TIGblogs - Bernard Muhia's TIGBlog

She is

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 17:02:00 EDT

She drinks from my fountain,
Worships at my mountain
She weeds my garden,
And dusts off my cobwebs
She whispers in my ear
Talking about what she will wear.
She sheds a joyful tear,
Every time she calls me her sweet dear.
She’s everything a man would want
Her confidence alone makes me fall in love
She is the girl in the park feeding doves
She is the girl in the kitchen with washing gloves
She is the girl in the boardroom chairing the meeting
She is the girl at the reception giving you a greeting

Poor soul

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 08:56:00 EDT

I’m just like you, you are poor materially, and I’m poor in spirit. You wear torn clothes and I wear a bare soul. You often go to bed hungry, I often go to bed angry. I walk around depressed, you walk around stressed. You live in an empty mud house, I live in an empty sad house. You salute me despite being my father’s age, I salute you for playing your part on the father’s stage. You complain about malnutrition, I complain about obesity. You can’t come to my exclusive country clubs without a pass, funny enough, I can’t come to the slums because you wouldn’t let me pass. I respect every soul as sacred, you respect every soul as sacred. I’m just like you, it’s just that we lead different lives. Poor soul.

Neda's vote counts

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 12:45:00 EDT

Neda’s vote counts

As I lay in the streets bleeding,
You are still in fortified palaces feeding
As my friends continue pleading,
You refuse to recount votes and continue misleading
I can feel my soul slowly leaving
Even though my face is beaming
My friends are now fearfully screaming
It’s all becoming hazy like I’m dreaming.

Why did I even bother to vote?
If you were going to rig out my vote
Why did I put my trust in the ballot?
If you would later kill my freedoms with a bullet
You use force to stay in power
Police batons rain on me like a shower,
You will have to kill me because I will not cower.

I lay on my back in the street
You shot me and now my body bleeds
I’m now a martyr, what my soul needs
A revolutionary symbol in my death
You will not continue to commit crimes in stealth.

Obama Dreams

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 04:47:00 EDT

Obama Dreams

I have a dream,
That one day,
That two day, today
The twenty-something age-group
Will save Kenya from the aged troupe
That Eric Omondi, Carolle Wambui,
Davis Waithaka, Joyce Mbaya, Bernard Muhia,
Cynthia Kahumbura, Moses Karanja and Valerie Kimani
Will from their respective respected fields
Bring forth national cohesion and great yields
That to be in our twenties
And headed for the stars
Will mean (more than just) something
That it is actually the in-thing
Dreamers, visionaries and pioneers just like Obama
From Kenya with international swagger
Cutting through the red tape like a dagger
And building empires through a policy of inclusion
My Obama dreams for the 20-somethings, is a grand vision.

For the ICT Press

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 07:48:00 EDT

The Kenyan Minister for Education banned students from using mobile phones in schools. The question that arises then is where that leaves the rest of the ICTs and especially the use of the internet in schools. Will E-learning ever take off given that the ministry wants to relegate education back to the Stone Age?

Yes, there were issues around the use of the mobile phones (ICTs) in schools that needed sorting but the education system desperately requires information and communication technologies to transform Kenya into a knowledge-based economy. E-learning and electronic content management are inevitably being integrated into the education system and the Ministry should be spearheading this shift towards development and adaptability. Already, efforts by players in the private sector and the civil society to initiate such a drive have emerged. One such initiative is a conscious, student-driven media interest online at http://www.fernmagazine.com. It is managing content produced by the students themselves. These and other brilliant initiatives are charting a course for the education sector behind the scenes, amidst all the hype around the landing of the undersea fiber optic cable.

Eccentric

Mon, 11 May 2009 01:24:00 EDT

Eccentric

A true dreamer, a visionary, an entrepreneur, a pioneer!

I told you about the WFP Orange campaign involving a student-led war against hunger, an email newsletter titled ‘manga iko’ and a photo exhibition to raise awareness about hunger in the country, then four months later, there was a global food crisis.

I told you about a rooftop photography project that would present a bird’s eye view of Nairobi and also include street photography to show a street-level view of the city. The project was also to present architecture as an art at galleries and other art spaces, two months later, there was an exhibition at the Nairobi gallery titled 24- Nairobi around the clock.

I told you about a looming class war in Kenya that was to be propagated by economic inequality and made worse by vast youth unemployment figures. Two prominent magazines-the African Executive and Taking It Global, a blog and a civic organization-Citizens Assembly- carried the article, nine months later, a global think tank, the Economic Intelligence Unit classified Kenya as one of the countries at a risk of social unrest following the global economic crisis and a consultant for the UNDP wants to base his research on my article about the looming class war.

I’ve been telling you that our young people need to be inspired to believe in themselves and their abilities and empowered to realize their heartfelt dreams and desires, and that this can be done through a spiritually-conscious media which embodies Fern Magazine-an online magazine written by students for students. That the coming of the fiber optic cable network will make the internet the next frontier for learning and business with young people thus making Fern Magazine the best platform for advertisers, civic organizations and the government to reach students directly, but you don’t hear me though.

A true dreamer, a visionary, an entrepreneur, a pioneer!

I desire

Sat, 09 May 2009 02:43:00 EDT

I desire

To rekindle that passionate fire
That immersion of our souls
Young and naïve, still learning
We were experimenting with nature
Finding our dreams, yet to mature
It’s that innocence, that purity
That makes me believe in love, sex and magic
Even though we were sometimes nervous, never panic
Coz if we found our bodies, we can find our souls
Sincerity of physical union, pleasure beyond all else
A discovery, like being somebody else,
I love you, I miss you, show me to myself
Make me a believer in right and wrong
Good and evil, a will so strong
Give me power to wrestle giants
But still remain down to earth like ants
Sing me a love song, then get into my pants
Kiss me like you care, hug me like a teddy bear
Take away my pain, blow away the dark clouds
Be like a bride, complete with wedding sounds
I can never run out of love for you, mine abounds
Selfish when my rubbers ran out
I know you wondered why I kept out
I cared for the near future, avoiding conception
Definitely straight, never mind the popular perception
Every woman is in you, a Goddess for real
I think about you, that sex appeal
You are more than these words
You are beautiful beyond
I would lose my breath today in your presence
Even though I know you, I want to rediscover
Perhaps I’m hung over a past flame
But there is nothing past about you dame
And I don’t even need to mention your name
But it rhymes with Ann
Love struck, I desire to be your man.

