Cooling Ethnic Animosity

The cooling cum collection center at Mwaragania

Kuresoi District in Kenya’s Rift Valley province has historically been reported as a conflict region.  Actually Kenya's tribal clashes which are usually heightened during the electioneering period have been traced to Kuresoi. Even today when there are signs of nationwide ethnic tension there is still the temptation to use the region as a litmus paper on how intensified the tension is. 

A very rich agricultural highland Kuresoi is densely inhabited by the Kalenjin, Kikuyu, Kisii and Luhya who do farming. It is also noted that the Akamba and the Somali also live in the region but their numbers don’t meet those of the first three communities. 

The agriculture-rich Kuresoi

Competition for natural resources especially land is the main cause these communities have been involved in ethnic conflict dating back to early 1990’s, and resurfacing in 1997, 2002 and 2007/2008. 

But as Kenya moves to another election there is hope that this circle of violence will change if the conflict intervention mechanisms being launched in the area are anything to go by. Or as the residents of Kuresoi are quick to tell you, the change is already being witnessed.

According to Simon Kang’ara, a community leader, the region is now peaceful.  “During the last referendum for the constitution all was well,” he says adding that this is enough sign they are ready to push for sustainable peace. 

Kenya passed a new constitution in 2010 after a campaign exercise that also took ethnic dimensions hence had been predicted to cause ethnic repercussions. 

Joseph Saina another community leader says “they want to end the stereotype that Kuresoi is a conflict region. What I want the media to report now is that we want peace.”

The community has gained this confidence and hope partly because of a project that was introduced in the area by the Catholic Diocese of Nakuru (C.D.N) through its Justice and Peace Commission (C.J.P.C) in the district that aims at cementing peaceful coexistence. C.J.P.C through the Catholic Relief Services (C.R.S) and through assistance from the American government (USAID) has set up two milk collection points cum coolers whose aim is to promote dialogue in the region. 

The two projects set up at Kimkasa and Mwaragania were launched in the month of April 2012 in ceremonies that celebrated the cultural diversity of Kuresoi as a district as well as its unity strength.

Some air of brotherhood was breathed during the functions as the community members shook hands and embraced greeting each other in the languages of their neighbours from other communities; an act that was unheard of in the past.

Citing lack of communication as one of the causes of ethnic tension in Kuresoi during the launch, Mary Oyath of C.J.P.C noted that dialogue will now be enhanced when the different communities meet at the collection points.

Besides dialogue the project is aimed at promoting cohesion. During the launch at Mwaragania, Fr. James Mwangi the Mwaragania Catholic parish priest thus posed the challenge “when milk is brought here, will you know which community it is from? It becomes one.”

Another priest, Fr. James Kagunya who is the C.D.N’s procurator while at the launch in Kimkasa summed it up thus “First we need to be convinced that this is our country Kenya. Let us live with God. Peace is not the absence of war. It is the presence of God.”

The government has also demonstrated its support for the project. At Kimkasa the District Commissioner Cyrus Gitobu expressed his hope that agri-business will be boosted. The government promised to train farmers on productive dairy practices. 

A front view of the cooler cum collection center at Kimkasa

These two projects dubbed ‘People to People Peace (3P’s) Project’ are part of 9 connector projects financed by C.R.S/USAID in different conflict prone regions in the country all of which are hoped to cool ethnic animosity as the coolers will, the milk.

In a message read on his behalf by Grace Ndugu the C.R.S/Kenya Country representative P.M. Jose expressed his hope that such conflict intervention mechanisms will be emulated in other parts of the country.  

Investigative Journalism as Research Journalism: A thought on Investigative Journalism Methodology

 Journalists doing what they know best in Naivasha following the PCEA Dagoreti-Hells Gate tragedy

 The word investigation is commonly used as a synonym to the word ‘research’. Actually the term ‘research’ simply means ‘to investigate’ or to ‘explore’. As a process research aims at arriving at dependable solutions as well as information to problems or about phenomena through a systematic plan of collecting, analyzing and interpreting data. 

