Dispatch from Mombasa

You have heard about the story of the pied piper of hammelin. He who asked to be paid to clear rats from the city of Hammelin. At the end of the story we are told that he who pays the piper calls for the tune. And none other than the Prime Minister Jakom Raila Odinga has said that MPs are being paid to ask questions in parliament. It is not a new thing, we have heard about it before. We have heard how multinationals would foot the bill for first class flights to beach resorts and also pay hefty allowances to the not so honourable members to ensure that bills that would curtail their profits do not see the light of the day. They would also ensure that if they see, it is in an empty chamber where a quorum can't be raised. My concern is have we become a nation of hirilings dancing to many tunes of the people paying us? If it is not Mps who are being hired to ask questions for pay it is the journalists who will be writing stories for pay. They will be penning stories that fav...

There are times when I have been accused of being too pessimistic. A person who never sees anything positive in the future, but who is forever lost in the glory of the past. They say this because whenever I begin to tell of a story I will begin by quoting the good times of the past. How things used to be easy, how then it was a small task to bring down a girl for a quick lay etc. etc. And now that I have grown old and bald I seem to have been caught up in that past and any attempt to move out of it seems to be a mountainous task. Take heart for I am not alone. I can at least boast of contemporaries like the Cameroon’s soccer team the Indomitable Lions, France National team Les Blues and England’s national team . The way they have performed at the SWC 2010 leaves a lot to be desired. Is Cameroon really the Indomitable Lions or tail between the legs rained-on old lions whose past is now a shadow? Roger Miller must be nursing heartaches remembering the good old times when Cameroon was a ...

Where I come from, we rarely talk about hens. The only time a hen counts is when it has laid an egg or when it has hatched chicks. And in the chicks what gets noticed early is how many among them will grow up to become full blown cocks, to engage in the favourite past time of chasing hens for a quick lay. Yet even as the chicks grow, there is always the fear of the eagle. The patient, sharp eyed and calculated bird that feeds on chicks. Many chicken keepers will tell you that the eagle is the ultimate enemy in chicken farming. Why all this chicken crap? Watching the Nigerian super eagles play I was left wondering whether they were really eagles or domestic fowls. I really did not know whether the roles had been reversed and the eagles had become chicken to the Greeks. Things were not any better when Sam Kaita was sent off for a stupid stud kick on Greece's Vassilis Torosidis and I guess that is when things hit a rock. Disjointed and unco-ordinated football became the norm as t...

It is hard to explain in words what I went through when I saw Bafana Bafana being wallowed in goals. Someone might just say that they are not our people neither are they our relatives, so why bother. But truth be told their loss was my loss. Of course, the Paraguayans were the better team. They made Bafana Bafana look like a village team used to play mpira wa makaratasi and had just been introduced to a real football. They ran rings around them and at the end of the day, they whipped them with three goals. I can't say that I enjoyed the game and especially when they absorbed so many goals. I really hurt inside me. I really wanted Carlos Alberto Pareira to do some magic and make the team tick . But that only happened in my mind. He never did that and to add insult to injury, the goalie was sent off for a tackle that I am not sure was not a professional jump from the Paraguan. The question is how many of the african coaches are aware that they do not have their teams and countries b...

The debate for a new constitution has gained momentum and just like a wave in the ocean nothing seems to stand on its way. To me it all seems like the document has been passed and what remains is to see what will happen in trying to implement what many have called a very ambitious document. My concern is that we in the media have not taken our positions. We have instead fallen in love with the proponents of the new constitution while shoving aside the opponents of the proposal. We have actually glorified the document and bought claims that 90 percent of the document is good while forgotting to listen to what the opponents are saying. Are they for example justified in expressing their fears about land? Do they have a ponit when they say that the government will take away people's land? Are the clerics having it right when they say that the proposed constitution allows abortion and provides for gay marriages? Are they just making noise when they say that the draft gives one religio...