A shift in consciousness

Mon, 04 May 2009 07:25:00 EDT

A shift in consciousness

The trumpets have sounded,
After two years of doing this and that,
Finally, Prana has moved this and that,
Time to empower the next generation,
Time to fuse hope in humanity,
Set a model business for young people
Tackle their problems without fear or favour,
Chart a new course for this generation,
Preside over a shift of consciousness,
A new awareness in media management,
Take this country to Canaan,
Just like Joshua took over from Moses,
A young man taking over from a mzee,
A visionary leading the way,
To a brighter and harmonious day

The trumpets have sounded
It’s time to get this show on the road
Not the first, second or third liberation,
But a deliverance from the jaws of poverty
A healing from the misery of disease
Redemption from the grip of ignorance
A new sunrise in the plains of Africa
A new beginning to an old lethargic story

On facebook, twitter and Iborian
On the airwaves and on newspapers
Shout a new message, don’t do whispers
Sing a new song, a song of unconditional freedom
Freedom from political mischief
Freedom from maize, oil and grand scandals
Freedom from renting out public utilities to multinationals
Freedom from infringement of our sovereign territory
Freedom of thought, speech and association
What our forefathers died for in `52 and `82

A shift in consciousness, away from dogmatic religions
To a Spiritual dispensation of Love
Away from rigid rules to peace and tolerance
Away from killing in the name of God
Away from stealing from the house of God
Away from celebrity worship and idols
To a recognition of our equality
To an acknowledgement of our oneness
That we are Spiritual beings having a human experience
That when your fellow man suffers, you suffer
When your fellow woman hungers, you hunger
That when a child cries, you feel the pain
That when we discriminate and stigmatize,
It is us that are discriminated and stigmatized
That we share a collective consciousness,
The Human Consciousness,
Birthed from the God Consciousness
Created in his Image and Likeness
What He is, We are,
What She can do, so can We

She came back

Sat, 02 May 2009 03:55:00 EDT

She came back

For five years I wondered,
For five years I wandered,
But none could come close
Our relationship was never put on close
She has always had my heart,
Despite us being worlds apart
She is a stewardess now, flight school,
And I in the media, pretty cool
I would give up going to heaven
Just to be with her.

OMG

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 01:57:00 EDT

OMG

I’m a Millionaire
On a sunny April I declare,
I can hear the ecstatic throb,
I no longer need to find that job.
The shame, the guilt, the hate,
All dissolved like a quarter past late
Time to chill, feel, be,
Solitude, gratitude
Teach me to meditate.
I’m a Millionaire
And I will not share.
Five rooms in the prestigious Karen
I prefer a woman who is barren
Nightclubs without beer, outside; just the McLaren
I’m a Millionaire,
Long lost relatives…, I don’t care!

Bastard

Sat, 28 Mar 2009 12:16:00 EDT

Bastard

Says she wants to help the youth,
but they continue to suffer right under her nose,
just like a politician, a hypocrisy I consider uncouth.
Says she wants them to drive up prosperity close,
but an emotional barrier, she continues to pose,
everyday feeding on their imperfections like a dose,
just like I would say to a politician, ef off bastard!

(Remix) Her beauty speaks of God

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 00:49:00 EDT

(Remix) Her beauty speaks of God

Angels dancing in her hair,
A Goddess with magnificent flair,
Rose petals at her feet,
An innocence evil cannot deplete,
The silky murmur on her lips,
Her beauty speaks of God.

Offspring close to her bosom,
Her body, a microcosm,
Soaked in perfection,
Beauty beyond interjection,
The warm smile on her face,
Her beauty speaks of God.

The lush grass growing,
The slow breeze blowing from her lungs,
Gentle streams rising into tears of joy,
The sheer femininity perhaps a ploy,
Her beauty though, speaks of God.
It’s a wrap, switch off my iPod.

Un-understood

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 12:31:00 EDT

Un-understood

When your people don’t understand the vision,
Like Moses in the desert on a silent mission,
Decisions, decisions, are they still your people?

I could just lead an army of 300,
Send home the tens of thousands of reservists.
Is the divine calling on me to do so?

If you have to fight to give your love,
Questions arise, do they deserve,
Already served their purpose, maybe they have.

A prison of the Mind

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 13:46:00 EDT

A prison of the mind

A worry habit is the trap,
Grips you with a stream of thoughts,
Unending, unrelenting, though never real,
They clench hard, with every thought,
Harder, with every stream.
Fear fuels the fire, the grip,
Anxiety does no good,
Frustrations push you off the cliff.

Meditation clips the stream,
The stream of thoughts,
Creates gaps of rest,
An escape from the prison,
If only for a moment.
The freedom is bliss,
The deep full breaths,
The relaxed muscles,
A step back to observe it all,
The consciousness behind the thoughts,
Yes, there’s more to the mind than just the thoughts.
Peace, is how I can describe it,
Floating in empty space,
Uncluttered by everyday struggles,
Struggles that never end, never will
A peace that is Holy,
That is God Herself.

Sometimes

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 14:51:00 EDT

Sometimes

The rain drops don’t kiss the ground, sometimes
The expectations turn into frustrations, sometimes
Your friends don’t call you back, sometimes
The job application gets turned down, sometimes
The ink in my pen runs out during exams, sometimes
The paved road comes to a dead end, sometimes
The brakes on my Benz fail, sometimes
The price of unga is out of my reach, sometimes
The plot I bought is on a road reserve, sometimes
My girlfriend brings home another guy, sometimes
I pay the rent just in time, sometimes
I am the best in my class, sometimes
The flight I missed crashes into the ocean, sometimes
My blog post gets published by a Pan-African magazine, sometimes
A stranger pays my fare when I forget my wallet, sometimes
I slow down at the Zebra- Crossing, sometimes
There’s no jam when I’m running late, sometimes
The shopkeeper gives me complimentary milk, sometimes
I find a parking spot right next to the lobby, sometimes
A brand new car, a larger crib, and a thriving business, sometimes.

Her beauty speaks of God

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 02:02:00 EDT

Her beauty speaks of God

He has to be a beautiful God,
She who created the universe,
Every flower, every hill, every cloud,
Soaked in perfection, beauty beyond,
The curves on her body,
Her beauty speaks of God.

The butterflies have their purpose,
The vegetation supplying oxygen,
The body a microcosm,
Any animal, bird or fish,
The smile on her face,
Her beauty speaks of God.

The gentle streams rising,
The slow breeze blowing,
The lush grass growing,
The sheer immersion of femininity,
Her beauty speaks of God.

Fern (Students') Magazine

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 01:52:00 EDT

Fern Magazine aims at promoting journalism as an esteemed profession among students in university, high school and the college level. The magazine will provide exposure for articles written by journalism club/ association members as well as other students studying for or interested in the profession. It will also publish poetry, essays, plays and other literary material from students who are not necessarily taking journalism as their discipline, but are talented creative writers.

Most secondary schools and other institutions of higher learning have a journalism club as part of their extracurricular activities. These clubs are very active as they have the mandate to accompany any troupe going for activities outside of the school. They then bring back a report of what transpired which is read out at the school assembly or pinned on the notice board for all students to read.

The magazine will collect such news stories among other creative literary material from talented student writers and publish them online so that students from another part of the country can know of what is the latest update. They will also be able to exchange ideas and most importantly exercise their freedom of expression in a manner that is peaceful. The magazine is hosted at www.fernmagazine.com

Young people are by nature very creative. This has been expressed on the internet through the success of user-generated content websites. This is where more and more young people are exercising their power to create their own media rather than consume what has been created for them by someone else. The success of the video-on-demand website www.youtube.com and social networking website www.facebook.com are good examples of the power of the liberalized young person. The online magazine works with the same principle whereby, rather than writing stories and presenting them to the students, we empower the students by asking them to write articles which we then publish in the magazine. This way, the students identify with the product.