Investigative journalism is thus research journalism, meaning, it is a kind of journalism that is anchored on research – on empirical observation or evidence of an issue to arrive at an objective conclusion. While exploring issues through research an investigative journalist seeks to expose that which is hidden for the common good. Like a researcher an investigative journalist follows a well thought process in looking for data, and in the interpretation or analysis of the data, where data for journalists is simply information.

Q: Should an investigative journalist make the conclusions for his audience or should he only make the facts bare for the audience to make their conclusions?

Investigative journalism parts ways with conventional news reporting on how the journalist gets his information. In most cases, if not all, a conventional news reporter is provided with the materials. An investigative journalist looks for the material through their own initiative, the more the reason it is referred to as enterprise journalism. 

In investigative journalism the ‘why’ of conventional journalism is approached as the ‘how.’ In other words investigative journalists probe further not just on the question of ‘what caused a certain phenomena’ but more deeply ‘what was the manner in which it unfolded.’

 

Investigative journalists are mainly qualitative researchers. Qualitative researchers rely majorly on descriptive modes of explaining phenomena. Unlike quantitative research that is based on numbers or what we may call quantities, to qualitative researchers, culture and behavior of humans is the key to inquiry. But that maybe is the key to the wide field of journalism; that even when we are talking about numbers, we should not stop at the numbers but try to investigate the meaning of those numbers to the way of life of a people (culture). For instance it is not enough to just report that Kenya’s economy is on a downward trend by 1 % but explain what is causing it and how that aspect is being felt by a cross section of citizens. 

Does a methodology for investigative journalism exist? 

In research, a methodology is understood as the method(s) of data acquisition and analysis. But perhaps the best way to look at it is to see a methodology as a step-by-step of the moving towards an unknown destiny – in our case the issue we want to unravel. Looking at it holistically then it should start with the first minute a researcher develops an interest in a certain issue. What this means then is that if at all a methodology for investigative journalism exists then it is anchored on the tenets of research.

But here lies the problem: research as we have come to understand it, especially within academic circles, is too strict. One has to follow the rules of academia to the latter. Yet journalism as we practice it is a walk-in-walk out enterprise; you don’t need to elaborate strictly on a piece of paper for instance about your problem statement as is required in research documents before you can conduct a journalistic interview. You will only need to have at the back of your mind what you hope to achieve at the end of the interview. Well, imagine you are doing a live interview with a politician on women and politics, and you start by saying “Mheshimiwa, welcome to the studio. The problem statement of this interview is…in the past women have not been active in Kenya’s political arena…bla bla bla… We don’t do this. We go straight to the point and leave the rest to academicians. 

However some guidelines as a process and methods for investigative journalism surely exist. And since journalism is an art that is perfected more through experience than formal schooling I wish to borrow largely from my experience: 

