Post by Onyango Oloo on Jan 16, 2006 22:50:04 GMT 3
Digital Reveries from Onyango Oloo
It is very likely that not too many Kenyans have heard of either the kora playing chanteuse Kokanga Sata and her troupe of fellow female songbirds in their flowing boubous or ogled the video of her compatriot Idrissa Saoumou belting out a plaintive ode/musical epistle to his ancient mama on an acoustic box guitar while stuffing an envelope full of 20 Euro notes while fully bedecked in a pyjama, reminiscing via flashbacks of a younger pre-teen version of himself plucking crude wires on an even cruder home made relative of the banjo/mandolin family. Baba Salah has a hit on heavy rotation called Woura and
The Ivorian-born, civil war Mali transplanted Monsieur Tiken Jah Fakoly is a cross between Bob Marley and Lucky Dube with a voice echoing faintly the gruff tones of Peter Tosh- and from the optical evidence, has very little trouble filling stadia in Europe with thousands of adoring multi-coloured rainbow fans; Oumar Koita is an intelligent performer who shoots and edits his own patriotic Pan Africanist paeans to mother country and mother continent.
On Sunday morning, on my way to this city at thirty or so thousand feet, I gleaned the following news nuggets via a series of monitors dangling before my eyes and piercing my back:
-there is a drought in Spain, of all places that is threatening to ruin that Iberian nation’s lemon growers;
-Bolivia’s freshly elected President is talking about socialism and a new millennium against the Empire as he continues with his global lap of honour on his way to his momentous January 22nd installation in the City of Peace;
-A dozen West Virginia mining families are venting their spleen, irked at the untruths spat out by glib mining company spin meisters;
-19 tankers are ambushed by Iraqi insurgents;
-Russia ends a European business scare by closing a deal that will see her sell her gas to a private company for US $ 230 per who knows what unit only for the latter to turn around and peddle the exact amount to the Ukrainians at a subsidized rate of US$ 95 per unit;
-A sobering KPMG report cautions French mammoth car maker Renault to pay particular heed to the commercial woes of US auto behemoths in the light of the ascendancy of Chinese and Korean motorcar upstarts;
-Meanwhile the fortunes of Canon and Samsung-a pair of Asian corporate heavyweight contenders- continue to surge;
-A bellicose, fire spitting Iranian President thumbs his fundamentalist nose at Washington and White Hall, defiantly stating that it is still all systems go in the quest for nuclear technology and industrial energy;
-From the Nairobi weekend editions of Kenya’s English language press, I underline the headline grabber by Standard’s Otsieno Namwaya who lifts the lid on the scandal of maize rotting in overflowing silos in western Kenya while well- connected hooligans plot to cynically exploit the national disaster mode to enrichen themselves and their overfed brood while thousands veer close to famine linked rigor mortis; Naivasha-based Flamingo-Homegrown horticultural corporate supremo Di.cky Evans pens an incendiary letter to the Sunday Nation’s editor scoffing at Kibaki’s mythical 5 % growth rate by pointing out that many flower farms are fleeing Kenya because of the appreciating Kenya shilling and other major disincentives to actual and potential investors;
Bamako is a scenic city chock full of monuments. There is a monument to Modibo Keita; another one to Guinean-Cape Verdian military-political genius Amilcar Cabral and Pan African colossus Kwame Nkrumah; Malian women saunter care- freely by the roadside with the finesse of veteran cat walk professionals; the boda bodas and two legged dala dalas of Bamako are the swarms of piki pikis womaned by a battalion of sisters battling garrisons of their male counter-parts in an amiable commercial tussle to wrest the right to capture the next passengers unisexed arms around the driver’s waist as they motor busily along the maze of the Malian capital’s asphalt serpents.
A month after I was among a team of stunned Kenyans fleeced and conned by a gang of uniformed Guinean airport security officials sleazily lusting after converted travellers francs, I find myself for the second time in West Africa.
This time around, I am part of the Kenya Social Forum advance squad scoping out the African leg of the 2006 edition of the World Social Forum dubbed the Polycentric because it is taking place near simultaneously in Bamako, Mali; Karachi, Pakistan and Caracas, Venezuela.
Wanna know more about this year’s WSF activities?
I have FIVE WORDS for you:
Google is your friend, pal…
Moving right along:
The musical artists in para uno are all Malians, so one cryptic mind twister has been disposed of- so you can actually, in a manner of speaking, VUTA PUMMZ- if you so chose that is.
What is the actual point of this seemingly aimless digital excursion I hear some of you mutter as you cling on hypocritically to the next paragraph as if it is a plank to a rare raft emerging out of nowhere to save you from crippling ennui.