In addition to publishing news stories, poetry, essays, plays from journalism clubs/ associations, the magazine’s website will also offer online courses on ethics, civic education, peace and conflict resolution, spiritual learning and human potential growth and development. Various organizations that currently offer such courses have been identified.

The magazine website will also be a platform to conduct campaigns aimed at creating social change. Such campaigns include the anti-drug abuse campaign, the Youth violence prevention campaign, the anti-AIDS campaign among tons others.

We invite your involvement as students, teachers, parents, guardians, civil society and government to offer Journalism as a career choice, to air grievances and celebrate talented creative student writers and reporters, to offer programs that are beneficial to students and increase their exposure to the career/ business world and to inculcate values in students that will be their guiding principles as they become leaders in whatever fields they choose.

In an effort to ensure that the content produced by students adheres to basic journalism principles, the journalism clubs in secondary schools have a patron who is often an English teacher. The English teacher acts as an executive editor and checks whether the quality of the stories is appealing to all audiences. This works in our favor as it lessens our workload. In the case of higher learning institutions such as universities, colleges and polytechnics, the students are expected to be more executive in their editing and rightly so. Students from these institutions can be relied on to edit their articles inline with guidelines from the profession which will be made available to them on the website. The Fern Magazine Editor gives the final go ahead on the publishing of the literary material received from student writers and reporters.

It is our belief that the media can be and should be used as a tool of world benefit. The ‘sensationalization’ of bad news and the use of media as a tool of incitement has depleted the value of journalism as a profession. It is our desire to see the day when bad news is not censored but that good and uplifting stories also make the headlines more regularly than the sad repetitive stories.

Fern Magazine
Keep your pen alive.

Rural schools to also access online magazine

Sat, 07 Feb 2009 14:12:00 EST

The unique design of Fern students’ magazine has broadened the access of online content for schools that do not have an internet connection. The online magazine boasts of a download-able version that once downloaded, can be read on a computer without the need to go online.
This essentially means that an entire student body only needs to send one representative to the post office or nearest cybercafé to download the current issue of the magazine and bring it back to the computer laboratory where students can read it from.

Fern magazine which is hosted at www.fernmagazine.com publishes content from students. It captures the creativity of articulate students who can write essays on topical issues. The magazine also provides exposure for journalism club students who can report on events. In addition, Fern magazine is a learning platform for courses on ethics, peace and conflict resolution, spiritual and religious teaching and human growth and development.

Out of the Toilet

Fri, 23 Jan 2009 07:55:00 EST

Out of the Toilet- Getting your life back
Introduction
Getting your life back (out of the toilet) is a story that lightly touches on my life experience over the last two years through events perhaps influenced by events that happened over a decade ago. The title captures literally what my life has become or failed to become, what effect these experiences have had to my overall view of life, my productivity and most especially my spirituality. Chapter one talks of the stink. Basically, this chapter is about any situation or condition in your life that you wish you never had. I guess this is the weakness that plastic surgeons prey on to get clients. Chapter two, the Harpic cleaner is about accepting who you are just as you are and realizing that everything that happens to you has a deeper meaning which you can see if you really look for it, or as time passes and you can put the jigsaw pieces together. Realize that you are as Psalmist put it “wonderfully and fearfully made…and in the image of God”. (Paraphrased) ‘Harpic’ is a toilet cleaning detergent that is sold in here in Kenya. The third chapter, the Master Bedroom is about living in abundance both on the inside with love, joy and peace, but also on the outside where material things come into play. I welcome you to journey with me within, into the past and also into the future. However to a large degree, of which you will discover towards the end, my story is more about the present. The present is a gift. Read that last sentence again. The essence of this story is that I, you, we, are to embrace the present moment and in so doing be in harmony and in fellowship with the Great Universal Intelligence and Presence that is traditionally called God. No matter your religion, there is someone or something you believe to be greater than you, to be without blemish and to be an all-loving Being. Come with me to Him, or Her, the Great I AM.
Out of the Toilet- Getting your life back
Part 1……………………………………………………………………The Stink!
Part 2……………………………………………………………………The Harpic Cleaner
Part 3……………………………………………………………………The Master Bedroom