1. Topic Selection: Like in research a good investigative story starts with a good selection of its topic. The topic is then narrowed down to an angle which is manageable within meaningful resources which include but are not limited to time and finances. It is important that an investigative journalist picks on a topic that interests him. Interest is the oil that will propel their engine even when the times ahead get tough.    
2. Need: In topic selection the journalist ought to ask how important the investigation is within a given context. Yes, it may be unlikely that someone will scoop you for an investigative piece, but what if the times have 'scooped' your story’s relevance. In some instances this is analyzed as ‘the size of the beast.’ So we ask is the beast you want to shoot down worth the struggle. In research perhaps we will ask of what relevance is the study, or what new knowledge/information do you bring forth.
3. Objectivity: In topic selection this can be analyzed as the independence of the journalist to the subject(s) both as a field of investigation and as characters for investigation. For instance how free will you be investigating the alleged murder of a family member by people who happen to be his former business associates and who are your neighbors. But you can objectively do investigative pieces on business-related cases of murder out of the fact you lost a family member through the same. If anything you will be more sensitive to such issues having gone through this kind of experience – what some people refer to as the broken leg syndrome.
4. Case Study: Picking a case study is about specifics. Who specifically do you consider as the one who will give the best response that will best explain what you want to expose? Where is the person and is reaching them within your reasonable means?
5. Expert Thoughts: With time I have come to learn that a good story is composed of good case study interviews, well recorded actualities for radio, a good photo for news paper and a catchy video for T.V. None of these should be exaggerated. Then expert thought is also important - in most cases for the sake of filling in the gaps and contributing to that aspect of new information. Unless on very technical issues I suggest that experts must not be limited to the Doctors and Engineers. Some people among us have come to hold expert opinion in certain fields that we cannot ignore them even if they have no formal titles.
6. Right of Reply: Story telling in journalism is about conflict of opinion if not of ideas. And if there is any field where opinion contradicts then it is in investigative journalism. As we endeavor to cover some stories we will almost see a list of people who may be implicated in the long run even before we go to the field. It is important to start thinking of how we will have them respond to allegations leveled against them.
7. The Hypothesis: A hypothesis is a guess or an assumption, an explanation we tentatively give to certain issues. An investigative journalist should have a tentative guess on an issue of interest which they should then pursue to prove or disapprove. For instance if one is investigating corruption in terms of C.D.F misuse, the hypothesis can be that the C.D.F.C, the committee that manages the fund is stealing through poor contracting mechanisms. Then you investigate who could the involved contractors be and how are they involved.
8. The Investigation: There are different ways of getting information on an issue. Some issues for investigation may mean that we insert ourselves as participant researchers before we can have any tangible results. However journalism is an oral field. You must get someone talking to tell you the story, if not you narrating. This is the reason good interviewing skills are important for any investigative journalist. It doesn’t matter whether you use a questionnaire as a means of getting first information, a voice will be necessary for an insert or so. Good questions get themselves good answers and the contrary is true. I have great conviction that in investigative journalism open ended questions are the best. The responses to such make the story or the narrative flow.
9. Packaging: Good interviews will remain on tape or paper if the investigative journalist is not skilled enough to expertly pick the best parts of their interviews that best tell the story. Start packaging as the process of data collection goes on to avoid the stress of sieving all at the end. I mean even as you interview you will identify who among your interviewees spoke well etc. Identify them early enough.
10. The power of Description: The core of investigative journalism ought to be good story telling techniques and this is about describing issues so that we can see them even when we are blind folded.
11. Ethical considerations: Although in investigative journalism we always ruffle feathers, this should not be a license to break rules of journalism especially on the right to privacy. We should think of the FAIR principle: FACTS, ACCURACY, IMPARTIALITY and RELIABILITY as well as RESPONSIBILITY. Our stories ought to be dependable in terms of the facts we give as these facts should be able to stand the test of time. Even when we have to ruffle feathers, we should be mindful of the impact such stories have to indirect characters in the stories like family members of an individual a story implicates.
12. AND AS THEY SAY NO STORY IS WORTHY DYING FOR. Observe your safety, we need you to investigate and tell more stories tomorrow. Among the Ibo of Nigeria I am told an adage goes that we always stand in the compound of a man who was seen as a coward to point to the tomb of a man was seen as a hero during his days. The role of the story teller is so important in our times we cannot afford to celebrate the loss of any in the name of investigative journalism.

Online Reference Materials:

·         Story-Based Inquiry: A Manual for Investigative Journalists. UNSECO. 2010.

·         CBA Editorial Guidelines. UNESCO. 2010.

·         The Media We Want: The Kenya Media Vulnerabilities Study. Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. 2010.

Texts:

• Kombo, D.K. and Tromp, D.L.A. (2006). Proposal and Thesis Writing: An Introduction. Nairobi: Paulines Publications Africa.

REASONS I WRITE*

Every rational being will always have a motivating factor for every action he takes in his life without which the action taken is null. On this basis I one day engaged my mind on the reasons I write.

It was on the Christmas day of the year 2006 and I was working as a casual in the masonry at the Chale Island in the far end of South Coast.

Two months had elapsed after being conferred the “powers to read and do that appertains to this Degree” of Bachelor of Arts or what some people at the Njoro Campus of Egerton University laughingly referred to as Being Around (B.A).

Such statements were meant to arouse feelings to the effect that those studying for a degree in social sciences were jokers passing time at the university since after all they were only send there by their fathers for lack of something good for them to do at home.

It was also about eleven months since my poetry anthology Kenyan Martyrs: An Arsenal of Verses had come out.

