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A Wider Lens
"If you do that then you will lose the people of the community, and then you will lose the organization.”
Post Tagged with: "Kenya"
Kenya Dig A Cellphone Revolution
There is a revolution in Kenya that parallels the banking system and the broadband revolution but is something entirely its own: the cellular revolution.
More Money, More Problems
Consider the flying toilet. The term comes from the Kibera slum in Nairobi, Kenya. Within the slum, there is often less than one latrine per 50 shacks, with each 12-foot by 12-foot shack containing, on average, eight people. Kibera sits on government land that never fully transferred legally to its pre-independence residents, and, as such, the government treats residents as squatters with no right or entitlement to legal, social, or economic protection. A complete lack of governmental presence within the slum means that at night, with no street lights and collections of roving thugs (and, at times, predatory policemen looking for a shakedown), using toilets can become dangerous. In response, shacks stock up on plastic bags, defecate or urinate into them after dark, and fling them from their windows out into the streets to bake in the morning sun.
Me Against the World
Now you see, in Kenya the most seemingly innocuous organizations, teams, or associations usually have a much darker underbelly than you would expect.
“Below the Battle”
Last week, the Kenyan government officially declared an “offensive military agenda,” an action that many are calling Kenya's first war. Interestingly, this war is not with another nation, but with Al-Shabaab – an extremist militia splinter group of Al-Qaeda that has controlled large parts of Somalia for years.
How We Don’t Look at Kenya
Western media coverage of the conflict in Kenya has been enormous, especially for a story coming out of Africa. The reportage has been a staple of the Economist and the New York Times since the beginning of the year, and even the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette has run the AP’s dispatches from Nairobi.
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