Part one
The Stink!
For me, the stink is its literal meaning. I really stink up the place, if you have ever had the pain of coming into contact with me, whether on the Citihopper bus, or at a conference, then you know what I am talking about.
The story begins months back when tap water had been temporarily disconnected to enable repairs at the pump station. In such scenarios, the standard procedure is to use pit latrines as the little water in storage is for use in the kitchen. So this one fin morning during the disconnection period, just as I was about to leave for work, I felt pressed to use the facilities. Having already suited up, I only took off my coat and entered the latrine. Once I was through with the business, I briefly aired outside to relieve my clothes off of the latrine stench. Minutes later however, the latrine odour seemed to have set in my shirt and tie. I shrugged it off thinking it would soon wear off as I walk in the chilly morning weather to the bus stop. I know pit latrines from way back when I lived with my grandmother upcountry and even in High school, and the stench always went away.
So I confidently marched off with my folder to catch a matatu (bus) to work knowing that by the time I had covered the kilometer or so, I would be fine. It felt so when I boarded a bus and got an aisle seat. About ten minutes into the one hour journey, I noticed a faint remnant of the stench and though that it was dying off it being faint. But the faintness wasn’t getting fainter; it just remained as it was. I was now beginning to become a bit self-conscious about it and I noticed one or two people twitch their noses. Then it got serious. I myself could not deny that the seemingly faint stink was not going away. My mind went off in all directions imagining the worst. The matatu had some music on and I tried to concentrate on that hoping to forget the unfolding drama. But that didn’t last long before a lady seated on the other side of the aisle went all out and covered the lower half of her face with her handkerchief.
By now it was fully out that something was utterly out of balance. The nose twitching increased and I tried my best to ignore it as a bad dream or my imagination playing tricks on me. The more I tried to ignore, the more I think it became noticeable. At one point, I contemplated alighting and taking another bus but that idea was quickly killed when I remembered I had almost enough money to get me through the ay and back home. With this knowledge in mind, I knew there was no other way than to suck it up. The morning traffic didn’t help much. I blocked out the rest of the journey and thought about the whole incident once I was off that bus. Unfortunately, I had to take two buses to work but the second one is a fifteen minute dash. I don’t even remember how the rest of the day went, but ever since, it’s like my body re-enacts that ordeal every time I get on a bus. It became serious when I realized the same stench stayed with me even when I use the washrooms at the office. My self-consciousness around the issue got worse and worse and even my meetings were affected. Ever since then, it hasn’t changed one bit. I get so self-conscious when around people, the anxiety kicks in and I can smell the outward manifestation of it.
The Gait
Another physical trait that has been troubling me is my gait. Gait is the manner or way of walking. Two years ago, I didn’t even know, at least on the conscious level, that people had unique gaits, to me, the right foot went forward, then the left foot, followed by the right foot and so on. There was nothing mystical or peculiar about walking.
This story goes all the way back to High school. Back then, adolescence was at its peak and I was just coming to terms with my parents’ separation. So the rebellious nature kicked in and I resented life for the separation. I think I took it out on God too because I stopped going to the school chapel. I only did so when the teachers on duty patrolled the school grounds and made sure that everyone went to the chapel.
A detachment from reality encompassed my rebellion. By this I mean, I drowned myself in daydreaming. While in classrooms, on the sports ground and even while doing other things. I hung my shoulders and dragged my feet as I walked, and even then I was zoned out, daydreaming. I did this all through High school which I never had much meaning for.
After High school, I had matured a bit and I slowly though unintentionally shook off the resentment together with the drooped shoulders and the dragging feet. Undoing years of damage would however take time. I went to university and it was hardly an issue. At least on the conscious level, I didn’t think the shoulders were hung anymore, although my shoes rubbed against each other as I walked but that was hardly troublesome. The first two years on campus were normal, I mean, going out to clubs, doing assignments and coursework and chasing after girls.
It was in third year though that a housemate made a comment one day as I was walking out of the compound where we rented on my way to a lecture. He casually mentioned that I slightly walked like a girl. I didn’t even pay attention to that because the norm with my group of friends was blasting each other with jokes, that’s how we passed time as there was regular power rationing. It came up in my mind later what my housemate had said and I got curious of his statement. Why did he say that, and was there any truth to the remark? Was it the usual jokes? I mean, no one ever said anything like that or about how I walked, at least not until High school when a friend pointed out how I dragged my feet when I walked. In High school, I already knew I dragged my feet, so it wasn’t any surprise to hear it. Here in campus, I knew that I hadn’t completely kicked that habit of dragging my feet as I walked, but it’s not like I had made it my mission to do so. It was later that I felt hurt in a way for the comparison with how a girl walks, because when I observed, I could see how girls sway their waists as they walked, which is partly why we check them out.
Was he being plain mean or did his remark hold truth in it? I never asked him about it lest he thought I had taken it seriously. Living in the same quarters meant I interacted with him almost all the time. I decided to ask another friend who I knew wouldn’t use the information later in a joke back. He dismissed it with a no and that was that. I shrugged it off and went on with my life. It was later that yet another friend tried to imitate me by slumping his shoulders and dragging his feet that I noticed that his portrayal of me included a swaying of the waist. Then it dawned on me that perhaps the earlier remark might have been true. Of course since I was being portrayed jokingly, I also laughed, at least on the outside. I think I subconsciously started walking that way because a short while after that people, strangers started making similar remarks. I overheard a quite a few. It really got serious. More and more people were commenting, loudly even! They uttered disgusting things like he is walking with unnecessary pride, or it’s an abomination others just making annoying sounds. Some even went as far as to suggest that I was a homosexual. This last one really pissed me off!
The remarks kept coming and I just couldn’t take it anymore. I started thinking that something was terribly wrong with me; I can’t be the only one who is right! The though came to me that perhaps a physiotherapist would know what was going on, and so I went to a clinic looking for one, but I was directed to a psychiatrist. He was a celebrity psychiatrist, whom I had seen on T.V. and I divulged my story. He wrote me a prescription for anti-depressants. I was really shocked! Anti-depressants! Really?
He said it was just a creation of the mind as a result of stress and depression. I never took the prescription to a pharmacy, nor did I go back to see him. And so I have lived with it since. It got to a point where it met up with the stink and they both wore me down, I even stopped going to work where I was volunteering because it was either drama in the bus or on the streets as I walked. I am now housebound as a result.
The Depression
It is now over a year after my brief interaction with the psychiatrist and I can honestly admit that things as they stand are worse off. On the prescription, the doctor wrote that the pills were for a psychosomatic case. I looked it up, it means (of an illness) caused by mental problems, such as stress and worry, rather than physical problems. Am I depressed, I strongly think so. Most of my thoughts have gradually moved from my unemployed status to the fact that out there they think am gay and to even questioning my very existence. When you get to the point where you are using words like melancholic to express your life experience at that moment, then I think it is acceptable to say that yes, your life is in the toilet.
In retrospect, I have come to agree that the origin of this ordeal is my parents’ separation fourteen years ago. In a way, I have spent a huge chunk of that time with my head buried in the sand about the matter and thus resentment and deep seated anger have over time given way to the psychosomatic condition I am in right now. It might be easy for an outsider to easily dismiss me as just seeking attention, but whether that is so or not is not the issue at hand. It is, dare I say, ‘African’ to sweep things under the carpet and especially where unfamiliar emotions are at the heart of the matter. And it is even worse when you are a man, because you are culturally not supposed to show emotion, men don’t cry, you are told. Society teaches you to suck it up, be a man! T.D. Jakes, the Bishop addressed this issue at a men’s conference that I only got snippets of. Our great local musician ‘Kanji’ expresses it so beautifully in his song ‘Am just a man’.
Will men ever be allowed to ‘cry’? Society carries you on its shoulders when you are doing well but frowns upon you when you are down. Is it a wonder then that our men drown their sorrows in alcohol? Or is this acceptable as a manly thing to do? I don’t have the official statistics but men commit suicide far more than women do! Why is that?

Part two
The Harpic Cleaner
Over the last year or so, I have been fortunate to get my hands on uplifting literature, mostly on how to be successful, but more importantly on spirituality and awakening the consciousness. These are the books that have kept me going through this tough period. Unlike the Harpic commercial though, the words in these books haven’t been able to cleanse my mind off of defeatism completely. However, I like what they have been able to offer, Hope. Other than Barrack Obama, they have been the most encouraging sources in the face of a storm wrecking havoc on my spirits. To me, spiritually, and not religion, offers a way out. Spiritually alive literature like ‘Conversations with God’ books 1 and 2 by Neale Donald Walsch and ‘A New Earth’ by Eckhart Tolle have stirred up passion and enthusiasm inside of me that was threatened with submersion by gloom and despair. I cannot fail to mention the life-giving words of Joel Osteen, pastor to Lakewood church in Houston, Texas.
It seems, when hope is almost out of breath, along comes great teachers and encouragers who lend a hand and lift you out of the toilet you are in. so are things back to normal? Hardly, but I can live with hope in my heart, joy in my soul, peace in my mind and love in my Being. Though the storm continues to rage on the outside, calm and stillness pervades on the inside. The calm I speak of is the resultant of a meditative consciousness that overpowers worry, anxiety and fear to bring back balance in one’s life. It’s an awakening that Eckhart Tolle speaks of candidly in his book, ‘A New Earth’. It is a giving of oneself to the universe, to be an instrument through which the universe is becoming conscious of itself. This is true living, which I would pick over sleepwalking through life. It is a life with a purpose higher than material accumulation and the need to control people through power, money or force. It is this journey within that will enrich the without.

Part three
The Master Bedroom
Getting your life back-out of the toilet-is the first step. Living in abundance is the last. What does not kill you can only make you stronger. After every adversity, on the other side lies a better, stronger you, ready to live life to the full with endowments that you did not have prior. It’s about getting out of the toilet, out of the washroom and into the master bedroom. Your life should be enriched by your experience. It should be expanded and made more elastic than it was before. King David had to face his Goliath and on the other side, he emerged as the Leader of God’s People.

Is it either Israel or Palestine?

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 08:12:00 EST

Is it either Israel or Palestine?