On this day, rather night, I was reading Chinua Achebe's chef d'oeuvre Anthills of the Savannah. Now you know how catchy it becomes when Ikem Osodi the protagonist starts talking about 'The Tortoise and the Leopard - A political Meditation on the Imperative of the Struggle’ during the lecture he has been invited to give at a local college. And when he finally opens a Pandora's Box through his denigration of the key players in the society, and his self styled attack leads to his death, you know you are reading about post independence Africa that was afraid of the academia and which as Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye noted in Coming to Birth, was fond of 'striking down its best and brightest'. This is the point where the book becomes the cost of a sleepless night.

As you read you keep on musing on the role of a writer in the society especially if you are or desire to be one.

In the lecture Osodi saw it as the desire “to excite general enlightenment by forcing all the people to examine their lives because as it is the unexamined life is not worth living.” For this, as a writer, he had an inspiration he died for thus “to widen the scope of that self examination.”

But the chairman posed him a challenge:

that writers in the third world context must not stop at the stage of
documenting social problems but move to the higher responsibility of
proffering prescriptions'.

To which Osodi reacted immediately:

writers don't give prescriptions, they give headaches.

This is the argument I loved most. My poetry collection had surely caused headaches instead of prescriptions at my residential village whilst trying to describe patriarchy and social stratification.

Two of its poems 'Marry a White' and 'The Road to Shelly Beach' had not gone well among some Caucasian lay persons with whom I have had a close contact. The former they said was ambiguous on how the poet, a typical African chauvinist, could not accept to marry an African elite woman allegorized as a white woman and who is in the poem, alienated to the African aura.They accused it of propounding a racist motif while the latter they said did not capture the real situation of Shelly Beach - Timbwani.

Either, 'Marry a White' should have encouraged 'unity' or love while 'The Road to Shelly Beach' should have described how some of the foreign residents have become a Cinderella of cunning moves by some locals, so they thought.

This was very unfortunate of me. While writing I had not anticipated such headaches. Perhaps the desire to urgently become a published poet had made me myopic.

I continued thinking.

Two weeks had elapsed after reading the moving story of Orphan Pamuk, the Nobel Laureate for Literature in the year 2006. I found his reasons for writing rather weird:

I write because I am angry at all of you, angry at everyone. I write
because I love sitting in a room all day writing. I write because I have
never managed to be happy. I write to be happy.

Here was one who wrote because writing to him was a kind of a palliative therapy. It gave him a unique feeling, a source of joy so to speak. Of what essence was it to me? I continued prodding.

Well, it was actually at night and those of us who were on duty at the island that Christmas season were supposed to be dead asleep. So we were huddled in a room in one of the houses were renovating for the island to peek as a tourist site of choice for many a country lover. You see we would spend the whole week from Monday at the island and only go back home on Saturdays. Unless we were working a crucial job that necessitated a night shift work ended at 6 p.m. By 7 p.m. we would have taken supper and ready for bed, so that’s how I decided to be reading every night before I sleep…unless as it is I was too tired.

As I was reading and meditating in the dead of the night I saw a lizard busy chasing butterflies around a bulb fixed on a wall on my extreme right. Below the bulb my roommates lay, deadly snoring.

Now despite having no life in the room there was a lot of it outside. Crickets were chirping in alternating tones and in the Indian Ocean waves were bursting in thunder on the coral rocks that fortify the island, about fifty meters away from me.

I checked my watch. It was some minutes to midnight. The moon, so tender at the time must have been clouded over hence it was very dark – the darkness in which owls pronounce bad omen and utter curses that remain to haunt man for long

As if sensing my loneliness a wild cat, wild because the cats in the island though of the normal breed have no home to be domesticated, came to pay me a visit.

He (the cat) only managed to go a few steps past the door when his eyes met mine. He stared at me for a few seconds, looked at the lizard that was now sliding down as it chased the fly, rushed for it, but sensing danger the lizard went up immediately.

Bored by this step he walked out unconcernedly, perhaps unhappy because he had missed a sumptuous meal, on Christmas day.

One of my roommates stretched.

,/

All this time I was sited ‘on my bed’ – a mattress with a red cover that had turned black by several days of dragging on the floor and by the exhausted dirty bodies that slept on it.

Next to me was another mattress (read bed) with no cover whose owner had gone home to celebrate Christmas. From its fissures came out a bed bug, a ‘thing’ I had not seen before so I at first mistook it for a cockroach. However I realized that it was slower and smaller than the species I knew.

