Culture Trek

Posts Tagged ‘post-election violence’

“KENYA IS MINE” is the latest motto for Kevin Sudi. Kevin first introduced himself to me after I had posted to the Facebook Village Volunteers’ group about my pending trip to Kenya. He has been instrumental in working with the Common Ground Program and as part of Village Volunteers. He works at a local level:

mainly with widows, teaching them organic farming, HIV/AIDS awareness and positive living, micro finance, entrepreneurship, nature conservation, and we also have a primary school catering majorly for orphans and other vulnerable children.

It is because of our communication that I chose to join forces with the Common Ground Program.

I recently wrote asking where Kevin was, what has happened to Common Ground, and what he thought might come next. My guess is that I was just one of many who had bombarded him with these questions. His reply was an informal mass email written with anger, disallusionment and, most importantly, a passionate sense of national pride and determination:

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I just read two compelling articles over at Spiked in which Western media is being taken to task for failing to report honestly and without stereotypical bias.?

In “Kenya is not the new Rwanda: Why Western observers see every political conflict in Africa as an inexplicable outburst of violence and a harbinger of ‘holocaust’” (Tuesday, 8 January 2008), Frank Furedi. Professor of Sociology at University of Kent, critiques the Western disinformation that plagues Kenyan news coverage. Tracing the underlying historical tensions of the region, Furedi challanges Western cowboy journalism that shoots from the hip:

Through today?’s promiscuous use of the term “genocide”, conflicts become transformed into morality plays about human destruction, and tend to be seen as being both incomprehensible and inevitable. Western reporters see only a sudden, inexplicable outburst of violence – a kind of murderous descent into hell – and overlook the structural causes of crises in the Third World…

…it is precisely because the stakes are so high that the last thing Kenya needs is for its problems to be transformed into a Western fantasy about “another Rwanda”. Kenya was not a beacon of democracy or a model of economic stability before the December elections. And nor is it the dramatic setting for a Rwanda-to-be after the elections. All that has happened is that one group of corrupt politicians overplayed its hand, got a little bit too greedy, and forced its opponents to react on the streets.

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During this time of crisis, Kenyans have formed complex information networks, connecting and self reporting while traditional media access has been obstructed by the Kenyan government. Success has been notable but a core group of individuals have implemented something more. They are documenting and verifying the post-election violence from the ground up.

The following is a repost from Ory at Kenyan Pundit who asks that everyone please circulate this widely to help Kenyans bear witness to unreported violence. (Ushadidi means “witness” in Swahili.)

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Linda Szeto has been invited to write a three part series on the situation in Kenya at Eugene Cho’s blog, Beauty and Depravity.

• The first installment was posted today, 2008 January 10. It’s a well researched, up-to-date, summary of Kenyan events as reported in the media world-wide.
• Tomorrow promises to present a compilation of Kenyan reactions from Linda’s friends and from various Kenyan blogs.
• The last will feature an account of the emotional and political struggles of Linda’s friend and Village Volunteer host, Emmanuel Leina Tasur.

I look forward to reading on with great anticipation.

My friend Linda, a Village Volunteer, has news from Kenya about people previously mentioned here. In her blog, Autosmiler, Linda reports on Emmanuel and Lillian, her host family from her trip last June:

I’d been supporting his campaign to be a Member of Parliament. I’ve included his harried email below. Emmanuel’s wife, Lillian, went into shock and they had to take her to the hospital. They are both recovering.

Presenting a perspective unavailable through mainstream media, Linda offers Emmanuel’s own words:

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For days I have been able to do nothing more than hold my breath and watch the atrocities unfolding in Kenya as violent objections continue in response to the disputed election of President Mwai Kibaki. When it comes to news coverage, I want less of the dramatic “still smoking” violence or descriptions of how this looks to international outsiders and more about non-rioting families and what it means for them to be displaced. The truth is, I have no clue as to what it entails, not on a level of daily survival. Where is the human interest? Why is this always the last detail to get coverage? I despise?the media’s limitations and, at the same time, am drawn to ?each story like a moth to flame.

Yesterday I read “Kenya’s crisis spreads gloom over Africa,” a Reuters article in which journalist Barry Moody opened with:

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