I believe I express the sentiments of the people of Kenyan when I say that we will be eternally grateful to the people of Israeli for their quick and helpful response after the 1998 bombings in Nairobi. This being said and seeing what is happening in Gaza and in Israel, I empathize with the Palestinian people on the one hand, and with the Israeli people on the other hand. After the events of January 2008 here in Kenya, I would not wish for anyone, anywhere to live in fear of war, or through it. I am working with the knowledge that we are all spiritually connected as the human race and so what one does to another, they do it unto themselves. I thus strongly detest the ideas that Israel should be annihilated, or that Palestine should not become a sovereign state. I detest the “either…or…” mentality in totality. It is my wish not to trivialize the conflict in any way, but can’t the human race just get along?

Bernard Muhia
Peace-loving Kenyan

Giving Students a Voice

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 06:49:00 EST

I formed Tazetta with my family members and this is one of the programs i intend to undertake under tazetta for the High school student population in Kenya.

BUSINESS PLAN

1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Tazetta has designed an online magazine for secondary school students. The objective of the magazine is to promote journalism as an esteemed profession among secondary school students.

The online magazine will provide exposure for articles written by journalism club members from secondary schools. It will also be a teaching platform for online courses on ethics, civic education, spiritual and religious learning and human growth and development.

The magazine website will also be a platform to conduct campaigns aimed at creating behavioural change among students. Such campaigns include the anti-drug abuse campaign by NACADA, the Youth violence prevention campaign by UN-HABITAT, and the anti-AIDS campaign by the NACC among others.

2. BUSINESS HISTORY

The idea of an online magazine started off in early 2007 to serve the youth. It soon emerged that internet access is not so prevalent especially in rural areas. I gave the idea time to grow and mature organically and it’s around July 2008 that a niche presented itself, the student population in secondary schools. This group is easily reachable through the established institutional framework and the drive towards e-learning is preparing schools for the ICT revolution. This setting was the perfect foundation to launch an online magazine on.

It is at this time that we learned of the AWPLI initiative. AWPLI stands for A Website per Learning Institution. The project is spearheaded by Elimu Holdings Ltd and its objective is to create websites for secondary schools among other learning institutions. We arranged to meet with their chief executive officer who embraced the project as value addition to their initiative. However it would cost us to integrate the magazine into the website network they had created. Elimu Holdings gave us a quotation of KShs. 105,000 which is still beyond our means. So far, 35 secondary schools scattered across the country have their websites complete and online. A business partnership with Elimu Holdings would avail the magazine with a readership base of 28,000 students. This readership base is growing rapidly as Elimu Holdings enrolls more secondary schools onto the AWPLI network.

Due to the high cost of integration, our next option was to host the magazine on our website and create links to the Elimu Holdings website. This option is much cheaper and gives us more control over the magazine. We however haven’t been able to commence that either due to unavailability of start-up capital.

3. PRODUCT AND/OR SERVICE

The online magazine for secondary school students aims at promoting journalism as an esteemed profession among the students. Most secondary schools have a journalism club as part of their extracurricular activities. These clubs are very active as they have the mandate to accompany any troupe going for activities outside of the school. They then bring back a report of what transpired which is read out at the school assembly or pinned on the notice board for all students to read.

The online magazine will collect such news stories among other articles from talented student writers and publish them online so that students from another part of the country can learn of what is going on in another school. They will also be able to exchange ideas and most importantly exercise their freedom of expression in a manner that is peaceful as an alternative to burning down schools to air their grievances.

In addition to publishing news stories from journalism clubs, the magazine’s website will offer online courses on ethics, civic education, spiritual learning and human growth and development. Various organizations that currently offer such courses have been identified. These include but are not limited to the following; Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, Brahma Kumaris Foundation, National Council of Churches of Kenya, Peak Performance International, Supreme Council of Kenyan Muslims.

The magazine website will also be a platform to conduct campaigns aimed at creating social change. Such campaigns include the anti-drug abuse campaign by NACADA, the Youth violence prevention campaign by UN-HABITAT, the anti-AIDS campaign by the Red Cross among others.

4. MARKET

The consumers of the online magazine are secondary school students. The schools that have enrolled on the Elimu Holdings website network will form the first batch of schools to be reached.

Young people are by nature very creative. This has been expressed on the internet through the success of viewer-generated content websites. This is where more and more young people are exercising their power to create their own media rather than consume what has been created for them by someone else. The success of the video-on-demand website www.youtube.com and social networking website www.facebook.com are good examples of the power of the liberalized young person. The online magazine works with the same principle whereby, rather than writing stories and presenting them to the students, we empower the students by asking them to write articles which we then publish in the magazine. This way, the students identify with the product. This module of community participation has been used very successfully by Not-for–profit organizations.

5. COMPETIION

The secondary-school-level population has largely been neglected because it has little or no control over economic resources. However, one player has been dominant in this niche market. The Insyder magazine has over the last five years been targeting the secondary school segment. A new magazine has recently joined this market segment. The Sikika magazine now targets teenagers.

Both of these magazines write what they think students like to read. They then take the magazines to students, teenagers and sell to them. The fundamental difference with our magazine is that it collects stories written by the students in journalism clubs, edits them and publishes them. The students get to read their material alongside that of other students. They are empowered to determine their own fate, and in the process grow their writing talent. They themselves understand their issues and can tell their own stories.

This need for a people to tell their own stories has been on the African agenda too, where Africans don’t like how their continent is reported on by western broadcasters and have thus been agitating for a 24-hour African news channel that will tell African stories from an African perspective.

In an effort to ensure that the content produced by students adheres to basic journalistic principles, the journalism clubs have a patron who is an English teacher. The English teacher acts as an executive editor and checks whether the quality of the stories is appealing to all audiences. This works in our favour as it lessens our workload.

Finally, both our competing publications are printed and thus we have no real competition on the online arena.

6. MARKETING AND SALES

The online magazine will be distributed over an already existing online network of school websites. Elimu Holdings Ltd has already laid down infrastructure which they are ready and willing to share with us. Secondly, we will work with the Director of Education at the Ministry of Education who will assist in disseminating this information to school heads across the country. The school heads will then pass on the information to their students and encourage them to write articles, poems, plays and other literature and submit them.

As for sustainability, the magazine will recover costs through advertising revenue. We will sell advertising space to universities and middle level colleges, manufacturers and distributors of school items. Advertising space will also be sold to organizations that carry out campaign on social change like NACADA’s anti-drug abuse campaign, Youth violence prevention campaign, anti-AIDS campaign, and the anti-corruption campaign. Advertising space will be sold at KShs. 60,000 per month for a banner advert. This is at a rate of KShs. 2.00 per student for the initial 28,000 readership base.

7. OPERATIONS

The magazine will be published on the internet. In addition to this, we are exploring the future possibility of publishing it in print for schools that don’t have internet connection in their computer laboratories.

8. MANAGEMENT

This project was initially founded by three journalists. These are Bernard Muhia, Moses Karanja and Mitchel Mkok. We have invited two more partners from the Information Technology field and the Marketing field.

We have also consulted two journalism associations for professional mentorship in this process. These are the Media Development Association and the Kenya Association of Photographers, Illustrators and Designer (KAPIDE). These bodies will compensate for our little experience in the publishing of magazines.