I took a piece of paper and crushed it. Some blood gushed out of it as it succumbed to the wrath of my fingers. With this came a pungent smell driving me to that conclusion since I had heard before bed bugs have a pouch of bad smell that can even make you go crazy once let open.

From far, I heard some cool slow and sentimental music being played at the islands restaurant. Actually there was a group that had been invited to come and entertain guests as they celebrated the birth of Jesus Christ. These guests were living in the rooms we had cleared with before, about a hundred rooms or so.

Their drum beats were lovely and their tunes wooing.

I wanted to listen to them so as to forget about what was happening at least in my life. Imagine leaving campus with the hope that you have all the creativity that will send employers fighting for you only to end up as an apprentice of some guys who keep on making you feel education is not important, guys who flirt with women with you as a case study…” I work with university graduates, who can’t get my salary. Money is what matters in Kenya and I have big money” Ha!

But by that time my eyes were becoming heavy. Keeping the eye lids apart was becoming a burden, especially with the lulling flutes.

These sending me to sleep made me conclude the reasons I write:

To talk about the agonies and glories in life; to talk about the visitation by a wild cat in the heart of the night while a distance away some other people were being visited by Cupid.

I write to talk about the consolations and tribulations in the world in view of what Socrates in Plato's Republic says of the rich…that they have many consolations.

I write to celebrate life!

I write to be immortal!

With this I hope I will always make sense every time I write. And if I write more poetry I hope it shall fall within the limits that were given by the father of African Literature, Chinua Achebe, when he said:

Poetry is at the heart of man's creativeness, but in the end it must transcend the poetry of the word to enter the realm of the poetry of human relations.

*This piece is adapted from an earlier one I wrote in August 2007.

This Man Kisinga…

I know you may have come across a fellow by the name Kisinga in Mwangi Gicheru’s Across the Bridge. Gicheru’s Kisinga is a gangster with a dirty mind and a dirty conscience if not with a dirty body as well. He dreams of anything 'big' including sleeping with Swedish girls he has seen in movies only to wake up soaked in the 'wetness of manhood'.  
  

Anyway should you want to know more about Gicheru’s Kisinga you will read Across the Bridge. So that tells you I wish to tell you about another Kisinga.

The Kisinga I want to tell you about is a very clean and smart fellow. A father of seven, Kisinga is a Mkamba of Diaspora who left kambaland soon after independence when Mzee asked Kenyans to "go thee unto the whole country and plow idle productive land". He ended up at the foot of the Shimba Hills in what is now Kwale County where he would bring up his family.  
   

Of course I am aware the word ‘idle’ on matters of land ownership is a post-colonial as it is a conflict sensitive word. The colonial theory was based on reports by the so called explorers that there was a far off region which was unoccupied and underutilized if not unutilized. If at all there were a people who sat on that region, taking it away from them was justifiable because the reports alleged they were uncivilized savages. Daniel Defoe in Robinson Crusoe and Joseph Conrad in Heart of Darkness expertly exhibit this.

So I don’t want to ignite such feelings to the effect that the Coast region was idle so it could be occupied by ‘outsiders’. Well, at least not at this time when the Mombasa Republic Council (MRC) is fighting for secession. What I intend to say is this…the likes of my Kisinga as a people in exodus wandered for some time before they finally found what to them was in a way land of milk and honey among a people who were hospitable. 

In the days when my Kisinga was settling down it is said there were so many carnivores from the hills of shimba that would attack their livestock. That's why among the cosmogenic myths in the land of my Kisinga is one that says the name ‘Shimba Hills’ depicts two lions that made life unbearable those early days. It says when the whites asked the indigenous community the name of their land they thought they had been asked about their troubles, so they talked of simba airi’, (simba for lion[s] and airi for two) hence reporting the case of two notorious lions that made life unimaginable in that epoch. Just to rub in the volatility of the lions the myth further says utensils would fall down from rafters if one of these two lions roared irrespective of how far they were. Sheep, cattle and goats would let loose their sphincter muscles unknowingly while dogs would screech with their tails between their hind thighs.

Indeed it is partly because of this, or so it is ‘cosmogenically explained’, that the indigenous community sold their land in give-away prices. 

