The daily dramas of the farmers' lives unfold against the backdrop of a looming global challenge: to feed a growing population, world food production must nearly double by 2050. If these farmers succeed, so might we all.


MAISHA NI MAPAMBANO

MAISHA NI MAPAMBANO

Author: elizabeth mahenge

Publisher: Lulu.com

Published: 2013-03-25

Total Pages: 47

ISBN-13: 130087385X

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Tamthiliya hii iko katika upande wa harakati za mwanamke kujikomboakutoka katika dhana hasi ambazo hujitokeza katika kazi za waandishi wengiwa kifasihi. Mapambano anayoyaonyesha Berinda ni yale ya mfumo dume wawanaume ambao wanadhani hakuna namna inayomwezesha mwanamke namwanaume kuwa marafiki pasipo kuhusisha ngono. Mtazamo huu hasiunaonyeshwa na Dokta Martin ambaye anamtaka Berinda wafanye mapenzikwa siri. Berinda anakishinda kikwazo hicho kutokana na ukombozi wakielimu alioupata katika elimu yake ya chuo kikuu.Berinda anaipeleka jamii ya Kitanzania katika mfumo mpya wa maisha naushirikiano wake wa kijinsia. Kitendo cha jinsia moja kuwa na ushirikiano najinsia nyingine pasipo kuhusisha masuala ya ngono. Kwa utamaduni waMtanzania, jambo hili ni geni. Jamii imezoea kuona wanawake wanapokuwana urafiki na wanaume - basi hakuna jambo lolote linaloweza kuendelea katiyao bila kuhusisha ngono!Usikose uhondo pamoja na huzuni iliyomo katika tamthiliya hii ya Maisha niMapambano.


(Re)membering Kenya Vol 1

(Re)membering Kenya Vol 1

Author: wa-Mungai Mbugua

Publisher: African Books Collective

Published: 2010-11-01

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 996602820X

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One of the critical questions that Kenyans have continuously asked is what went wrong in January and February 2008 with the peace they had hitherto enjoyed. There have not been readily available answers to this fundamental question. The collection of papers presented in this book attempt to provide, as a starting point, possible explanations for the events of early 2008 including key background issues in Kenyan history since pre-independence times. Based on a series of public lectures titled (Re)membering Kenya organized by the volume editors together with Twaweza Communications and sponsored by the Goethe-Institut Kenya, the Institute for International Education and The Ford Foundation the lecture series became a way of trying to get scholars to engage meaningfully with the Kenyan public on critical matters pertaining to their nationhoodeven if this entailed first calling to question the lie about the very ideas and practices upon which that nationhood is assumed to stand. A key lesson drawn from the unfolding discussions at the Goethe-Institut Kenya was that the 2007 elections debacle was merely the cusp of momentous crises to do with among other issues, governance, law and order, Parliaments abdication of its role in ensuring accountability from the Executive, dilemmas of identity and socio-economic marginality. The book is the first of three volumes under the (Re)membering Kenya series whose overall objective is to cast some new light on the various trajectories that informed the happenings of January 2008. The present volume brings together some of the best interpretative writing and suggestions on pertinent questions, past and present, ranging from the architecture of Kenyas ethnicity, Kenyanness, generational competition, socialization and violence, iconic representations of identity to the ongoing debate on the efficacy of the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC). It is hoped that the issues debated during the public lectures and documented herein will spur further discussions in other spaces within civil society organizations, among activists and in newspapers where the public might continue to expand their thinking on the complex task of (Re)membering Kenya.


A Tapestry of African Histories

A Tapestry of African Histories

Author: Nicholas K. Githuku

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2021-10-18

Total Pages: 390

ISBN-13: 1793623945

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In A Tapestry of African Histories: With Longer Times and Wider Geopolitics, contributors demonstrate that African historians are neither comfortable nor content with studying continental or global geopolitical, social, and economic events across the superficial divide of time as if they were disparate or disconnected. Instead, the chapters within the volume reevaluate African history through a geopolitically transcendent lens that brings African countries into conversation with other pertinent histories both within and outside of the continent. The collection analyzes the pre- and post-colonial eras within African countries such as Kenya, Malawi, and Sudan, examining major historical figures and events, struggles for independence and stability, contemporary urban settlements, social and economic development, as well as constitutional, legal, and human rights issues that began in the colonial era and persist to this day.


Getting Heard: [Re]claiming Performance Space in Kenya

Getting Heard: [Re]claiming Performance Space in Kenya

Author: Kimani Njogu

Publisher: African Books Collective

Published: 2008-01-15

Total Pages: 202

ISBN-13: 9966028099

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Getting Heard: (Re)claiming Performance Space is the third in a series of publications on art, culture and society released by Twaweza Communications. The aim is to bring to the fore conversations taking place in Kenya about identity, creativity, nationalism and the generation of knowledge. The series is also about the pursuit of freedom through arts, media and culture. In Getting Heard the performance space is shown to offer wider possibilities for knowledge creation. It shows that in post-colonial Africa political leaders have consistently performed over their subjects at local and national levels. There is discussion of: Kenya National Theatre, Story Telling, Radio Theatre, Translation, African Languages, Music, Media and Mungiki This volume opens a window to our understanding of post-colonial Africa through performances.