9. SIGNIFICANT RISKS

Our little experience in publishing magazines accounts as a risk which we have tried to address through linkages with professional bodies in the media industry.

10. EXIT ALTERNATIVES

We fully realize that we can take the magazine business only so far down the line. This will necessitate an exit as our creative muscles will have been stretched to the limit and the business portfolio will have exceeded our management capacity.

Our first option is to bring in expert managers to take the business to another level. Our second option is to sell our stock to investors and hand over the business to them. The investors may include Elimu Holdings Ltd.

Inspiration for the youth

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 03:21:00 EDT

My name is Bernard Muhia. I am a 24 year old Kenyan male. I am a journalist by training but currently unemployed. Due to my unemployed status and with no sources of income, I am living with my single parent.

Over the past one year, I have been volunteering as an administrator with a professional body. As a young person, full of vitality and creativity, I have been less and less inspired at work over the last three months. There hasn’t been any challenging projects or assignments and that made me gradually withdraw from the organization. I have to say that I don’t have anything principally against the organization though.

A lot of young people’s creativity and energy is fizzled out in their mundane jobs, jobs that they can’t quit because they still have to pay the bills or are too afraid to follow their true dreams and passionate desires. The only remedy that they resort to is to constantly change jobs hoping to find one that inspires them. Since most of their managers and supervisors are over 40 years old, and believe in systems and maintaining the status quo, there is no way that these young employees can express their creative energies for the benefit of their employers. Individualism has also not been appreciated in most corporate cultures. The human resource manager stresses team building and collective responsibility and thus the quiet ones remain so, and the creative ones hold back.

The society is fragmented more than ever before as seen in the ever rising cases of divorce and extreme anti-social behaviour. When a family unit disintegrates either through divorce, separation or otherwise death of parents due to AIDS or any other causes, the children grow up traumatized. This country has inadequate resources, facilities and personnel to handle childhood trauma that is commonplace.

To make a bad situation worse, the high rate of unemployment in this country has left in its wake a generation of young people who have despaired and lost hope in ‘the system’ and also in themselves. Poverty is not a lack of or inadequacy of resources but a state of mind of resignation gotten from that external lack of or inadequacy of resources. A percentage of today’s successful people have very poor and seemingly hopeless backgrounds but it’s their state of mind that changed for them to rise above that background and come out successful.

It is this state of mind, which results from the real or perceived inadequacy of resources, the childhood trauma arising from disintegration of the family unit and lack of organizational support to express young people’s creative energies that moves me to want to run an inspirational program for the youth. My goal is to help young people to grow and develop by overcoming any emotional blocks, limiting beliefs, low self esteem and self destructive behaviours that are blocking the road to abundant success in their lives.

Being a young person, and having experienced all of the above puts me in the right position to get through to and be accepted by the youth. The youth as defined by the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports are any persons over the age of 15 years but under the age of 30 years. I envision coordinating my efforts through a proposed youth center for excellence named ‘Under30.com’. The motto of the youth center for excellence will be ‘Make friends with success by following your bliss’.

To help me better understand the task that lies ahead, I am taking an approach used by universities which is writing dissertations or theses. I am preparing to write a book titled ‘Being a youth; A guide to the challenges, needs and aspirations of a youth’. I will carry out a survey among 200 young people to establish the following:

1. What challenges do you face as a young person; physically, socially, emotionally, spiritually, politically, economically and intellectually? (Give seven answers, one for each state, i.e. outline physical challenges, social challenges etc).

2. What are your needs in the physical, social, emotional, spiritual, intellectual, political and economic spheres? (Answer for all spheres).

3. What are your aspirations professionally, politically and socially? (Answer where applicable).

Their answers will form the basis of my book. Using the book as a guide, I will embark on the inspirational program. The program will involve screening an inspirational video program designed for the youth. The video program has been developed by Jack Canfield who is an author, motivational speaker and teacher by training. He trained at Harvard University and later at the University of Massachusetts in the U.S.A. He has also written a book titled ‘The success principles’ which will be issued to the youth benefiting from this program.

Due to the fact that this is my first time embarking on such a task, and going by the guidelines of the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, I will form a linkage between the youth center for excellence and Peak Performance International. Peak Performance International is an organization that has experts in the human growth and development field. This synergy will ensure that the program is run by the youth, benefits the youth, but is mentored by experts in human growth and development. Their input will enrich the inspirational program with relevant content and the right delivery.

The program first aims to target the youth through already established structures. The first group is the youth benefiting directly through loans from the Youth Enterprise Development Fund. Their number is 22,000 young people across the country as quoted by the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports. The second group is composed of students. These are secondary school students, university and polytechnic students across the country.

If a country’s youth are critical to the growth of the economy and to the internal security of the country, then the youth agenda should be given the attention of a national disaster. Handing out loans is the right gesture, but if the recipients are living in a state of despair and lack motivation, then the money will be of little consequence. And if students in secondary schools, universities and polytechnics continue to strike and disrupt their studies because they see the future as being bleak due to the high unemployment rate, then we have a failed education system.

I will reiterate that poverty is not a lack of or inadequacy of resources, but a state of mind of resignation gotten from the external lack or inadequacy of resources. A percentage of today’s successful people have very poor and hopeless backgrounds, but it’s their state of mind that changed, for them to rise above that background and come out successful. Our youth need inspiration to change their state of mind from despair and resignation to hope and inspiration.

The impending class war

Sat, 31 May 2008 10:30:00 EDT

THE LOOMING CLASS WAR

By Bernard Muhia

The French riots of 2007, which were a horrific representation of a class war or the recent spate of violence in South Africa, are probably where Kenya is headed. According to Dr. Sobbie Mulindi , who studied and lived in France for 15 years and is now a human behaviour specialist at the University of Nairobi, this country is on the brink of a class conflict that will surpass the post-election violence. Dr. Mulindi says “the next conflict is going to be between those who have and those who have not”.

The possible outbreak of spontaneous violence countrywide has also got the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports very worried. According to Mr. Isaac Kamande, the chief economist at the Ministry, a failure by the Coalition Government to fully and comprehensively address the problem of youth unemployment is going to be “disastrous”. His worry is that the youth will join or form new militia groups that will forcefully claim what they perceive to being taken away from them in terms of denial of opportunities. He expressly says that the youth feel denied and robbed of economic opportunities.

Kenya is ranked among the top 10 most unequal societies in the world and the most unequal in East Africa. For every One Shilling a poor Kenyan makes, a rich Kenyan makes 56 Shillings! This is according to research done by Society for International Development on economic inequality (2004). On top of that, Kenyans are among the highest taxed populations on the continent. As a result of the post-election violence, Kenya now has the second highest cost of living on the continent after Zimbabwe. It has become expensive to be proud to become Kenyan.

A class war is a friction between various groups or clusters in the class structure. There are three main classes; the upper (rich) class, the middle class (non-manual labourers) and the working class (manual labourers). A fourth class of the unemployed has developed over the decades, the underclass. Most of the youths in Kenya fall in this class which apparently has the majority compared to the first three classes. This is the class of the ‘have nots’!