In short there are so many stories that my Kisinga told us, about their original land and about this land they later settled in. I remember one story about a community they called Akavi and which they constantly fought with in their land of origin. Take Akavi as strangers. See them as enemies if you like and if we have to go to the extremes. Akavi my Kisinga said were people who crossed their land with large flocks of livestock looking for pastures. In the event the community of my Kisinga would stage resistance and there would be exchange of arrows from their side which the Akavi would reciprocate with spears. A song was composed by the community of my Kisinga to give them courage for such an encounter. It was literally a war song and it wound sound the alarm that the Akavi have been spotted. It goes: mukamba kwata uta ulumie Akavi nimeukila (you mkamba hold tight your bow, and indeed your arrow, for the Akavi are just about to cross).

Although my Kisinga told us several times of their victories I have thought time and again his was an exaggeration. I have felt they are the ones who lost many a times. It’s because if this I have argued psychoanalytically that the community of my Kisinga who are good at carving, hitherto do naked sculptures of the Akavi as a revenge tactic. I have argued, as they carve these sculptures, the way they keep on taking away unwanted wood with the adze to make the fine product of a old Akavi elder seated on a stool, is the very way they are hitting back at the many times they were speared without giving an equal match.

Anyway, I should stick to this fellow – my Kisinga. A very joyful man, he was at his best after a drinking spree, although he would drink responsibility out of him. I remember one day he made me walk him around from one drinking spot to another on a Christmas day. It happened that our mother had not sent us new outfits for Christmas. Ashamed and disgusted to see our age mates in new clothing, my siblings and I refused to go to church. That Christmas our mum had also forgotten to send us necessary shopping for the festivities. So when my Kisinga proposed I should go out with him so I can bring back home a packet or two of wheat flour for chapatti, the idea sounded angelic. I ended up being his page boy the whole day. I don’t remember much but I remember I came back home in the evening carrying a container of mnazi, the local brew in coast.

As it is my Kisinga just made us laugh about all this – missing a special meal on Christmas. Many a day he made us laugh even while we felt offended by him. He was a good story teller. He was also a good dancer. There is a day he cheated a young man that he would give him one of his daughters had he bought him enough mnazi. The young man listened to him and even after buying him the beer he escorted him home. On reaching at his compound he turned against the young man and asked him to leave as fast as he could before he descends on him. That young man still narrates that story to date. 

My Kisinga was a weird fellow. Or let us just say he was the best grandfather in the world. How on earth could he teach us how to flirt with women? And his style - “if you meet a girl” he would advise us, “ask her to join you in a task of pounding maize. Ask her to provide a mortar. You provide a pestle in reciprocate. Caution her to be well prepared as the task ought to take nine months.” Oooh my, that was my Kisinga for you. Asked today though I would say I now know better the politics of pounding maize that ought to be ready in nine months. 

My Kisinga was a healthy guy. He had a good appetite. He liked eggs and would take them raw in black tea. The last time I saw him he would wake up early in the morning and go the stream to bath without winking. He was very energetic and daring. A story goes that he once dared a District Commissioner (D.C)in to a battle. He asked the D.C to take off his kofia – the hat administrators put on – if he wanted to see him best. The D.C was leading a delegation from his office on a hunt for illegal brew in my Kisinga’s village. My nanny it is said was a brewer then. The D.C cowed so is it said. 

It’s some time since I saw and talked to my Kisinga since we don’t stay together any more. We only meet in dreams for we are far apart. His relevance in my life attempts to wane yet there is this one lesson he taught us that won’t go. That during the days of your life do your best to smile, do your best to be happy, do your best to avoid worries for the more you worry the more life becomes scary.

I have lived by this adage. Many a times I wake up weighing heavy with a dampened hope but I shake off my scares and stand up for the day’s chores. I wish this spirit to you too, rather, I know you have done this not once not twice. 

It’s the reason then I conclude by sharing this verse that appears in a poem I wrote a while back as a dedication to him:  

                           My grandfather is in bed

                           For him that we made

                           Within the homestead

                           My grandfather is dead.

Whaooh…now you know this my Kisinga. He passed on in 1999 and this is a mere dedication in his memory.