CONTINUED...
It is very likely that not too many Kenyans have heard of either the kora playing chanteuse Kokanga Sata and her troupe of fellow female songbirds in their flowing boubous or ogled the video of her compatriot Idrissa Saoumou belting out a plaintive ode/musical epistle to his ancient mama on an acoustic box guitar while stuffing an envelope full of 20 Euro notes while fully bedecked in a pyjama, reminiscing via flashbacks of a younger pre-teen version of himself plucking crude wires on an even cruder home made relative of the banjo/mandolin family. Baba Salah has a hit on heavy rotation called Woura and
The Ivorian-born, civil war Mali transplanted Monsieur Tiken Jah Fakoly is a cross between Bob Marley and Lucky Dube with a voice echoing faintly the gruff tones of Peter Tosh- and from the optical evidence, has very little trouble filling stadia in Europe with thousands of adoring multi-coloured rainbow fans; Oumar Koita is an intelligent performer who shoots and edits his own patriotic Pan Africanist paeans to mother country and mother continent.
On Sunday morning, on my way to this city at thirty or so thousand feet, I gleaned the following news nuggets via a series of monitors dangling before my eyes and piercing my back:
-there is a drought in Spain, of all places that is threatening to ruin that Iberian nation’s lemon growers;
-Bolivia’s freshly elected President is talking about socialism and a new millennium against the Empire as he continues with his global lap of honour on his way to his momentous January 22nd installation in the City of Peace;
-A dozen West Virginia mining families are venting their spleen, irked at the untruths spat out by glib mining company spin meisters;
-19 tankers are ambushed by Iraqi insurgents;
-Russia ends a European business scare by closing a deal that will see her sell her gas to a private company for US $ 230 per who knows what unit only for the latter to turn around and peddle the exact amount to the Ukrainians at a subsidized rate of US$ 95 per unit;
-A sobering KPMG report cautions French mammoth car maker Renault to pay particular heed to the commercial woes of US auto behemoths in the light of the ascendancy of Chinese and Korean motorcar upstarts;
-Meanwhile the fortunes of Canon and Samsung-a pair of Asian corporate heavyweight contenders- continue to surge;
-A bellicose, fire spitting Iranian President thumbs his fundamentalist nose at Washington and White Hall, defiantly stating that it is still all systems go in the quest for nuclear technology and industrial energy;
-From the Nairobi weekend editions of Kenya’s English language press, I underline the headline grabber by Standard’s Otsieno Namwaya who lifts the lid on the scandal of maize rotting in overflowing silos in western Kenya while well- connected hooligans plot to cynically exploit the national disaster mode to enrichen themselves and their overfed brood while thousands veer close to famine linked rigor mortis; Naivasha-based Flamingo-Homegrown horticultural corporate supremo Di.cky Evans pens an incendiary letter to the Sunday Nation’s editor scoffing at Kibaki’s mythical 5 % growth rate by pointing out that many flower farms are fleeing Kenya because of the appreciating Kenya shilling and other major disincentives to actual and potential investors;
Bamako is a scenic city chock full of monuments. There is a monument to Modibo Keita; another one to Guinean-Cape Verdian military-political genius Amilcar Cabral and Pan African colossus Kwame Nkrumah; Malian women saunter care- freely by the roadside with the finesse of veteran cat walk professionals; the boda bodas and two legged dala dalas of Bamako are the swarms of piki pikis womaned by a battalion of sisters battling garrisons of their male counter-parts in an amiable commercial tussle to wrest the right to capture the next passengers unisexed arms around the driver’s waist as they motor busily along the maze of the Malian capital’s asphalt serpents.
A month after I was among a team of stunned Kenyans fleeced and conned by a gang of uniformed Guinean airport security officials sleazily lusting after converted travellers francs, I find myself for the second time in West Africa.
This time around, I am part of the Kenya Social Forum advance squad scoping out the African leg of the 2006 edition of the World Social Forum dubbed the Polycentric because it is taking place near simultaneously in Bamako, Mali; Karachi, Pakistan and Caracas, Venezuela.
Wanna know more about this year’s WSF activities?
I have FIVE WORDS for you:
Google is your friend, pal…
Moving right along:
The musical artists in para uno are all Malians, so one cryptic mind twister has been disposed of- so you can actually, in a manner of speaking, VUTA PUMMZ- if you so chose that is.
What is the actual point of this seemingly aimless digital excursion I hear some of you mutter as you cling on hypocritically to the next paragraph as if it is a plank to a rare raft emerging out of nowhere to save you from crippling ennui.
CONTINUED...