With the youth between ages 15 and 30 years constituting 32% of the country’s population, it is a cause for alarm that majority of them are in the underclass in the backdrop of the high cost of living. At some point, something’s got to give and when it does, it’s going to be ugly. This group feels left out and is a disgruntled lot. The creation of the Ministry of Youth Affairs was a great leap in the right direction and substantive ground has been covered since, but that barely scratches the surface. Dr. Mulindi acknowledges that “ we have come up with so many sound policies regarding the youth and their welfare, but the problem has always been funding, implementing monitoring and evaluating them”. In fact, we have such excellent policy documents that they are edited and used by other countries while Kenyans continue to wallow in poverty and disease.

There are currently four documents that strive to address the youth unemployment problem. These are; The Poverty Reduction Strategy paper (PRSP), Sessional Paper Number 4 of 2005, Sessional Paper Number 2 of 1992 on small scale and jua kali enterprises and the Development Plan 1997-2001. The latest addition to this pile is the Youth Employment Marshal Plan (November 2007). Kenyans are also partly to blame because they do not listen to professionals nor do they use their research. We should move away from relying on politicians, who have vested interests, for direction.

As a consultant on the UN-HABITAT backed National Youth Violence Prevention Campaign, Dr. Mulindi says that the lack of employment and the feeling of despair is what push the youth to join Militias which tend to provide a sense of direction and belonging. The late American rapper, Tupac Shakur in his song ‘mama’ expresses his choice to join street gangs as not the best but says that “even though they sold drugs, they showed a young brother love”. Mr. Kamande agrees with this theory when he asserts that the feeling of being abandoned by society, betrayed by the political class, looked down upon by the financial sector and criminalized by the police force is not a good combination for a young person trying to make a living.

There is a general lack of faith in the ability and potential of the youth and this is a societal problem. Parents cannot offer their title deeds or logbooks as collateral for their youth nor are financial institutions willingly ready to lend to the youth. To add insult to injury, the police have criminalized being a youth/ being young. When the police report that majority of the criminals are youth, they also include in their statistics ‘crimes’ like walking without identity cards, loitering in the streets, being in groups of four or five and hanging on matatus! (Public Service Vehicles)
I am not a human behaviour specialist nor do I condone violence but I think all these factors contribute to why militia groups are coming up to fight ‘the system’(oppressive structures in public, private and social sectors). It’s a youth revolution that most often than not, leaves a bad taste in the society’s mouth.

One sign of the looming class war that most stakeholders did not pickup on was that most of last year’s (2007) political campaign rallies were held on working days, but were massively attended. This shows that there are so many youths who are idle and unemployed, and they pose a serious threat to the internal security of any country. Dr. Mulindi says that “we will never have peace unless we address the problems of the underclass”.

Then came the disputed elections and the result of that post-polls violence was the internally displaced people. The violence is the most serious thing that happened to Kenya’s population as a whole, since independence. The worry from different quarters is that the IDPs will not forgive the perpetrators and that their frustrations at being flung into the underclass so suddenly might push them to the battlefront of the class war. There were reports that militia groups were having a field day recruiting youths in the camps of the displaced. According to Dr. Elijah Agevi who is coordinating the National Youth Violence Prevention Campaign, analysis of the intensity of the post-election violence reveals a worrying coleration between violence, the youth and the lack of their opportunities therein. He is also concerned that a simple trigger can bring spontaneous violence that might take on a class conflict dimension.

We have a serious problem of unemployment and the ramifications of this, among the youth. As the security forces try to deal with the symptoms by shooting to kill and brutally arresting youths who just fill up our prisons, what they are essentially doing is creating hardcore criminals. Rather, addressing the root causes of the problem is a far more viable approach. The Ministry of youth has come up with a Youth Employment Marshal Plan (November 2007) which seeks to promote the successful transition of youths from school to work and thereby contribute to economic development. Most importantly, the Marshal Plan is expected to “greatly reduce the incidence of social problems as youth unemployment is essentially a time bomb”.

Dr. Mulindi who has extensively been involved in issues concerning the youth and is also the Chairperson of AFC Leopards, says that sports when used as an entry point can help fight drug abuse, HIV/AIDS, and teenage pregnancy. Football for example is a labour intensive sport and has the potential of employing over 2 Million youths directly, countrywide.

There then couldn’t have been a better gift for the youth than the merging of the Ministry of Youth and Sports. The task of the new Ministry is to now make sports an economically viable option for the youth. Kenya is in the world headlines every week thanks to athletics, so the new Ministry should view developing athletics vigorously countrywide as a priority. We can have town marathons in almost every town in the country and invite local and international sponsors. There is already a vote of confidence in Kenyan sports following the airing of the Kenya Premier League on a paid TV network.

I may not have all the answers to this quandary nor have I comprehensively expressed the views and frustrations of the youth despite being one of them. And so I propose further research into the looming class war, so that we can better understand it and hopefully help our youth break out of the cycle. The research will involve a countrywide survey to collect views, opinions and recommendations from youth respondents and other relevant stakeholders on how we can address this problem. The research will yield a report that will be presented to the Government of Kenya for it to take action immediately and expeditiously to avert the worst case scenario of a class war.

Story by Bernard Muhia. The writer is a member of the Kenya Association of Photographers, Illustrators and Designers (KAPIDE). He can be reached on bernardmuhia2000@gmail.com

Post Election Violence Trauma Counseling for Journalists

Fri, 09 May 2008 03:43:00 EDT

By Bernard Muhia

When asked by the psychiatrist what shocked them the most, one journalist (identity withheld) said that he was shocked “…to see people you have been living with for years turn against you and even kill your relatives…people you have shared with in times of grief and joy”. He was sharing this during a group trauma counseling session for journalists carried out by Dr. Sobbie Mulindi1.
Mental health experts acknowledge that covering a violent conflict can create serious health problems for journalists and photographers who often find themselves in the frontline of the events to get the images and the stories. Thus, they often experience or witness traumatizing incidents and many of them will struggle to cope with the impact.

It is in the unprecedented wave of politically motivated violence that was triggered by the 2007 electoral process that media practitioners found themselves at the heart of the events and witnessed firsthand, gross abuse of human rights. More than 1,000 Kenyans were killed and over 500,000 displaced by the crisis. Such disturbing images can take a toll on any human being irrespective of the community they come from or their profession.
The gruesome images may haunt them for the rest of their lives and may threaten their mental well-being if the problem is not adequately addressed through trauma counseling. Evidence gathered and symptoms reported among Kenyan media practitioners ranged from anxiety and depression to emotional numbness and substance abuse. The fact that the post traumatic stress was threatening the sanity of the workplace in several media houses was a cause for alarm.

As a rapid response strategy, International Media Support2 (IMS) organized the Nairobi Round Table meeting in February 2008 and discussions arising from editors and media representatives present identified the challenges that media practitioners and media houses had been facing prior to, during and after the December 27 2007, Presidential Election. One of the needs identified was that “journalists and media practitioners are traumatized but are lacking counseling to deal with the post-violence trauma and the self denial”.
The counseling sessions were subsequently organized by the Kenya Association of Photographers, Illustrators, and Designers (KAPIDE) as one of the imminent and crucial needs for support to Kenyan media practitioners having witnessed some of the worst things that can happen to humanity with no equipment to protect themselves and no tools to handle the emotional shock.

The counseling sessions were held in five locations across the country worst hit by the violence namely Nairobi, Nakuru, Edoret, Kisumu and finally Mombasa. In total, 150 journalists went through the hands of the psychiatrists and as Festus Amimo, a journalist based in Kisumu put it, “…received a full dose of what the doctor saw fit for him”.
While delivering a speech on behalf of Dr Bitange Ndemo3 at the opening ceremony of the Post-election Trauma Counseling Sessions for journalists in Nairobi, Mr. Peter Alubale4 said that the suffering of journalists is not appreciated by TV, Radio and Newspaper audiences. He went on to say that, “Journalists like all of us are human, with feelings, concerns, and needs”.
In the ‘Post Election Violence in Kenya’ presentation, Dr. Mulindi identified the disaster experiences as: sexual assault, interpersonal violence, selective victimization, evictions, revenge actions, and criminal activities. He also delved into Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and almost everyone in the room had either one or more of these experiences: recurrent and intrusive distressing recollections, distressing dreams (nightmares), reliving the experience, flashback, illusions, / hallucinations, numbing and hyperactive arousal.

Tervil Okoko who is the Chair of the Kenya Union of Journalists (KUJ) officially opened the Nakuru sessions and noted that some of the journalists from the town like Simon Siele had been displaced from their former homes and coined a new term that was used throughout the sessions; IDJ’s (Internally Displaced Journalists) from the acronym IDP’s (Internally Displaced Persons).

A visibly shaken Michael Oongo in Kisumu said “I hope the images of a very young boy threatening to hack me will go away”. After undergoing the counseling, a journalist who attended the Eldoret trauma counseling sessions later gathered enough strength and voluntarily wrote of his experience:
At one time when covering the extent of the post-election violence, I had to ask for permission from a gang leader to enter a small shopping center in the Rift valley province where groups of youths were vandalizing steel doors and windows in broad daylight. The one thing that shocked me the most was that this was happening less than 500 meters from a police station.
I witnessed police from another Police station in the Rift valley collect 10 bodies with deep cuts and arrows lodged in the bodies. One of the bodies had a pungent smell, was swollen and had safari ants all over it.
I also witnessed residents of a small center in the Rift, jamming the local police station carrying the body of an elderly man who was killed as police escorted farmers to harvest in their farms near a forest.

During the Eldoret sessions, Bernard Kwalia said that he was just glad to be alive to undergo the trauma counseling sessions. He had been spared death in Mt. Elgon simply because he had identified himself as a journalist. The killers sent him away to report the atrocities in a bid to instill more fear in the public. The three people captured along with him were killed and he was forced to watch.
In a true story submitted anonymously during the counseling sessions in Kisumu, one journalist wrote of his experience:
“Oh please God, don’t let it be, please, I don’t want to find him here”. These were the words of a young girl who had taken her search for her big brother to the provincial mortuary. My first instinct was to move closer and do the necessary as a journalist, ask a few questions. Before I could get to her, she let out a loud painful scream; she had just seen her brother’s body among a pile that had been brought in the previous night.
I quietly folded my notebook and decided to forgo the interview as I was overwhelmed by her pain at the discovery. I put myself in her shoes and imagined if it was me, who had just found out that someone close had suffered the same fate. For the rest of that day, I did not work as I worried about my safety and that of my family. I wondered why no one had called from the office to ask about my wellbeing and general safety especially after a shooting incident in my neigbourhood earlier that day. My conclusion was that as long as I submitted a news item to be broadcast, nobody really cared about how it came about or the hardship involved.

Yegon Evans, a journalist who attended the Nakuru sessions made a true but alarming remark when he shared that it was a new dawn as some of them (local journalists) were not even shaking hands. He said under heavy breath, “I hope that changes”. Journalists in Nakuru had formed cliques inline with their political affiliations. It was towards the closing of the counseling sessions, Yegon confessed that “The sessions had helped burry differences and allay fears and suspicions among the journalists”.

Still in Nakuru, one of the psychiatrists captured this story from one journalist5:
This reporter has been in the profession for 20 years. He has been covering the North Eastern area, Somali and Sudan. He has always covered deaths and destruction of property for many years. He was involved in an accident a month before the elections. Just after the elections, he witnessed a man being beaten in a bar in Garissa. He called the police to come and rescue the man. But on taking him to hospital, he died. The police came and beat the residents in the area who then got angry with the journalist for reporting the matter. He was under siege in his home. Later he managed to get away and made it to Nairobi to attend a doctor’s appointment.
When he went to his employer’s office in Nairobi after seeing the doctor, he was sent to Nairobi’s Eastlands to cover the political skirmishes. He didn’t object to it but instead went straight to town and took a bus to Garissa. He stayed there for a few days and was called again to cover stories on IDPs in Eldoret. He witnessed a woman being gang-raped by four men. He was shocked that these men committed the crime in front of the camera. He was helpless but tried to assist the woman by calling the police who arrived and got the men in the act but did not rescue the woman, instead they were furious and asked “Is this what we have been called here for?” they left without rescuing the poor lady.
In Eldoret, he witnessed mass destruction of property, people being killed by live bullets from police who were pursuing looters but ended up killing even the peaceful demonstrators. He witnessed people being killed by being burnt alive in their houses and churches where some had gone to take refuge. Many children had been abandoned, schools had been burnt, roads barricaded, there was no communication since there was no airtime, shops were closed and hence no food for several days. It was chaos.
The reporter survived only on water. He worked in a very risky environment. He is still based in Eldoret and vows to do his best to become one of the most recognized journalists.

George K’ouma6 was very concerned that journalism had now become an endangered profession in Kenya, especially after the recent spate of post-polls violence. “There was a journalist who lost his wife (all names withheld) because the militia knew he was a journalist, perceived to side with a rival political faction”.
William Oloo Janak7 on the other hand noted that there has been no proactive engagement from the media fraternity. KCA8, KAPIDE, and KUJ are conducting counseling sessions for 150 journalists based in five towns of the worst hit districts. With the vast number of journalists across the country, this initiative barely scratches the surface as there is an immense need for trauma counseling. Mr. Oloo said that “No media house has so far conducted trauma counseling for its in-house or permanent journalists”.
Most journalists at the sessions shared the opinion that the ‘No Crisis, No Counseling’ policy should not be endorsed and called for the Counseling Sessions to be a sustained program. This was in light of the fact that journalists are exposed to potentially traumatizing situations everyday in their line of work. The most feared enemy to press freedom according to Mr. Okoko9 used to be an underpaid journalist because he was corruptible. He went on to say that “Now, the newest enemy we have to press freedom is a traumatized journalist, he can plunge the country into disarray”.

The trauma counseling sessions according to Bernard Okebe, a journalist based in Kisumu, will add up to the healing and reconciliation process the country is pursuing.
At the end of it all, almost all participants identified with the statement: ‘I thought I had it tough, but hearing what others went through, I now see that I was better off’.
Story by Bernard Muhia.

The writer is a member of the Kenya Association of Photographers, Illustrators and Designers. He can be reached on bernardmuhia2000@gmail.com

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Wed, 07 May 2008 08:32:00 EDT

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